On Balconies, Where Half of Life Is Kept
A Tbilisi balcony is never just a balcony. It is a pantry, a wardrobe, a workshop, a storage room - and sometimes the most honest portrait of the people inside.
If a flat has a balcony, that’s where life actually happens. That’s where you’ll find jars of ajika, an old sewing machine, two dozen flower pots that will “come in handy any day now,” and a cat who steps out every morning to make sure the city is still there.
The neighbours have laundry drying outside, and the sheets snap in the wind like the flags of a very small, very proud republic. Someone is drying peppers; someone else has lavash laid out – just enough and not a minute longer. The balconies sit so close together that it’s often impossible to tell whose chair just scraped across the floor, or who’s cooking something with walnuts again.
By evening, the balcony becomes the place where life’s big questions get settled: who won the match, what’s wrong with kids these days, and what was cooking on the third floor – judging by the smell, probably something with garlic. The cat doesn’t take part in any of these conversations, but it listens carefully – as if it, too, has opinions about kids these days.
If someone starts renovating a flat, the whole courtyard knows. Not because anyone announced it – a stack of new tiles simply appears against the balcony railing, and that’s all the explanation anyone needs. In Tbilisi, news travels vertically, from balcony to balcony. Phones are for people who somehow managed to miss it.
Silence on a balcony is the most suspicious thing that can happen in this city. Even the weather forecast raises fewer questions.
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Word of the Day: Ajika (ah-JEE-kah) – a spicy Georgian paste that lives on the balcony in jars, waiting for winter.
On the Salt That Comes Down From the Third Floor
Why walk downstairs when a basket can travel instead? In a Tbilisi courtyard, salt descends from a balcony – and the basket always seems to know where it is going.