Let me tell you a story

They looked at each other over their steins of watered-down local beer. In the distance across the bay a fog obscured the peaks of the mountains. The sea washed silently against the port wall; the impending rain had transformed its hue from blue-green to gray-green. Further out a few freight ships waited their turn to dock and unload, but this close to the bar the only thing in the sea was a solitary orange bobber, which demarcated for those in the know how far out they can swim without being fined. It was a trap for milking tourists.

They looked at each other for a while, then looked out over the port. It was a strange location for a bar, but the view was still breathtaking, as far as the girl was concerned, and it was close to home.

The boy spoke up. "In August, when we were talking online and the lights went out, that was because the Russians were bombing us. They blacked out the whole city. Everyone stood out on the street to watch. We didn't have any bomb shelters, so what did it matter if we sat at home or out on the street? The places they bombed weren't military at all, they were just regular streets with houses, like ours. And they weren't small bombs, either. One bomb fell on a car and didn't explode. It was twice as big as the car, both in length and width. It was just luck that it didn't explode, who knows how much damage a bomb of that size would have caused if it had exploded.

"One time when we went into blackout, they forgot to turn the streetlamps off on our street. Imagine, the entire city is dark except our little street. Of course, we called and they turned our lights off too right away.

"It's funny what a person can get used to. The war only lasted five days, but even within that time, we got used to just waiting. When the lights went out, we just had to wait to see if we'd be next. The waiting is the worst part."

The boy paused and took a swig of his beer. Gazing out over the now-empty port, he continued, "You can't imagine what this port looked like then. Every American military vessel in the Black Sea gathered right here in Batumi. They were ready to jump in and help us if given the signal. Not just little ships either, but huge warships. Imagine what would have happened if some drunken Russian pilot took it into his head to drop a bomb on one of those ships. The Americans would have responded, and there'd have been war between the US and Russia.

"See those silos over there, across the bay? They're filled with oil. If the Russians had bombed them, there'd have been a chain reaction and the whole city would have gone. Thank God the Americans were there, and the Russians didn't dare to bomb us anymore.

"So while Europe did nothing, America really helped us. They were ready to help militarily at any moment, if it came to that. I know you don't like Bush, and maybe he did a lot of bad stuff for you at home, I don't know, I've never been there to see, but he truly saved us from Russia, and I can never think he was a bad person and I will always respect him for that."

The boy fell silent once again. Throughout his monologue, the girls eyes had not fallen from his face even once, though he looked off into the distance as he spoke. Now he looked at her for the first time, and his eyes grew wide when he saw that hers were brimming with tears. "Hey," he said a little roughly, shaking his head. "What is that?"

The girl wiped her eyes quickly and said, "It's just that I didn't know, and I'm imagining everyone I know here standing out on our little street just waiting to be bombed, and it's awful. When you went offline suddenly that day last August, I scoured the internet for information about what was happening here, but there was none. No one knew what was happening, and even now no one there knows what happened. Why would they bomb Batumi? You're not even close to Abhazia or South Ossetia. And why bomb Poti? And Gori? And Kutaisi? There was just no information. But now I know."

And now you know.