tan — Why did you come back?
G.M. — I don’t have a good answer. Every answer I give is too clean. The truth is that one day I realised I had lived in Berlin for fourteen years and would never be able to say our city.
tan — And you say it about Tbilisi?
G.M. — Less now than before I left. That is the part nobody warns you about. You do not return to the place you left, and you are no longer the person who left it. Two strangers meet.
Emigration happens twice. The second time is when you come back.
Language
tan — What was hardest?
G.M. — Georgian. That sounds like a joke and it isn’t. For fourteen years my Georgian was frozen at 2009. Words that had become ordinary here I simply did not have. Words I used sounded faintly dated.
tan — Did people notice?
G.M. — Of course. Politely. That moment when somebody pauses for a second before answering you — that second says a great deal.
Advice
tan — What would you say to somebody leaving now?
G.M. — Nothing that would talk them out of it. But one thing: don’t call it temporary if it isn’t. Half the people I knew in Berlin lived out of suitcases for ten years because I’ll be back soon. They spent the ten years there anyway. They just spent them badly.
tan — And to those who stay?
G.M. — The same. Don’t call staying waiting. It is the identical error on both sides — the belief that real life begins somewhere else.