Hello friends,

I’m starting something here that feels a bit questionable – but then again, why not? During the night I was haunted by a flurry of vague dreams where old and new memories blurred together. So by morning, the only clear thing was that I wanted to write – and not just a few lines, but something long.

So I’d like to tell you in a little more detail what happened to me since 1986. Some of the events are more, others less interesting – but all in all, to be honest, I think my story isn’t a boring one. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother writing it down, would I? I hope you’ll find it engaging too. If not – well, forgive me. “Everyone’s own shit smells sweetest,” Erasmus once said, and I’m clearly no exception.

I’ll begin with this: at the post-graduation placement committee, I had the foolishness to obey and accept my assignment without protest. (Emilia Angelova, smarter than me, simply said she didn’t want to be placed – end of story.) I, however, only muttered that I’d prefer not to be sent “right into” Preslav. They took pity and sent me to Shumen.

So I ended up as a philosophy teacher at the local technical school for economics. A big town – lucky me. And, as in every economics-focused tech school, the students were almost all girls. I was 25... You get the picture. At first, it all seemed manageable.

But before long, life in Shumen took a bite out of me – no joke. The headmaster started breathing down my neck, checking my prep work; the students looked ready to dislocate their jaws from yawning; the female teachers chatted about shopping at the local department store while I tried to read Faulkner during breaks – and they laughed at me behind my back... On top of that, I started putting on weight. That’s when I truly panicked – for the first time in my life, the thought of leaving Bulgaria (called “fleeing” back then) started haunting me seriously.

Fine. But things aren’t that simple, are they? Within a week or two, all my hopes were pinned to the upcoming PhD entrance exam – so much so that, against all logic, I became totally obsessed. I started preparing early, much more seriously and diligently than I’d ever done as a student. After all, it felt like everything depended on that one exam. (And I still believe that’s true.)

Just before the exam, I took a leave of absence and returned to Sofia (oxygen!) to keep studying like a madman. My enthusiasm dropped a notch, though, when I found out my main competitor was Stilian Yotov. Let’s be honest – we all know Stilian. I figured my chances were slim. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Maybe I’m imagining it, but I still remember the look of sympathy in Ivan Kolev’s eyes when I told him what the situation was...

So I went into the exam with low expectations but gritted determination to give it my all. (Meanwhile, I’d tried to crack open a backup plan and had applied for an assistant lecturer position at the University of Mining and Geology – just imagine how thrilled I would’ve been to explore the philosophical aspects of Rhodope rock formations...)

The written exam went smoothly. The next day came the oral. Feeling I had nothing to lose, I somehow managed to stay cool. I remember tossing in a joke midway through that even Aristotel Gavrilov laughed at. That – more than any “philosophical erudition” – probably saved me. In the end, Stilian and I swapped scores on the two parts and ended up tied. (By then it was already clear that neither of us would be cut, because the fearsome Bate Stefan Iliev had unexpectedly dropped out of the Marxism section exam, opening up another slot.)

The rest passed in a daze. The exam ended with no declared winner (thank god – Stilian must’ve been sweating bullets too). The final decision was made by none other than Acad. Nikolay Iribadzhakov – and voilà, I found myself back in the old Alma Mater, which by then felt dearer than home.

I began living the life of a postgraduate student under socialism – which meant, basically, hats off and do as you please. No one bothered you as long as you regularly showed up at department meetings. Fine, but I’m not one to sit around doing nothing. I read and read until my eyes gave out, but still, I was bored out of my mind. Thankfully, Mr Gorbachev eventually started shaking the foundations of the system, and before I knew it, I felt the urge to become active. I stuck my neck out, organised a film programme at the university, and amid harmless movies, I slipped in quite a few that gave hearty slaps to the cherished norms of our time.

It worked for a while with some success (hard to believe, but years later in Berlin, a Bulgarian stopped me on the street – he’d studied at the Art Academy back then – and said he remembered me from those gatherings in Auditorium 65). But then reality knocked. First, all the equipment broke down, screenings fell through, people started booing and demanding their money back, and I was cowering like a beaten dog, unable to say a word. That alone would’ve been enough...

