Going to the edge of Europe, a trip to recall the story of "border"

Editor's Note: In Capka Kakapo's own words, her generation of Eastern Europeans grew up when the Berlin Wall fell, and their childhood coincided with the Prague Spring, so the "border" has special significance for her. Therefore, for her, the trip to the border is quite attractive.

Kapaka Kakapo was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. 1973. 1992 moved to New Zealand with his family and now lives in Scotland. Published the novel Peace Villa, the memoir Nobody Street and Twelve Minutes of Love: The Story of Tango.

Whether writing novels, memoirs or travel notes, Kappa Kakapova has the temperament of a poetess-keen, delicate and profound.

In "Working Border", she returned to her hometown of Bulgaria, where she had been away for 25 years, to explore the stories on the borders with Turkey and Greece. Once the book was published, it also won many awards, such as the Scottish Blue Cross Book Award in 20 17, Edward Stanford Durman Travel Writing Award in 20 17, Al rodham Global Intercultural Understanding Award in 20 18, and Highland Books in 20 18.

"The border I want to talk about is echoed with the seductive voice of the siren. Its uniqueness stems from three points: the remains of the Cold War still exist here; This is one of the most vast wasteland in Europe; Since its birth, the mainland has been the meeting place of all continents. "

When I was a child, Cacapo Eva heard that the border area was full of soldiers and spies. This is a shortcut to the west and a forbidden area for two generations. What's left there now?

After the "Cold War", cities declined and the countryside was deserted. However, Kakapova found that there are still many legends about firefighters, smugglers, treasure hunters, border guards and so on in those ancient border areas. The wilderness before us has an end. But in people's stories, boundaries are everywhere-visible or invisible,' soft' and' hard'.

From the coast of the Black Sea all the way to the west, across the Thrace Plain, across the Lodpe Mountains, and finally back to the starting point-the mysterious Stranja, the border is not only a fascinating walking note, but also a secret history of the Cold War that spans time and space. It tells us that cross-border people are not just numbers, they are people, carrying stories worth listening to.

Authorized by the publishing house, this abstract selects several chapters to explore the ancient Bulgarian fire dance ceremony buried in the border jungle, following the author's delicate brushwork.

Border: Going to the Edge of Europe, [New Zealand] Kappa Kakapova (with), Ma Juanjuan (translated); Social Science Literature Publishing House ‖ Thorne

Everything begins in spring.

We set off from the "disco" cafe and went to the "Great Holy Spring". The motorcade slowly drove along the canyon to a place that could not be found on the map. It's a clearing in the border forest, and it's a crossroads where hunters' footprints and paths are intertwined. On the way, we passed the abandoned border barracks full of snakes, which used to be the place where elegant "Poles" spent their childhood. The door decorated with ceramic tiles is dilapidated, with ghostly slogans written on it: national boundaries, national order.

I was sitting in a Soviet Picari with the women in the village. The road was bumpy, and despite the driver's efforts to control the vehicle, everyone was tossed up and down by the hard seat and gritted his teeth. Women like to hold children with icons in red clothes and lace on their legs. I glanced down and was surprised to find that their expressions were so lifelike.

"Some are very old." A woman whose body is as thick as a man says. The oldest icon has a history of 300 years. Women take care of them like orphans.

"So we only take them out of the church on Saint Constantine's Day and Saint Helena's Day."

Despina, who lives in my street, said. Her husband is ill in bed, and she takes care of the lush garden alone. "Dear, what do you think of our village?" The woman who asked the question was chewing gum.

I like her straightforward appearance. She always likes to say the words "things are different". "Cherry will fall soon. You can't eat such cherries in the city. "

"Maybe Scotland has cherries." Despina said.

"No, there is whisky in Scotland," corrected the woman chewing gum. She winked at me. "Men wear plaid skirts, right?"

The women snickered. To show that I am an old friend, they handed me an icon to put on my lap. A woman with blue eyes has been sitting still, and her eyes look a little scary. I try not to see her. I don't know if it's the so-called evil eye.

"Few people come here, dear," said a woman who used to cook in the school cafeteria. "You should really see what this village used to look like."

"There are schools and libraries," Despina said. "There are orchards, fields, herds of livestock and thousands of cows. Our village used to be very rich. "

"Let bygones be bygones." The woman who chews gum is filled with emotion.

"A few years ago, we went to Meliki," said the manly woman. "We visited the Greeks. They are lovely people. "

"Lovely person." Everyone echoed. /kloc-0.00 years ago, the ancestors of Meliki people in Greece left these icons, and they still keep the fire dance ceremony called "anastenaria", which is called "nestinarstvo" in Bulgarian.

