A Single Thread

Silk was introduced along Georgia’s ancient trade routes centuries ago. Today, the people working to preserve silk-making are defending not only a traditional craft but the country’s history as well.

- Esi Edugyan

1 TBILISI RISES OUT of the steep banks of the Mtkvari, in Georgia, spread wide on either side of the river like hands cupping a bowl — a city of cobblestones, winding lanes and wrought-iron gates bleeding rust. It is filled with the particular decay of the old Soviet republics, and the air smells of fresh bread, hot herb soup and scorched motor oil.

I arrived on a winter’s night in January. Dusk was just coming on, and the buildings were startlingly bright in the wet streets, darkness eating their edges. I’d come to Georgia to explore not just what the country has become but also its various pasts. I’d come to see its grand Orthodox churches, erected from the fourth century when Christianity was officially adopted by these lands; I’d come to visit the silk museum in the heart of Tbilisi, a place that since the 19th century has fought for the survival of silkworms and sericulture. I’d come, ultimately, to speak to the Georgians who worked fiercely to preserve their nation’s ancient silk-making traditions, those for whom its loss meant the death not just of an art but of an entire way of life.

The collective stories we tell about who we are as nations are rarely straightforward. Even the origins of a country’s name can be a matter of dispute. Georgia has been called Georgia since as far back as the eighth century B.C. — but I discovered three different myths as to how that name came to pass: One says that it was named in honor of St. George, the country’s patron saint who was killed under the Roman emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians in A.D. 303; another that it came from georgós, the ancient Greek word for “farmer”; and the third, most memorably, that it derived from the Persian word