This story is about one long silence...This silence cannot be felt on any peaceful seashore, nor in the mountains when it is quiet, nor under the clear sky among the still rocks... This tranquillity is that of David Gareji, or to be more precise, the noise of this petrified chaos. Perhaps it is because of this mystery that it was termed a desert.  Perhaps this is why David Gareji has always longed for the sound of the water escaping from the depths of the earth, the water that is so abundant in Georgia. It may have been the regularity of its nature: it was that just in eastern Georgia, in the outer Kakheti, on the semi-deserted slopes of the Gareji mountain along twenty five kilometres in length, the David Gareji Monastery complex, cut in stone, was to stand stock still and was to petrify the centuries... "Rusted rainbow rocks, greyish enlocked hillocks, dark yellow crescents... A fracture as sharp as a winding lightning, a cut in rock and a threatening silence of the multitude of caves or constructions becomes settled, reaching as deep as our souls... Everything here is built of stone, ancestral and enormous..." this is how Gareji was described by a Georgian writer, Levan Gotua...

When you think that you have already seen everything and there is nothing left to shock or surprise you, when you are sure that the voyage in time could be made possible only in the beautiful movies, you may stumble upon David Gareji and realize that everything is still to come...

"Just let us imagine that a nation has no history. Give it Gareji and a brilliant history will be acquired." This is how Niko Ketskhoveli, a great Georgian scientist described Gareji.

And yet to cite the words of the metaphrasic version of the life of Illarion Kartveli: "The place was a desert and distant from the village, fairly rough and joyless." At this very spot in the first half of the VI century, David - one of the thirteen of the Assyrian Fathers, founded the first monastery. Today this monastery is termed David's "lavra" – the main monastery. Such a choice was not surprising at all. True believers have never chosen Eden as the place of worship, their activities always began and spread from remote, difficult to access places – preaching their religion, and laying the foundations...

David was not alone, his disciples accompanied him to the Gareji mountains. These were Lukiane "from the local dwellers" and the nun Dodo – "a Kakhetian by birth and origin". These were the very people who commenced to build the Monastery and with them the first sermon was heard. Later, a church founded by Dodo was named "Dodo's horn" and the church founded by Lukiane – the Epiphany. Launching of such a deed was not easy at all: churches, cells, a refectory and other premises were all located in the artificially cut caves. And soon David Gareji was turned into a town of churches cut in rock with flat ceilings, arches and crowns...

Now it is so quiet in those labyrinths, the halls are deserted and the watchtower definitely lacks a sharp watchful eye... At one time all this was alive, the life was in full swing, but even all this activity was tranquile just like the kind deeds of the monks. It was as if this way of life hid its main mystery... A small world existing beyond the David Gareji gateway. And it was with the following words that the coming visitors were greeted: "Open up the gateway of truth. Let me enter the temple and greet the Lord because this is the gateway of the Lord and only the truthful shall enter".
There is a story about David of Gareji that has reached our days: having set out to worship in the holy places, he took along with him to Georgia three stones. It happened that God sent an angel to appear in the dream of the Patriarch of Jerusalem and entrusted him to catch up with David requesting him to return two of the stones to Jerusalem so that the good would not be completely betrayed. David was to take the remaining stone to his desert "as the memory and the token of his belief..." So it happened and later on, this miraculous stone healed everyone from all ailments... Perhaps this very stone also helped David of Gareji to withstand and defend himself and his monastery from the enemies that were frequent and numerous. In the XIII century the Mongol invasions repeatedly weakened the beating pulse of Gareji. In 1615, on Christmas Eve, the Shah Abbas's warriors killed six thousand Gareji monks.  And once again this place faced the threat of loneliness and abandonment as felt earlier, hundreds of years ago...

Even today the archaeologists still argue why man abandoned these places in the second half of the second millennium, BC. These were the very settlements retained by the land of Gareji... The lack of water is said to be one of the reasons. Apparently, later on, already at the time of the existence of the Gareji monastery, there was only one water spring baptized as David's tears. Here the fresh water from the spring used to satisfy the thirsty desert dwellers. In this fossil town, where even a rustle has a strong pitch creating an echo, nineteen churches have been discovered: Black Cells, A White Desert, The Martyred, Baptist, Dodo's Horn, Chichkhituri, The Saint David's Lavra, Udabno, Veran Gareji, The Bertubani... The home of the monks in the basin of the Iori river (earlier known as the Mgvime and the Magazani), Berebis Seri, Kolagori, Pirukugmarti, Didi Kvabebi, Kotsakhura... Strange are these names, the form of their cross-sections and cuts in the walls, it is unbelievable that a human being was able to fight with the stone and could have managed to built the walls to their final height...

David Gareji was a royal monastery – with the primary and figurative meaning of the word. The kings themselves patronized it and took care of it. The monks of the monastery were greatly esteemed and were granted special privileges – they had the right to bring up the prince.  A mutual agreement of this type between the clergy and the civil servants also supported the might of the state and was one of the incentives for the development of cultural life in the country. In the David Gareji literary school, which was formed at the end of the XVII century, both civilians and clergy were educated. There happened to be three major types of activity that this school engaged in: the creation of hagiographic – hymnographic collections, development of dogmatic and polemic literature, and such cultural activities as running libraries, rewriting manuscripts and so forth. At that time Sulkhan Saba Orbeliani monitored the cultural life of the Gareji monastery.

Now it seems that the David Gareji life has moved to its frescoes... Thank God, that these frescoes, at least part of them, still exist – those that have withstood merciless destructions throughout many years of wars and invasions... Here we mean not only old invasions and conquerors, but the new ones as well...

Perhaps all of us remember a not so distant past when students,  journalists and scholars univocally demanded the abolition of a military polygon located in the vicinity of the David Gareji Monastery complex. Rallies of protests swept across the country, there were numerous addresses made. For Georgia at that time, withdrawal of the Russian army from David Gareji was not only about the survival of this monument and resumption of the divine service, but also about defending the dignity of the nation and a great victory of the national movement. For a time it appeared as if everything was over. As if this was the end of the neighbouring military polygon and its severe results for the monastery complex. But time went by and it became clear that the fourteen-century-old Gareji walls were again to tremble from the destructive force of artillery volleys and aviation bombs. But this time, instead of the Russian army, the Georgian military happened to be in the "opponent's camp"... Luckily, today all this belongs to history...

Today, the David Gareji churches, its walls, stone cut stairs are being turned into "an open museum".  In spring – in the month of May during the Garejoba celebration, people temporarily forget the vow of silence. Then following the day of noise and crowds of people, Gareji is back to its usual, mysterious tranquillity. Maybe this is because it has already said its word in history.

Eka Kevanishvili