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.
One day I ran out of salt. I did what anyone from my previous life would do: I took my bag and headed for the shop. I made it as far as the courtyard.
“Where are you going?” asked my neighbour from the third floor. The one who knows everything before everyone else.
“To buy salt.”
“Why?!”
She said it as if I’d announced I was going to Kutaisi for salt. “Listen, do you have any salt?” she called upstairs – and a minute later, from the third floor, on a clothesline tied to a wicker basket, salt actually came down.
Nobody in the courtyard found this strange. It’s simply logistics the rest of the world hasn’t figured out yet. Later I learned that the basket works both ways. Up goes whatever is needed urgently. Down – whatever is too good to throw away: half a lavash, three tomatoes, a greeting card from last New Year.
In the evenings, the same clothesline becomes a witness to far more serious negotiations. I listen to them from my balcony.
“The loquats are worse this year than last.”
“Worse? You haven’t tried Gia’s.”
“Gia’s are always better. Even Gia’s asphalt is better.”
The argument is conducted with the intonation of an election dispute, not a conversation about four trees in a courtyard. It always ends the same way: nowhere. Until the next evening. By then the basket is already back upstairs – waiting for someone to urgently need something again.
As for the salt – I never did buy any. I have a feeling I’ll never need to.
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Word of the Day: Loquat – in Georgian, mushmula (moosh-moo-LAH) – a small yellow fruit that every summer starts arguments capable of outliving any friendship.
On Taxi Drivers Who've Already Decided
A taxi ride in Tbilisi is rarely just a journey. Before you arrive, your driver may explain the traffic, the government, the neighbourhood – and possibly your own life.