Author: Nino Urushadze
I have known Keren from afar for a long time. When I wrote to her and told her that I was going to do an interview with her, she agreed, although she said that she could not imagine what could come of it. We met in Zugdidi – the city where she lives. Her persona has always been particularly interesting to me, and after our meeting I can say that she is one of the most outstanding interviewees, with her diverse experiences and identities, that I have spoken to so far.
“I am Keren Esebua. 35 years old. A queer activist and artist,” Keren tells me when I ask her how to introduce herself.
Displacement
Keren was born in May 1989 in Sokhumi. She says that being born near the sea largely determined his character. Sokhumi of the peaceful years does not exist in her memory, these are later, traumatic memories, when at the age of 2-3 he could already distinguish the sounds of different combat weapons from each other.
“We came out last. Five days before Sokhumi fell. My family left Abkhazia separately. My parents and I went out first. Grandma stayed behind – she didn’t really want to leave Sokhumi. At some point, she thought that she could stay because she has Polish roots and thought that nothing would happen to her. However, later she also had to leave, because she had to clash with his Abkhaz neighbors because of the house.
We left on a Ukrainian ship with thousands of people on board, including the wounded. At first we came to Poti, where we were met with a lot of buses, which were used to distribute the refugees to different cities, and like many other families, at some point we lost touch with each other. I spent the years of exile partly in Kobuleti. Kobuleti consisted of many settlements. When you entered, first there was “Chiragdani”, then “Kobuleti”, our settlement was called “Horizonti” – it was two sixteen-story buildings. “Practically, refugees were settled in all boarding houses.”
From one war we came to peace with our own people. But there was no reconciling consolation that, yes, we had come to a place where we were received. […] I was looking for my place in this society for a long time and I had a feeling of alienation for a very long time.
The situation of people burdened by displacement and war trauma was further aggravated by the unkindness of the local population. Keren recalls that it was very difficult for them to accept the new people who arrived in such numbers.
“We were very traumatized. And to add to this trauma, the division continued there. From one war we came to peace with our own people. But there was no reconciling consolation that, yes, we had come to a place where we were received. I remember that the “Red Cross” opened a school for us on the third floor, where internally displaced persons worked as teachers and only internally displaced children studied, so that there was no danger of clashes, bullying, non-acceptance. For a long time I was looking for my place in this society and for a very long time I had the feeling of alienation.
On the one hand, of course, I reserve the right to be offended, but on the other hand, we were all impoverished, equally impoverished – Adjarians, Megrelians alike… Every corner suffered the same poverty, hunger, unemployment, lack of light, poverty, and, of course, irritation was caused by the new group influx. There is a danger of competition, that you will have less because so many new people have settled here. Besides, I think we can also find a trace that they could not forgive us a little for abandoning Sokhumi, in spite of everything. I can say with full responsibility that until 2008 I heard this dispute in the society that we left and left Sokhumi. We became the faces of this unsuccessful war, we became the direct face of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict, and now we were on the shoulders of these regions, carrying them. Which, of course, is not true.”
Keren feels that the severity of these two events cannot be compared, but when she looks at the war in Palestine and the children there – how they look, how they dress – she remembers her own childhood experiences. She says that even the colors and inscriptions of the humanitarian aid are the same.
“I think that every child living in poverty, every child living in poverty chooses entertainment, holding concerts, dancing, where they entertain all the adults, as one of the means of escape. On the one hand, this entertainment is very superficial, and on the other hand, when we see how nervous our parents are, how nervous our neighbors are, how tense they are, it’s as if you’re unintentionally, completely naively trying to manage this mood. Do it somehow, because you know it will be more comfortable and a good environment for you too, when everyone around you, family members and neighbors, feels good.”
For a very long time, I thought that onion, salt and oil is a salad – an ordinary food. It was the poorest, most difficult years and, of course, it affects a person
She spent her childhood reading books, dancing, writing, singing, swimming in the sea. She started writing very early, at first – poetry, and at a later age it took a more prosaic form. She recalls being obsessively interested in the figure of Alexander the Great, researching facts about him and thinking that if she read enough literature, she could investigate his death.
“I really liked this “nerdy” childhood of mine, where I was constantly reading, writing, writing and studying. I am still writing. If I used to write poetry, poems, now I write for music more often.”
Photo: Irakli Gamsakhurdia
Despite the difficulties, she says that “Horizont” still carries pleasant memories for her of how the displaced people stood by each other and how they shared everything they had. It remained an example of how people who have lost everything can overcome the most difficult and difficult years by caring for each other, and at the same time love and respect each other very much.
“I remember that we used to drink tea from jars. For a very long time, I thought that onion, salt and oil is a salad – an ordinary food. It was the poorest, most difficult years and, of course, it affects a person. In my case, I still think it has a good effect, because I have a very high tolerance for everything, and I think it helped me a lot later.”
