The engagement photo of Yosif and Sarina Sabita

This is the engagement photo of my parents. It was taken in 1922 in Sofia. My mother and my father are on the left and the other couple are friends of theirs whom I don't know. My mother always dressed very well. On this picture she is wearing an official dress made of taffeta with a veil and a belt. My father was a tall man and my mother always made efforts not to look so tiny next to him, so she used to wear high-heeled shoes. In those days most people got married after being introduced to each other by other people with the aim of matching them up, this was called matchmaking. My parents met that way, too. My mother had lost her mother, and arrangements were made for her to meet my father in order to enable her to leave her family, because she wasn't on good terms with her stepmother. My father's name was Yosif, although he was the firstborn son and according to the Bible he was supposed to be called Avram. My father was an Anglophile and I have heard that he often argued with his brother Avram, who was a Russophile. Being the eldest in the family, my father was respected most. My mother's parents, Shabat and Rebecca, came from the town of Berkovtsa. My mother became orphan at a very early age - her mother died when she was 5 or 6. I don't even know my grandparents' family name. Her father remarried, but his second wife was a nasty woman who treated my mother very badly. From her father's second marriage she had five stepbrothers and stepsisters. Being a child herself - she helped to look after them and took on too much - she became a hunchback as a result of the heavy work.