Then our professors tried to criticise comrade Todor Zhivkov – and within a blink, they were all sacked. And me? Our naïve Zlatko, still wet behind the ears, put up a poster the very next day praising the “civil disobedience” of some fellow named Woody Allen, because, apparently, that American didn’t give a damn about anything. Right. America is far away, and Woody Allen even farther. So they summoned me to see comrade Mincho Semov, who, back then, I think was rector or something. Mincho stank of sulphur from a distance and foamed at the mouth like a wild bull – one glance away from skewering me.

“You little idiot,” he barked, “do you have the slightest idea what kind of mess you’ve stirred up?” I blinked like a mouse in bran, my soul shrunk to the size of an acorn. But since there was no escape, I played the innocent, babbled nonsense about how civil disobedience in those days (the Stalinist era) was our daily reality, that they themselves once fought for it, and so on...

He stared at me, bewildered, probably unsure whether I was serious or just mocking him. But I wouldn’t back down. Cold inside, burning outside. I babbled like a wind-up toy for twenty minutes until Mincho finally lost patience and threw me out. Whew – close call. From then on, once burned, twice shy. I kept my head down and waited for the first chance to disappear in a puff of smoke (i.e., I started looking for a way to escape to America).

I had it all figured out – but the tavern-keeper didn’t show. I clawed and scrambled… but nothing worked. I started losing hope. One year passed, then another, then a third. I pushed and fought, but saw no light anywhere. I was living on dreams that left my pillow wet every morning. And to top it off, the secret police summoned me – seems I’d been loitering too much around the American Embassy, which, as we know, is bad for your health... You get the picture.

Meanwhile, it was time to write my dissertation. I was clueless. What dissertation, man? Just let me out of here alive and well – I don’t want your poison or your honey! But did I have the guts? No. I shut up, sniffled quietly, swore when no one could hear me – and wrote. I wrote and wrote until I scraped together about 150 pages and, fearing no evil, went to see Nikolay Iribadzhakov. Now, I have nothing bad to say about the man – he tried to live with integrity, and I respect that. But my scribbles didn’t please him (rightfully so – who likes a half-baked stew?). He tried to set me straight, but I was too twisted from stress. I told him I wouldn’t change a thing, come hell or high water.

He got angry and threw me out of his office. But wouldn’t you know it – one or two weeks later, his secretary called me in again. I went, legs trembling. “That’s it,” I thought. “They’re chopping my head off.” I walked in – and there was Iribadzhakov, grinning ear to ear, even offering me coffee. “What the hell,” I thought, “just kill me quickly so it’ll hurt less.” But no – he kept smiling and talking, though I could barely hear him. Then he said: “I have a principle – not to stand in the way of the young.”

Suddenly my heart jumped and pounded in my throat. “Look,” he said, “I see you’re stubborn. Fine then. Go bang your head against the wall. What you’ve written won’t pass with me, but if you find another supervisor – do what you want.” I almost kissed his hand! What joy, what bliss! I couldn’t sit still for a whole Sunday. Eventually, I arranged with my new supervisor to handle the handover discreetly and properly, just as it should be.

All right, but things didn’t go entirely smoothly here either. At the internal defence, Stefan Popov (another man I have nothing bad to say about) lost patience and tore my “dissertation” to shreds. And me? Instead of defending myself, I blurted out: “Oh come on, let’s not act so self-important – everyone knows this is just theatre.” (Clearly, my nerves were beginning to fray, and I had lost all respect – for myself and everyone else.) But you can’t live without meaning. It just doesn’t work! Without meaning, there’s no life, no matter what anyone says. A person starts to unravel from the inside like a worn-out rug, the weave thins, and parts begin to fall off one by one – though on the outside he may still look perfectly fine.

That’s what I learned from my dissertation, and – God forbid – I’ll never join such a dance again. I don’t want to do meaningless work, even if it means scrubbing pavements. But let’s leave it at that – I can already feel the heartburn rising…

So I defended the dissertation (the people took pity on me and managed to overlook my cynicism). And now what? Where to, Zlatko? The soul longs to fly, but the wings are too weak, and the room’s too small – it just wouldn’t work. I dreamed of America, but if dreams could make things happen, I’d have known half the world’s women by now – in the biblical sense too. It just wasn’t happening.

