How Bulgarians behave when they are far from home is as fruitful an opportunity for satire now as it was when Aleko Konstantinov presented the world with his wonderful creation, Bai Ganyo. In today’s febrile Bulgaria, continually racked by corruption and economic crises, where right wing commentators are talking of a third national catastrophe, caused by falling birth rates and increased emigration, Mikhael Veshim has attempted to lighten the mood with his latest book, Nashington. The nearest English translation could be Ourshington or Washingrad.
As the title implies, this sometimes hilarious, sometimes melancholy novel celebrates Bulgarians’ resource in recreating a little Bulgaria in whatever corner of the world they find themselves in.
Four Bulgarian men gather to celebrate St George’s Day in the land of the free. Gosho is an extraordinary gardener and cook, able to magic Bulgarian tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from his suburban plot in a land where vegetables normally taste of genetically modified cardboard. To these skills he has added animal husbandry, successfully raising a lamb bought for his name day from the local pet shop. He is blissfully unaware that in the land of the free, such a purchase will inevitably lead to a visit from the animal welfare police, who might just spot the lamb’s cooked carcass on the dining table.
With forthright bluntness Gosho is ready to point out that his Korean neighbours have a pet dog – he assumes is destined for their cooking pot.
For his friend Tosho, the name day feast provides welcome training for an imminent hot-dog eating championship. Rasho whose smoking and drinking have brought him to a centimeter from death’s door, has had a pace maker fitted that sounds an alarm the moment a cigarette or glass of rakia approaches his lips. Rasho bitterly resents this alien intrusion that seems designed to thwart his very Bulgarian need for spectacular self annihilation.
His friend Sasho, firearms expert and talented handyman is apparently the most successful of the group. There is nothing he can’t do with his magic screwdriver. He can even disable Rasho’s pacemaker, so that he can drink and smoke to his heart’s discontent.
Like Bai Ganyo, our four heroes feel a healthy distrust for the country they find themselves in. Having failed to realize their dreams in the land of supposedly limitless opportunity, they console themselves with their undoubted intellectual and cultural superiority. Gosho’s only fear is that his son may be “Americanchised”, that he will be contaminated. His Serbian friend’s son has come out as a homosexual. Gosho prays to the Bulgarian God that the same does not happen to his son.
Veshim is a gentler satirist than Aleko Konstantinov. Bai Ganyo with his miserly peasant cunning and his thick headed ignorance continues to be a painful stereotype for Bulgarians, anxious to claim their rightful place in Europe. Veshim shows a real affection for his characters and does not miss the opportunity to confirm Bulgarian prejudices about America. The Bulgarian reader will be tickled by our heroes’ improvisations in combating a culture of general ignorance, petty restrictions, political correctness, celebrity fixation and tasteless cuisine. The sure sign that this book does little to challenge stereotypes is the presentation of the only black American character as a shallow airhead.
Veshim has produced a book for the folks back home. Worried by the increasing disappearance of young talent in waves of emigration, Bulgarian readers will take comfort that the grass is not greener on the other side of the mountain, and that there is something heroic in our comic characters’ attempt to preserve their Bulgarian spirit in alien climes.
‘Uncategorized’ Category
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Review of Nashington by Mihael Veshim
May 14, 2011 by Christopher Buxton
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Cultural Differences
May 14, 2011 by Christopher Buxton
Ankara, Sunday: it’s our first night, having just arrived, transported from the airport to a hotel in the central Ulus district. It’s gone ten, but it still feels early for us, so we go out in search of a celebratory glass of beer.
Of course we are aware that in Turkey, a secular Moslem state, bars serving alcohol are not to be found in every street. You have to look out for the blue signs advertising Efes beer. Luckily we appear to be located in Beer Street – there are two Efes signs. However being Sunday all the bars are dark. Just round the corner, there’s a flash of azure.
Beneath a supermarket broad well lit steps lead us down into a large subterranean hall with a high ceiling. The area is divided into sections of orderly white plastic tables and chairs by rows of artificial plants. High up, fierce strip lighting emphasizes that this is a waiting room for lost souls – lost souls who can be distracted by large soundless TV screens showing curvaceous singers. Off this waiting room are a four or five low ceilinged dives, each fronted by an obsequious waiter and a grey haired man in a black suit, who advertises his importance, by being seated alone, beads in hand, in front of the door to his dark smoky hole.