Understanding the Conflict
She spent the first years of exile with an insatiable desire to return to Sokhumi and a principled political position — she would only return there when the Russians left and the displaced population returned home. It was unthinkable for her to return to Abkhazia otherwise. However, over the years, the perception of the complexity of this conflict entered into his thinking and life.
“For us, Georgians, Abkhazians are very abstract. We only have a very vague idea of them based on the narratives we hear from family or the political elite. Long-term participation in the process of Georgian-Abkhazian dialogue taught me to perceive this conflict in all its complexity, now I know much better what people want in Abkhazia and what they fear at the same time. I realized that this war affected all Abkhazian families, there are victims in all families, some of them had to be displaced just like us.
My family had to walk across the coast from Sokhumi, sleep on a desk at school and wait for the ship for several days, during which an Abkhazian woman sheltered us (they said she would help other Georgians as well). One Abkhazian also fought with my grandmother because she wanted a house, and the other Abkhazian saved her from death. Little by little, I realized that we cannot look from one point of view and look only at the expense of our own self-victimization and loss, look only from one perspective, where we are the only displaced persons and victims of this war.
In her opinion, the only way to solve the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict is to start a full-fledged dialogue and discussion in society on how reconciliation should be done. She considers the attempts of the Georgian Dream to bring the issue of Abkhazia into the agenda and hints about reconciliation with Abkhazia as a pre-election simulation.
“After 2008, no one promised us to spend the New Year in Abkhazia, and now this narrative has started again. Even if we imagine that the Georgian Dream regime reconciles with Russia, with Putin’s regime, which has Abkhazia on its hook, which we are constantly playing with and where it moves, we look there, and this reconciliation is simulated, this is a danger that a public clash will occur again, because there is no readiness for this reconciliation.”
Music
Despite her great love for music, singing and dancing, at a certain stage of her life she felt that it was not necessary to go in this direction. She suddenly found herself in music in 2015, when a Mexican composer discovered his poem translated into English and saw a video on Facebook of Keren singing with friends.
“He asked me, if you can, to send you the composition and write the lyrics. It was the first attempt to write a poem directly to music. Then he asked me to sing. This was also a new experience. This is how my entry into music began. This project has become quite famous in the narrow circles where this music is listened to and loved. Accordingly, different people contacted me at different times – “We want your voice, we want your lyrics…” – and very slowly, several projects started with different composers in different countries.
Keren mostly writes lyrics for music in English, although one of her latest compositions — “Queer Woman’s Manifesto” — was written in Georgian. She also makes music videos herself, creates costumes.
“In the small apartment where I live, I have no studio, no microphone, no video equipment. I’m writing all this very creatively in the bathroom. I record the sound on the phone, then I take this phone and go to shoot. It took years to figure it out—how to “blend it,” what effects to use, how to make it all look good. It may look like it was shot on a phone and low-budget, but it carries its own idea and doesn’t devalue that idea. I think it’s all at a pretty good stage now.
Frames still exist, but these frames are also very interesting. Moving within these frameworks and finding new ways makes this music much more experimental than if everything was very accessible and simple. It could have been more superficial, because simplicity often pampers us. These frames are good training and I like them.”
Queerness and Coming Out
She inserted herself late into the LGBTQ spectrum. It was too late to realize that her admiration for the women around her was not simply a desire to be like them.
“It’s not just a sexual orientation or part of an identity. With all these marginal experiences, here I find a place. The way I want to live, it does not fit into the heteronormative order established in our country. It is not very difficult for a Georgian woman to perceive herself as a queer feminist woman at some point. It depends on how we understand queer here — whether or not we want to understand it only in terms of sexual orientation. To me, it has a broader meaning, and [queer] is every person whose experience will never match that of the majority.”
According to Keren, politics should not dictate what identity we carry and what form of relationships we connect with each other. Heteronormative relationships/families, people are the foundation of any political regime, so for me personally, the way is to deconstruct and decolonize my own beliefs and ideas.
“I want it to become completely acceptable to society that I don’t want to be a mother, I don’t want to create a heteronormative family. Let me determine what kind of family I will have. It is very important for each of us that political agendas do not interfere in our lives and dictate how we live. This feeds the state in later stages, this feeds heteronormative families, and directly creates the basis for an order that is easier to manage for any regime. This is unacceptable for me.”
She never hid the truth about herself from anyone, and she never had a coming-out experience in whatever form this process might imply. She says that queerness is something she is not ashamed of, that she is proud of, and therefore she could proudly talk about it everywhere.
“There was no stage for me to say, come on, now I’ve figured it out, I’m going to sit down and tell everybody. If we touched on this issue, I would not hide from anyone, no matter who they were – a fellow villager, a fellow student, a fellow city dweller, a colleague. No one was surprised, nor were they met with aggression. Not because I was so acceptable, on the contrary, because a person “like me” would certainly say that. But we should not understand this in such a way that they would greet me with applause. It’s almost like a person silently swallowing a small ball and not saying anything to you. He is even a little glad that this “marginal” picture of you was filled for him. If the conversation was about it, my position was always very clear and principled. I didn’t back down, and people didn’t have any additional questions.”
Zugdidi
Like all queers in Georgia, it is not easy for Keren to live in such a small and traditional town like Zugdidi. Moreover, this experience can be painful, although she tries to talk less about the unpleasant memories that are connected with the stages of his growth and formation in Zugdidi.
“At some point there is persecution, non-acceptance, too many rumors, it can become very uncontrollable and damaging at the same time. I have a very good family, who taught me all the time that there is no need to fixate on this and you should do your work, but it hurts you in the sense that people change their perception of you and constantly create different narratives around you, where your face, work, humanity and , in general, they will lose something very humane.”
According to Keren, during the period of the National Movement, she was also persecuted by the police, despite the fact that he was in a youth organization at the age of 16-17, like many other internally displaced people.
Photo: Nino Urushadze
After Abkhazia, she had to see Russian aggression this time in Zugdidi. The most clear and heavy memory that connects with Zugdidi is the war of August 2008, when she was 19 years old. The fleeing population, traffic jams caused by Russian military equipment and troops…
“We got so used to living without the Russian army in Georgia, we all collectively forgot that before 2007 there was still a Russian “peacekeeping” mission in Georgia, even at the entrance to Zugdidi. Even now, here on those big poles, if we approach and see, the inscriptions left by the Russian soldiers, the years related to the change of their units, are preserved.
During the August 2008 war, my friend and I were the only young people left in the city. At some stage, at the expense of this anger, we even blocked the way of the Russian army near the city council. They stopped thirty centimeters from me, we threw small proclamations, where several sentences against the Russian army were written. When they passed, the local government followed, and pointed the finger at us, how dare you do this and what are you doing. And this clash happened not only with the Russian army then, but also with the local government, which, I now understand partially, was trying to protect us, although to me at the time it was perceived as if they were coming behind them, controlling them and even protecting them. All this later turned into a very big conflict. I couldn’t accept this insult and I couldn’t forgive it.”
“The Voice of the Region Must Be Heard”
Staying in Zugdidi, which also makes it within certain limits, is her choice. Apart from the political part, this is determined by her character. She says that in Georgia everything happens in the center, which is very tiring for Keren – the further she lives from any urban point, the more peaceful she feels.
“I am waiting for the time when I can move somewhere to the mountains, higher, say to Svaneti, and have a small house where I can be alone very quietly. At some point I’ll go somewhere urban, I’ll see people I love very much for a while. I’ll have a concert and then I’ll be able to go back to my little spot where I’ll have complete control over my own territory, my own personal space. Communicating with people in large doses makes me tired, I need long pauses to calm down and catch up, even though I don’t have any communication problems. I need silence to relax. And this loneliness is a choice based on character.”
When demonstrations related to the Russian law began in Tbilisi, many of her friends participated in these demonstrations and were physically abused. Keren also bought masks and the necessary equipment to go to Tbilisi and stand with his friends in front of the parliament.
They constantly threatened people with queers, that if we don’t protect our Georgianness now, everyone will definitely become gay and lesbian, everyone will pervert, we will lose our Georgianness… This intimidation was done constantly to make people stop thinking about the many problems that unite us all.
“Then I had a little honest dialogue with myself, and this honest dialogue ended with me staying in Zugdidi. In the political part, I consider it essential and important that the voices of the region be heard, especially now. Yes, sir, we have gotten used to this culture, that if we stand with the parliament with enough persistence, for enough time, something will change, but I believe that now is the exact time in Georgia, when people should come out in all regions and no one can lie to us anymore that the three hundred thousand people who came out in Tbilisi It does not reflect the opinion of one and a half million Georgians. Regions should talk about their own problems. There are a lot of social protests in the region and all this should take the form of public protest.
In the regions there is no sound of queers at all. An idea was formed as if this community exists only in Tbilisi, and everyone forgets that we are everywhere, queer people live everywhere, and everywhere we have the same difficulty living as other people. Any regime likes to manipulate differences, but there is no difference here. Along with this hardship, the persecution of queer people has been directly reported as a fascist law passed against us. Yes, it hurts and I’m worried about my friends in Tbilisi, but I decided that even with a very small queer flag, I’d rather stand in the region as long as I have the stamina.”
During the period when the governing team was visiting the regions of Georgia and organizing public discussions about the hate law, Keren shared a video on social networks that depicts a kind of performance-protest against these events.
