BREZNITSA, BULGARIA - It's hard to believe this colorful village festival was once considered political subversion.
The shirtless wrestlers slathered in olive oil, marching bands, horses decorated in flowers and carpets, and hordes of guests bearing gifts of socks, corn and bread are part of a three-day Muslim circumcision ritual, called a sunet, which recently drew about 2,000 people from throughout the Pirin Mountain region of southwest Bulgaria.
Circumcision, a religious duty and essential part of a Muslim man's identity, was forbidden under communism simply because it expressed the identity of Bulgarian Muslims - a group the communist regime said did not exist.
"There is great joy here," said Isa Mersim, 26, watching traditional dancing in the central village square. "This is a celebration of the new generation and the regeneration of our traditions."
When Mersim was a boy, his parents took him to a village nearly 400 miles away to a man who performed the procedure despite fear of arrest.
In the early 1980s, he said, 10 mothers from Breznitsa went to jail for having their sons circumcised. Now, he can freely circumcise his 18-month-old son, Mehmed.
"Twelve years ago, this would have been unthinkable," he said.
This is the fourth sunet since communist rule ended in 1989 - most people here are poor and can rarely afford such celebrations.
They are farmers, shepherds and physical laborers, subsisting on what they grow or raise. And heavy rains late in the season damaged the tobacco crop, destroying a year's work for many residents.
Attention to the past
Despite the poverty, the isolation of their mountain-top geography and a history of state repression, these Bulgarian Muslims are celebrating their new democratic freedoms by observing centuries-old traditions.
This attention to the past has served to connect people, defining who they are and helping their communities overcome the social and economic dislocation resulting from Bulgaria's painful transition to a free-market multiparty system.
While most villages in Bulgaria are withering because of the world's lowest birth rate combined with movement to the cities and to the West, the streets of Breznitsa, with a population of 4,000, are alive with children. People here stay at home and take care of each other.
"We are all in an economic crisis, and there are very few villages which can afford all the cows and sheep to feed all the guests," said Dr. Lufti Mehmed, a circumcision specialist who traveled about 300 miles from the Black Sea coast town of Aitos to perform the procedures.
The doctor said mosques destroyed during communism are being rebuilt, and Muslim celebrations are increasing in frequency. He said he performed 5,000 circumcisions last year.
"Women married to circumcised men have fewer instances of cervical and uterine cancer. And it increases male sexual performance," he said with a grin.
On the first day of the sunet, 100 young men gather on horseback to travel to other villages to invite their neighbors. Their horses are decorated as elaborately as available materials allow: with brightly colored carpets - handmade wool kilims - and cheap polyester imports: flowers, plastic beads and silver tinsel. A marching band announces their arrival with drums and tinny zurnas, archaic Turkish horns that sound somewhere between a clarinet and a kazoo.
About 200,000 Bulgarian Muslims are among the country's population of 8 million. They don't agree on how Muslims came to live here, in a land that is 85 percent Christian Orthodox. Some say they originated from Anatolia or Crimea; others say they are descended from Persian slaves brought to the region by Alexander the Great.
Ottoman tax records suggest they converted to Islam in the last quarter of the 17th century, when Bulgaria was a province of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. And other Muslims live in the adjoining region, spread across the Greek and Macedonian borders.
They speak Bulgarian and are not related to Bulgaria's ethnic Turks, who are also Muslim, number about 800,000, speak Turkish and are the descendants of Ottoman settlers.
Today, a poor sheep farmer, Shaban Fetta, is sponsoring the sunet, welcoming and feeding guests at his home on the second day of the celebration. He said he is fulfilling his promise to God because his daughter-in-law delivered a healthy baby despite a fall during her pregnancy.
The guests arrive in groups from neighborhoods and villages and are led by marching bands. They bear gifts of whatever they can afford, walking and dancing in a circle before they enter. Some wave flags covered with banknotes, women carry trays of bread and pastries, men have sticks slung over their shoulders, hung with stalks of dried corn, grapes, shirts and socks.
"If we lose our traditions, we lose everything," said Isa Hadzhioliev, 28, a fifth-grade teacher in Breznitsa. "Bulgaria has better minority-rights protection than anywhere else."
These traditions have particular significance in Breznitsa because of past attempts to forcibly assimilate the population.
In 1972 the communist regime forced Bulgarian Muslims to take Christian names, the most organized and bloody campaign out of three attempts in the last century. The official purpose was to return the "true" identities to those the regime said had been forcibly converted during the Ottoman Empire.
Authorities told all Muslim men in Breznitsa to report to the village square, to look through a list and choose Christian names for their family members. When several hundred gathered to protest, they were died.
The so-called "national revival process" was expanded to the much larger ethnic Turkish population in 1985, resulting in an exodus of 350,000 refugees who crossed the border into Turkey.
Ethnic tensions were so high they became the top priority of the first post-communist government in 1989. Ten thousand Muslims surrounded the parliament in the capital, Sofia, in a peaceful protest. They spent several days in the snow, chanting "give us our names back," until government officials apologized for "the crimes of the past" and said their names would be returned.
There have been no ill feelings between Christians and Muslims before or after the violence, though.
"We don't hate anyone. We all understood this as a policy of the communist state and not a Christian policy," said Ahmed Molla, 40, one of the protesters from Breznitsa. "The people in Sofia helped us, they brought us tea, sandwiches and coffee."
'Things are better'
On Sunday, the final day of the sunet, a crowd gathers at the soccer field for prayers and speeches from political and religious leaders. A procession of horses arrives, bearing the young boys and babies to be circumcised.
They are dressed in a variety of costumes. Some wear tuxedos and satin royal robes, other people's heads are covered in traditional multicolored veils hanging with beads and coins.
After the procession leaves for the sponsor's house for the circumcision, shirtless men wrestle on the field, competing for the prize of a ram. The fighters will later embrace the newly circumcised boys and wish them the same strength when they grow up.
After 13 years of economic chaos, many Bulgarians are nostalgic for the minimal but guaranteed material standard of life during communism. But Bulgarian Muslims have always been more focused on keeping their distance from the government. Most see the recent painful years of democracy as an unqualified triumph of good over evil.
"Life was hard both then and now," said Saduk Bendzhev, 70, who supplements his monthly pension of 50 levs [$25] as a shepherd.
"Now things are better because we have our names back, and we can pray. People are happy because 60 children can be circumcised properly. Before, people went to jail for circumcision. I prefer it now, when we are all free."