We prefer the open space and a nodding young waiter accompanies us to a table. Apart from a morose lonely raki drinker, we are the only customers in this section.
I order two beers and forget to ask how much they will cost. The waiter darts off and as we wait, an extraordinary shape passes by our table. Tomorrow in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations we will see many similar figures. This Hittite fertility goddess has squeezed her substantial pale body into a mini-dress which is more straps than material. Tottering on high heels she makes for the solitary drinker. As she bends over him her dress rides up further where her enormous buttocks reach the backs of her knees. The drinker appears oblivious and Miss Five by Five disappears.
Our nodding waiter reappears with beers and a dish of peanuts, which from their taste I realize have been retrieved from the depths of the Dead Sea. The price is 15 Turkish lira – this seems a bit steep, but this is our first night and we’re not disposed to quarrel. I hand him a 20 lira note. He becomes quite effusive – perhaps he is ashamed – we cannot know; but he scurries away and returns within seconds with a dish of hazel nuts.
Meanwhile, perhaps thinking that we might have more than beer in mind, we are approached by a succession of women. The first is another Hittite goddess, taller than her strapped sister, she waddles towards us with an air of regret and a handful of necklaces. I assume wrongly that she is intent on selling the latter, but as the enormity of her approaching body fills my field of vision and I am forced to look her in the eyes, a pasty face that has seldom seen the Turkish sun assumes an effusive smile. She swoops and seizes Annie’s hand, shakes it, releases it and seizes mine. She says nothing. In a second she has released my hand and tottered away on her high heels. We do not see her again.
A second woman approaches with a much more confident step. I’ve seen her earlier talking to the very important man who sits in front of the nearest dive. She is slimmer, wears a tight top and jeans. Her thirty years old face is topped with blonde hair. She too insists on shaking our hands, as though we were VIPs on a luxury aeroplane. No words pass but she lingers as if expecting more than embarrassed incomprehension. She is too professional to show discomfort and in a second she has swooped over the artificial bush to talk to a new lone drinker who has just sat down in the next sector.
Our waiter appears with a servile shuffle and a third woman at his shoulder. To my surprise he has come to give me my change. He is bowing so low that I cannot see his face. The third woman bobs sinuously in the background. Like the waiter, she prefers to avoid eye contact. She has a darker complexion than her sisters and is dressed quite modestly in green chemise and loose trousers.
I hear a murmur at my elbow. I look down and realize that the waiter is trying to communicate with my shoes. I overhear his proposal: “She will like you buy her a beer.”
My shoes do not respond. But Annie and I wave our hands in what we hope to be a universally understood gesture of helpless incredulity. The beer hall houri simpers and retreats as graciously as a cobra that has momentarily forgotten its purpose in life.
Captured in our cultural balloon, we are now left in peace to finish our drinks.
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Famous last words
March 26, 2011 by Christopher Buxton
Какво ме гледаш бе келеш
“Oy what you staring at you wanker?” (street cred translation)
Reportedly the last question posed by the prestigious Burgas businessman, Georgi Tanev before he was stabbed to death by a pimp outside an “erotic dancing club” in the centre of Burgas.
These words would look good engraved on his tomb stone. It might ensure his immortality – more surely than his glass and steel buildings and his ownership of Neftokhimik Football Club.
Generations of disaffected Burgas teenagers could lay flowers and renew the inscription in memory of tragic bragadaccio.
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Colchester 7.40 a.m.: invasion of Bulgarian reality
March 22, 2011 by Christopher Buxton
It is morning. After a disturbed night with a sore throat, my wife, Annie is asleep. I am up, reading newspapers online. The telephone rings from the bedroom. Only my mother-in-law, Milka, would ring so early. She often ignores the time difference, spurred on by an urgent need to dictate the latest medical advice culled from her weekly medical newspapers. Annie is an only child and Milka at 86 has devoted her life to her child’s, her grandchildren’s and my welfare. In this she is very close to the Bulgarian stereotype of parental duty.
I race to the phone – of course too late – for Annie is moaning and rubbing her eyes. Milka’s voice screams through the receiver – I have to hold it a foot away from my ear. And even then I find it impossible to make out what she is saying, still less to interrupt and get clarification.
