I do not believe in Bulgarian tolerance. I can’t, no matter how hard I try. I listen to the boasts, where for the thousandth time I’m told the tale of how our recent predecessors saved the Jews, I look around, search for some kind of resemblance, for something to break the evil tooth of my doubt – and I can’t, I just can’t...

Wherever I look, whatever I focus on, wherever I seek reassurance for my hope, I am met with the same thing – wicked, low-bent horns, looking for something to stab, something to lift into the air, only to then smash it against the ground, turn it to dust and ash, wipe out its roots.

Tell me, how am I supposed to believe in the tolerance of a people who, in the span of just forty – just forty! – years, first save one minority, and then, before everyone’s eyes, viciously and without any visible sense of shame or modesty, rob, humiliate and attempt to destroy another, twenty times larger? I’m sorry, but if there’s a word for this, it’s more like “schizophrenia” than “tolerance.”

A full split of personality, of identity. Some incomprehensible, inexplicable, cosmic outburst of compassion, mercy and humanity, in a fleeting, insignificant moment of our history – and savage, destructive malice, spite, hatred, a thirst for historical revenge – during all the rest of the time, including now, precisely at this moment as I write these bitter, biting words that tear me apart more than they wound any of my fellow countrymen. The age-old rage of the slave... The age-old rage of the slave... The age-old rage of the slave.

Every day – every single day! – I encounter new and new deniers. People hunched over, hiding behind the mask of anonymity or even not needing one. People who deny, and deny, and deny... “There’s no such thing!” “It wasn’t us, it was Uncle Tosho!” And if not him, then some others – the communists, the anarchists, the masochists, the onanists...

Everyone else, just not us! No, no, and no! A thousand times no. We are kind, we are tolerant, we are broad-minded. Just, if you could please, move out of our sight, if you could just vanish, evaporate into thin air, disappear from the face of the earth, please! You have too many children, you lie in wait for us silently and slyly, planting demographic bombs under our feet, even though you pretend to be so meek and gentle... You – all of you – the Others, the Not-Ours, the Different...

Why are we like this? Why are we like this, for God’s sake? Can someone explain it to me, can someone point me to that hidden side, secret string, magical tucked-away corner of the Bulgarian soul, to which I can turn, before which I can kneel, which I can implore... People, don’t do this! People, come to your senses! People, don’t drink your fear like mild rakia! The only ones who gain anything from this are the Sowers of fear – cunning, predatory, hawk-instinct bastards who smell blood and prey exactly where the meagre ruins of our national and human dignity begin.

The Sowers of fear. The small, yet insatiable, indelible, seemingly undefeatable parasites who have burrowed somewhere into the command centers of our nervous and mental systems, who have paralyzed us, wrapped us in a mad web of fears and clichés that completely paralyze the faint cries of our so deeply frozen consciences... The riders of the murkily-glancing, enchanted, spellbound, cursed giant called the people. The zombie-masters, the circus tricksters, the connoisseurs of Ruses and Craft, the shepherds of the flock, playing the duduk that beguiles our senses, with a hand hidden under the cloak, secretly resting on the handle of the knife, prepared for the next offering, where one more little sheep must be slaughtered so that the great feasting can begin...

Who else but them – that handful of people who relentlessly blare the horns and bugles of fear – benefits from all this? Who else, you foolish monstrosity? “The Bulgarians will crush us, they’ve always tried – wave after wave, every twenty years!” That’s from one side. “The Turks will swallow us, they’re like a tide rising slowly and relentlessly! If we don’t bash in their heads – every twenty years – we’re done for.” That’s from the other. And the zombies dance, with minds scrubbed smooth, to the tune of these ever so simple, ever so easy to swallow and endlessly ruminated incantations.

The two large ethnic groups that make up this people lie in wait, ever-expecting the next blow, ever since they began living together, ever since they remember one another. Two wrestlers, sweaty, breathless, smeared thick with grease, glistening... And even if this behaviour was perhaps inevitable in earlier historical periods, what explains it today, what justifies it today, in our time, when we are supposedly starting to cast off our worn-out national shirts and trying to dress in new, urban clothes, emblazoned with big, bright European stars?

Why can’t we merge, why do we refuse to form a single, homogeneous whole, to leave behind the eternal “Bulgarians, Turks, Armenians...” and really try to become something new, unified and whole – European or otherwise... Something that might at last allow us to stop counting our babies as if each newborn were a goal scored into the opponent’s net?

When, when, when? Can someone help me, give me a little hope, a little reassurance, amidst the mad carousel of this unending madness?

When, people?

When?

Berlin, June 2011