In the print shop’s back room, Lasha kept a single photograph: Mihail, his brother, in military uniform. Killed in Abkhazia '93. Not by a bullet. By a landmine made in a factory that no longer exists. The fruit passed down: father’s blood, sister’s silence, brother’s scattered bones.
Lasha had tried to escape. He went to Batumi, worked on a cargo ship. He learned Russian curses and Turkish lullabies. But the fruit followed. It ripened inside his ribcage. Every kindness he received, he crushed preemptively. You’ll leave anyway. You’ll die anyway. The tree only bears what it bears.
She sat beside him. “Then why stay in the garden?” the fruit of grisaia qartulad
He reached for the photograph of Mihail. Turned it face down.
Lasha looked at her hands. No rings. No calluses from fighting. Just the soft palms of someone who hadn’t yet bitten the fruit. In the print shop’s back room, Lasha kept
His father had been a khanzari maker—a dagger craftsman in the old quarter. Not a criminal. Just a man who sharpened edges for others. One night, a rival family mistook him for the customer. Lasha found him in the courtyard, the pomegranate tree blooming above, its fruit split open like a wound.
– The End
“You talk in your sleep,” she said. “You say ra grisaia —what is Grisaia?”
Lasha woke to Tamar’s cat purring on his chest. The print shop was silent. The rust smelled like rain. And for the first time, the weight behind his ribs felt less like a fruit and more like a seed—something that hadn't grown yet. Something that could still be planted in good soil. By a landmine made in a factory that no longer exists
He almost laughed. “Because you don’t leave. The tree follows you. The roots are in your lungs.”
თბილისი, 2024