I Want to Be with You

By Un Voltron and Mariana Zakova

On the bank of the Mesta river there is a place, where Ive left my tribute to Bulgarian past. It isnt neither the khans time nor the time of the rulers, who have multiplied the territories of the country. Its survival time.

With my senses of a person from other worlds, I find that sensitiveness of the soul, which Id recognize only by its traces. These are children.

If there are lost souls in the world, they will find each other not to be lonely in their loneliness. And to take the real road, which will bring the freedom for themselves and for all Bulgarians.

Its time to teach our children how to walk this road.

I didnt know the land of the people without homes, names, families. I learnt about them when I stayed on the bank of the Mesta river in an autumn the villagers were harvesting the remains of their children among the grasses, and the ploughed land wasnt black but red. With blood. Then, for the first time, I learnt that it wasnt the colour of victory but of death. I didnt know it.

In an autumn like that, a lot of years later, the villagers harvested the fruit of their happiness - their children, who became linked by marriage to conceive children.

For me it means Bulgarians have survived. Again. It is a book about the truths of slavery and fortitude. After being a part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years Bulgarians restore unity to their country from the ashes of the bones and blood of many ruined generations.

And again they begin to set up their home with families and children as ever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491888063

Un Voltron

Mariana Zakova with his family live in Sofia – the capital of Bulgaria, Europe. Mariana Zakova is coach leader and principal of the 137th Secondary School in Sofia . She works with its professional team for leadership style in education. Mariana Zakova is MA in Bulgarian language and literature, but she has also specialized in the field of modern management - Organization and management in education – Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridsky”;Solving conflicts at school – University for peace and conflict solving - Granada, Spain; Trained in a program for coach leaders of Veleva-Bialec Coaching – Paris, France Mariana Zakova’s interests are referred to her native land Bulgaria – unfamiliar or not well known. Beautiful, because it has everything – a sea- with hot summer and golden beaches; mountains – wonderful where to go skiing… not to forget! But this country also has got its history which has been stolen little by little – by someone or other – not to be known. The history of Bulgaria is the main topic of Mariana’s books – The Voltron’s Circle (2009), Led by Furies (2011) and The Trumps (2011),which contains three novels - The Cries of Samodivas, The Singing Pigeons and I Want to Be with You. They all are united by a common topic – the past of the state Bulgaria, which you don’t know very well. In the way a writer, known in their country, Mariana Zakova departing from the scope the exotic history. Her beautiful story travels not only across countries but also on the continent. The experienced writer begins to live and die with their characters in a breathless, dreamy and at the same time very naturalistic story about life just as it is really. Thus was conceived the next novel AWORLD FOR TWO is not just about love , passion, obsession and friendship across borders . It has everything that lives today in Karachi, transcultural metropolis and the capital of Pakistan. They all are united by a common topic – the past of the state Bulgaria, which you don’t know very well. In the way a writer, known in their country, Mariana Zakova departing from the scope the exotic history. Her beautiful story travels not only across countries but also on the continent. The experienced writer begins to live and die with their characters in a breathless, dreamy and at the same time very naturalistic story about life just as it is really. Thus was conceived the next novel AWORLD FOR TWO is not just about love , passion, obsession and friendship across borders . It has everything that lives today in Karachi, transcultural metropolis and the capital of Pakistan. Here the novel I WANT TO BE WICH YOU - The time comes to go back to the terrible story of Ottoman rule over the powerful state Bulgaria started in the late 14th century and lasted until the late 18th century. 500 years Bulgarians have maintained their faith as Christians. And after these 500 years until today Bulgaria is a country on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe. Terrible times, strong people, beautiful love alive as they succeeded in survive the spirit and the nation. You must read, to look again next Mariana Zakova,s books

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© 2014 Mariana Zakova , Un Voltron. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/20/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8805-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-8806-3 (e)

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CONTENTS

I am such as I want to be

I don’t want to be alone

They say the day of reckoning comes

Epilogue

Notes

About the Author

Only a person, who can find themselves when they’re most lost in the unfamiliar and hostile, can survive.

Only a person who has the strong ground of their origin under their feet can survive!

