For many years, August has been  my blessed month - summer serenity  of a resort illuminated as a carnival, night bathing under twinkling Milky Way in the  black sky, the fullness of communication and inclusions of new faces in a friendly whirlwind, hiking, crack  of cicadas, reminiscent of immortality, and sultry afternoons, replacing each other with the ardor of a young lover.

         August 14, 1992   the Georgian troops entered the country, and the sun went dark, something sinister  appeared in it, the  coast  was covered  with sticky web of violence. Even a victory could not save from it, obtained in  endless thirteen and a half months,   because even the expulsion of enemies does not turn  death and destruction into oblivion.
        
         It took seven or eight years for time and  rains washed away and  cleared in my mind the grass and trees,  a blazing  sky,  a lilac  twilight, descending from the oleander inflorescence, again it was easy to breathe, and the crackle of cicadas did  not crack like  guns, and holiday fireworks did not wake  an alarming thought - what if the war starts again?        

         On  August 15, 2000 shot at the back of his head, was killed Zurab Achba,  a man - mountain, who was able to laugh at himself and enjoy life in all  of its manifestations. Before the murder, I was sitting in his office in front of the Botanical Garden,  listening to  Russian romances just brought  from Moscow and enjoyed  first-class chocolates.  From time to time Zurab  read out excerpts from his new article, the text, as always, was witty, but it had no political revelations, and it was impossible to suppose that the man  laughing  hearty the other  night would be killed  by a cowardly bastard, sneaked  up  behind  him in the darkness.
        
         Twelve years passed, but the murder of Zurab has not been opened yet. The third president came to power, but a famous lawyer’s death remains an ominous mystery - sore on the government’s conscience passing the baton of inactivity.  
        
      
         August is still hiding in a black depth of its  nights a  bitter memory of the war - sometimes when you look at the starry sky  you begin to think  of the names of killed friends,  it seem suddenly  they twinkle overhead and already know about the eternity that is not available for us yet.    

    
         Almost this way flickered candles, lit by Zurab’s friends on the place of his death on 15 ugust  - the first time it has been dark this year at the place of his murder on that damned place. Friends stayed at home - the first time we have not heard the gun fire again...      
  
                                                                                                   Nadezhda Venedictova