Bulgaria

After ten years we returned to retrace the same Balkan route to understand and witness the changes underway.
We leave from Trieste in nine. A heterogeneous group made up of artists, photography, cooks and a videomaker. A month of travel and a fully equipped van.
After two weeks between Bosnia and Serbia, with the sight of a Frontex pickup stationed in one of the last Serbian mountain roads before the border, let's go in Bulgaria.

We have arrived in a town of twenty thousand souls that seems like one of those places forgotten by God, e, pare, also from Europe.
Harmanli, south east of Bulgaria, it is a stone's throw from the triple border with Greece and Türkiye. We are here thanks to the contacts of the Collettivo Vicenza Balkan Routes and guests of the German NGO MedicalSolidarietyInternational.
A city without news, which does not convey a clear narrative of itself. A gray spectrum that shows its variations in color to the maximum. Grey, such as the area that includes its border with Turkey: the first wall with which the EU defends itself from incoming migratory flows.

A rainbow breaks through the gloomy clouds, giving a moment of carefreeness. It rises exactly at the point where the gaze meets the official field for people on the move. a large building, giallo. Worn out.
At this moment there are about two hundred people, a small number compared to previous months. The border has become increasingly insurmountable, increasingly frequent and often violent illegal pushbacks. In the solo 2024 the Bulgaria rejected at its borders 50.000 people. In fact, there are more and more cases of border police violence against people on the move. Proof of this is the recent confirmation by Frontex of the guilt of the Bulgarian authorities for the deaths from hypothermia of three Egyptian minors. The rainbow lasts exactly two minutes, then the colors disperse in the vacant gazes of those few citizens walking around the city. The rainbow lasts two minutes, less than the time it takes to drink a coffee.

Inside the Harmanli camp, two hundred people including families and unaccompanied minors live waiting for a response to their request for humanitarian protection, a pass to continue the journey, with hope in the heart of a brighter Europe.

During our artistic activities with people in the Bulgarian town, we collect dozens of drawings in the long roll of paper that is accompanying us. Small moments of lightheartedness, stories that come to life thanks to colors. Drawings of houses fill it, of dreams and flags, their roots. Most of the people in Harmanli are from Syria and Syrian Kurdistan, but there are also Palestinian families and Moroccan and Egyptian children.

We know a Kurdish-Syrian family who fled Rojava, who tells us his story. Ali and Lyana (fictitious names), husband and wife, pregnant with a girl, and two children of 9 e 12 years. They manage to cross the border between Türkiye and Bulgaria, but a nightmare awaited them that they had not experienced even in Türkiye. The police catch them and separate them, takes them to the Lyubimets detention camp. For a week they know nothing about each other. Then they are finally gathered in a closed room together with other people. The window is closed, it's summer, Lyana is in her fifth month. There is no oxygen. The camp doctor sneakily brings them a ventilator. On more than one occasion the camp agents try in vain to convince Ali to sign the voluntary repatriation form to return to Syria, a country still crossed by numerous widespread conflicts which the EU however considers safe.
A nightmare that lasted three months, from which this family fortunately emerged, managing to find a minimum of stability thanks to immense tenacity. Ali works as a cook, big children, who learned Bulgarian in the detention camp, they go to school. They found a small apartment to stay. The owner has guaranteed that he will not send them away. Children drive the family's hope.

A situation, the Bulgarian one, surrounded by a gray cloud. As the border becomes more and more insurmountable, the numbers of people entering are decreasing, NGOs operating in the area are also decreasing and media attention is decreasing. To the detriment of people who often remain stuck in that limbo of waiting which becomes impotence and generates further trauma.
In that same limbo where though, despite it all, there are still volunteers and humanitarian workers, almost always women, who spend themselves on the front line of reception.

Photo Michele Cattani