5. Checked Privilege
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Do You Speak Georgian? is a narrative podcast and serial memoir set in the Republic of Georgia. Join your host, Alicia Michelle, on a whirlwind adventure in the South Caucasus, where you’ll hear about the dark side of international travel – the side mainstream travel bloggers don’t share on Instagram.
Do You Speak Georgian? reflects the author’s recollection of events. Some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of those depicted. Dialogue has been recreated from memory.
The average flight from the United States to the most visited city in Europe, London, takes just over nine hours. The average flight duration from the United States to Georgia’s tongue-twisting capital, Tbilisi, takes just a few hours more, at roughly thirteen.
Thirteen hours is a lie.
Two obstacles make getting to Tbilisi from North America a challenging and time-consuming process. One being that Tbilisi is not home to a major airport. The other being that, at least for the average American traveler, Tbilisi itself is an emerging, relatively obscure destination.
I boarded my Turkish Airlines flight on August 28th, 2014 with the awareness that it would take nearly 48 hours to reach Tbilisi. Said 48 hours, the longest I had ever been in transit, involved the triple threat of a transatlantic flight to the then-operative Ataturk International Airport, an eight-hour layover in Istanbul, and a red-eye connecting flight to my final destination at midnight.
Being naturally disposed to anxiety, I couldn’t help but to mentally roll a play-by-play of events that had not yet transpired. I worried about how tired I would be once I arrived in Istanbul, a mental and physical state at odds with the alertness and intuition required to function alone as a woman in a strange place. I visualized navigating an airport I had never been to, deciphering signs in a language I had never seen before, and spending my layover site-seeing in a city that always seemed to star as the setting in movies about human trafficking.
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In spite of less-than-ideal circumstances, anxiety meant I also came prepared. With a pre-obtained Turkish entry visa, a print-out map of Istanbul’s metro system, and a detailed, pre-researched game plan of how to exactly spend my layover. Even economy class-induced sleep deprivation could be managed, by popping two melatonin pills after dining on a mile-high rendition of satay chicken and Turkish delight.
I wasn’t able to grab a window seat during online check-in, but by craning my neck, I caught a glimpse from my neighbor’s window before he lowered the blind. America’s edge, Massachusetts’ arm bejeweled with strings of amber streetlamp diamonds in the night, waved “goodbye” as the plane speed away into the abyss, and over the Atlantic Ocean, blackened beneath a new moon sky…
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My first encounter with Georgia happened explicitly. Encounters with Turkey, one of Georgia’s geographical neighbors, naturally happened as well. These encounters, however, happened implicitly, through abstract means.
Sometime during the early aughts, I indulged in a good old-fashioned Wikipedia information binge while procrastinating on a middle school book project. In light of the recent September 11th attacks, I began the binge by searching for something I kept hearing on the news.
Islam.
Three hours later, and with no further understanding about Islam, I ended up on page about Orientalism.
With pre-Renaissance origins, Orientalism is a form of artistic, cultural, and literary study pertaining to Western depictions of the East.
At first glance, Orientalism appears benign. It illustrated an unfamiliar, far away land for audiences during a time when access to information and travel were luxuries reserved only for the wealthy. An internet search for “Orientalist art” brings up countless 19th century oil paintings, featuring treasure-filled Levantine palaces, chiaroscuro Ottoman court scenes, or Algerian opium dens filled with voluptuous veiled women.
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Every once and while, I encountered a medium that blew my mind. As a child it was anime and house music. And as a preteen, it was Orientalism.
Orientalism was a welcome departure from my abrupt and traumatic introduction to the East. My sixth grade classroom watched the World Trade Center collapse on the television screen, and the students asked, in confusion, despair, and rage, “why did this happen?”, “who did it?”, “what did it?”.
Adults who were supposed to be all-knowing were rendered speechless. They had no answers for us because no answers could be found, leaving us to search for answers of our own.
Was the world filled with magic? Or was it filled with mayhem?
My intuition told me the world was filled with both, but I was too young to grasp the concept that magic and mayhem coexisted. To accept them both meant bidding bon voyage to the world as I knew it. To accept them both meant signaling I was ready, even though I didn’t know what I was ready for.
And so I clung onto magic. Mayhem did not exist, and romantic 19th century depictions of the Arab world provided plenty of supporting evidence for my beliefs. Orientalism was my answer. Orientalism was my escape, an embodiment of the abstract idealism and innocence I clung to as the carefree 90s transitioned into a 21st century filled with concrete cynicism and grief.
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When dissected by socially conscious eyes, Orientalism is insidious.
Insidious because it was designed to rationalize colonialism, conquest, and racism. Those Eastern scenes, illustrated with soft ocher tones, were a subliminal way to demonstrate how enlightened and civilized the West was in comparison to its neighbors. That the East was savage, home to a sensual, deviant culture and corrupt, debased inhabitants. Academically known as one of the three pillars of white supremacy, Orientalism informed viewers that it is the West’s duty to “tame” the East, be it under the under the yoke of slavery or the mast of imperialism.
While taking a break from packing my suitcases, I fell into another internet information binge. I stumbled upon a critique of the growing ESL market across the developing world.
Teaching English abroad was a legitimate, albeit risky option for casualties of the Great Recession.
An alternative with parallels to Orientalism.
Instead of conquest and enslavement, the English language served as a cloak of good intentions for foreign teachers to hide behind as they consciously and unconsciously preached the virtues of Western supremacy to impressionable students in vulnerable communities.
Hours and time zones ticked away, leaving me with plenty of time to reflect on the additional, invisible baggage I carried.
My privilege.
How would I, a traveler from the West and a descendant of the victims of Orientalism at that, interpret the East once I stepped off the plane?
Was Orientalism a two-way street, where the East interpreted the West in equally insidious ways?
If given the opportunity to sample my own slice of the colonialist pie, would I succumb to the subconscious desires I harbored in my own heart of darkness?
Or would I discover that any savagery to be tamed in the East was actually savagery with origins from within?
Podcast Track Info
Intro/Outro Music - Vchera by AL-90 - some rights reserved
Racist-sounding song - Georgian March by Unknown
Show Notes
Further reading on the three pillars of white supremacy.