Syedyshev Oleg
Syedyshev Oleg

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Humorous Essays Based on students' memories

"All have died
except for those who are alive, and those whom we remember"Confucius

Essay 102. A Look and Something

In journals you can though find
An excerpt from him - A Look and Something.
What is the Something about, now - about everything.
 words of Repetilov from "The Woes of Wit"


* The Woes of Wit is Alexander Griboyedov's comedy (written in 1823) in verse, it is a satire on society of post-Napoleonic Moscow.

Just tell me in what words I should describe my feelings before meeting a friend, who I have not seen for more than forty years? It looks like you are confused. Yes, and so am I. What I expect from the meeting? It is even difficult to say. One of my bosom friends-fellow students said that it was necessary to meet in order to communicate, communicate and communicate again. "And communicate about what?" - I asked him. About everything. However even during that brief conversation about topics for communication I got bored; my fellow student was gnawed by the only one topic of "how great it was back then, and how bad it is now". Perhaps he feels uncomfortable as soon as he constantly thinks and talks about that. I feel sincerely sorry for him. Though, I am thinking about another friend, to be more precise about Dimka Mkheidze.

Dito Mkheidze in Kemerovo

Dito Mkheidze in Kemerovo

Well, I shouldn't say Dimka. He is a highly respected person now, the chief otolaryngologist of Imereti. For sure people around call him Dimitriy Dimitriyevitch. So, that will be the first toast, how he will react to my calling him Dimka. This is not on purpose. What does the Ribot's law say? With age, and perhaps there is no need to boast - sixty three is, of course, is far from old age, but it is already far from youth, so during this period of life man's memory easier recalls facts which are forty years away, than yesterday's ones. So I will recall "Dimka", and not Dimitriy Dimitrievitch. How could he be Dimitriy Dimitrievitch for me, if in those remote days of student careless life in the morning he on a regular basis managed to take unnoticed my clean socks and Dato Nobidze's clean well-pressed shirt? Dato and I, like two fools ("sulelo" in Georgian), every evening were preparing what we would put on to go to classes at the institute the next day. No, we were not two fools however, but to be more precise two boobies. We saw that Dimka did not want to wash his shirts and socks, but did not take any measures. However, Dimka should be given a credit for his pants were always pressed so well, one could shave using them; and if we asked him, he never refused and pressed our pants also in the best way possible. And if I came down on him too hard, he used to give me to wear his camel wool pullover. I liked it a lot, and it was very warm.

So with all those thoughts I was flying from Munich to Tbilisi. Of course, I was bringing gifts with me. Though even with that there was a certain issue; I had not seen Dimka for very many years and absolutely did not know his habits and likings, and to find a gift he would really like without that knowledge was like poking a finger in the sky. I remember in the days of stagnation Arkadiy Raikin (Arkady Raikin, 1911 - 1987 was a Soviet stand-up comedian. He led the school of Soviet humorists for about half a century.) used to say that the best thing to give as a gift was a microscope, because a gift should be expensive and useless. However I will honestly tell you that I did not want it to be like that very much. Last year in December, when I was in Milan at Vittorio Emmanuele gallery (the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II is the oldest shopping mall in Italy), I saw a big photo of Bill Clinton, who a week before that when in Milan had come to the store and bought a tie.

Bill Clinton is choosing a tie

Bill Clinton is choosing a tie



I asked a sales clerk what kind of tie Clinton had bought? The Italians would not be Italians, and that sales clerk was a typical representative of the South of Italy - tall, slim, dark-haired and with dashing moustache, also jet-black. So he put out on a counter a huge heap of ties, I dropped my jaw, and he informed me that he had brought the very heap for Clinton as well and started demonstrating how he was offering a tie after a tie to poor Clinton, and how he rejected one after another. I was standing there absolutely shocked by force of his words and swinging gesticulation, and I was surprised that he did not overturn anything or flapped anything off the counter. And the sales clerk was going on telling how Clinton was laughing, and how he stopped him, when he became exhausted. And there the sales clerk snapped up all the ties somewhere underneath the counter stating that they were not worthy of any attention, and put a chic tie on the counter; dark green with such an elegant dark-red stripe. "Here is what Bill Clinton bought" - he announced to me. The tie's price was impressive, but I bought it as a gift for Dimka without a moment's thought; let Dimka have a tie, like the one of Clinton. With one gift the issue was resolved. I knew that Dito's son together with his wife and children lives at his place. One of the main characters of "The Diamond Arm" (it is a Soviet comedy film released in1968. The Diamond Arm has become a Russian cult film and is considered by many Russian contemporaries to be one of the finest comedies of its time.) said, that one should give ice-cream to kids and flowers to a dame. So I decided not to make things more complicated and bought French perfume of the newest collection for the women, and to a crowd of Dimka's grandchildren also a heap of various chocolates. Only Dito junior, Dimka's son, was left without a present. I planned to give him a wallet, but I could not find the one I really liked; for some reason I decided that if I like the wallet, then Dito-junior would for sure like it. I also wanted to put a two dollar banknote into the wallet for him. I liked very much the story of issuing of the banknote in the States. It was during the war with Vietnam. In those days a Vietnamese prostitute cost two dollars in the city of Ho-Shi-Min. So the caring American government issued a two dollar banknote. And all first issued banknotes were sent to Vietnam for American soldiers. And among the veterans of that war there was a custom and a belief that every macho man had to have the two dollar note in his wallet, as it is said, just in case. So I intended to tell this story to Dito. There was only one problem - there was no wallet. However at the Munich airport there was a store which was selling wallets; and I hoped to buy it there. I bought it, and right away, I came inside, saw it and decided that that was the one I would get.

