Dispatch – May 7: The Lake

I first wrote about this large “lake” near my Tbilisi suburban apartment on May 7, 2023, in this Dispatch. A nearby construction had damaged the only road through the neighborhood, and created a tectonic depression that flooded with every rain, for days on end. The story was my usual rant about how crossing this lake was only the first of many obstacles an average suburbanite would encounter on a long, stressful day, and how then-Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili chose to go after gays and lesbians instead of addressing pressing day-to-day problems.

It’s May 7 again, but in 2025. In the two years that have passed, Garibashvili has lost his job slowly, then rapidly. One law was passed cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights, and another one was initiated. Two new Foreign Agents Laws were adopted, and two fierce waves of resistance erupted, with the second one still ongoing in its sixth month. The last traces of democracy are disappearing, and repression continues to shrink civic space. Everything is dying, everything is vanishing, everything is getting smaller.

Except The Lake.

The Lake is growing and thriving, testing the patience that – some fear – the proud Georgian nation has in overabundance.

Here is Nini and the Dispatch newsletter to tell about the suburban lakes and the monsters hiding at the bottom.

There is no going around The Lake. “It’s flat at the bottom, just drive through slowly,” I warn taxi drivers in what has become my late-night routine. By pointing out that there is no hidden pothole – or a mythical creature – beneath the vast expanse of muddy water, I hope to spare them a heart attack and myself a negative review on the taxi app. No one wants to drive through the lake in a freshly washed white car. I have to explain and excuse myself – “I’m sorry.” (And don’t tell anyone I live like this.)

Some drivers still act shocked. Others respond with reticent silence, amplifying the ominous sounds of water splashing around the car.

But then there are the more experienced drivers who understand. “This won’t be fixed for a while,” they comment with an expert sigh. They’ve been through lakes like this before and know pretty well that nobody’ll do anything about it until the construction of four large apartment buildings is finished. If they fix it now, it will have to be fixed soon again anyway, they say. And it won’t be finished anytime soon, even though the locals have waited patiently as the water mass has steadily grown.

One consolation for the community was building a narrow, ad hoc concrete pedestrian bypass. I call it a “bridge,” but it really looks like a runway. If there’s someone also coming from the opposite direction, you have to catwalk across it like Cindy Crawford or fall into the water. But on rainy days, shoes still get dirty: the waves created by passing cars reach the runway and spill over to the other side, creating a separate swamp there. The place now looks like a small replica of the area near the port town of Poti, where freshwater Lake Paliastomi and the surrounding Kolkheti wetlands are separated from the Black Sea by a thin strip of land.

Across the Holy River

But sometimes it’s beautiful. When the afternoon sun shines down on the sprawling outskirts of the city and the frequent strong winds blow with full force, the shadows of large tree branches dance across The Lake’s surface. The water turns brownish-green, resembling the Jordan River, a spot where Prime Minister Garibashvili sat down for his famous May 2022 photograph.

That photo, posted by the government with the happy news that Georgia had acquired a plot of land there for baptismal rituals, shows the ex-PM crouching on the bank as if testing the quality (and purity) of the water. The image instantly became a meme, with everyone and everything from ex-President Saakashvili to a lurking alligator to the Belarusian dictator Lukashenka to pre-Raphaelite Ophelia pasted in the muddy water in front of the prime minister. The image resurfaced on April 25, when Garibashvili said he was quitting politics. Georgian meme-makers marked the occasion by editing his figure out of the picture.

The Lake in our neighborhood has yet to take on a sacred significance, but we might be slowly getting there. Rituals have quietly developed in and around the flooded section. You can see local kids testing each other’s skills by riding their bikes through it without falling. A stray dog at the construction site has made a habit of standing in the water, suspended in time like a Tarkovsky film character, barking at slowly moving cars from there for dramatic effect. Toddlers happily wade through it under the watchful eye of their mothers. Something developmental psychologists might appreciate.

And there is still a lot of potential to explore. Wedding photographers have yet to arrive for snazzy lake shoots. It also hasn’t appeared on the niche radar of those interested in socialism-meets-capitalism urban mess. And, thankfully, Georgia’s most powerful billionaire has not yet floated a raft on The Lake to ferry big, beautiful trees into his backyard. It’s not that he wouldn’t dare, just that the terrible traffic jams make escaping the suburbs by any transport a time-consuming endeavor, and Ivanishvili learned the hard way that his beloved trees might succumb to protracted transportation. Trees apparently cannot tolerate much discomfort. Humans, on the other hand, must have developed some extraordinary endurance, or so some opposition-minded Georgians have concluded.

Draining the Lake

On April 29, a 7-year-old and her pregnant mother had to watch in shock as police raided their home, as part of a “sabotage” crackdown on those managing solidarity funds to help protesters who had been fined or imprisoned. On May 1, a cameraman was fined for a Facebook post “insulting” police authorities. On May 4, a prisoner died, months after being hospitalized following the alleged physical abuse. Four protesting miners in Chiatura, fighting for the survival of their families and their town, were remanded in custody over group violence charges. Two women were attacked with pepper spray and green paint in what appears to be a Russian-style “zelyonka attack” after returning home from a daily Rustaveli rally on May 5.

That’s just some of the distressing news Georgians have heard in recent weeks. A year or two ago, each of them would have fallen into the category of “something the Georgian nation will no longer tolerate”. But the phrase – “that’s something the Georgian nation will no longer tolerate” – has now become a popular joke, used in public discourse only to imply the opposite is true.

The fuse of the protests is still burning, yet the explosion seems so delayed that it leaves many wondering what exactly has become of this proud, freedom-loving nation. Some believe that the persisting anger and misery have numbed our emotional response. Others prefer to think that people are just happy to “live in the mud.” Both may be true. When you are left in misery for too long without much hope that anything will change, you have no choice but to see beauty in that suffering. A roadside puddle becomes a lake, and the daily effort of crossing it evolves into a sacred ritual.

Last weekend, however, showed that we have not yet reached that point. The May 4 “Unity March” in the eastern suburbs of Tbilisi, demanding the resignation of the Georgian Dream government, was a double surprise. The demonstrators hardly expected the level of curiosity and support they attracted as they marched through the Isani, Samgori, and Varketili districts, while the locals in turn acted both startled and often happy to be part of a noisy political event. Passers-by were filming the protest en masse, and families rushed to windows and balconies to watch. Some waved in support, others displayed national flags, and while there were inevitable frowns, you could see the rekindled hope and faith in too many faces to ignore the significance of the protest activity.

For many Georgian activists, the day was proof that the passivity of some Georgians does not mean that the discontent has gone. It is still there, just waiting for a new, more effective form to express itself. But one must probably hurry up to find that form. The Lake is growing, and The Lake is growing on us.