Elixir

May 1, 2023
Perhaps it's the pandemic that has reignited our awareness about our relationship with nature. In her latest chronicle of exploration, Kassabova (To the Lake: A Balkan Journey of War and Peace, 2020) travels to her homeland, Bulgaria, to learn from the elders about nature-based "ailing and healing." She visits the Mesta River basin, where "everything was still connected--peaks, people, plants. This place still has something of the old, wild kind--medicine, meaning, magic." What follows is a magical travelogue in which she weaves plant knowledge with descriptions of healing rituals and stories about the region's long-suffering Pomaks, also known as Bulgarian Muslims. Kassabova's narrative loops and wanders, moving from plant-based healers to the plants themselves and other natives who call the Mesta basin home. Those who enter will be willing to get lost in this beautiful and aromatic maze, in which they will find rich and sumptuous wonders. "Now that we are all ailing, East and West, South and North, we are rapidly coming to a convergence of paths," Kassabova observes. Truer words have not been written.

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Starred review from June 15, 2023
A Bulgarian native revisits her homeland. In the third volume of her planned "Balkan quartet" (following Border and To the Lake), Kassabova recounts her pilgrimage from the rural north of Scotland, where she lives, to Bulgaria's Mesta River valley, where she grew up. This valley, she writes, "was suspended in an exquisite web of earth, water, fire and air, and inside the web was some trail I had to find. Something was forgotten that I had to remember. It had called me and I had come." Memory beckoned to her as well as a fierce desire to escape the noise, lights, and distractions of civilization where biophilia--love of nature--has been suppressed: "The body-as-garden was replaced by the body-as-machine." The inhabitants of the valley, though, celebrate the body as garden, imparting their rare intelligence of plants and their visceral and mystical connection to the Earth. The region has survived invasion, persecution, and political and economic exploitation; throughout its volatile history, its peoples had been forced to change their names, dress, and rituals. In the early years of communist rule, for example, "all herbal shops and practices were closed," but herbalists' knowledge and practices endured, as have myths, folklore, and spiritual traditions. Kassabova portrays in palpable detail the many "earth experts" she met along her journey, including Rocky the Enchanter, the ebullient purveyor of medicinal herbs; the "babi," women who serve as "midwives, wish-granters, spell-lifters, spell-casters, medicine dispensers and physio- and psychotherapists"; fortunetellers; and guides through physical and metaphysical landscapes. The author creates a mesmerizing narrative of transformation and discovery, epiphany and "magical miracles." She also charts her deep immersion in a place that seems outside of time. "Who were these people," she asks herself, "so familiar yet unknown? Their faces talked to me. I had the odd feeling of having been among them." The book includes delicate botanical drawings and maps by Faccini. A radiant memoir of wonder and revelation.

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