We were flying from Munich at night. Even though I had a substantial dinner at a restaurant in Munich and on the plane food was not bad, for some reason I was dreaming about food during the whole flight. That was Georgian food. I was dreaming about satsivi and khachapuri, and Kharcho soup and, or course, khinkali. And sure enough heaps of greens and also huge drinking horns for wine. And I was dreaming about Dimka as well, who was treating me to the delicious stuff, and was proposing toasts non stop. I had seen Dimka before the flight. We communicated via Skype, but in my dream I saw the one, who I knew forty years ago young, slim, handsome, to who girls were so much attracted. So you can imagine in what mood I woke up, when they asked to buckle seatbelts. We were landing in Tbilisi; all flight long I was looking at shish kebabs and heaps of khinkali and did not try anything, but was listening to Dimka all the time.

The landing was smooth; they who work at Lufthansa are pros.
When I was preparing for my visit to Georgia I was a bit concerned, how the Georgians would treat a Russian? Mass media was sort of scaring by arrests of the Russians right in the streets of Tbilisi. So when I was approaching a Georgian border guard, I had that kind of thoughts in my mind. However the border guard turned to be kind and curious. He only asked me about one thing: why I, a citizen of Ukraine, flew to Tbilisi from Munich? And when I replied that I had not been to Munich for a long time and missed it, he gladly said: "Cool!". The word does not convey the emotional expression of the border guard's exclamation not to mention his grin from ear to ear. My mood got immediately improved. I forgave Dimka his proposing toasts all night long in my dream and was looking forward to pick up my luggage and go to the arrivals hall. Even though I supposed that Dimka would not come to the airport personally to meet me, because it was two hundred kilometers away from Kutaisi across a pass, and I arrived at five in the morning, yet I conceded that as possible. That was the reason why I wanted to enter the arrivals hall so much.

Georgiy and Dito jr.

Georgiy and Dito jr.

Like I had expected, I was met by Dito jr. and his friend Georgiy. Both had smiles from ear to ear. It is very nice to be welcomed with so much sincerity and joy, and at the same time to hear concerns and regrets that I had not brought my whole family with me. And right at the airport I was demanded to promise that next time I will come together with my wife and daughter. We immediately started for Kutaisi. And there an excursion started or, to be more precise, a mixture of an excursion and excursus into history of Georgia, which, I should admit, both Dito jr. and Georgiy knew very well. I had also prepared for the visit and re-read all six volumes of a historical novel by Anna Antonovskaya "Didi Mouravi". I had done the right thing. I was not a passive listener, but actively participated, for instance, in discussion about the battle of Surami between the Georgians and the Turks; when the Georgians defeated troops of the so much hated Ottomans, which strength was ten times bigger. It was very interesting to observe sincere joy on the faces of those mature men and their pride that even I, the one who came to Georgia for the fist time, knew about former glory of the Georgians. Generally speaking, the trip from Tbilisi to Kutaisi was though long, two hundred kilometers, neither more nor less, but with all the talking it flew by unnoticed. It was a bit bothering, I will honestly admit, to observe Georgiy's bravery, who was sitting at the steering wheel, when we were driving down the very same Surami pass along a serpentine road. To my timid inquiry about whether he was going to beat Schumacher, Georgiy replied that only for the sake of the guest, meaning me, he was driving carefully. What could be said to that? I silently prayed and asked God to protect the so much considerate to guests Georgian Georgiy while he was driving.

