by David Zenian
Tbilisi, Georgia — There are no tollbooths along the 150 mile-long road from Yerevan to Tbilisi. There are no gas stations either. But be prepared to be stopped by Azeri farmers scrutinizing cars with Armenian license plates, or armed bands manning mobile "road tax" stations.
The journey, which can take up to six hours, is an education in itself. The breathtaking scenery compensates for the potholes and the narrow mountain roads as the scars of conflict unveil along every other mile of the way.
Just inside Georgia across the "open border", the village of Mughamlu emerges. Once a thriving hamlet inhabited by ethnic Azeris, the village now is partially destroyed and many of its hillside homes torched. "Mughamlu was attacked in 1989, and its Azeri inhabitants were expelled. Their departure has eliminated one of the problems we had along this road," explains a taxi driver who has been using the road for many years.
"Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, this road was safe, but in the past few years we started feeling the Karabagh shock-waves all the way here," he said. "We used to get stopped and robbed here by Azeri gangs. We are finished with that now," he says as the road starts winding up the mountain side to the next village — Akhlu.
Here, well inside Georgia, Azerbaijani farmers display fresh baskets of fruits and vegetables along the road. A stop for some apricots proves to be a nervous encounter. "Ermani, Ermani", is the only understandable word of the whispered utterances between the roadside farmers. "Ermani", in the Turkish language, means Armenian. The bargaining is in Russian. There are a few "asides" in Armenian, and the stop is brief and tense.
Leaving Akhlu, however, barely lowers the blood pressure of the passengers of the 1975 Zjiguli — the Soviet version of the Italian Fiat. A thirty-minute stop to cool off a boiling radiator feels like an eternity. There is no other traffic on the road.
The driver, a middle-aged unemployed factory worker, assures the passengers that "thanks to the presence of the Russian army" in the region, only a few cases of violence have been reported. "A car with Armenian license plates was set on fire last year, and its passengers kidnapped,"he recounts as we enter the village of Goda, in the heart of the predominantly Azerbaijani inhabited Marneouli region of Georgia, home for an estimated 260,000 Azeris.
"The Russian troops did not even get out of their army base here to prevent the incident. Instead, they painted large signs along their two meter-high fence in Armenian, Georgian and Russian warning would-be trespassers," our driver said. The warning signs are still there. They read: "Stop, we will open fire." A T54 tank, with its turret pointing toward the approach road of the army base, enforces the message.
An hour or two later, the countryside gives way to the picturesque city of Tbilisi — the capital of Georgia, one of the most ethnically diverse nations of the former Soviet Union.
A Georgian police "checkpoint" is a comforting appearance — especially when it turns out that all the two officers want is a few liters of gas to get them home.
