It took a long time to get back to Freedom Square and the
road that led to Mariam’s shed. On the way, I walked down an alley to a kebab
shop that specialised in Iranian and Afghan dishes. I sat at a table near the
door and ordered a “chicken on the bone kebab” when a fight broke out. Two
large men burst into the restaurant, yelling and baying for blood. One of them
looked like a Viking in a blue puffer jacket, the other was equally broad and
had a red pug nose. A Georgian man finishing his meal looked at them and shook
his head. The other customers looked on nervously.
A scrum formed and the restaurant staff – five or six Arabic
men with large bellies, making up in weight what they lacked in height - slowly
pushed the pair backwards towards the sliding glass door. The shouting went on
for several minutes and finally the intruders were pushed out of the restaurant.
The owner locked the door. “Georgia!” he said. The waiter returned to finish my
order and made an apologetic gesture about the noise.
The dish came in an unnervingly quick time to cook
chicken on the bone. There were bony pieces from the back of the chicken, and a
couple of wings and drumsticks. The meat looked nicely cooked on the outside,
but was red and jelly-like close to the bone, and had the gamey smell of
pheasant. I figured they’d had too bad a night already to complain. I ate the salad
and the naan bread and then thought what the hell and ate some of the whiter
chicken meat. I paid and headed off to Mariam’s shed. It was 1.20am. I’d
arrived at a similar time the night before and the iron portcullis that led to
the courtyard garden and noticeboard of compliments had been open, but this
time it was shut. I pushed a few times but it was definitely locked.
I began to think about all sorts of horrible possibilities,
knowing my bag and passport were inside. I knocked a few more times and pressed
my ear to the gate but there was no sound from within. Next door was a basement
bar. Three customers came out to smoke. I asked one of them for help. He was an
olive-skinned man in his early 20s and spoke good English. I asked if he could
see a buzzer on the gate. “A bell?” he said. I nodded and in our drunken state
we felt round the gate. He turned on the light on his phone. But there was no
bell or knocker, only the name Hostel Mariam with a phone number underneath. It
was printed on A4 paper and stuck to the door with sticky tape.
“You live here?” he asked. “How long?” I told him it
was my second night. “You have your clothes here?” He shook his head and
clicked his throat in disgust. We both knocked again on the iron gate. My
knuckles were getting raw and the banging made very little sound. I shoved the
door a few more times. The night before, the gate had been wedged open with a
brick and I was wondering whether the brick had become wedged under it, but it
was definitely locked.
I started getting a horrible anxious feeling, and the winter
air seemed to bite much harder. The thought of spending a night on the street
wasn’t a pleasant one. The man blearily examined the gate again, then typed the
number on the wall into his phone. I thanked him a couple more times. The phone
kept ringing and cutting off as he made disgusted shakes of his head. He was
definitely on my side.
Suddenly there was an answer and he started babbling
away in Georgian. His tone slowly got aggressive. It wasn’t a good sound to
hear. After a minute, there was a pause while he flicked away at his cigarette.
There was a barrage at the other end. It sounded like a dragon breathing fire. “Is
it a woman?” I asked. “Yes, it’s an old woman,” he said. “But I don’t know what
she do. I think she’s lying. She says you only have a small bag there and you
move out.”
He dialled the number again, crushed his cigarette with his foot,
and then lit another one. A voice came back on the phone, and his tone got more
aggressive. He checked with me again. “You sleep there?” he asked. “Yes,” I
said. “You have your clothes there?” “Yes,” I said. Then the phone went dead.
He swore and began to redial. “What happened?” I asked. “She says you check
out. She not come to the door. She has a bad heart – it’s hard for her to get up.
I think she’s lazy.” He tried the number again but there was no answer. I was
already thinking about the park bench I’d sleep on. Without my passport, it
would be very difficult getting a hotel. Then I thought about Babar’s hostel
and whether there might be a spare bed there. Did they still keep the door open
when Babar wasn’t turning up in the middle of the night?
My new friend, and I really don’t know what I would
have done if he hadn’t been there, tried the number a few more times and finally
got through. The conversation quickly turned into an argument. I could hear a
hurricane coming down the phone. He kept checking with me that I “had my
clothes there,” and kept shaking his head. Eventually he said: “I think she’s
coming.” I thought I could hear distant noises from inside the courtyard, but
after 10 minutes just put it down to hope. Then finally the door opened and
there was Mariam, her orange hair stuck up in rollers like a medusa, hailing a
torrent of abuse.
She was leaning on her stick and rubbing her back much
more than I’d seen her do before, making whimpering noises interspersed with
full-blown rages of hate. I stepped through the gate, afraid it would shut
again, and for a minute she swore at the young man and his friend who had
wandered up to watch the spectacle. She slammed the door shut and clenched her
fist, making hammering gestures in the direction of my nose. She carried on
shouting and I did my best to rectify the situation. I helped her as she hobbled
back through the courtyard to my shed door. My bag was on the table outside,
underneath the vines. My toothbrush and toothpaste were on a chair next to it.
She’d cleaned out my room. I panicked, thinking about my belt pouch containing
my passport and money that I’d hidden under the mattress.
Mariam continued to rant at me, pretending to hammer
my face with her right fist, as she gripped her stick with the other. I kept
telling her I hadn’t said anything about checking out. Her punching motions got
closer to my nose. One slip of her walking stick, and my nose would be as flat
as a khachapuri. Eventually she unlocked the door to the shed and we walked in.
I kept saying “no check-out” as she continued her attack. She said nothing
about the English being “number one” this time, and the only thumbs-ups signs
were the ones directed at my face. I realised she was probably mad.
She pointed at the beds and I pointed to the one I’d
slept in, and she turned back the cover. While her back was turned, I checked
under the mattress and found my belt pouch. Nothing appeared to be missing. The
cash seemed to be about the right amount and the passport and bank cards were
there. I handed her 25 laris for the room, then she left. The shed was
freezing. The water jug had a slight sheen to it as though it was about to ice
over. I shut the door and found she’d taken the remote control for the air
conditioning, which when you put it up to its maximum of 16C was the only way
to heat the room. I took the blankets from the other beds and piled them on top
of me. I decided to check my emails and realised she’d turned off the wifi as
well.
I woke early. There was no banging on the door this
time and there was no sign of Mariam in the courtyard. I dressed and wandered
out to the other shed to brush my teeth. It was far too cold to shower. I stood
outside my shed for a few minutes gathering my thoughts. There was still no
sign of Mariam. Normally she would be peeking through the net curtains, but
there was no light in her kitchen. I found a plug outside my shed that led to a
bundle of wires and managed to put the wifi back on. It also turned on the
porch light.
I lay on my bed, shivering and searching on my tablet for
hotels. It was still a few hours before check-in times. I went to the toilet. I
heard no noise in the courtyard, but returned to find the outside light was off
and so was the wifi. The plug had been taken out and the bundle of spaghetti
was dangling down as it had been before. I took it as a sign that I was
definitely no longer welcome.
I packed my bag and walked past the mandarin plant and
the noticeboard with all those cheery messages. I could feel eyes on my back. Mariam’s
black cat was sitting on a chair near the gate and was watching me with narrowed
eyes. It hadn’t liked me when I first turned up, but now it looked particularly
unfriendly.
I pulled the gate open and ventured out into the rain-drenched
street. The basement bar next door was shut. At the end of the road was a small
hotel with Christmas lights in the window, but I wanted one further away from Mariam.
That cat had put the chill into me, and in my bleary state I began wondering whether
Mariam had ailuranthropic powers – she certainly had the temper for it.
(Continues...)