Passage A.569

rendering, not the wording of the record

There came a Beridze woman from Baraleti. "This grave must have been some rich man's," she said, and pointed me to a squared stone. "A 'stone' was had made by whoever had wealth. Whoever had no means would lay the boulder that came up when the grave of this deceased was dug. That was not even called a 'stone'. My father was in Crimea, he traded; when my mother died, father came back and set a 'stone' on mother's grave. There was no master in the villages around here. He was at Khando. We had him make it. We gave three tumans. That was in 1911. Some stones cost even more."