The table is longer than it needs to be, which is the point. Bread first, torn not cut, still warm enough to fog the air above it. Walnuts crushed into something dark and thick, pomegranate seeds scattered like they were an afterthought, though nothing here is an afterthought.
The tamada stands. Horn of wine in one hand, and the room goes quiet the way a room goes quiet before weather. He speaks for a while in Georgian, I catch none of it and all of it. Then he drinks the whole horn without stopping, and the table erupts, and somewhere behind me three men start singing without agreeing to.
This is polyphony, someone tells me later, though I didn't need the word for it. Three lines of melody that shouldn't fit together and do, rough at the edges, more honest for it. My camera stays on the table most of the night. Some rooms you photograph. Some rooms you just sit inside of and let the film catch what it catches, blurred, low light, a hand mid-gesture.
It's 20:03 and no one is checking the time. There's a rhythm to a supra that has nothing to do with clocks: toast, drink, eat, sing, repeat, and somewhere in the repeating you stop being a guest and start being part of the noise. I think about how many dinners I've eaten alone on this trip, notebook open, camera on the table, and how different it feels to have twelve strangers insist you eat more, drink more, stay longer. Saudade, maybe, for a table I haven't even left yet.
