CULTURE

Beginning

it’s light out I tell you

there’s still lots more

my beautiful bird

is far away I can see it

flying away again

I love without being loved

Human

to A

I’m at 2130 metres above sea level

This story took place on the New Year’s Eve of my last winter in Bulgaria. Together with my wife and daughter, I greeted 1997 in a rented one-bedroom apartment in a windy, ugly suburb of Varna. I don’t remember this day to have heralded аnything new and different for us.

There’s someone you have not yet met:

He wears three mittens in crimson red.

His furry coat – so soft it feels;

his socks have holes on all five heels.

He’s always hiding in the pantry;

details of his life are scanty.

In the dark he quietly moves,

munching on some sugar cubes

and frolicking in secrecy

when no one else is there to see.

A tiny cockroach he has tamed;

this land of jars he has reclaimed,

and he is the lonely lord

to all that people here have stored --

I. The Eternal City

Chapter Three: The Frogs

“A RETIRED PEDIATRICIAN LOOKING TO MEET a modest and respectful woman. Dad, are you sure about this ad?”

“Seeking to meet sounds better, right?”

“Yes, seeking to meet is better, but what I meant was…”

“Should I put my age down as well? I did write I was retired.”

“You’re still young at sixty-eight, so you better write that down, but I meant the rest of it.”

“Well, what is it? Don’t make me drag it out of you! You keep nagging me to meet somebody, and now… should I leave the pediatrician part out? Should I not write that I’m a doctor at all?”

She remembered the day she went to the hair salon. She hadn’t dyed her hair in four years, and hadn’t gotten a drastic haircut in three. She explained in detail everything she had read on the charity’s website – before being cut, hair had to be sectioned into small ponytails, secured with rubber bands and then carefully placed in a transparent snaplock bag. It mustn’t be wasted.

Sometimes, Lola and I would take out a bunch of covers and blankets out on the porch and spend the night under the stars. We arranged them in such a way that only the end of the small awning was above us and then we lay down and gazed at the night sky. Whenever we looked at it for more than a minute or two, Lola panicked that she would “fly away.” That’s exactly what she said – that she was afraid of flying away, and I tried to harbor that fear with me, to feel it and share it with her.

If you have stayed in Bulgaria for more than a week and have conversed with Bulgarians of a certain age beyond business transactions and polite small talk, you have probably heard them reminisce about something from their youth that you might find charming, mysterious and exciting, but hard to comprehend. It might have been something from the times of Communism, the period between 1944 and 1989, that despite its proximity in time and millions of living witnesses is getting increasingly mythologised.

The charity exhibition Buy Art, Give Future To a Child is a chance to buy top photography from some of Bulgaria's finest authors and to help disadvantaged children to realise their talents and potential. The proceeds from the exhibition at the Sofia Press Art Gallery will go to the Plyusheno Meche, or Teddy Bear, association which organises Bulgaria's Hidden Talents mentorship programme. It helps talented young people without parents or at risk to enlist in university or get a job.