ABSTRACT

The white horse, draped with a Georgian flag, walked gingerly, its hoofs slipping on the thin layer of ice covering the streets. Behind it came an APC, towing the casket on a gun caisson. It was followed by a wall of women, all dressed in black. They wept as they walked, clenching their fists above their heads. The man they were mourning was Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who had died, was killed, or committed suicide in the mountains of western Georgia two months before, but was now about to be reburied in the courtyard of his residence-in-exile in Grozny, the dreary capital city of the breakaway Chechen Republic in the Russian North Caucasus. My quest for Gamsakhurdia was finally over: I was within three feet of him but had never met the man.