We arrived in Kutaisi at daybreak. Finally the car stopped at a huge two-storied house. Looking at the brickwork one could tell that the house was built more than a hundred years ago. I had been invited to the house back then, when I was a kid, by Dito's father, who was also Dimitriy Dimitrievitch. Much later one of our fellow students told me that she had assumed that Dimka lived in a privately owned house, but he happened to live in the one owned by the state. She was wrong. Dito explained to me that the Soviet administration had expropriated from the family of Mkheidze princes their Kutaisi mansion. The Mkeidzes were allotted three rooms, and the rest of the rooms became three other apartments and the house was turned into an apartment block. Both Dito's grandfather and father dreamed of restoring the family home, but only Dimka managed to do that. And he did that very elegantly. He bought apartments to all the three families dwelling in the house, and the new apartments were more spacious; and so he implemented the cherished dream of his father and grandfather. All that I was told by Dimka's wife Manana, she was a keeper of the family home at the same time. One should see with what pride she was talking about Dimka and what he had done; it was clearly noticeable that she not only loved and respected him, but also was proud of him. I would not lie, if I say that many of our fellow students could have envied Dimka, but one should not do that, as someone else's family is a mystery; and nobody knows how many skeletons in a cupboard every family has.
Dito started loudly knocking at the door. I had a suspicion that he was going to wake up not the Mkeidze family, but the whole neighborhood. Manana appeared first, and only after that he came, sleepy and disheveled, if one could say that about a man with a shaven head. We hugged and kissed. We sat in armchairs and were looking at each other in silence. We did not feel like talking. I do not know what Dima was thinking about, but tens of episodes of our student life flitted through my mind. And then absolutely unexpectedly Dimka asked: "Do you like khachapuri?" In response I gave him a very quick answer of my own: "Chemi trakida nachkapuni?" And there I saw that a respectable man looking like Dito Mkeidze sitting in front of me was really Dimka Mkheidze, my dear student friend. By a mischievous flash in his eyes and by his hand held towards me with a palm up, which I immediately clapped by my palm. Well, most probably we exchanged passwords. And the ones like: "Do you sell a wardrobe?", "No, we are selling a double bed, and a spy lives one more floor up." You should admit that those password answers were banal ones. Ours were on much deeper, on intuitive-emotional level. I am not going to translate what I replied to Dimka, and why he became so glad; I will only say that Manana blushed and went to the kitchen to make us breakfast.
And then everything twirled like in a kaleidoscope; I was taken sightseeing around Georgia. I am very grateful to Dimka that my guides gave preference to ancient churches and monasteries. Of course, the first was Motsametskiy monastery,


Icon of Holy Martyrs David and Konstantin

Icon of Holy Martyrs David and Konstantin


Two Ditos, father and son, of the Mkheidze family

Two Ditos, father and son, of the Mkheidze family

where relics of Saint David and Konstantin of the Mkheidze family are kept. I was amazed that both Dimitri's were welcomed like family members at the monastery, and the father superior told me that David and Konstantin were direct forefathers of Dito. When Dima told the father superior that we had studied together at the institute, and had not seen each other for forty years, and I flew to visit him after so many years of life apart, the father superior gave me an Icon of Holy Martyrs David and Konstantin. And as a special favor he allowed us to kiss the relics. After my generous donations for development of the monastery he also allowed us to walk to the private part of the monastery. Generally speaking, we walked around all of it and only did not step inside monks' cells. Next was a monastery in Gelati, where, according to legend, there are ashes of the Georgian tsar, who had united the country David the Builder. There we not only were at the service, but also climbed to the top the bell tower of the church.

Father superior of Motsamet monastery and Oleg Syedyshev

Father superior of Motsamet monastery and Oleg Syedyshev



They knew Dimka there, and I was presented an icon of David the Builder and several packets of incense, which I was very happy with; Natalek once in a while walks around our house with burning incense to cleanse it of wickedness. The next day I was leaving Georgia and the Mkheizde men invited me to a restaurant to have khinkali. It was the end of February, and Lent had already started, which was observed at the Mkheidze home, but because of me Dimitriy decided to break it, even though I was protesting. However later, when we had already visited the restaurant, I thought that it was good that I was protesting not very decidedly. It is not for nothing that gluttony is considered to be a deadly sin. And khinkali were absolutely delicious.

Dito Mkheidze and Oleg Syesyshev on the bell tower of a monastery of Gelati

Dito Mkheidze and Oleg Syesyshev on the bell tower of a monastery of Gelati

And the compulsory shish kebab was melting in the mouth. After we had eaten, we headed to Tbilisi. Dimitriy personally and Manana went to see me off. The car was driven by the daredevil Georgiy, it should be noted that that time he was more careful and not so quick, as he had been on our way to Kutaisi. We drove to Mtskheta, where there is the residence of a patriarch of Georgia Ilijah II. However, in that case disappointment was waiting for us; the residence had already been closed, we arrived too late. I was not very upset, as I already had too many impressions, but Dimka was really concerned that we had left Kutaisi so late. Our parting at the airport was easy and without any pathos. We hugged, kissed, shook hands and agreed that, if God permitted, we would meet again. And I sent Dimka away. I do not like long partings, which are bitter tears. Dimka understood everything, waved his hand and left.


Coat of arms of the Mkheidze pirnces of Imereti.

Coat of arms of the Mkheidze pirnces of Imereti.

8 April, 2012

© Copyright: Oleg Syedyshev, 2012
Publishing licence #213101901194

Translated by Viktoria Potykinato content ↑


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