Rotting Christ- What Is Georgia Up To Now?!

OP-Ed

Every year, embarrassing photos of me emerge on Facebook, aged thirteen with long hair and wearing a T-shirt of a 1980s metal band, as well as whatever ridiculous accessories those clever bastards in the music magazines assured me looked cool. Usually it’s my mother who shares these ghastly pictures, and she had best be bloody careful, else when she’s elderly it’ll be an old folks’ home for her in the back of beyond. Still, they aren’t shared very often, but when they are, my wife and friends have a field day. It isn’t, I can see now, a winning look – but still, at least most of how truly awful it all was isn’t shown in the meager collection of photos my mother periodically shares, which is a mercy; wristbands and army-style dog-tags were the least of it, if I recall.

I suppose back then it was some sort of statement. Being different is harder than you’d think at thirteen, and I was damned if I was going to be seen by adults as being anything like my Britney-loving, Wayne Rooney-worshipping peers. I had no desire to fit in, yet for some reason wanted everyone to know I was different – while they laughed to the point of hysteria at Shrek (which I had never found even remotely funny or entertaining) or spent their weekends watching shaved head morons kick a ball across grass for millions, I stolidly read Tolkien and novels about the American Civil War, and spent my free time applying myself to the mastery of the drums (to the point that I seriously considered attending a music university in the USA) and earning some proficiency with the guitar.

You can guess the outcome. No friends, except one moody specimen who only tolerated my endless prosing about General Grant’s final push to break the Confederacy because he was so bloody taciturn nobody else could abide him, and no girlfriends, except one – the fattest one in our year who threatened to commit suicide every fortnight (but never did, and accused everyone else of being ‘drama queens’), and only finally condescended to go out with me because all the sporty boys had turned her down. Those were dark days.

I’m happy to say that it all turned around a year later, when I got a haircut, took up boxing, and listened to music that other people liked too. There was something rather easier about discussing James Blunt than trying to explain that a man in his forties literally screaming into a microphone about death is actually very talented and has some deep, relevant message he’s trying to convey. I’m not sure how much I ever really liked any of the music I listened to, but for some reason I felt compelled to pretend I did. My parents must have had patience that would do credit to saints when I think back on all the rubbish my brother and I inflicted on them.

But my embarrassment at the photos of my brief years as a metal head pales in comparison to the toe-curling cringe-worthiness of the actions of Georgians in positions of authority. Really, it feels something like rank betrayal – I spend so much bloody time defending this country, talking it up and assuring those at home that it’s a lovely place filled with lovely people whose hospitality is legendary, and what they do repay me with? An Indian girl with a visa and hotel arrested and deported upon arrival for no apparent reason, a group of black students assaulted because of the color of their skin, and now this, a metal band arrested at the airport because their band name was Rotting Christ.

They had been scheduled to perform a show in Tbilisi as part of their Eastern European tour, but were arrested on charges of Satanism. I would be alarmed (although not unduly surprised) if this is a crime, for democracy should guarantee everyone the right to believe in whatever rubbish they want, but then I remember the words of the Prime Minister last year, who declared that ‘secularism in its classical definition does not belong in Georgia’. Well, thank’ee Mr. Kvirikashvili, you’ve proved my case of the Orthodox Church having political influence admirably. I needn’t have bothered running around chasing interviews and data after all.

But what really worries me isn’t that a band with a name like Rotting Christ was barred from entry – with many Georgians becoming offended at even the most harmless joke about religion or Jesus, I suppose it isn’t surprising that some bald, heavy-breathing and fiercely patriotic border police officer (I’ll call him Giorgi) decided that these heretics were not going to enter the country. Giorgi might not have been able to stop the Russians in 2008, but he could do his bit for this country here and now. Perhaps imagining himself as Gandalf roaring ‘You! Shall not! PASS!’ he ordered the skinny long-haired Greeks into custody, and thereby ensured that the priests would not have something to complain about this week.

This is what really worries me – that Giorgi was able to do this apparently with enough confidence that he would not be at risk of losing his job; the same holds true for whomever deported that Indian girl last year (who described her awful experience in a lengthy and viral Facebook post). It doesn’t come at a great time for relations between Tbilisi and Athens, since a host of Georgians have been deported from Greece due to some horrific crimes and/or outstaying their visa, and these Rotting Christ chaps were all Greeks. It also shows that while the government might be pushing this place as a tourist hotspot, its border police aren’t onboard yet. I hope that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is firing the men who deny entry to people because they feel like it – but I take leave to doubt it.

By Tim Ogden