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Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria QUOTES

Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria QUOTES

1 " I chose to see emigration and globe-trotting as an escape, not as a loss. Nowhere to call home? No problem, the world is my oyster. Where are you from, they ask. Does it matter, I answer.
But it does. Because how can you truly know yourself, and how can you know other place and people, if you don't even know where you come from? "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria

2 " It’s funny,’ Rado says, ‘I can only be Bulgarian when I’m in France. Here, I’m semi-French. Everything is funny and bizarre, and I laugh like someone watching a Beckett play. Except I am a Frenchman with Bulgarian memories. […] But I’ll never be one of them. Ah, the filthy French! "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria

3 " Where do nations begin? In airport lounges, of course. You see them arriving, soul by soul, in pre-activation mode. They step into no man's land, with only their passports to hold onto, and follow the signs to the departure gate. There, among the impersonal plastic chairs and despite themselves, they coalesce into the murky Rorschach stain of nationhood. "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria

4 " Traveling around the country where you grew up , lost some of your virginity and a few of your illusions, acquired some lasting neuroses, and then left in a hateful mood, is a slightly schizoid experience. You are at once an outsider to the present and an insider of the past. Or perhaps the other way round. "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria

5 " I left Bulgaria when I was a seventeen-year-old East European, and I am now, by all appearances, a 32-year-old ‘global soul’. But everybody needs a borrowed ‘us’ from time to time, even a global soul. And after half a lifetime and several other countries, the Bulgarian ‘us’ is still the only honest one I have. "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria

6 " was initially happy, then with the onset of consciousness unhappy, then with the advent of adolescence wretchedly miserable, and finally, in the last throws of my domestic incarceration, convinced I was born in the wrong place and had to escape at all cost. In other words, an ordinary childhood followed by an ordinary adolescence, "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria

7 " I was initially happy, then with the onset of consciousness unhappy, then with the advent of adolescence wretchedly miserable, and finally, in the last throws of my domestic incarceration, convinced I was born in the wrong place and had to escape at all cost. In other words, an ordinary childhood followed by an ordinary adolescence, "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria

8 " I managed to convince myself that I’d left Bulgaria behind for good. I chose to see emigration and globe-trotting as an escape, not as a loss. Nowhere to call home? No problem, the world is my oyster. Where are you from? they ask. Does it matter? I answer.
But it does. "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria

9 " Esther’s mother died of cancer soon after we said goodbye, and Esther emigrated to Canada where she now lectures in literature and hopes for tenure. She returns to Bulgaria once every few years. ‘I’ll never feel particularly Canadian,’ she emailed me, ‘but I’ll never go back to Bulgaria, and after ten years away, in what way am I actually Bulgarian?’ Right now, that’s a question I can’t answer for her, or even for myself. Right now, my deep suspicion is that it’s possible, perhaps even inevitable, to live between – no, among – nationalities. It’s a bit like wearing different suits, all of them the wrong size, all of them slightly ridiculous, either too baggy or too tight. They don’t make the right size anymore, it’s been discontinued. But I also suspect that the Bulgarian suit was never the right fit for me, or for Esther. "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria

10 " Right now, my deep suspicion is that it’s possible, perhaps even inevitable, to live between – no, among – nationalities. It’s a bit like wearing different suits, all of them the wrong size, all of them slightly ridiculous, either too baggy or too tight. They don’t make the right size anymore, it’s been discontinued. "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria

11 " Were they happy years, do you think?’ I ask Grégoire. ‘Well, if I’m not happy now, I must have been happy then. When I was at the Lycée, I wanted to be in France, to be free, to be myself. Now that I’m in France, I wish I could come back here, to be at home again. I feel more connected with the past than with the present. Is that normal?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Probably not. But at least you feel connected with something. "

― Kapka Kassabova , Street without a Name: Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria