GEORGIA

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Georgia is one of the countries making up the Caucasus, a region nestled between Asia and Europe. It was once part of the Soviet Union, and Sacred Darkness, by Levan Berdzenishvili, is a portrayal of life as a political prisoner in the Soviet gulag.

Having read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s grim chronicle, The Gulag Archipelago, many years ago, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read another book about the gulag. But Sacred Darkness was different. For starters, it’s fiction, even though it’s based on the author’s real-life experiences as a political prisoner in a Soviet prison camp. As a work of fiction, it’s very entertaining, although the description on the book’s cover is something of an overstatement: “The only book on the Soviet gulags that’s impossible to read without laughing.”

Each chapter is about a different inhabitant of the camp. There’s a mentally-challenged young man who relives all of his late brother’s war heroics as if they were his own. There’s a prisoner who’s obsessed with calculations and numbers, and another who’s a philologist, always ready to debate the fine points of the various Caucasian alphabets. Political prisoners in the camp include an electrician, taxi driver, movie projectionist, inventor, former military officer, psychologist, and members of many other professions. My favorite chapter is about Butov, a theoretical physicist who was arrested for maintaining an underground library of anti-Soviet literature. When the authorities finally found the library, they burned everything in it in a fire that lasted a week. Unbeknownst to them, Butov had microfilmed most of the collection, so the vast majority of the library's materials survived, even though the hard copies were destroyed.

Interwoven with the characters’ individual stories are details of life in the camp. The work the prisoners are expected to do is to sew heavy-duty work mitts. When their work is done, they pass the time by playing games, reading the books that make it past the censor, and having Socratic debates about any number of topics, with one prisoner or another playing the role of Socrates. Their food supplies are meager, and they drink as much tea and smoke as many cigarettes as their finances allow. The narrator also introduces the reader to the cats who live in the camp: “… the very old cat Vasika, the fine young cat Gipsy, and the sweet gentle Ada.”

Although there is much in this book that fits in with our expectations of what one might find in prison literature, such as conflicts with prison officials and arguments between prisoners of different nationalities, the fact that the inmates are political prisoners gives the book a whole different feeling. In this prison, no one is worried about getting shanked by another inmate. Everyone is there for crimes of political activism against the Soviet Union, not acts of violence.

What surprised me was that the leader of the Soviet Union during the period covered by this book was Mikhail Gorbachev, and the real-life people on whom the characters are based were imprisoned during the era of glasnost and perestroika. Knowing that the Soviet Union fell under Gorbachev’s leadership, I was not expecting to read that so much political repression was still taking place while he was president.

I enjoyed Sacred Darkness much more than I expected to, and I’m glad that the author has gone on to have a fulfilling life after his experiences in the gulag.

COOK

During one of the Socratic debates that occurred between prisoners in Sacred Darkness, the topic discussed was food. The narrator played the role of Socrates, and another prisoner took on the character of Anaxogoras, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. After a lengthy debate about the fine points of various international culinary specialties, the narrator, as Socrates, forced an admission from the prisoner playing Anaxogoras that a Georgian dish called satsivi was the best dish in the world. How, then, could I not choose satsivi to make for this blog post?

The problem is that satsivi is made with turkey. Fortunately, I was able to find a recipe on the “Georgian Journal” website for a vegan version that uses mushrooms in place of the turkey. With this recipe, I encountered a new problem: where on earth to find the spice blend the recipe called for. It’s called khmeli suneli, and my local spice shop didn’t have it. I drove to an international market in a nearby city, and searched spice jars and packets in languages I can’t read until I finally found what I was looking for. This packet of khmeli suneli (or, as the packet says in fine print on the back, hmeli-suneli) is a blend of salt, coriander seeds, fenugreek, sweet paprika, basil, bay leaf, red hot pepper, turmeric, mint, and marjoram.

The satsivi was pretty good, served over a bed of white rice. I was a little underwhelmed with my first bite, so I sprinkled on a little salt and that made a big difference. After all the trouble I went to in searching for the khmeli suneli, I was shocked to realize that the recipe called for only a third of a teaspoon, so the flavor was virtually imperceptible when added to four cups of mushrooms. At this rate, I’ll have to make this dish many more times in order to use up the whole packet of khmeli suneli! If you decide to try out this recipe, be generous with the pomegranate seed garnish, which gives the dish a nice little zing.

GIVE

GlobalGiving.com listed three projects in Georgia. All seemed worthy, so I chose the one that had received the fewest donations, an effort to raise funds to buy an adapted minivan to transport children with disabilities to a daycare center in order to provide them with “a personal development plan and consultations with psychologists, doctors and occupational therapists.”

According to the project description, “Families living in rural areas of Georgia have limited access to public transportation services. In addition, available buses, largely from the Soviet period, are not safe or adapted for people in wheelchairs. In order to provide our services, the organization currently pays for the private transportation of children with disabilities. The cost of this service is very expensive and does not provide the safest method of transportation, as the private cars [they currently use] are also not adapted for wheelchairs.”

More information about this project is available at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/van-for-transporting-children-with-disabilities/.

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