Cringey Casablanca: The magic chacha

Part II of Edward Slavsquat's never-ending adventures in the Caucasus

It is what it is.

The below text is a truthful retelling of Edward Slavsquat’s precarious existence in Tbilisi. Read Part One first though…

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They have a peculiar way of organizing society in Tbilisi.

If you are able to climb The Hill in under ten minutes you are granted residency. If you can make the journey in less than five minutes you receive citizenship. A three-minute trek is rewarded with a seat in parliament; reach the summit within two minutes and you are appointed President.

There’s one record yet to be achieved by either man or beast. Sprinting up The Hill in under 60 seconds secures EU membership for Georgia. The country’s Olympic runners are still trying to crack that nut and they’re becoming increasingly despondent.

Yesterday your correspondent clocked a 9:48 and after the city’s church bells rang out in celebration I was crowned an official resident of Tbilisi.

The ceremony was held on a stage erected in front of City Hall, and the large crowd that gathered clapped and whistled as I was handed a framed certificate conferring upon me all the rights, privileges, and obligations of my new status in Georgia.

As per tradition, the mayor of Tbilisi recited the famous lyrics of beloved 19th-century Georgian poet Nikoloz Baratashvili:

You made it to the top of The Hill

You did it

and I’m so proud of you

“Speech! Speech!” the swarm of admiring Georgians shouted at me.

“Gamarjoba,” I said into the microphone. “Now that I have residency I can finally apply for a Russian visa and return to Moscow.”

The crowd booed and hissed and threw rotten vegetables at me and then dispersed.

At the very end of the ceremony I was given a dagger donated by the flea market.

Of course, being able to ascend The Hill in under ten minutes means you’ve spent enough time in Tbilisi to extricate yourself from the oblivious existence of an easily hustled passer-by and really live in this city. And the first phase of this transmutation is to gain proper appreciation of Georgian cuisine.

Probably you think we Tbilisians eat only khachapuri and khinkali? Probably you think Georgians—my people—only know how to wrap meatballs in twisted knobs of dough and crack eggs over vulva-shaped cheese bread? You are khacha-wrong.

But since I am your Resident Tbilisi Correspondent, and since some of you even give me money, I will reveal to you all the mysteries of this ancient city.

Listen very carefully.

For millennia, the Georgians have been keeping a delicious secret from you: beans.

Tbilisi has the most wonderful beans, mashed into a semi-paste and sprinkled with spices or something. I don’t know how they do it and I don’t ask because I know they won’t tell me.

Next time you’re at a Georgian restaurant just say “beans, please” and leave it at that; or if you want to show off you can use the Georgian name for this magic bean dish—Gamarjoba (pronounced GA-MAR-JOBA).

There is an excellent café near The Biltmore that has mind-blowing beans. Even locals such as myself dine there. And no, I’m not going to tell you the address—because you and your tourist friends will ruin it. There’s nothing Tbilisians hate more than foreigners causing a ruckus while we’re trying to enjoy our bowl of beans.

If I was ever approached by the Tbilisi Bean Farmers’ Association I would stop writing about clot-shots altogether and commit every ounce of my strength to shilling Georgian beans. Ball’s in your court, TBFA.

The price of sucking tobacco in Tbilisi

If you are stranded in Tbilisi and feel nostalgic for the quiet comradery of Russians, head straight to the nearest hookah lounge.

This useful lifehack works anywhere in the world because every hookah lounge serves as an unofficial Russian Elks Club. If you speak even a little bit of Russian you will be greeted as a brother and given a fez to wear.

Hookah-smoking is a despicable and disgusting habit; and it’s expensive; and it has absolutely no upsides and a huge number of downsides. I once read that smoking one little hookah is the equivalent of stuffing 50 cigarettes in your mouth and then lighting them with a flamethrower. To put it plainly, only a fool would smoke hookah.

I very much enjoy smoking hookah and find great comfort in dimly lit smoke-filled rooms surrounded by contemplative Russians sucking water-filtered tobacco out of hoses.

However, not all hookah lounges are created equal. Truth be told, a tolerable hookah lounge is something of a rarity these days. Most are too noisy or too expensive to enjoy yourself properly. A surprising number of smoke-rooms are actual criminal enterprises, so if you’re not careful you’ll get taken for a ride. It’s very important to ask how much a hookah costs before ordering one, and as a general rule you should never spend more than $20.

