The apartment where I spent many summer months was on the outskirts of a narrow strip of life hugging the Black Sea’s coast. Sunny Beach, Bulgaria, was a tourist’s wonderland populated by too-fancy hotels with fountains that lit up at night, though the more inland, the more dry grass and half-done construction projects outnumbered hotels. Sunny Beach was quite sunny, per its name. The sun left flip-flop tan lines on my toes and made the air shimmer with heat. At midday, it grew uncomfortable and spending any time outside the range of the A/C became unbearable.
Our apartment building was nothing special. The last on a short run-down road, it jutted out into the landscape of dead grass and rubble. Its sides were an ugly beige stucco that I liked to pick off. In fact, pretty much everything there was some shade of beige—the abandoned construction on the other side of the street, the little pebbles behind the building where we played hide-and-seek, the squat wall surrounding the courtyard, and the knots of dead brambles beyond it.
But I didn’t see this dreariness. I saw the green swing set and patch of fake grass making up the little playground, the clear turquoise of the pool, and the bright red of the swim shorts my dad wore. The torn deep blue awning of the corner store down the road where we would buy chocolates by pooling our change. The superficial blue of the cheap flip-flops I bought at that corner store, the ones that gave me blisters. I remember the pastel pink and green plastic cups that we drank bottled water from because the tap water tasted too metallic. I remember the pretty deep-red nectarines and the juice that would run down my arms when I took a bite. The fruit tasted better in Bulgaria, always perfectly ripe.
Bulgaria wasn’t like home in New York anyway. In Bulgaria, nodding your head means no and shaking your head means yes. In Bulgaria, we ate soup for lunch in the midst of summer heat. In Bulgaria, we had naptime. I hated naptime, thirty minutes staring at the thin wooden slats of the bunk bed above me and begrudgingly contemplating the fact that I was too old for naps. The funny thing is, eight years later I would do anything for a nap. But there, the stubbornness to prove my maturity would suppress my sleep. In the summer humidity, I pushed the thin sheets decorated with little flowers to the foot of the mattress.
The end of naptime was a release back to the world’s delights. I would run across the bedroom to wake Sasha, my cousin, who would be dutifully asleep. Together we would skip to the kitchen. There, from the balcony standing next to the wire rack of drying bathing suits and towels, we could look down at the pool. If we saw Dima down at the pool, we went because Sasha liked Dima and he was very mysterious and rarely hung out at the pool. He was also ten years older than us, we being eight and nine (I’m older) but that didn’t stop Sasha. Dima was at the top of our priorities, along with swimming 24/7 either in the pool or in the sea, and going to the boardwalk. By night the boardwalk transformed the beach from an endless line of sand and beach chairs and bathers to a blur of bright lights in the darkness. The smell of salt would mix with the smell of cheap souvenirs and the chlorine of nearby pools. The tourist traps of the boardwalk were my wonderland. We indulged in mini-golfing, the makeshift spas where little fish nibble your toes, and the occasional carnival ride.
Later I would understand that we went to Bulgaria because the apartment was cheap. I would see that in what the Boardwalk was during the day, when the darkness and business no longer masked the crumbling shops and the graffitied alleyways. I would see it in the layer of dirt dusting the sides of the busy roads, and the way my grandmother never let us leave the apartment courtyard alone. It seems like I am nostalgic for a Bulgaria that never was, a Bulgaria that exists only in my memories.