I decided then to spit on all safety nets and jump into the void. There was only one organised trip to the U.S. back then – don’t know if you remember. They advertised it on TV as “To Chicago and Back.” “Right,” I thought. “This is it. Let’s go, Zlatko, time’s running!”

Now I need to rewind a bit – to the time I met Doreen Westphal. If only I had known then that even the mangiest lambs have guardian angels… There I was, straining with all my might toward America, dreaming and trying to replace life with fantasy – and luck was already knocking on my door, practically gouging my eyes out. But who was looking?

We met at the university in ’88, fell in love, but I refused to take things seriously – after all, I was hell-bent on reaching America. I didn’t want to lie to the girl, so I kept holding back. (She later told me that if I had said the word, she would’ve followed me to the States – but how was I to know?) Fortunately, I didn’t have to lie for long – she had to return to her East German prison soon anyway.

Then came the letters – first warm, then cooler, and finally rather desperate. I couldn’t hold myself together anymore and was clearly looking for someone to disgrace myself in front of (Uncle Iliya Tasev never dies!). But not her – I couldn’t say anything to her…

Until the moment came – one that changed everything with a single stroke, as it always happens in my life: not by will, but by accident.

I had started a relationship with another woman – ten years older, with two children. The affair was all fine and dandy, but eventually I’d had enough and packed up my things. You’d think – no big deal, happens all the time. But in this case, all my bottled-up pain and fears collided – and like a house of cards, my carefully arranged world collapsed.

You see, I left her at a moment when such things just shouldn’t be done. She was seriously ill (a tick had bitten her – she’d contracted Lyme disease, little known at the time). Thankfully, she recognised it in time and recovered – but in that moment, things looked grim, and my desertion took on a deeply dramatic quality. Imagine: for years I’d been pretending I wasn’t doing something completely meaningless, clinging to a shred of self-respect just so I wouldn’t spit in the mirror every morning while brushing my teeth… and now this, on top of it all.

So, cast out like a dirty kitten, I suddenly found myself in the void – in mere minutes. I was hit by uncontrollable spasms, things started turning clinical. Poor Avram tried to console me (I tried to hang on his neck during my first fit of despair), but it was no use. Depression is slow and brutal – God spare anyone from it.

And yet, I got lucky. My landlords at the time – Uncle Sasho (God rest his soul, a very good man) and Aunt Maria, who had no children of their own – had long since accepted me as a son. With their angelic patience and support, I slowly began to claw my way out of the pit. It took many months, of course – but I began to recover.

Eventually, I gathered the courage to share a bit of my state with Doreen. At the time, buried in my Balkan upbringing, I thought showing weakness – especially to a woman – was unacceptable. I scribbled a vague letter, all hints and no truth, because we had to “be strong,” and all that. I was ashamed to bare myself – that’s how I’d been raised. I didn’t know, back then, that in other places, such baring of the soul isn’t shameful at all…

And imagine how I felt when, a week later, the office phone rang – and our Theodora told me from far-off East Germany: “I understand something’s not right with you. Want me to come to Bulgaria?”

That did it. Balkan or not – tears rolled down my face, and my voice trembled like a willow flute. I didn’t dare say much, afraid she’d hear just how broken I was.

From then on, things began to spin fast. The angel had outwitted me – this time with a promise of an imaginary “specialisation” in Manchester, which made me briefly sideline my American dream. I went to Berlin, supposedly for a short while – just as the Wall fell. The city was chaos – Babylon! Colourful, wild, dazzling. At first I’d spend hours in West Berlin shops (not to buy – no money!), just marvelling at the trinkets I never imagined existed. Then I discovered the libraries – same reaction.

Little by little, the pain began to fade. Theodora looked after me as if I were ill, and amid all that colour, dark thoughts had less room to thrive. Eventually – I agreed. We got married on 19 November 1990 (her birthday – we still joke it was to save on gifts). After that, it all became serious.

