From Varna with an Umbrella

During a leisurely stroll among street vendor booths of used books, a title caught my eye – “18% Gray”.  I picked it up thinking it was about B&W photography, to realize that it was about the pleasure of being alive by a Bulgarian novelist Zachary Karabashliev.  I had not heard his name before, and decided to buy the book.

Bulgarian literature, classic or modern, is an unknown to me. Primarily because I do not read in the original language and there seem few translations into those that I speak. But I knew about one Bulgarian writer because of his assassination in the late 1970s. I had read many articles about the way ricin was used to kill Georgi Markov, and Karabashliev’s novel made me recall how the world was surprised that a modified umbrella would be used to shoot a pellet filled  with ricin.  And as I read the novel, as I read about the stories every immigrant has to tell be that from Varna to San Diego, or from Warsaw to New York, my mind was still curious about the umbrella, about ricin and about the oldest form of assassination—that with poison.

So, I decided to learn more about the origins of the umbrella.

… And how glorious these origins are! From Parasol (shade from the sun) to Parapluie (protecting from the rain), this tent-like apparatus has been used in ancient Nineveh, Babylon, China, India, Greece until it found its way to the West. It has shaded royalty on chariots, the rich sitting outside their mansions, and over millennia has kept Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Western women away from the damaging rays of the sun. It can be large when anchored in the sand on a beach, foldable and colourful for a walk on the promenade, waterproof or in plain cotton. An umbrella has been used as a walking cane, a defensive weapon against street attackers, can hide a sword blade or even be modified to conceal a gun shooting bullets or ricin pellets!  In short, an umbrella is among the most versatile inventions to achieve “protection”, be that against the elements, violence, or ideologists against a dogma or a regime.

An umbrella is the most universal representative of a shield.

.. As I read Karabashliev’s book, his passion for life, for photography, his nostalgia for Stella, for Varna, his attention to everyday events on the streets of Tijuana, I ended thinking that it is a book about self-realization. Perhaps the most intimate imageries, even pornographic, about him and Stella would attract a wider audience; perhaps the scenes and discussion about photography would allure those like me who still use mechanical cameras and film; but at the end, this is a book about an immigrant.

A Bulgarian immigrant who without talking about umbrellas talked about protection and shielding. An immigrant who made me pick up his book because the title seems to be about photography. An immigrant who took me back to the 1970s, to the story of Georgi Markov, and the start of my own life as an immigrant.

Used books, when bought from a kiosk on the street, have delightful secrets to share.

August 15, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

PS. I took this picture a couple of days after I finished reading the book.  I am certain that without the hyperbolic thoughts about umbrellas Karabashliev’s “18% Gray” triggered in my mind, while I would have noticed this young lady with an umbrella, I would not have taken a picture.