This is my mother's family photograph. It was taken in front of my grandmother's house in Dupnitsa in the 1930s. The old woman in the back is my maternal grandmother Devora Komforti; the woman with the fur collar is my mother Ester Bohoracheva, nee Komforti, next to her, with the shawl wrapped around her waist, is my uncle Rahamim's wife, and the woman in front of her is my mother's brother David's wife. The girl to the far right with the lighter coat is me, the other two girls standing are my cousins, the children of my uncle David. The young woman in the far left was a servant in my grandmother's home. She is holding in her hands my sister Elvira Alfaha, nee Aronova.
Every summer we visited my grandmother in Dupnitsa or my uncle in Kyustendil by train - this was at the beginning of the 1930s, during the summer holidays. When we were younger, we went only for one or two weeks, but when we started going to school, we spent the whole summer vacation there and played with our cousins. We didn't go on holiday to other places. It was around that time that I traveled by car for the first time. My uncle Rahamim, who lived in Plovdiv, had a car. He would drive to Kiustendil and take us on a ride around the suburbs. On the Christian holiday of Archangel Michael my father's employer would prepare a special dinner of boiled mutton for his employees and would come to take our family in his car. What I also remember from those years is our father taking us to a restaurant from time to time to eat kepabcheta [grilled oblong rissoles].