So off I went, looking for a job. I didn’t even want to hear the word “philosophy” anymore – just hearing it made my stomach churn. But you know how it is: a Bulgarian lad can handle anything. I hoisted my flag and told myself I wouldn’t give a damn. My English had deteriorated a bit over the years, since I only practised it on paper, but back then I still had a decent American accent – so much so that even Americans sometimes mistook me for a Canadian.

I put on my ragged jeans and a shirt I thought looked quite sharp, barged into the biggest computer shops in town – and once I opened my mouth, there was no stopping me. Most Germans, the moment they hear an American accent, get insecure and go all wobbly-kneed. They could see I was broke as a church mouse, but because I was speaking American English, they didn’t dare kick me out. They actually listened. And during all those desperate years as a PhD student, I’d learned to work with computers – programming, even (boredom has its upsides, apparently). So I’d wave a floppy disk in front of their noses, showing off my little program for storing addresses – and offer them a deal.

The whole thing was stitched together with white thread, obviously. But where I found the gall to stand there and sell myself, I still don’t know. Eventually, a few East German guys took me in – no salary, but they gave me a computer to use, and told me I could keep whatever I managed to earn. (They’d just opened a shop, and their advertising was literally a sheet hung in the window with the slogan “Only stealing is cheaper.” Those were the days.)

So far, so good. I began working on the computer day and night (again out of boredom – Doreen had gone off on a real three-month specialisation in London, and I had no company). And wouldn’t you know it – I discovered, to my great surprise, that I had some kind of talent for design. Well, not drawing – I couldn’t draw a cross to save my life – but for abstraction, for visualising ideas in the form of symbols. Logos, basically. I still remember designing the logo for those guys at the shop (the firm was called ICS; they’ve long since gone bust, but the logo is still in my files). They were so pleased, they actually reached into the till and gave me 50 marks.

Oh, the joy! I’d earned my first money in Germany! I rushed home, grabbed Todorka (meaning it had already been more than three months since I’d earned a single penny – we were surviving on her 600-mark monthly stipend), and we immediately blew the 50 marks. We bought a vinyl copy of Jesus Christ Superstar (yes, record shops still sold LPs back then), then a döner kebab each and a Coke – and just like that, the money was gone. But our hearts were full.

Buoyed by success, I took my folder and began scouring the town for clients. I’d visit the local cobbler, tailor, or shopkeeper, boldly open my folder and then my mouth. People blinked, hesitated – but I wouldn’t back down. I kept talking nonsense until they said yes.

I began earning a bit here and there, but it soon became clear that I couldn’t survive like this. With great effort, I scraped together maybe 200 marks a month – barely enough for cheese. Love was still fresh and strong, but even that can’t sustain itself forever. I decided I needed to find something else. I wracked my brain, but nothing promising came to mind. Design without formal education? A dead end. I’d have to try something else.

Eventually, I decided to apply to the local art school (Zlatko? Art school? Yeah, I know…). I started preparing for the entrance exams – don’t ask me with what kind of delusion. I had a tight knot in my stomach, couldn’t believe anything would come of it – but once you start something, you stick with it. That’s the Bulgarian way.

And just as I was pushing myself headlong into yet another dead-end street, my guardian angel intervened again. One day, just as I returned from a qualifying German exam (required for admission), I found Gerd-Dietrich Schmidt waiting for me at the shop – a young businessman who’d just founded a training company and bought his computers from ICS. My friends there had already figured out I was a smooth talker and used me as a free advisor for their customers – my chatter often persuaded people to buy something. (There are plenty of salespeople in my family; the seed didn’t fall on barren ground.)

We started chatting, and it soon became clear that Gerd wanted something done. He’s a cautious man, but eventually he came out with it: he’d received a commission from Klett (one of Germany’s biggest educational publishers) to produce a biology experiment workbook. He didn’t have his own graphic designers, but he’d seen me fiddling with that sort of thing at the shop – could I maybe help?

Man, I’d been waiting half a year to hear words like that – if I didn’t jump to the ceiling it was only out of politeness. “Let’s go, Gerd! What are you waiting for? If there’s a way to start, let’s start now.”
“How much will you charge me?”
“Oh, let’s say you can get away with 500 marks.”

