My father, my favorite Bulgarian, passed away some years ago, on his feet. In this way he gave his sons a final – and perhaps most important – example, but that is not what I want to talk about. My old man, Mitko Enev, died trying to reach the top of the stairs where an ambulance was waiting for him; an ambulance that promised rescue, or at least hope, from the trap of the heart attack that, as you have probably guessed, had already trapped him inescapably. He didn’t make it, but not before he had refused to allow the paramedics to place his heavy body on the stretcher. I hope you’ll forgive these proud words, but to me this is a magnificent act of free will, a purely Bulgarian form of stubbornness that would rather give the finger to death a thousand times over than humble itself and bow to the inevitable. And it is probably things like this that allow me to live in Germany without feeling embarrassed every time I have to explain that I am Bulgarian. „Be what you want to be, just do it to the end“ – this is what comes to mind when I think of my father’s death. That, and the hope that my children, even if they don’t speak Bulgarian, will carry something of their grandfather’s stubbornness. And of his great soul, which always insisted on not taking life’s problems too seriously. All his life.

On the other hand, almost at the same time, my family was dealing with another death, this time an expected one. My then wife’s grandfather – a dry and bony German from the Baltic region of Germany – was on his deathbed, surrounded by his loving relatives, people full of love and respect. May his bed be comfortable, the good man Ervin deserved every bit of it. He had passed through all the circles of the inferno of war – on the Eastern Front, by the way – and then through that other inferno, German Communism; he had brought up four children, and until a few months ago he was still drying out a bottle of schnapps every week, along with a few beers. I say this only to make it clear that I respect this man, all joking aside. People like him, tenacious and tough as nails, have made it possible for Germans to become a kind of myth for us Bulgarians.

I repeat – I respect and love Grandpa Ervin very much. I say this and hasten to add that something in me refuses to accept without reservation the way he died. I wonder if the reason for all this is not the natural pride that is inseparable from being young, though it would be a bit of an exaggeration to call myself „young“ at this point. I cannot say for sure, of course, but this kind of death seems to me somehow too reasonable and impassive, too German, to put it bluntly. Long study of philosophical texts has taught me that accepting death may be one of the main achievements of civilized life, but my atavistic Bulgarian instincts refuse to accept this foreign wisdom and make me shudder when I try to imagine the reality of this slow farewell. To lie down on that special mattress, paid for by expensive insurance, to feel the last sparks of life leaving you, together with the warm trickle between your legs, as fear slowly but surely transforms you from a human into an animal… Brrrr, God save me from the wisdom of such acceptance! „The horror… the horror,“ whisper the white-pressed lips of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now – and that is all I see when I think of death in its civilized form.

 Sozopol, 2003