"We have also been to Strania, Turkey," continued the woman chewing gum. "We went to our original village and saw our parents' old house. However, no one lived there, leaving only ruins. "

"Empty village", the man-like woman added. She cleans the streets in the village. People call her "ears" because she has extremely sensitive hearing. She can hear whispers in the room a few blocks away, and maybe even hear the thoughts in other people's heads. I saw her sweep the invisible dust in the empty square with a broom every day, and then turn into the other side of the mountain. When I passed her, I tried to keep my mind blank, but she always stared at me sideways, which made people shudder.

Map of bghistory.info in the Strania Mountains.

The truck finally stopped and people gathered in the forest.

People call this place "hometown", which is a wonderful metaphor. For hundreds or thousands of years, it has witnessed crowds of Zoroastrians, musicians, revelers, mysterious fortune tellers and ordinary drunkards gathering together. Until the end of 1940s, Stalin took the place of nature as the object of worship. When my generation was growing up, I happened to witness the cauldron of mutton soup bubbling on the fire, and the woman got off the truck and stirred the soup.

There are five wooden platforms called "odarche" in the open space, one for each of the five villages on the border. When the wooden platform is empty, it looks like an execution platform. Now, people line up from the river and put icons on the wooden platform one by one. All this looks very much like the scene in the movie Wicker Man. The person holding the icon did not stop to pray, but took small steps and danced a regular circle dance with gestures at the scene. In the smell of orthodox incense, the smell of paganism clearly comes to my face.

With the rhythm of bagpipes and cowhide drums, I joined the team leading to the river, where women "washed" (actually didn't touch the water) the icon. They took off the clothes of the icon, "scrubbed" them, put them on and put them back on the wooden platform.

This clearing is a permanent meeting place, and the wooden table like a platform is fixed. By noon, the carnival atmosphere was already very strong. Here, idolatry seems to have transcended faith, carnival or culture-it has been given another meaning. Although I realize it, I can't say what it is. It should be a feeling related to the border.

Greeks also have icons. A group of Greek women are bending over to work by the river. This is the hometown of their ancestors, who were buried in the valley village. Therefore, "hometown" has become a special tourism brand: ancestral tourism.

I began to walk along the steep mountain road to the direction of the "Great Holy Spring", and the spring water just gushed out-this is a great event. Once the Great Holy Spring begins to gush, all the springs in Strandja will start to drip. A girl ran over and patted me on the shoulder. She is dressed in white and looks like a goddess.

"Hello, my name is Iglika," she introduced herself. "Iglika" means primrose. "What's your name?"

I stopped and saw that she was blonde with long wheat hair, just like the characters in the song. Out of superstition, I can't help worrying. Aren't you afraid of attracting evil eyes to live like her? I told her my name, and she smiled, showing white teeth like pearls.

"Your name is water drop!" She took my hand and held it in her cold palm. "There must be some kind of close relationship between you and water. We are very similar. Do you know that?/You know what? I studied at Manchester University for two years, but I can't stay in Manchester. No one can live there, I am back. "

On the way to Dashengquan, she kept talking like a gurgling spring. But when we reached our destination along the stream of people, she disappeared. Iglika comes from Cross Village, hence its name, because it is close to one of the few remaining river bridge ferries on the Veleka River. The Veleka River originated in the mountainous area of Turkey, with a total length of 1.47 km. It cuts the Stranja Mountains to form a canyon and finally flows into the Black Sea, regardless of any boundaries. Rivers are the boundaries of the mythical world-so people must "clean" the icons here.

I didn't see Iglika again that day. The villagers in Valley Village invited me to sit at their table. People pass each other a large bowl of mutton soup, called "kurban"-stewed lamb slaughtered that morning-which means to sacrifice animals (from Arabic "qurban"), usually accompanied by bagpipes and drums. Although I have never seen it with my own eyes, in Greek and Bulgarian rural areas, both Christians and Muslims still retain the tradition of holding kurban in major celebrations. In the past, every village that held a fire sacrifice ceremony had knives, axes and stumps dedicated to sacrifice. Now everything is gone except the chapel on the edge of the village. They usually stand on the mountain spring, where people worship icons before the ceremony begins.

"There is a church in the village of Novo, Sabel, in the mountains of Strania. It is built on a mountain spring and is an ancient place of worship." I don't know who spoke behind my back at the right time. The woman who speaks has light brown hair and smoky complexion, and her eyes are mysterious. Her name is Marina, and she seems to have been sitting on a huge oak stump not far from the table for a long time.

She said that there was a well in the church in Zabonovo village, where the primitive and mysterious battle was held. Up to now, if you come to the well at the right time of the seasonal cycle at night and know the doorway, a man and a black cow will come out of the well at night and fight until dawn.

