Guram Odisharia (III) — The President's Cat
Miriane (Guram) Odisharia (1951–) is a renowned Georgian poet, prose writer, playwright, and public figure, born in Sukhumi and displaced to Tbilisi by the Georgian-Abkhazian war of 1992-3. He was the Georgian Minister of Culture and Monument Protection between the years of 2012 and 2014, and is recognized as an expert in conflict and peace transformation in the Caucuses. He has written widely about his own experiences of conflict and dislocation, and his work has been translated into languages including English, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Armenian, and Italian. His work often explores themes of nostalgia, loss, the concept of home, dislocation, survival, and self, before, during and after experiences of violence and war. Literary scholars note that the Black Sea is a significant source of inspiration for Odisharia, functioning as a personified force or conceptual plain against which the historical, political, cultural, and personal may be brought into focus.
His novel The President's Cat paints a vivid picture of Sukhumi, a once-exotic city-resort marred by the horrors of the Georgian-Abkhaz war.
Excerpt:
They were studying Bebeisiri Lake, or rather the Bebeisiri Lakes, Major and Minor. And before that, the same summer, they had been investigating the migration of stones at sea, so-called “Turkish stones,” which had over the years—in a manner of speaking, of course, that is—in this same way, drifted towards Sukhumi, by way of Sarpi and Batumi. They were studying “Russian pebbles,” which “travelled” from Novorossiysk to Batumi. From time to time, he lay down on his back and, closing his eyes, listened to the sound of the waves and the cautious rustle of the stones.
“Advancing like the army of Alexander the Great, Sosik.”
Bebeisiri Lake is located in Gali district, not far from the sea. River Okumi flows into it, as do the Mokhokha and Namgvale Gullies, and it is connected to the sea by Wolf Gully. The lake is situated between the Black Sea and the Trans-Caucasian railway. The Bebeisiri Lakes together occupy an area of two square kilometres, their depth varies from three to five metres[…]
They wrote of Bebeisiri:
“The water temperature of the lake in winter varies from +6 to –3 degrees and, in summer, from +27 to 33. The absolute minimum air temperature is +11 and the maximum is 41. The lake water varies from reddish to darker brown and its transparency in summer ranges between 50 and 150 centimetres. There are up to 170 days of cloud cover a year and up to 193 sunny days and the average annual rainfall is 2,200–2,700 mm. Rain falls mainly in winter and spring. Summer is largely dry, with no wind, but a light sea breeze in the mornings.
In the gorge, where the lake is located and in the surrounding countryside the trees include: white beech, lime, black beech, chestnut, oak, bladdernut, hazel, maritime fir, pear, apple, cherry plum, and blackthorn. And the following introduced trees: acanthus, actinidia, camellia, fortunella, poncirus, eucalyptus, juglans, phyllotaxis, pteleocarpa, lotos, d. sineusis, aleuzites, and the camphor tree. And the following water plants: water chestnut, water rose, lotus, wind-grass, and the lemna and wolffia duckweeds. Wolffia is an ethereal oil plant, eaten by fish, the silver carp, and the white amur. Wolffia is found both on the water surface and on the bottom. Its movement from top to bottom and bottom to top is determined by temperature variations. When the water temperature falls below 10 degrees, wolffia ceases its synthesis of ether oils. Its specific gravity rises correspondingly, and the plant drops to the bottom of the lake. When the temperature rises above 10 degrees, proportionately, the synthesis of ether oils increases, and it emerges on the surface of the water.
The lake is inhabited by fish: sheat-fish, common carp, big-head carp, white amur, an exotic carp (introduced by M. Alavadze), tapelas, herring, trout (introduced by M. Bgazhba), common bream, common rudd, pike, and others. It should be noted that saltwater pike often invaded the lake from the sea and destroyed the local fish. To prevent this invasion, the bay of the lake closest to the sea was fenced off with synthetic fibre netting (at M. Bgazhba’s initiative).
Explanation:Georgian author Guram Odisharia’s The President’s Cat (2007) illustrates, in this excerpt, the littoral space as one in constant flux and movement. It is also significant in its reference to history, describing the transportation of pebbles via the currents of the Black Sea waters “advancing like the army of Alexander the Great…” There is an implied political undercurrent, or symbolism to this movement – perhaps a reflection upon the imperial histories and shifting boundaries of empire that have long characterized the Black Sea space. Here, understanding of the water as a depository, or composed of multiple fragmented yet co-existing parts, is also made abundantly clear.
Citation: Odisharia, Guram. 2008. "The President's Cat" in Two Novels from the Caucasus (Central Asian Literatures in Translation, 2024). Academic Press Studies. Trans. by Felix Helbing. pp. 111-113.