Kapka Kassabova joins Elvira Mujčić in a conversation at the Basilica of Santa Barbara during a rainy Sunday morning.

As an expert travel writer, every book Kassabova produces takes much preparation in advance. Elixir (2023), for example, is the result of many encounters with people living with animals on the mountains, often surviving at the “borders” of life.

Borders are a strong theme in her narratives. According to Kassabova, pastoralism is in human DNA, and in Anima: A Wild Pastoral (2024) this perspective is further explored in her portrayal of the Karakachans, a Greek people that relies on human-animal interdependence and seasonal transhumance.

Karakachans, who reached their apex during the Ottoman Empire, are a multilingual tribe that have a strong connection with their animals. Their origin is unknown, but they originate from Greece and have a smaller presence in Bulgaria, southern Albania, and North Macedonia. One relevant aspect in their culture is that guardian dogs are especially important. Guardian dogs’ identity is triple: they identify with other dogs in their pack, and they will fight other dogs outside it; they identify with the shepherd; they identify with the sheep.

A forgotten, invisible and marginalised people, unaffected by industrialisation: pastoralism has slowly decreased and only survives in Southern Europe now.

Nonetheless, pastoralism is still part of our humanity: if it’s true that every seven years our body goes through a complete cell renewal, Kassabova says, the experience she lived while preparing for Anima changed all the cells in her body, some sort of “personal transhumance”. Pastoralism may have become invisible now, but for her, living with invisible people in invisible places with invisible animals felt more real than ever. Her goal was to bring marginal people and places to the front, to see their land. And when the land talks, stories ensue.