It was Gerd’s turn to jump to the ceiling. (Years later, he told me that the cheapest quote from a professional design firm had been 1,500 marks per page – which meant about 8,000 marks for the whole workbook.)

But how was he to know that cheap would turn out to be exactly as good as its price? We began working – slapping things together, smudging and sketching – and in the end the workbook looked like something between a scrapheap and a pancake. You couldn’t tell whether to read it or use it as toilet paper. But Gerd – he’s a tough guy, not easily discouraged – actually managed to sell the junk to some Western fools.

Not only that – we clicked, and started producing new workbooks together. Zlatko, man of means! I began investing in my new profession, bought a huge stack of books on design, stayed up nights reading, struggling like a devil to understand the basics of typography and book layout. I knew full well: without real knowledge, I’d never get far.

Fortunately, I was a quick study – and as the quality of my work rose, so did my rates. Eventually, Gerd had no choice but to officially hire me.

Phew! I was finally free from slavery! Who could compare to me now – a man with a title, and in Germany no less. I proudly adorned myself with the title “Head of Production” (never mind that the publishing house had only just been founded and I was the only member of the department), and then I started hiring new people. They all arrived with certificates and degrees up to the ceiling, while I was the only one without a formal education. But when it came down to actually doing the work, those degrees didn’t help them one bit – and believe it or not, for the first few years I did practically everything myself. (That’s because they had all studied back when computers didn’t even exist yet, and I basically had to teach them the ABCs – an ABC I had invented myself in the meantime.)

It was incredibly hard, because no one could help, and I solved thousands of computer-related problems on the fly, always under pressure. But eventually, things started to move. After about a year of constant losses (since our products didn’t sell at first), we finally managed to bring a killer app to market, and the spigot opened. It was a compact collection of charts and formulas for secondary schools – neatly bundling all the essential building blocks of science and technical education. After that, things became easier. Soon, we dared to work in colour (rediscovering America again, working seven days a week until midnight – but hey, if it’s not in your head, it better be in your feet, right?). The department grew at lightning speed… and the first signs appeared that my skin was once again starting to feel too tight.

Unpleasant thoughts began to gnaw at me. By that time, the publishing house was making good money, and the two partners were millionaires (at least on paper). And me – the one who had devised the entire production technology (I hope you’ll believe I’m not exaggerating – they still use the method I came up with during my first four years there, even nine years after I left) – I was sitting there sucking my thumb, despite working 60–70 hours a week. That wasn’t right.

To top it off, my American friend gave me some advice (in ’92 I finally fulfilled my long-time dream and travelled across America coast to coast for five weeks – finally putting to rest the lingering ache, because I saw with my own eyes that it wasn’t exactly paradise over there either). “Dude,” he said, “if you want to make money, start your own business. As long as you’re working for someone else, you’ll never see a dime.” And in ’94 I bought a book that really shook me up (in Paris – we were travelling like maniacs back then, knowing full well that once the kids came, freedom would be over). The book was Power Shift by Alvin Toffler, which isn’t particularly remarkable – like all his books – but it kept repeating a refrain that had already taken root in my mind: “Whoever possesses knowledge possesses power.” As old as Francis Bacon, you might say – but sometimes old truths float back to the surface like corks, and you can’t help but wonder where they came from. That’s what happened to me. I thought: I possess all the technological knowledge in this company – and zero of the benefits. That’s it. Enough.

A worm began to gnaw at me so badly that I started having asthma attacks (purely from repressed anger – there was nothing wrong with me physically). I lost all interest in my work, neglected everything, and spent more and more time indulging in spiteful fantasies of how I’d quit and bring their whole empire crashing down in minutes… Thank God for Doreen, who kept me grounded – otherwise, I might have actually done something stupid.

Eventually, it became clear to everyone that I couldn’t stay there any longer. But luckily for me, Gerd took it all without resentment. “Alright,” he said, “if you’ve decided to work on your own – we won’t stop you. I just want you to keep working for us as a freelancer – and keep training our people.”

What a weight off my shoulders! Turns out it was so simple – and yet I had tormented myself for so long. So I started working again with my old energy – maybe even more – because my income tripled overnight, and I finally began to find a bit more time for my family (by then, on 2 August 1994, our son Paul had been born).