Marina is a scholar who studies ethnology. She stayed in burgas for 30 years, and then returned to the border town to take care of her elderly parents. She didn't ask me the purpose of my visit, because she had another way of getting to know people.

Oaks sway silently above our heads, and the summer sky is full of vitality. There are children, old people, drunkards and ethnologists here. You can see an outsider like me at a glance in the crowd-we look stiff after all. People gulped down homemade spirits, and people stood guard on every wooden platform, guarding the icon.

Marina said: "The manifestation of the gods is a kind of belief. People think that the icon is the embodiment of God on earth and the medium between man and God. " I asked her, where is the Great Holy Spring? Because in my eyes, it is really not big. "We can't look at the problem from the surface." Marina shook her head and told me a story with a smile.

In ancient times, every spring, a deer ran to the mountain and washed the mountain spring with antlers until the spring water gushed out. It comes every year, and after clearing the mountain spring, it is voluntarily slaughtered as a sacrifice to kurban. So people here never hunt deer in the forest for fear of hurting deer with golden antlers. Marina said that it has been heading for the sun since the Bronze Age, and fire is its secular incarnation.

In my opinion, the forest is full of all kinds of hunting crimes now, and people get their prey at will.

"That's how the great holy spring came about," Marina concluded. "Because of this, the Zoroastrians here for generations first realized the harmony and unity with fire. The spring water gushed out, the dress was washed and turned counterclockwise. These ceremonies have been with us for many years. "

But what does all this have to do with fire "Obviously," Marina said, "today is the Torch Festival between Saint Constantine and Saint Helena. To worship them is to worship the goddess of the earth and her son and lover, the variant of the sun god. The core of Zoroastrianism is to express the duality of Dionysus and Apollo. The sun and darkness mysteriously come together, which is very short. Both can only be short-lived. "

A stag is both a hunter and a prey; Mother and son are lovers.

"Metaphorical thinking is like this," Marina smiled, revealing a nicotine tooth stuck with nicotine. Of course, what I really want to know is: when can we meet the fire fighters?

"Fire is the secret of the night." Marina said.

"So we have to wait here all day?" However, Marina suddenly disappeared, like an elf in a tree.

"According to tradition, the ashes in kurban are the ruins of fire," said a young man sitting at my desk. He looks strange, always sitting without drinking, pale and bloodless, with a pair of prominent critical eyes, at first glance, he looks like a cold-blooded reptile. He is a local fireman.

Soon, the band came-a man with a big drum, a chubby bagpiper, a gypsy accordion player like a melancholy Egyptian, and a young singer with a sunflower face. The singer brings a fresh breath, as if opening a door, emitting a beam of light, and the whole body is shining. The bagpiper walked down the steps with the same trembling notes. This is not music written with consciousness and mind, but the ancient sound of time. The accordionist played a sad tune to the rhythm of the cowhide drum, and the singer opened his voice.

The crowd began to stir, and this clearing seemed to bring everyone up. Everyone leaned on the grass with glasses up and stared at the mirror-like river. "Real Firefighters usually have another talent," Marina said as she sat back on the stump. "They can either sing or predict."

Pinterest.at map of Zoroastrianism in ancient Bulgaria

Fire dance pinterest.at map

She said that during the First World War, a fire runner named zlata was very famous in the nearby village of Urgary. She cruelly and accurately predicted which young people in the village would never come back in the war. Firefighters can spy on the future from the coal, but here, the future is always bad news. The Greek women who came to Dashengquan today are descendants of those who jumped into the fire. Their ancestors saw everything with superhuman foresight before the Balkan War: war, exile, loss of homes, livestock and children, which led to a long road of plunder in Greece.

"Why?" They threw themselves in the ashes and wailed, "Why do you want to farm, have children and build houses?" Woo-woo-woo-the blackest black! "

They used to live next door to the house I rented. Before it all happened, they knew it would be lost forever. During the great migration after the Balkan War, many families lost their babies and children in the forest. Refugees of all ethnic groups were attacked by various miscellaneous armies, and even children were not spared. This is a typical Balkan dilemma: civilians are more afraid of war than combatants, and the remnants of war persist in the dark.

"Fire and water," Marina said, "together, they are a kind of group therapy. Without it, people will go crazy. " She went on to say, "Fire and water are both purified and destroyed. So the person who jumped into the fire must have conveyed something. "

"What's the news?"

"Pain," Marina said, stamping out the cigarette butts on the roots. "We all know suffering, but experiencing suffering, fire and water makes others feel the same-this is an experience from other places, so loving fire is not a family tradition."