On the bank of the Mesta river there is a place, where I’ve left my tribute to Bulgarian past. It isn’t neither the khans’ time nor the time of the rulers, who have multiplied the territories of the country. It’s survival time.

With my senses of a person from other worlds, I find that sensitiveness of the soul, which I’d recognize only by its traces. These are children.

If there are lost souls in the world, they will find each other—not to be lonely in their loneliness. And to take the real road, which will bring the freedom—for themselves and for all Bulgarians.

It’s time to teach our children how to walk this road.

I didn’t know the land of the people without homes, names, families. I learnt about them when I stayed on the bank of the Mesta river in an autumn—the villagers ‘were harvesting’ the remains of their children among the grasses, and the ploughed land wasn’t black but red. With blood. Then, for the first time, I learnt that it wasn’t the colour of victory but of death. I didn’t know it.

In an autumn like that, a lot of years later, the villagers harvested the fruit of their happiness—their children, who became linked by marriage to conceive children.

For me it means Bulgarians have survived. Again.

I AM SUCH AS I WANT TO BE

A fter some days of hunger, my enemies are ready to eat me, as though we are dogs, left without a master—hungry and wild. I don’t feel like being food for any like-animals, into which these former people have turned. Our reputation of Yanlaz effendi’s proud soldiers has collapsed now to such extent that everybody is afraid of us. It’s the same as the fear of wolves—during hungry and cold winters in the north, where I have seen the same brutal creatures, attempting life of everything that had life. And we’re not intended to be such ones, because since I got here, none of us has attempted the others’ lives with such intentions. Now it isn’t so, and I’m sure that this is also a part of the plan of our master, father and everything in this world. The only person, who holds us to be people, but it depends on what it is meant by this. For us human life has value only when it is own, ours. Any other life is just an existence that is part of everything around—the land, the trees, the grass, the birds and the flies—creatures, which are equal to each other. And as it is so, we are not particularly concerned about the survival of any of them, let alone about a man, left in the world by a random choice of God’s ways. Does it make sense to think about anything as trivial as whether there is or there is not a rain-spot in the dust of the street? After all, the sun will shine and the spot will dry out, then it’ll rain again and so on. That’s it.

I get a little suspicious and now it is the time to find out which of the three in the room is the strongest. We have been left alone for three weeks, and the food ran out even as early as in the second week. We are not taught to supply ourselves with food—we’ve always had it, like everything else, we’ve had even more than the others around us have had. And in the street we are the only ones, wearing the clothes of the rich, who get used to leaving traces of strong shoes of a fighter, ready to cross everything that is a border. Except for one thing—his own border, which is where he himself decides, draws it and until he wants it. Our instincts are of hunters, who got used to being on the trail of living creatures until we turn them into our victims. And then—what follows.

Come what may—I am the strongest one and I know that unless I attack first, I will be the victim. There are only two poles in the world and I am at one of them. All the rest—at the other. And as I’m sitting cross-legged on the ground, the light from the window is showing me that someone’s shadow is leaning over me from the balcony of the inside staircase upstairs. I’ve learned to stand up suddenly—I tighten the muscles of my legs and stand up while sitting. Then I only know that I have started. I shrink and fly up, where Feiz has already stood. I know that’s him, there’s no one to be so impatient and at the same time—so stupid. Some say that being cruel is part of your human nature, because a man is like all animals. But I have changed my opinion. Since I saw that same Feiz, gnawing bones of a very beautiful pheasant, given to us by the neighboring boarding-house of another friend of our rich well-doer. Yanlaz effendi, who had placed the bird in a cage with gilt windows and precious beads—to play with, didn’t get angry at all, and to my surprise, he even praised his favourite student for the decision—to find food at all costs when you are hungry. Human decisions on the same issue are sometimes strange. I would not do that and that’s why my actions have not always been approved. I think that is because they are smarter or not—because they always involved violence, which wasn’t equal to food, and to much more. And now, when Feiz is ready to nibble at my throat, I will do so that not him but I would nibble at his. No, I would not stain my mouth with the blood of this mangy smelly animal, and I will take pity on a hungry savage marten, which is ready to have its meal instead of me. I set it free and only look back to be sure of the result. There’s nothing to do there. I leave everything in Allah’s hands. Is it enough… ?

I begin to think about the past and this is one of the signs I’m getting older. So many years have passed. Why am I going back to that single picture of our youth, which shows me that being in the world is not only honour, given by Allah, but also burden that would be good to bear as He would tell you. I bear my life as nobody could have predicted me. Because there was a variety of ways, that I could follow and get anywhere. But I chose only that one, which was showed me one night by the witch, living under the bridge behind our house. She didn’t love me, because I always called her so, but actually the woman was old and very kind. She used to give us cookies with cinnamon, but her fingers were bent, with long nails—it made me think she was a witch. And how did I know there were witches? I never knew it. In the confused past of my childhood such women appeared and each of them turned to me and said: Tell them who you are! Then I wanted to get up and go out on the street, to go into the wide world and never come back to the dark house of Yanlaz Effendi, where I spent so many years. And now, when my life is on one of its other turns, I think it is neither me or Yanlaz, nor all of us—his trainees, but Allah had decided us to be such as we were. And we were the only ones who left no other traces but death behind us.

My name is Emir Bey and I present myself to Allah on the day of my last sigh. I put my hands on my chest, and when I feel my heart beating for the last time, I stand at our god’s feet and say: Am I at death’s door, among the others, departed from their earthly homes? Wasn’t I merciful enough? Didn’t I leave many homes with people in them? Forgive me, Lord! You mean I have not fulfilled my earthly destiny? Punish me in my last hour as I deserve! When the bright trace of a beam, forgotten by the winter in the corner of my cold room of a lonely man, thrusts like a tip of a spear in my closed eyes for days now, I understand that Allah didn’t allow me to go through his doors. And this is my punishment.

I open my eyes after such a long time and light is almost forgotten sensation, as well as the pain of my stiff body, lying who knows how long on the hard wooden plank-bed. Lie has found me to make a fool of me—will I leave the world of my earthly days or I just think so? Repeated, this sentence becomes true and I realize very clearly that the world still has a place for me. I get up and shuffle my feet to the only clothes I have, folded on the chair in a way Yanlaz Effendi taught me to do this. I’ve folded in them all my life—at one of its ends—its beginning, which I don’t know, and at the other one—what is now, over here. I feel cold and I toss up one by one all my shirts and the rest—and I slip them on and it seems they give me back my true life. I look at myself in the pane of the open window and I see that before me is none other but that one who sowed the seeds of his masculine nature in his own land for so many years. Obviously, it is the time to see if some of my sprouts grew up. I roll a cigarette of dried tobacco leaves, left on the bottom of my tobacco-pouch, and I go outside. The birds are wool-gathering in songs, the bees keep on buzzing around, and me—here I am—I’m still young and my shirt is straightened on my strong back.

Why have I been so foolish to think I have been at death’s door? I’m still of this world, but I’m not ready to leave it. Yet.

It hurts me on the right. Why—I know it. It isn’t only of the knife, but of the loneliness, to which I drove myself. One day I was at the end of my life and then I realized lots of things. There’s only one day, among all my crazy and wild days, when my madness had no equal. Then I stood alone against myself. That Emir was quite different. I’ll never recover from that. Because of a woman!

The wind is whistling in the branches of the big elms near the river and the night is as cold as I remember it from the time when I first met Fatiya. I wasn’t a man suitable for such a woman, but I did not think so then. And it was right. I survived in the world just because I was with her and I forgot the rest. I survived and now—here I am—I’m here again. But Fatiya is gone. Why am I thinking about it—I know that much time has passed since my wife passed away, and the world closed its bright windows for me. It isn’t easy to realize that the time has come to live without one of your halves. The other half, left alone, is unable even to keep balance, and it’s what keeps you stand on the ground. I steadied somehow, but I still limp slightly. And here, just under my left rib, it still hurts me.

Does it hurt of something else, or because that mate, that one of my age, who smelled of pee, managed to stab a small thin knife into me? It was for Yanlaz’s suit, when he died one day. I’m thinking of such things these days, and it’s because I was about to leave this world. Let me remember everything about it.

So, one day, that old bastard Yanlaz, who didn’t feel ashamed of his shabby offal, hidden in his full-bottomed breeches, was benighted in the home of his dear friend from his youth—a bald,