CULTURE

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.

The New Yorker is an institution; a magazine bought and read by generations for its captivating and meticulously researched, fact-checked and proofread texts, the dry witticism of its cartoons and the illustrated covers that offer a visual commentary on both local and global issues.

Aleksandrina Ivanova

Sinemorets, which name means "blue," is one of the most picturesque parts of the Bulgarian Black Sea cove: a rare combination of pristine beaches, impressive cliffs, a river and thick oak forests. You have probably seen it many times, in person or in photographs, including in this publication.

Andrei Rosetti, Veleka

‘You’re so sour-tempered, Gergana’ asserted baba Zoya and kept knitting. ‘As if a lemon wedge is stuck to your tongue.’

I kept my mouth shut, didn’t want to argue with her. That’s not why I was there.

‘Have you seen Boyan?’

‘No, he hasn’t come home yet, no. Why? Doesn’t he drop by Mitko, the huntsman, anymore?’ The woman had such a mirror-like gaze. I didn’t see her, but myself in her eyes.

‘Maybe he’s in the tap-room with the other workers.’

Baba Zoya fell silent for a second. She put aside the green ball of yarn and took the black one.

The gulp of winter air fills my lungs with chills, then retreats with a sigh. It clears off old visions and carries them away. The visions vanish, soaring high, where they belong. They were here only for an instant - for comfort, hope or advice. They predate us, and send us off. They will be around after the last human is extinct. Then, finally at peace, they will tend to noon. They will dance floating in the skies, or descend at their whim – for no reason and with no duties. Unfettered visions bound only by their own immortality.

11 August 1999

“I hate her.”

I stood in my room, gritting my teeth so hard I was in danger of breaking a molar. Of course she wouldn’t come.

“Viki! Come on, you’ll miss it!” Grandma called to me from downstairs, and I slammed the phone down. I had squeezed so hard that my knuckles turned white – even though the conversation was long over – and I went downstairs.

“Who were you talking to for so long? Your father’s already waiting for you outside.”

There is a pedestrian tunnel beneath Fourteenth Street, connecting the subway trains at Sixth Avenue with those at Seventh. Daily, a wash of people are flushed through this hot pipe of meat, the bodies so densely packed that you cannot see the tunnel’s end until you’ve already passed through it. It’s like a scene out of Metropolis, almost Biblical.

So will things be different, do you think, for us now? She asked this from the bathtub. Her voice was surprising because it was so light.

I suppose they must, he said. He was in the kitchen preparing lentils. The skins of these lentils were a mottled grey with green and brownish flecks. Whatever they expressed they expressed through some arcane, subliminal code.

She said, It’s funny, isn’t it? A funny feeling, I couldn’t say why. He heard the bathwater stir. Strange and sort of amazing, she said, the things that come back to you.

Like what?