I have to admit, I still love old photographs. When I was little, I loved them because they were linked to a lot of stories told by the elderly relatives who came to visit our home. They would usually retell them after dinner, over a cigarette and the smell of the freshly brewed coffee that my mother took out on the old silver plate. And then, after one of the relatives would ask for the family album, their chats became filled with memories of some other time and some other people. Quietly I listened to the endless conversations of the personalities from the family album that I always failed to understand completely. Those characters were called upon in the room filled with smoke, usually through the joyful, merry tones and the vivid narrative shouts. Occasionally, they were mentioned in the unhearing murmuring comments, but also in the smothered giggle, or disturbed by the sudden loud laughter of the guests. Sometimes I would catch them floating in the living room, during the narrators' interludes - the ruling silences, and the speeches made in shattered voice. Stories. Stories of people's destinies, and biographies of distant relatives that I had never heard of. The stories were intertwined with characters from the novel of the past, archived and then reenacted in the amazing theater of life by the characters that have entered in the little photographic family everlastingness. 

  
Now that I enter midlife I start loving photographs in another way as well. Like preserved prints of the shapes of past, not just of the set and costume design of times gone with the wind, of the changed topography and geography of space, but - least deceiving - of the landscapes of the human world, of the faces, expressions, relations, weaknesses, emotions, moods, souls… Captured in a moment, for eternity. Thus, fitted for contemplation. And of constant come back. In the characters of a time. Of an age. The mystique of the photographs of my childhood which came to life in the atmosphere condensed by the cigarette smoke and the past called upon in the family gatherings that I tried to rationalize later. The photographs, as I defined later when I comprehended the first philosophical terms, are an expression of the paradoxes and even more, of the aporia which have always existed and exist even today, getting new appearances so that the wonders of technology of modern life are being added as new arguments to the unchanged phenomenon of the being. Consequently the ascetic arsenal of those paradoxes, noted in the ancient Eleic teachings and determined in the scholastic examples of Achilles and the Turtle or the Bow and the Arrow, can be enriched today with a new technological example…the photographs, yes the photographs. There are static, and yet they contain a process, they are tranquil, and yet they poses disquiet, they are numb, and yet carry so many stories. They show but they hide so much too. They are the new kind of the pure aporian substrate. They depict the multi-significant, captured past brought until today. That is why it just looks as if they bring serenity and order in the distressed, chaotic movement of life. Sometimes they even instigate that in us. The pictures, the photo-fixations, the icons, the photo-engravings. 
               Like the photograph of the modest yet persistent gaze on Aunt Rachel's face. 
               "All right", I asked my father not so long ago "Are you going to tell me something about her? Who is Aunt Rachel? Why does she appear on that one photograph?…" 

  
     "Who is Aunt Rachel?  

 

               During the time when my father's face became more worried as he listened to the radio that he had bought for the sake and great joy of my two elder brothers - Rachel fell in love. At least my mother said so, gazing at the shy and sensible girl. The person chosen by her heart was Jon, a strong and healthy young man with red cheeks and a pretty smile. He was the son of the milkman who came every night, wearing his beanie, bringing fresh milk to our house. In all the years that he was coming Jon was always with him. 
                No one knew exactly when Jon and Rachel fell in love. We only knew that it had happened, by the blush on Rachel's cheeks every time she would leave the porch and enter the living room with a can of fresh milk in her hands. 
               And so, we started joking around whenever we would see Rachel combing her shiny dark hair in the mirror, before Jon came in the evening. My mother usually froze our frowning faces with a single, quick glimpse, and then we rushed out of the room silencing our giggles with our palms leaving the girl carried away in her ritual accompanied by my mother who, pretending as if she didn't notice, carefully watched over the first signs of Rachel's adolescence in its prime. 
               During that time, in the quietness of the snowy winter nights, Rachel wove blue shapes on the pieces of her dowry, under the vigil eye of my mother who taught the girl new and complicated embroideries while she was patching our socks and underwear. She spoke quietly to Rachel of the secrets and traps of marriage and life. On occasion, we the kids would capture some of those advises whenever we would enter the kitchen for a glass of milk before bed, pretending not to listen, while the two of them carried away in my mother's narrating, would continue the ritual of revealing the experiences of life. 
          On the other hand, my father turned into a silhouette, sat by the radio next door in the neighboring dark and cold room, wearing a robe and a scarf and leaning his ear to the glowing device, cautiously turning the volume down whenever Rachel would enter. He stayed there until my mother called him to be reasonable and come in to the warm kitchen. I think that is how my father grew old. Those months were engraved in my memory as if they were years. I can still remember my father - a stooped silhouette in the dark room - leaning over the radio and listening to its whisper. 

