“Black Sea Breeze, Palm Trees, Youths with Kalashnikovs”

If a place is created by the people who live in it, what happens to it when those people scatter? Does the place remain where it was, or does it begin to exist everywhere it is remembered?

I believe a place has no intrinsic meaning on its own; a place does not exist if there are no people to endow it with meaning. The world and the cosmos beyond us, nature and the buildings beyond us — they are indifferent to us. Places without people are merely what they are: soil, water, and elements. Only our experience and memory create something that possesses sense and meaning out of this indifferent cosmos.

History remembers thousands of cities, countries, and empires that ceased to exist. Without the people for whom those cities meant something, these places are merely ruins — which may or may not hold interesting historical significance, and nothing more. No one loves or longs for those cities in the way people yearn for places to which they are bound by imagination, experience, and memory. Today, we walk nonchalantly over what were once sacred territories, cemeteries, or temples — places that once held immense, intense emotional weight. To us, they are nothing.

Have you ever felt that you have become an archive for a place that can no longer speak for itself? And if so, to what extent do you feel that people in your country are interested in reading this archive?

Yes, but it is an unstructured, “unscientific,” and fundamentally unreliable archive. It is not arranged by any rational structure, but by emotions, fragments of memories, narrated stories, and the nuanced shades of historical and personal shifts. This archive, along with my own memory and that of others, weakens over time and constantly hovers on the brink of fading into ephemerality.

For me, writing and talking about Sukhumi is an attempt to capture that “ideal” city formed within these nuances — during the catastrophe and in its aftermath, which is often far more complex and endless. And yes, I realize it was not an ideal city. But it existed before the catastrophe and has come down to me through the stories of others. When you look back from such a distance, many details of the mosaic and the negatives of everyday life shrink, leaving you with only the general picture — and that picture is alluring. Distance creates this, too. Yet that picture is so good that you would wish it upon any city.

The city we left behind still stands where it always stood, but I am acutely aware that the city I remember and love, and the city that exists today, are two entirely different cities. It is a strange experience to remain loyal to virtual ideas and an address that takes the form of a city. It would be much simpler if that city had been destroyed, if it had vanished; but that city lives on without you, among people who are not you, and within a history that excludes you.

Is there a place in time and space — in the future or the past — where the city I love and remain faithful to, and the city that exists today unknown to me, will ever intersect? And what would that intersection look like?

In your opinion, do memories become more collective the farther people move from home?

I feel more of a sense of belonging, a certain type of identity, because Sukhumi possessed a distinct identity. Some cities simply have this; others have it less, and some not at all — like charisma in people. I needed a “home” and a sense of belonging; otherwise, the world would have crushed me, and the winds would have scattered me. Later, empathy and a sense of belonging toward other displaced people were added to this — a true closeness, a closeness born of shared hardship. At a certain point, I felt I had to protect this place, that I had to share it.

Also, there was a time when being a displaced person carried a sense of “shame.” I disliked that. Later, many young people told me that through my texts and approach, this “defective identity” turned into a source of pride for them. Perhaps this is an inversion — taking a loss and viewing it as a victory, taking what was lost and treating it as something gained. But that is how poetry works.

Svetlana Boym notes that nostalgia is not simply the desire to return. Boym significantly altered how many scholars understand nostalgia today. Hearing the word “nostalgia,” we instantly think of “longing for the past.” In Boym’s view, this is an oversimplification. For her, nostalgia is not really about the past alone; it is our relationship with time.

Boym distinguishes between two types of nostalgia:

Restorative nostalgia, which says, “Everything was better before.” It seeks restoration, reconstruction, certainty, and believes that returning to the past is possible.

Reflective nostalgia starts from a completely different premise: returning is impossible, and it’s okay. The goal is not to rebuild the past, but to comprehend what its absence means. Boym writes that reflective nostalgia lingers on longing and loss rather than trying to erase or overcome them. It acknowledges that memory is incomplete, multilayered, and sometimes contradictory. Instead of saying “Home must be exactly as it was,” it asks, “What does the impossibility of return teach us?” Its goal is not to “fix” history, but to make sense of experience. Thus, home continues to exist somewhere between memory and imagination.

When you imagine returning home, do you think it is possible to reclaim what was lost, or do you feel that the place you remember can no longer exist in that exact form?

You know, I don’t have either type of nostalgia. My parents had it, and still do. Unlike them, I spent very little time in that city. Consequently, the city to which I — and many people of my generation — have remained loyal is a non-existent, virtual city: a blend of the real, the nostalgic, and the imagined. In a way, my Sukhumi inside me is more pristine, more intriguing, and more yearned-for than it is for my parents, even though for them it was everything — their alpha and omega. But mine isn't “contaminated” by personal experience; all I know is that there was no war where they lived. That means a lot to me, because when my generation first opened its eyes and gained consciousness, there was only war and darkness — nothing else. Slowly, you come to realize it wasn't always that way.

For me, this city was always a potential — a lost potential. A kind of paradise that seemed to exist just a moment ago, but one you couldn't reach or experience in time. Yet its urban culture is so pronounced that in every other city where we have lived, I was always living in two cities simultaneously: one was the city waiting outside, while the other was Sukhumi, continuing its life inside our homes, among our guests, in the way my parents and relatives spoke, in their Russian, their Georgian, and their values. Often, their worldview differed from the views found in the physical city around me. This was both a discomfort and an identity program.

Perhaps all of this was intensified by the fact that when you have no home, no neighborhood, no roots anywhere you go, you need an address — and an address that matters. For me, that was always Sukhumi: my Sukhumi, the impossible city.

Is it possible to return to a place without trying to return to the time when you lived there?

I was recently in Poti, a city where I spent 10 years after Sukhumi. I visited places — or rather, “architectural moments” — where I felt as though I was returning in time. But everyone and everything had changed so much that nothing prompted me to return. Instead, something else happened — something I have yet to process, so I cannot speak on it yet.

Does it matter if the place that exists in memory no longer aligns with reality?

It depends on why you go back to that place. If a person wishes for moments, architecture, or landscapes to return them to childhood or a sweet nostalgic past, seeing the changes will be difficult. On the other hand, there are sometimes places you want to vanish, because they hold memories you wish would disappear or lessen in intensity. In that case, a person might be glad to find the place isn't as they remembered it.

I feel deep emotion for everything that is fleeting and passing away, but at the same time, I am not in favor of eternal preservation. Ultimately, places change, cities change, people die — only the version we remember remains in our minds, and that version is almost always largely inaccurate anyway.

Have you ever thought that returning might destroy the place preserved in your memory?

It will definitely disrupt it. Nothing is permanent. Everything changes, and you cannot step into the same river twice.

Can returning sometimes mean losing the place a second time?

It always depends on your purpose for returning. The place always changes depending on what you came to see.

What remains of a place after we leave it — and what remains of it inside us?

In me, inspiration always remains. Even if it is pain, shame, or a warm memory… whatever connects me to a place eventually turns into a source of inspiration. That inspiration then translates into a musical melody or a sentence in a novel — neither of which might have a direct connection to that original place or memory.

What did you bring with you from there?

Black Sea breeze, palm trees, youths with Kalashnikovs.

Also physical objects: a children's illustrated Bible — one of the first books I ever read. Photos, a few items of clothing. There were a few other items they managed to bring along. I still have some of them today. An iron cross.