Nobody will be surprised that, with today’s easy access to information, when there is in particular a growing demand for books or films full of biographical or personal histories, people are interested in each other’s stories: stories which have something new to say about them, or which recall old stories and arouse an emotional response, all the more when these stories concern Giorgi Kekelidze, whose Gurian Diaries have recently become a bestseller. Gurian Diaries are not so much a specific memoir, as an attempt to reconstruct the reader’s own past and, by doing so, they resemble a game into which the author inveigles the reader.

EXTRACT
Translated into English by Natalia Bulia-Peters and Victoria Field

The Gurian Way of Love

It looks like it’s morning. It’s snowing.
It always bugged me when people have tea with bread and butter in the mornings. I don’t know why, I suppose it’s the fault of my early and unspeakable childhood but I can’t stand the way they do that, so calmly. It’s completely beyond me! Perhaps I should skip breakfast now as well. No work today, coz, as they say, it’s the weekend. Stuff the weekend! I take after my grandmother but she took off pretty smartly. Okay, I have to start writing.
In Guria, sex is known as ‘ajibakuri’. That looks like a pretty convoluted word. It sounds suspicious. But as for love, well, love is love. It could be called a mind-bender but that means something else. I am not going to tell you about it now. You can look it up in the Gurian dictionary.
Another word for sex in the Gurian dialect is ‘mai’, meaning ‘that something’. This word can be traced back to ‘maia’ meaning ‘illusion’ in Sanskrit. But you know, you could argue that this something is nothing but this, that and the other. Carry on arguing...

***

‘Well, then, tell us the story of your wedding.’
‘Let’s begin with the fact that I was fixed up with a girl. After going out for a bit, we agreed to get married. We got to the stage when we set a date for the wedding. That was a done deal in Tbilisi. But the day before we came to Guria, my old fiancée tells me she can’t get spliced. I asked why not. Geno, she says, I’m not what you think I am …’
‘But you must have had some relations with her before that, surely?’
‘Yeah, we went out, but not like those crazy lovebirds you get nowadays. And, besides, I was getting on, I was about thirty five years old. She was around the same age. When I asked her again ‘what’s all that about?’ she repeated, ‘Geno, I am not the sort of girl you think I am.’ This time it didn’t take me long to guess what she was on about. Everything was ready for the wedding day. All this happened on Friday, the day before.
The wedding reception was all planned... (See PDF)


In case of using the information, please, indicate the source.