               One day, and that was at the beginning of the occupation when the new, Bulgarian authorities came and sealed our radio, Rachel started noticing our mocking glimpses after the milkman's visits. Jon waited outside while she, completely confused, entered the house to find the milk can. It was then that Rachel caught my elderly brothers winking at each other. But so did my mother too. Entering the kitchen at that moment and handing over the milk can to Rachel, she bitterly scolded them and sent them off to their rooms. I gave her a scared look, and after she noticed that, she came, smiled and gave me a long hug. That was how Rachel found us, coming back from the porch. She didn't have the softness and the careless appearance anymore - she was pale. That was the first time I noticed a peculiar, persistent gaze in her sad eyes. They were focused on my mother. My mother whispered in my ear to go to bed. 
               "What has happened?" My mother asked Rachel 
               "Jon wants us to leave," silently answered Rachel. 
               But they didn't. Life went on as usual. Only, Rachel's face got a new, solemn expression that changed briefly, after Jon's visits. My mother allowed her to take him into the kitchen, explaining to my father that she did so because of the threat from the occupation police. Meanwhile she told my father, who drank tea even more, and stopped listening to the radio, that she saw an overwhelming emptiness in Rachel's eyes. Jon, continued coming over, while strange changes took place in our town. 
               One day, coming back from her parents' house Rachel brought a yellow star. She took it out and put it on the table. 
               "My father said that from now on, we are to put this on, every time we are on the street." My mother, always quick in her reactions, came to the table and took the star. 
               "What are these nonsense child, here's where you'll put it," my mother opened the trash-can, and threw out the yellow star. We all felt eased by that gesture. Everyone smiled. My eldest brother mockingly imitated Mussolini. Until the evening everyone was in good spirit. 

    
Apart from our wishes, things became more tensed. Soon enough, over the offices and stores, some of them belonging to our family friends, the sign "Forbidden for Jews, Vlachs and dogs" appeared. The Jews and the Serbs where banned from the schools. My father started closing the store earlier, trying to stay home longer. Whenever a uniformed person entered the store, he got confused, partly because he couldn't speak Bulgarian, and so my eldest brother had to leave school, and take over the business. Apart from him, my mother started unwillingly changing her Macedonian language into Serbian instead of Bulgarian, whenever she dealt with the Bulgarian government services, which gave me the erroneous impression that she did that to purposely agitate the occupiers. 
               The people with yellow stars became more and more visible in town. They were our neighbors, our friends, customers in my father's store. My father stopped going to the store. And being the quiescent person that he usually was, he became almost completely silent. My mother tried to cheer him up, while my brother ran the business. Whenever my father looked down, my mother would come and rest her arm on his head. Then, he usually looked up and gave her a trifling smile. 
               "Is there anyone in the store?" He always asked my mother, and after she confirmed, he bowed his head and had a sip of the tea, now, almost always in front of him. 
               One day the inspection from the Direction of Jewish questions came to our house to check for Jews. My father was numb. When the inspector asked him the question, I believe that he couldn't even hear it. Rachel looked at my mother. 
               "There is no Jews here", said my mother, in a cold voice. Then she turned towards Rachel, and spoke to her in Vlach: "And what are you waiting for. Go and finish your work, and take your father out of the room too." 
               Rachel understood and turned towards my father, she took him by the hand and he stood up. 
               "Excuse me now gentlemen, I have work to do," my father told the inspectors in a shattered voice and walked out of the room taking Rachel with him. 
               My mother turned toward the unwanted visitors. 
               "Anything else gentlemen?" She asked them with a determined voice. 
               "Nothing!" They said, and noted that on Solunska Street, number 10, there are Unbefitting, but no Jews. 