“I heard that this meeting was held on the territory of the combine. I took a taxi. This taxi driver looks at me because I have an LGBT flag on my hand, he looks at me and he doesn’t like it very much, he was an elderly man. I went with him and on the way, as usual, he asks my name. When he finds out that I’m Esebua, he jokingly asks if he was taking me to rob a bank too. Not to rob a bank, but to meet Papuashvili, I said.
I will never forget this person’s attitude – despite this flag of mine, despite my statement that I was going to meet with Papuashvili, when this grandfather saw that there were military police, patrols and a lot of cars everywhere in the territory of the combine, he told me to stay, wait for you, and let you enter. This memory is amazing for me – somewhere he was afraid that a girl was going to a meeting with a Papuashvili with this flag and something would happen to him. We must always remember that any kind of aggression against queer people is a tool in the hands of the government. In this form it does not exist in ordinary people.
She recalls, I was absolutely prepared that meeting face to face with this number of people could be violent and aggressive.
“Everyone who came out looked me straight in the eyes and in the face. […] It was important for me to show that I, too, could stand up to these people. I wanted to show an example. I’m not saying that everyone should act like this, but I wanted them to see that I always have the strength to face these people without any aggression, I have the willingness to talk and I have enough skills to withstand the pressure, ridicule and aggression from them.”
Blackmail that the State Arranges
Keren says that the Georgian Dream government does not have any social project to improve the quality of life of people in the country. To cover it up, it offers an ideological package and constantly manipulates the fear of war, which in a country like Georgia, which has a lot of internally displaced persons, war veterans and, in general, the society has war trauma, causes heightened anxiety and fear in people.
“We have a problem in education, health care, rising prices… There is no space in our life where we don’t live on credit. We all take loans in the same way for education, weddings, funerals, going to the doctor, buying medicine, appliances, repairs… absolutely all our experience, our life in this country, is related to taking a loan from the bank. In the background of all this, the absolutely weakened and politically powerless Georgian Dream, which knows that it cannot offer us anything else, tells us that you are hungry and thirsty, but come, look, in fact, the issue of Georgianness and faith is at stake here, and we will solve it.”
Keren talks about social protests, traffic lights, Chiatura, Balda, workers’ strikes and hopes that a political force will emerge that will help people voice and solve social problems.
“The government should work for us. Somewhere we have to understand that no political force wins in the elections – the only winners should be the Georgian people, no one else. And that’s exactly what the October 26 election is all about.”
She says that the government has categorized people – someone is a “collective National Movement”, someone is an “agent”, and queers are included in the next group.
I want people to understand that we [queers] are just as hungry as them, we live in this country just like them. If we go out into the streets and protest now, we protest because we are in danger of being destroyed, of our friends or ourselves being prosecuted, of being tried, of going to prison, of being held administratively responsible, and therefore we cannot remain silent.
“[The homophobic law] directly threatens the queer community, all queer people who live and express themselves in this country. This is a physical danger, a danger to life, a danger of being caught… There is a danger to women, who will no longer be able to use political power in the political agenda, they will no longer be in the parliament because it turns out that there was positive discrimination in a country like Georgia with a quota for women. These women cannot and will no longer voice our problems. This is a huge threat and danger. And I hope that Georgia will not turn into this fascist, monotheistic, one-party country, where everyone who dares to disobey state blackmail is punished.”
“We Can’t Keep Quiet”
For her, the fears that exist in the regions about queers are completely understandable, and she says that this is the result of the constant instrumentalization with which the population has always been intimidated — intimidation by the queer community.
“I understand all this very well. I am not a person who stops, stands in a position of surprise and thinks – how?! We are not parties and we do not stand against each other. People were constantly threatened by us, that if we don’t protect our Georgianness now, everyone will definitely become gay and lesbian, everyone will pervert, we will lose our Georgianness… This intimidation was constantly done so that people would stop thinking about the many problems that unite us all, that we would not be together, that our Consolidation against political forces.
I really want our dialogue to be completed and to be able to explain to people that we are not a threat, that we are really together in this fight, and we must understand that the first danger facing us now is the danger of Georgia’s existence. This is not the danger of losing Georgianness, it is the danger of losing the state – Georgia. There is a danger of the Russian army returning to Georgia, but not as the Georgian Dream tells us. We have to think about the danger of a ruling team that is deceiving us and leading us to a totalitarian regime, an authoritarian, fascist regime.
I want people to understand that we are hungry like them, we live like them in this country. If we go out into the streets and protest now, we protest because we are in danger of being destroyed, of our friends or ourselves being prosecuted, of being tried, of going to prison, of being held administratively responsible, and therefore we cannot remain silent.
Hopefully, on October 26, we will be able to resist the regime, which terrorizes us, persecutes us and tries to come with a constitutional majority and change the constitutional order in the country through intimidation and blackmail.”