This morning L and I visit the Olympic Hope swimming pool on the outskirts of the town. It is situated next to a glasshouse complex and opposite the Roma school. The structure was built in the late eighties and was only a shell when the ‘great change’ came about. It has remained in that condition for the last twenty years. There is one rumour that it was abandoned because, even unfinished, the building was subject to subsidence. Nowadays the unfulfilled pools are home to scattered rubble and a single inquisitive raven that takes off through shafts of light and shadow as I approach.
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In the afternoon we all drive along a road marked on the map as a subsidiary road but in fact it is barely passable for anything less than four-wheel drive vehicles. After driving over the top of a hydro-electric dam we arrive in the small town of Batak which has a fixed place in Bulgarian consciousness (and school books) as a place of pilgrimage, a station on the road to (re)forming a national identity. In the late 19th century, before the Russian decision to push back the Ottoman influence in the area, there were local uprisings here and in other towns and villages. These were put down with such brutality (even for the time) that Western European and American newspapers wrote about the massacres which took place. It was one of the factors which caused a realignment of British foreign policy in respect of the failing Ottoman Empire.
The bones of the victims of the massacre here are preserved in a glass-lidded ossuary inside a small chapel which is the scene of regular visits by those of political consequence in addition to the general public and school groups. In fact, at the entrance to the chapel grounds there are flowers placed there only the day before by one of the former. Though there is absolutely no dispute as to the facticity of the event, historical research into its extent, political advisability and the entire context within which it happened, has provoked controversy in recent years: the thrust towards systematic examination of hard evidence being pitted against the unassailable, polished armour of a national shrine.
In the square in front of the church there is a commemorative bust to Lady Emily Strangford who came to Batak in the autumn of 1876 after the massacres and helped care for the survivors. Lady Emily, whose husband had died some nine years previously was a well-known traveller having visited and written about Lebanon, Greece and Turkey. She also donated time and money to a hospital in Cairo. A short distance away there is a museum which we visit. |