               As of those days, the last reminiscences of peace and serenity were lost. The winter was harsh, and filled with another kind of coldness, the one within the people, that slowly took over our town. Rumors that the Jews are going to be taken away by the Bulgarian police became more frequent. Those rumors said that they would be taken to special gathering centers, where they will be detained until the end of the war. Many said that those centers were a point of no return. 
               Since the rumors began, Rachel started sleeping over at her parents' house again. One late afternoon, right after she left our house, her father came in to our home. He came in, wearing his large black hat and worn-out coat. The corpulent man stopped by the living-room door, and nodded, after he quickly glanced at everyone with his big, sad eyes. My mother invited him to sit down and offered him some jam, but he interrupted her. 
               "Dear madam, sit down please, I have to tell you something of great importance," He said with a feeling of decisiveness reflected in his eyes. "Rumors say that we Jews are going to be taken away on a road of which no one knows anything." 
               "That's nonsense, people talk all kinds of rubbish nowadays." 
               "It is possible," Rachel's father answered after a longer pause. "But in case it is the truth, then I have come here to ask you to keep Rachel with you. She told me that you listed her as a family member, may God lay his blessing upon you. If we have to go, I would like at least one of my children to stay. You accepted my daughter as if she were one of yours. " 
               My mother looked at the man's deep, sad eyes. There, he saw something that left her numb and speechless. She just nodded. 
               As of that night Rachel started sleeping over in our home again. 

   
In the morning of March 11, the raids really started. The town was filled with soldiers and policemen. As we heard later, they arrested the Jews, and led them through town in vast lines. 
               I was sick those days and slept in my parents' bedroom. A silent clamor woke me up from the restless sleep. I turned toward the window. My mother was awake. She stood by the shut window blinds, wearing her nightgown and a scarf over her shoulders, watching a river of people pass by. Faces known and unknown. She was gazing at the children sleeping in their parents' arms and the old people who were trying catch up with the fast - moving line. In the bed, right next to me, laid my father. He stared at the ceiling with a blank, expressionless look on his face. 
               That day, my brother didn't go to the store. My father woke up and woke everyone up - everyone but Rachel. We gathered in the kitchen. Everybody was quiet. My mother told my father to go and ask around the neighbors if anyone minded the fact that we kept Rachel. 
               "Whoever has anything against us keeping Rachel will most certainly turn us into the police. If there is even one neighbor who does mind, we'll tell everyone she's gone, and hide her here, in the house." 
               My father had a pensive look on his face. He had just left the house through the kitchen door, to start his visits with the neighbors, when Rachel appeared at the kitchen door. 
               She was neatly dressed. She wore her new coat and winter shoes. She had a suitcase in her hands. My mother had a terrified look on her face. 
               "Where do you think you are going?" my mother asked her in a firm voice. 
               "I have to go," replied Rachel, and smiled at us with her sad persistent gaze, which reminded me so much of her father's. Everyone was silent and could not say a word. 
               "Wherever my people go I will go too," she added silently. 
               "You shan't go anywhere!" Said my mother. "That is your father's wish too. You will wait for them here." 
               "If they come back, I will come back with them. You see how things stand, mother." She said, looking at me, "It is best that everyone is with their own. 
               "My mother bowed her head. Then she looked straight into Rachel's eyes. 
               "You don't consider us your own?" she murmured. 
               "Don't make it harder on me, mother," said Rachel and a tear drop sled down her round, soft cheek. "This is how it has to be. Otherwise there will be no peace for any of us. 
               "She turned around and gave my mother a hug. They stayed silent for a while. 
               My mother whispered something in her ear. She refuted quickly and shook her head - then she turned away from my mother. She glanced at us with a strange, deep look. I got the feeling that she wanted to capture everything with her sight: my mother, us, the kitchen, the wooden ceiling, the stove, the window, the door through which my father left, and through which she would come in blushed and filled with joy after Jon's visits. She wanted to smile at us, but the tears gave her out. Then she turned around and left. 
               That was the last time I saw Aunt Rachel. 
               That night Jon came to our house. My parents had invited him for the first time to the reception room. My mother gave him the embroideries of Rachel's dowry. She showed them to him peace by peace, just like the custom required. 
               "Keep them, keep them well", she told him before the young man left speechless and confused. 
 

     That was Rachel. She wasn't a relative,and yet she felt s
o close. And what is a relative? One with whom you were born, with whom coincidence or family tied you to. Or one to whom life itself has bound you. Maybe, most of all, it is someone you miss. Even from your ancestor's photographs. The ones you have never met. The ones you had just seen. On a photograph. The ones you felt close to. Through the stories that repeat long afterwards. Looking through your family albums. With the photographs, the photo-fixations, the icons, the photo-engravings. Capturing the moment of that glaring net, thrown in the turbulent seas of time. 
               There, just like on the family photograph with Aunt Rachel, everyone is gazing at you. And although they are all gone, everyone is still here, together, now…  

                                                                                                                                                             (Translated by: 
                                                                                                                                                              Dimitar T.Osmanli)