For a connoisseur who appreciates the finer things in life, a truly superb hookah using the finest tobaccos filtered through the most advanced hookah technology declassified by the Pentagon—such decadence will cost upwards of $35. But if you’re paying more than $40 to smoke a hookah you have been scammed beyond your wildest dreams.

Here’s some more free advice from a longtime resident of Tbilisi: you might be walking down the street and you might notice an alluring hookah lounge nestled on a cozy cobblestone street; you might observe the lounge has enticing oversized pillows and even a powerful fan that blows cooling water vapor on its patrons. That might look very pleasurable because it might be very hot outside.

Loitering in front of the lounge might be a suspiciously friendly woman who might beckon you to sit down on those soft oversized pillows and order a nice refreshing hookah.

This might happen to you. And if it does, just ignore her and keep walking. Because if you don’t keep walking you’ll be in for a real treat after finishing the mediocre hookah that you ordered carelessly without even looking at the menu.

This is very good advice—the best advice I can give anyone. According to my calculations this advice is worth at least $115.

Hot lips

There is a bar in the style of decrepit chic located on the roof of a condemned building not far from The Biltmore. The entrance to this establishment is unmarked and you have to clamber up a narrow, shaky staircase to reach it. I didn’t actually know where this staircase went when I first decided to climb it, so imagine my surprise when it took me to a rooftop bar. Usually I just end up in someone’s apartment and get yelled at.

The bar has no chairs; instead you have the choice of sitting on a beanbag or a swinging wicker basket chained to the terrace’s overhang. The waiters—young bubbly Russians—are exceedingly friendly and all dress like orphans who escaped from the circus.

It’s a very pleasant place to sit and read. I never travel without a book, and for my journey to Tbilisi I packed my hardcover copy of Ernest Hemingway, Dateline: Toronto: Hemingway's Complete Toronto Star Dispatches 1920-1924.

As the title suggests, it’s a 450-page anthology of Hemingway’s blog posts for the Canadian Lamestream Media.

In one dispatch the cub reporter documented the different strategies employed by shoplifters in Toronto’s department stores. In another report young Hemingway marveled at the latest trend in medical quackery—a cult of American dentists called the One Hundred Percent Club who advocated for merciless tooth-pulling as a cure-all.

Ernest even provided financial advice to his readers: if they wanted to save money they could volunteer for a free shave at the local barber’s college, provided they wouldn’t mind a barber-apprentice nicking an artery—he was still learning, after all.

There is great wisdom buried in these old blogs, but digging for the long-forgotten nuggets is serious and time-consuming work. And so I found myself passing another defiantly warm Tbilisi evening with Ernest at the beanbag bar.

I had reached the best part of the blog archive—Hemingway’s musings about 1920s Paris. Although undoubtedly superior to Tbilisi in every way, the Paris he described shared eerie similarities to Cringey Casablanca: the same hapless loafers, refugees, bohemians, grumpy locals, and unscrupulous grifters—even the Moroccan who tried to sell Hemingway a goatskin dyed to look like a tiger pelt sounded vaguely familiar.

In his blogs he painted a picture of a schizophrenic, tormented, and beautiful city that was probably both overly impressionistic and far too real, and he achieved this in part by paying close attention to the French capital’s communities of bumbling expatriates.

In “Paris Is Full of Russians,” filed on February 25, 1922, Hemingway wrote:

Paris is full of Russians at present… Just what the Russian colony in Paris will do when all the jewels are sold and all the valuables pawned is somewhat of a question. […]

Of course things may change in Russia, something wonderful might happen to aid the Russian colony… But there is a great probability that nothing very wonderful nor unexpected will happen and then, eventually, like all the rest of the world, the Russians of Paris may have to go to work. It seems a pity, they are such a charming lot. 

The dispatch was followed a few days later with a glowing review of the “American Bohemians” who had graced Paris with their ungodly presence:

The scum of Greenwich Village, New York, has been skimmed off and deposited in large ladles on that section of Paris adjacent to the Café Rotonde… They have all striven so hard for a careless individuality of clothing that they have achieved a sort of uniformity of eccentricity.

