Issue 102

A smiling man offering to sell you a traditional carpet supposedly woven by his old mother herself – everyone who has been to any part of the Middle East has met the omnipresent "genuine" rug dealer.

She volunteered in the Bulgarian Red Cross Refugee-Migrants Service, and now works for the Council for Women Refugees in Bulgaria. There, she helps migrants to integrate, adapt and deal with the Bulgarian administration. She is fluent in Albanian, Turkish, Bulgarian, and also speaks Arabic and English.

How did you arrive in Bulgaria?

We left Albania in 1998 and initially went to Turkey. Then my father came to Bulgaria and was granted refugee status. We came here through the procedure for family reunion, in 2004. I was 14.

When did you come to Bulgaria and why?

What does it mean to be Bulgarian? And what does it take not to qualify as one?

Here are some of the commonplaces spread by the mainstream media. Foreigners are rich, highly marriageable material. Or they are funny people who buy decaying rural houses and settle there, happy to grow tomatoes. They are poor migrants who want to sponge on Bulgaria's social security system. Or they are nice fellows who get drunk on a tiny glass of rakiya. Then there are the terrorists...

I enjoyed your photos of Sofia under snow (no snow in Berlin, alas), the impressive research on Kolyu Ficheto (I had seen some of his work in and around Veliko Tarnovo but did not know that they were all done by the same man), and especially the thought-provoking essay on the Border of Death by Dimana Trankova.

Mum says I have the memory of an elephant. That Jay got the brains, Emily, the beauty, and me, I never forget.

I remember sixth grade: Blair Cavaney, year five toff kicking Johnny in the nuts, not once, but twice because he looked 'weird.' Walker and me, suspended for a week because we pushed him up against the dental shed. Told him that you never kick anyone in the nuts. That if he did it again, we'd kick his head in.