Bambusikha

I’ve never spoken to the old man, though I’ve seen him countless times — for what feels like forever. 
He’s a parking attendant of sorts. Not employed, not serving anyone — just living beside one of the grandest banks in the country. He watches the cars, helps people park, collects a few coins, eats his khachapuri, drinks something from a plastic bottle.

He has a booth — small as the word «still». He raises the barrier for certain cars with the ease of someone who’s long stopped caring. Above him stretches a mosaic — maybe the finest in the city. In summer the sun burns across it, but in autumn — especially in autumn — it glows with a deep yellow light, as if the memory of summer itself were holding on to that façade, refusing to fade. Tourists stop to stare, of course. But I think every Tbilisian knows it too — from childhood, from the first moment they looked up at the sun.

When I found first time a house on Javakhishvili Street, 58, a dog appeared with it. The neighbor upstairs found her in a dumpster; she used to fit in the palm of a hand. She’s big now, but her name is Patara — “little one” in Georgian.

Now she’s enormous — one of the finest dogs I’ve ever known. I call her Bambusikha. She lives in the entryway, in her den between a pipe and an old bicycle. I buy her bones and small treats, and we’re friends — quietly, without words. Sometimes I think we understand each other better than we understand most people.

By day, Bambusikha keeps company with the old man. At night, she returns to us. He never lets her walk alone — he always brings her back. There’s something tender in that, almost holy — as if he, too, lived only to return something to its home.

Yesterday, after a new security camera was installed on the faсade, something happened that left me in tears.

She came to the door. The code lock blinking.


A few minutes later, for no reason, I went out for a smoke — and saw her at the far end of the block. I don’t know how she saw me. She simply stopped. Turned. And ran — fast, graceful, like a leopard. I opened both doors, and she burst inside, breathing hard — as if the whole earth had just come home.

And I stood there, cigarette in hand, thinking that maybe this is what life really is: someone always going somewhere, and someone always returning. Between them — the mosaic, the sun, the old man, the dog.


And this warm city, where it’s still possible to wait for someone.