Speaking of wise books – I want to mention another that had a big influence on me: The Age of Paradox by Charles Handy. In it, he makes the simple point that the greatest challenge of our time is to find balance between time and money – that most people have one or the other, but rarely both at the same time. So, guess which thought I’ve been using to console myself ever since I became self-employed?

A few years went by. I kept working, kept earning. I even visited Avram in South Korea. But – who’d be surprised? – eventually my old worms started gnawing at me again. God forbid I ever find peace! The work started to bore me. I became so efficient that I’d finish my required tasks in two or three hours a day – and spent the rest of the time looking for something to do.

Oh, I tried all sorts of things. At one point I discovered the internet, started dabbling there a bit, hoping to find some new source of work. But being a lone wolf, I never managed to turn it into a proper business (that takes organisation – and after my publishing house experience, I had sworn a resounding “no” to anything resembling management, despite having acquired some decent skills in that area).

Then – unexpectedly – I got obsessed with chess. Fanatically. To the point of self-forgetfulness, as with everything else. I spent a fortune, played hundreds of games – some of them not half bad – until I finally realised, to my surprise, that chess had an extremely negative impact on my character (or at least on mine). It turned me into an aggressive machine obsessed with victory and nothing else. Either–or – to borrow a phrase from philosophy. But either–or doesn’t take you far, especially when your usual opponents are a growing son and the woman to whom you owe nearly everything you are.

In the meantime – in 1996 – something else joyful happened in our family, something that would come to serve as a constant reminder that we are, after all, human beings, made of clay. Our daughter was born. She turned out to have a developmental delay and now, at six years old, is at a mental level somewhere between two and three. I say this without the slightest sense of tragedy, divine punishment, or other such nonsense – God is my witness. We've learned to live happily even with this burden on our hearts. We love our little one fiercely (as she loves us), and we try not to live in anticipation of a miracle, because such hope, like a magpie sucking on a hen's egg, drains the soul. “Only he will be saved,” Dostoevsky once said, “who manages to find support within himself in time…” Or something to that effect – I forget the exact wording.

So. If you have a bit more patience, I’ll soon get to the end – because it seems to me the most interesting part lies there. In one of my many attempts to discover something new in life, I came up with the idea of creating a computer game. From the very start I knew I couldn’t get far on my own, so with Avram’s help I got in touch with one of the most famous Bulgarian animators. A big name, full of respect! And so it began…

In short – after a year of effort, arguments (and over 20,000 leva spent), I suddenly found myself back at square one. Nothing came of the game – just a 150-page script and a few dozen (very beautiful) illustrations. Well then, what now? The barn had burned down, to hell with it – but what was I to do with myself? The only thing left was to try to write further. But did I have the guts?

Ever since I’d burned my old manuscripts in a field as a student, I had sworn off writing completely. Once burned – enough. But now I had no choice. Had I not tried, I would’ve likely ended up back in that same hole from which Todorka once dragged me – because if there’s one thing I cannot forgive, in myself or others, it is the fear of a challenge.

So I sat down, sharpened my computer – and lo and behold! The words began to flow on their own. They lined up one after another, bouncing and bleating like Easter lambs – sometimes well, other times not so much – but the fact remained: writing suddenly gave me such pleasure that I didn’t even notice when I began climbing all over people’s heads with it. And so, I’ve now written two books, but – well, you can’t keep an awl in a sack – now I want people to start reading them, and I spend my days knocking on one closed door after another. Whether it’s fate or just plain stubbornness – I still don’t know. Time will tell.

But as I keep saying: what must happen, happens – one way or another. The important thing is simply not to stop knocking, even if sometimes it all gets to be too much. Whether we write books, organise festivals, or teach students – it doesn’t matter that much. What matters is not to stop…

But now I’m drifting into village-square wisdoms, which means it’s time to stop. I’ve been hammering these keys for five or six hours now, and I’m sweating all over. But there was no other way – it seems these things were pushing hard to come out. At least judging by the immense relief I feel right now.

Take care!

Zlatko
Berlin, 2003