Hemingway was a real stick-in-the-mud, I thought to myself as I sat on my beanbag.

As I reached for the next page, a woman in a white sundress with bulging lips the size of GMO melon slices appeared in the corner of my eye. 

Armed with an iPhone and a fruity cocktail she plopped down on a beanbag, aimed her phone at her one-of-a-kind face, snapped a photo, frowned, and then tried the same inventive pose while swinging in a wicker basket.

Everything about her irradiated extreme charm.

It’s a well-established fact that this type of seductress is mass-produced in a processing plant outside of Moscow. Each morning a fresh batch is loaded onto large trays and transported by delivery van into the city center, where they are released onto street corners in Chistyye Prudy. The femme fatales then spend the day admiring themselves and creating filtered photo-collages of sushi rolls.

My new acquaintance had a similar passion for the arts. I watched with reverence as she delicately positioned her Mango Gin Fizz on a table and resumed her life’s mission of documenting for posterity everything she ate and drank.

After that, the obligatory panorama shot. 

Absent-mindedly she guided her phone across the horizon until the camera eventually locked in on me sweating on my beanbag with Ernest Hemingway’s blog posts.

Realizing the severity of the situation she frantically pulled the camera away and zoomed in on The Biltmore.

When she finished her photoshoot Luscious Lips walked over to me.

“Here, take this,” she said to me in Russian as she handed me her cocktail. “Too many calories.”

I blushed uncontrollably—the first time a young lady had ever bought me a drink!

She paid the waiter for my Mango Gin Fizz and left, and I continued to read, glowing with pride and renewed self-confidence.

A few minutes later a slightly different girl emerged from the bar’s creaky staircase. She was wearing a yellow sundress and had lips that resembled giant red crescent moons.

After receiving her Pomegranate Cosmopolitan she unfurled her retractable selfie-stick and got down to business.

Pressing her drink against her cheek like a lunatic who doesn’t know how cocktails work, she attempted a daring close-up shot—but the lighting wasn’t quite right; then another try from a different direction but she couldn’t fit The Biltmore into the frame. Exasperated, she stared into her phone from an entirely new angle. Perfect, except—who is that sweaty retard drinking a Mango Gin Fizz in the background?

She fled to the other side of the bar in search of greener pastures and several minutes of feverish self-photographing commenced.

Finally satisfied, the peerless jewel of Tbilisi walked over to me.

“I don’t want this,” she said to me in American English as she placed her cocktail on my table. “Pomegranates give me gas.”

Titanic Lips paid the bartender for my Pomegranate Cosmopolitan and disappeared down the dodgy stairs.

Two drinks from two pretty girls in one night—I could hardly believe my luck!

The evening’s excitement got me thinking. Despite being from opposite ends of the earth, and despite speaking different languages and probably never having met, these two enchanting women were united by a common belief, transcending the malice, pettiness, hypocrisy, zealotry, and insincerity of our rapidly degenerating world: they both understood, intuitively, that I would gladly drink their disgusting girly cocktails.

Maybe it was the feeling of almost being photographed twice in one night, or maybe the high sugar content of my free cocktails was creating a chemical imbalance inside of me, but at that moment I realized the fate of humanity rested in the selfie-stick-holding hands of these two angels.

After all—aren’t we all the same, at least on Instagram? I asked myself as I ordered another Mango Gin Fizz.

I meditated on this question for a long time then paid my tab and carried Ernest up The Hill.

The magic chacha

Another morning in Tbilisi.

I quietly open the door to my apartment but I already know I’m not being quiet enough. Alerted by the vibrations, Liana pops out of nowhere and waves a large pitcher of her vinegar at me.

“Gamarjoba! More wine, Mr. Edward?” she shouts excitedly.

I tip-toe backwards into my quarters and close my door.

Is my landlady trying to pickle my innards? I think to myself as I lock my door just in case.

I have my suspicions. Then an idea. I’ll check the online reviews for clues.

May 27, 2022: “Loved our stay. But if Liana offers you wine politely decline.”

I keep scrolling.

April 5, 2022: “Great location with a view of The Biltmore. Property was very clean. Steer clear of Liana’s vino—it’s literally vinegar.”

I’m starting to feel ill.

