1.
My hometown Plovdiv is the oldest inhabited city in Europe. It used to sit on nine hills, now only six. When the seventh hill was destroyed, its rocks, like a crawling stone serpent, paved the city streets. One of these streets is in Kapana, a pedestrian district in the heart of the city boasting art galleries and craft workshops. Colourful buntings and fairy lights stretch across the cobbled streets in a blinking canopy over the cafés and restaurants.
One evening a fellow was assaulted by the owner of a new café. The victim, Mitko the Sock, is a Roma, somewhat of a mascot in Kapana. He walks the outdoor cafés and restaurants, shoulders hunched in a spontaneous apology, and sells socks. Mitko was doing his usual rounds between the tables when a big man towered over him, wagged his finger, and shouted “Don’t ever come near my café, you Roma dog!” He knocked Mitko’s socks off his hands, trampled them in rage, then headbutted Mitko. The scene was filmed by a passer-by and later posted on social media. The following day many gathered in protest and solidarity, took off their socks and left outside the aggressor’s café; even the door handle of the café was dressed in a sock that had Peace written on it in red lipstick.
“It’s sad Mitko is gone,” an old potter sitting outside his workshop said to me when I visited a few months later.
“We accept otherness”, he continued, “Christians, Muslims, Jews, we’ve shared these streets in peace for centuries, it’s what makes this city rich and vibrant.”
“I locked up late that night.” The potter lowered his voice, “I saw Mitko, standing in the middle of the empty street, arms raised to the skies, then he threw something behind him and walked away. “
2.
When I was four, Mom brought me on a holiday to the countryside. All I remember from that holiday is shouting and chasing fireflies in the dark with a bunch of other kids, a giant black dog with a thunderous bark, and the look of concern on Mom’s face on the last morning of the holiday as I had wetted the bed—the start of years long affliction.
After numerous visits to doctors and countless tests changed nothing, Mom turned to mysticism. For years she would bring me to old women with various divination skills to help with the bedwetting. Some moved bony hands over my head, then made jerky gestures towards and away from me as if removing something. One time we went looking for a particular psychic in a faraway village nestled in the folds of a mountain. We kept stopping the car and asking for directions from women dressed in shalwars and bright headscarves, speaking a dialect I didn’t understand.
When we finally found the place, a Pomak woman with a face like a dried-up desert floor made me sit on a chair in a room lit by a scattering of crackling candles. When she rolled her eyes, the whites reflected the flickering flames and her head above me was like a floating scull lantern. The woman wrote down peculiar squiggles on a piece of paper and told Mom there was A big fear in me. In the end she gave Mom the piece of paper in exchange for money and told her to burn it. The bedwetting continued. Crushed rooster feet mixed with honey didn’t help either.
Among my favourite pilgrimages were the visits to women that melted lead and poured the molten metal into large cauldrons of cold water. With each drop falling, the lead would sizzle and solidify into a shape that the diviner would read and decide whether I had truly been touched by the evil eye. They believed the lead absorbed all the power from a curse. The piece of metal—the bullet—I was to put under my pillow and sleep on it for three nights then throw behind my back in a remote place. Every time I held the bullet, cold and heavy in my hand, ready to throw, I was torn between keeping it and being a good daughter.
3.
There is a field outside my bedroom widow where cows rest in pairs. Some mornings I’m woken by starlings tapping their beaks in the gutters. Later they fly over the lavender patch I planted five years ago. The bushes have flowered and are buzzing with bees. My hands trail over their crowns. I rub a small flower between thumb and fingers. As I bring my hand to my nose, the purple fields of home, now thousands of miles away, bloom in my mind.
Frothy white blobs are scattered here and there on the lavender’s stems. It’s a tale of maturity and independence. Cuckoo spit is produced by the nymphs of spittlebugs. They feed on the watery sap of the plant and produce an incredible amount of urine that foams around them. The foam protects the nymph from predators and provides insulation from extreme conditions. When the nymph finally matures into a froghopper, it emerges from its liquid fortress and leaps away.
*
Mom treated me as if I were broken and wanted to fix me. In her desperation, she turned to the mysticism of Pomak people. In this place of otherness she glimpsed a solution, sought a cure, and found hope. Bedwetting is history now but I wish I had kept the last bullet as a symbol of connection, the centre where otherness meet and collaborate.
On my last visit home, I spent a few hours walking around the district of Kapana, keeping an eye out for Mitko. I thought about him on the night of the assault, his arms stretched to the sky, and I wondered did he wish for revenge or did he, like me, wish for acceptance.
Back in Ireland, I distribute around pieces from home – pottery dishes, vials of rose oil and mountains herbs. At the bottom of the suitcase— a new pair of brightly-coloured socks.
(c) Donka Kostadinova
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