Chri-i-s! Is it you? Are you well? A-a-a-n-ni-ie! They’ll be cutting off the left leg and arm! Oh Go-o-d! More of this. Unable to break through the wailing, I pass the phone to Annie, seriously worried that Milka has had some accident and needs a drastic operation.
Annie speaks but with little purpose as Milka refuses to recognise her daughter’s voice. It’s not you! It takes a further two minutes of shouting to establish that the person lying in our English bed, answering our English phone is Annie. At our end we are thoroughly alarmed. There’s been frequent mention of cutting of limbs – but whose? First we think it is Milka’s limbs that are in danger and start thinking of getting emergency flights out to Bulgaria. Then we think it is Yanka, the woman who looks after Milka. One thing is clear – Milka is hysterical and cannot hear us properly. At last we talk to the only slightly less hysterical Yanka.
So what has happened? Five minutes earlier Milka received a call supposedly from the English Embassy in Sofia. A voice informed her that her daughter Annie had been in a dreadful car accident. The result was that Annie’s left arm and left leg would have to be amputated. Otherwise she would die and in order to carry out the operation the doctor needed seven thousand leva.
I need to emphasise at this point that my mother-in-law is not stupid. She is as sharp as ever she was. Milka knows that you don’t pay for emergency operations in England And she is well aware of scams. The Pensioner newspapers she reads are full of stories of old folk parting with enormous sums. Typically, sons or daughters have been involved in an accident, and money is needed for operations or police bribes. Time is given for the anxious parent to get his/her money together and pass it on to a stranger who is parked up down the road.
Once I could smile sadly at the gullibility of those conned out of their life savings in this way. I was complacently certain that Milka would never be fooled by such a well known transparent fraud No longer! Milka’s visceral emotion overcame all her logic – even to the extent of refusing to recognise her own daughter’s voice. The criminals knew that once they had planted their lurid horror film pictures in Milka’s mind there would be no moment of scepticism. A Bulgarian mother does not stop to check, when she believes her child is in danger. I have no doubt that had she got access to 7000 leva in her flat, Yanka would have been dispatched with it.
Whoever rang my mother-in-law is guilty of causing her grievous harm – worse I would suggest than one occasioned by a street robbery. We dread to think of the consequences of our not being at home when Milka rang. Fortunately good friends and relatives were there to help Milka calm down and accept that her beloved daughter was whole. In this time of emigration so many isolated Bulgarian mothers and fathers are vulnerable to these all too common spiritual assaults.
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Dostoevsky should be a guest on SKAT TV.
March 19, 2011 by Christopher Buxton
Dostoevski should be a guest on SKAT TV. He would have noticed many similarities between the Russian 19th Century state and Bulgarian kleptocracy. His ears would be well tuned to the outpouring of romantic outrage.
Book 3 of Idiot begins by a reflection on a non functioning modern state where none of the modern technology works and administration is in the hands of men encouraged to be proud of their lack of practicality.
No such thing as hypocrisy when characters admit their villainous self interest shamelessly and even cheerfully.
The Idiot Myshkin is surrounded by normal madness. Tea parties become screaming matches. The struggle to achieve French Salon social decorum is sabotaged by the ready acceptance of the irrational and inconsistent.
Does the reader wish to beat Dostoevsky’s new women?
Reader hits a wall of pain, rather like a marathon runner,
Tolstoy rightly points out that once you’ve read fifty pages of Crime and Punishment, the reader knows what is going to happen. The same is true of the Idiot for all its convoluted romantic plots.
Angel comes to Moscow in the Idiot; the devil comes to Moscow in Master and Margarita. Not much else changes in Mother Russia – or in Bulgaria!
Capital punishment – knowing the time and nature of your death – fascinates the characters, particularly Ippolit, who remains alive at the end of the book despite his promises. There was no capital punishment in “savage” Russia at this time although there are references to horrifying executions in previous centuries.
Capital punishment is irrelevanbt in a society where there are no evil characters – not even Rogozhin is evil in spite of his diabolic name. He is merely someone who indulges his instincts – and must be forgiven.
People have so much time to indulge their distempered passions. And if they don’t have money, they borrow it. Without the daily worry of work, they can stand outside the bedrooms of cold objects of desire for days on end without sleeping.
Instinct is preferred over reason. Characters appear uninvited at social functions and spout pages of elemental passion. Despite this in the end, their patient listeners are indifferent.