Abkhazia is something of a paradox: a country that exists, in the physical sense of the word (a territory with borders, a government, a flag, a language), yet it has no legal existence because for almost twenty years it was not recognized by any other nation state. And so Abkhazia exists without existing, caught in a liminal space, a space in between realities. Which is why my first letter to Max was something of a message in a bottle thrown at sea. -- Eric Baudelaire