The second prong at play, meanwhile, which is equally uncomfortable to speak about, is the reality that in general Georgia’s Orthodox Christians tend to share some of Iran’s ill-feeling towards evangelicals.
“They think of us the same way as Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Reza explained.
“A Georgian friend of mine accused me three times of being a spy for America,” another convert told me.
Another, whose case was rejected because Georgia’s immigration service did not accept he was a Christian, told me the questions he was asked in his interview related only to elements of the Orthodox faith, about which he had no idea.
And when this individual sought to explain his own reasoning for his deeply held faith - for which he was arrested in Iran - they told him he could only answer the questions posed.
And so he said that he could not. And so they rejected his claim, declaring that it had not been established that he was a Christian.
An easy win.
I could focus now on the particular challenges faced by asylum-seekers who are unfit to work - two of whom I met, and who receive no support from the state - but I would like to close with one final example which I think highlights the absurdity of the situation.
And that is the example of Behzad Asiaie, an Iranian whose claim for asylum was based on his political activity and not his faith, although he has since converted to Christianity - for which he blames Reza, as, no doubt, would the Iranian and dare I say even Georgian government.
The striking thing about Behzad’s case is that it’s extremely well documented. You can search his name on Google, in both English and Persian, and it’s safe to say that what you would find would not please the Islamic Republic.
For one thing, Behzad has already spent a year in Tehran’s Evin Prison for his activism. Added to that, since arriving in Georgia five years ago, with no intention to claim asylum, he started a new activist group called Hamrasho (which means “all together”), which has organised protests about various things outside the edifices of the Islamic Republic in Tbilisi.
As part of the protests, which is where Behzad met Reza, Behzad even filmed himself burning images of Iran’s Supreme Leader, and published it on social media.
So, when the Georgian government rejected his eventual asylum case and told him that they didn’t think he would have any problem were he to return to Iran, the jaw really must drop open.
My conclusion upon leaving Georgia was that it really is a lovely country - provided that you have money and don’t make too much noise.
I put this perspective to a Russian couple, who I met on my last night in town, and they - like Reza and Behzad before them - nodded in agreement.
For they, like my Iranian friends, are exiles, having fled Russia because they are against Putin’s war.
They told me they know of no other Russians among the thousands in Tbilisi who support Putin’s war, but nor do they know any who would be foolish enough to protest about it - whether back home, or outside the Russian embassy in the lovely Vake district of Tbilisi.
I penned this article on my last night in Georgia in a Ukrainian restaurant housed roughly between the two edifices of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which felt about right.
The entire restaurant is painted in the colours of the Ukrainian flag; the Wifi name is “Slava Ukraine”; and the password, I was told, translates as “super slava”.
Which seems to be about the loudest protest that one can get away with in Tbilisi.