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Monday, November 15, 2010

What The Hell Are We Building?

Imagine, you hear the airplanes, you look up but you can’t see them. You are haunted by that sound. You go into the basement, you hide under the car, you run, but it does not matter where you go, when the bomb gets dropped on you. So, you squeeze on a tractor with ten other people. And you leave it all. You are an IDP and this is August 2008.

Imagine that your home was burned. Just like that, burned. And everything in it was burned. Everything you bought, collected, valued.

Imagine that you've spent 4 months in the kindergarten, sleeping on a mattress, on a desk. They promise you a house. So, you get a little cabin, most of the necessities. You’re getting money and produce at first. Flour, pasta. They even give you a TV.

And then…you find out that the roof is leaking, that the walls are perpetually wet and that the floor has holes in it. You get pneumonia. Almost everyone in your family gets pneumonia. They give you a plot of land, but you can’t work on it, cause you’re sick. It sounds like a crappy melodrama, but you’re an IDP and this is January 2009.

And then, time passes, the walls get wetter, the holes get bigger, the food stops coming. PTSD catches up. Nobody cares about you, all the journalists, media, foreign help, NGO’s, everything is gone. The war is not interesting anymore. You’re an IDP and this is November 2010.

And then, you turn on TV and see this:

Flickering video. The track is a song written 7 years ago, during the rose revolution. Words go like this: “if we sing the same song together, we will build a house”.

The video goes on, and they show all the new shit erected in Georgia, mainly in Tbilisi, all the new, expensive, useless, worthless shit and the song, the song by a folk-rock-kinda singer that I liked, this song pours out of my TV, out of your TV, out of TVs the IDPs that watch it in their one-bedroom house! How could you, all the revolutionary, undergroundy artists, how could you sell yourselves?! Are you guys just getting old? Is that it? You were lying to us, you were lying to us, when you stood along those people, the people who promised us gold, but built us shiny, glittery bridges! How long can we stand this fakeness? Why doesn’t anyone mention that right now, people are living in card houses? One storm and those cabins will fall apart!

Oh, they will pay suitcases of Euros to famous singers, for a free concert in Batumi, they will spend a fortune on their own residencies, hotels and bridges, they will force everyone in the country to sing the same song and they will build, we will build, damn it, we will built all together, using our money, and finally, when all is sang and built, there won’t be anyone left to live in the house!

1 comment:

  1. i likeed ittt tooo much:))) the problem is that those who can and who should protest just dont care, they just decided that they are not and should not integrate that much in society and just live in a way that is good just for themselves and their families. Cause they think that nothing can be changed and they dont want to "fight the winds". But we should forget them, all those "hidden Georgians", all those "frightened Georgians", cause I care and I do think somethings can be changed.

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