27 May 2023
Filipivotsi is smaller than a village. The population is barely above two hundred. There is a line of cottages and a highway road in between them—and that is that in terms of architecture. Pine trees cover the hills around. Leafy green bushes froth against the decaying unpainted walls of the residences. Filipivotsi is a sensation and a smell. Filipivotsi is unkempt, but it is generally tranquil.
It is only noisy in the Tsigani settlement.
Whenever Father returns to his village to visit, he finds himself missing the comforts of his residence in Sofia. It took him years of work to be able to afford a two-storey cottage in his working-class suburb. It is rare for anyone of his generation who is Tsigani to do such traditional work in the hospital. Even his patients to this day complain loudly in front of his face about the Gypsies and their stealing. When Father confesses that he is Romani, they stare at him, staggered, then try to polite up their language. Father appreciates the attempt to be civil. When he was growing up, the backlash of the Bulgarians against the Romani was far more violent and forthright than shouting stereotypes. There were places he wasn’t allowed to walk around for fear of his life. His mere presence meant that people were afraid they were going to be hassled or robbed.
Despite the harshness of his early days in Sofia, nothing compared to the impecuniousness of his upbringing in this settlement. Father confronts this fact during each and every one of his visits. When his car drives up the highway and Bulgarians look at his features, they wince. Then when he comes into the settlement, he sees the houses made out of tarps and tin walls, the water from the melted snow still puddling in the potholes, the donkeys, goats, and people standing about and living in the trash, and he remembers his childhood years, feeling the anguish fully and whole.
Previously he’d avoided coming back because he hated the emotions he associated with being Romani, and the stereotypes from the Bulgarians that came with it. But now there is the issue of his mother’s health, and that is far more important than anything else. Father is a doctor And he sees his visits as essential to the recovery of his mother.
And to think if it weren’t for the scattered days that happened a few weeks ago in this month of May, he would have never understood this.
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