March 12, 2022: “My boyfriend spent two days (!!!!!) in bed after drinking the wine we were given by the property’s owner—IT WASN’T COOL. Although to be fair the apartment did have excellent air conditioning.”

And on and on, just like this.

As I scroll in horror one comment jumps out at me.

January 18, 2021: “Ask Liana for some of her chacha. It’s life-changing.”

I fly out of my chair and knock on my landlady’s door.

“Oh, Mr. Edward! You’re here to do your laundry?”—she gives me a sniff—“yes; I’ll go get the basket—”

“—Wait,” I stop her. “Liana, do you have any…chacha?”

She freezes.

“Mr. Ed—ward, it’s been s—so long. Now I just ma—make wine. Maybe you want some more wi—wine? I’ll bring you some mo—more wine,” she stutters in Russian.

“Maybe you have some chacha stashed away somewhere? Just a nip?” I press.

She gives me a concerned look. But slowly—as if animated by a fond but distant memory—a smile creeps across her face.

“Okay, Mr. Edward. Okay. Just a moment.”

She disappears into her kitchen. There’s a sound of clanking pots and pans. A cat shrieks. More clanking. Then silence.

Liana reappears at her doorway with a small object draped in a dirty cloth.

Our eyes meet.

She lifts the rag, revealing a glass decanter holding 100ml of cloudy green liquid.

Liana raises the decanter to the sun as rays of light bounce off it in different directions. She smiles.

“That doesn’t look like chacha,” I say, wincing.

She gently places the decanter on a fold-out table leaned against a wall near her door.

“It’s chacha. But it has certain…properties.”

“What kind of properties?”

“Magical ones,” she replies without hesitating.

My eyes widen.

Sensing my extreme curiosity Liana leans in close to me.

“It’s not for everyone, Mr. Edward. If there’s a storm brewing within you—if you suffer from self-doubt, if you are vulnerable to fear or suspicion, if you haven’t made peace with the world—beware! My magic chacha can play cruel tricks on those who are unprepared for—”

Sounds like a dare to me. Before Liana can finish her sermon I seize the decanter and pour the mysterious green liquid straight down my hatch.

“That’s lovely. Do I detect a hint of walnuts?” I ask puckering my lips.

The blood drains from my landlady’s face.

“No…No walnuts,” she whispers back, her appearance now ghostly pale.

“Well, better get going. Thanks again.” 

And off I go—almost skipping down The Hill—invigorated by Liana’s gusto-giving magic chacha.

My badly shaken landlady wanders into her living room and frowns at her shirtless husband watching television on the couch.

“What’s the matter?” he asks, not actually interested.

“The American drank it all—the entire bottle,” she says, holding up the empty decanter. “A teaspoon is too much for most people…”

Her husband suddenly becomes excited and almost considers getting off the couch.

“The entire bottle? Inside such a little American?” he belches as he slaps his plus-sized gut.

Liana turns to an icon on her wall and crosses herself: “Gamarjoba, Mr. Edward!”

She bursts into tears and runs out of the room.

*********************************

Halfway down The Hill I see a group of somber-looking people gathered around a lamppost. It’s some kind of makeshift memorial with flowers, cards, and candles scattered on the ground.

I push my way through the crowd to get a better look.

“In Loving Memory of Frank,” reads a cardboard sign. I remove a note taped to the lamppost and examine its contents.

“Rest in Peace, Frank. Another tourist tragically taken by The Hill—we will never forget.”

It hits me like a freight train: Frank, the dehydrated American cajoled into buying that wretched chandelier last weekend at the flea market—dead. Claimed by The Hill.

The card slips from my shaking fingers and falls onto the pavement. 

I tear off another note: “Gamarjoba, Frank. You will be missed.”

And another:

Thank you for your lari, please come again.

Sincerely,

The Flea Market Vendor.

This can’t be happening, I whisper to myself. It just can’t be. Something has gone wrong.

As I weave between the mourners a man with colossal rolls of fat plants himself in front of me.

“Edward Slavsquat?” he says to me in a thick Georgian accent.

“Yes?”

“Someone wants to speak with you. Come with me, please.”

“Do I have to?” I ask.

He takes out a dull dagger he probably bought at the flea market: “Yes.”

TO BE CONTINUED….