The world of the Romas

By: Hatto Fischer, Athens

Flooding the British labour market. Plundering the social system. Diffusing illicit drugs and fostering crime. With these headlines, British tabloids launched a media campaign against the Roma — or Gypsies — just months before the entry of several eastern and central European countries into the European Union.

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Quite important in terms of society is that there prevails a dominant prejudice against gypsies as if thieves and ready to steal the children. Whenever their colorful caravan appeared, neighbors would run to put their chicken into safety and lock the children inside their houses.

The Roma shared the tragic fate of Jewish people insofar as many of them ended up as well in concentration camps during the National Socialist era in Germany and perished. Less is known about their fate compared to that of the Jewish people and since not much is known about the latter, generally speaking, it is very disturbing to have to acknowledge how little is known about the Roma.

Compared to the nomads, the moving about reflects their different cultural, geographical and social orientation. There is a need to come together and to depart as if networking was already in their blood before it became a well known concept for co-operation across Europe. As such they are carriers of an identity rooted in the streets and roads of Europe and demonstrate a sort of independence and freedom from the usual traps of society i.e. to have only an identity if in possession of property. Naturally this makes them into a natural and socio-cultural challenge to those who feel trapped inside their own acquisitions and gilded cages. Something along those lines is stated by Yorghos Tzirtzilakis when reviews the works of Maria Papadimitriou and in so doing cites the sociologist Anthony Giddens who “claimed (in 1989) that if we do not idealize living conditions we shall see more clearly that most of our own ‘sophisticated’ institutions are anything but natural to human life: the world created by industrial civilization does not necessarily reflect progress.”

Thus a more serious study of their movements, customs, music, way of bringing up children, man woman relationships is needed not merely in scientific, but in an artistic and social-anthropological, that is humane way. It will mean a confrontation with the own ‘pathetic viewpoint’ in order to do away with a series of prejudices intermingled with clichés and associations e.g. their world is messy while ours is clean, ordered and clear especially in the distinction between what is private, what is public as if such clarity in the social and global order exists nowadays! Or as Maria Papadimitriou would describe it, the first thing to discover is that what is to us private and public, does not exist in the same way in their world and where in our world borders exist, they have a different way to draw the line. Perceiving them in that way is to first understand them before judging them on the basis of how they live.Yorghos Tzirtzilakis puts it in the following contrasting way:

“Of course, these people are associated with an almost primitive model of life and dwelling, always temporary and under a state of persecution. Yet this same state promotes the ‘otherness’ and the mythologies of a population still accompanied by secrets and spirits. I am aware of the objections to ‘dirty living’ and the demands of rationalization, but we must admit that these areas contain worlds and myths (like the spectre of ‘Carmen’, for instance) which we love and hate at the same time. Worlds and myths which provide a recognizable (exotic) identity as much as they perpetuate exclusion and marginalization.”

To overcome the ‘pathetic glance’, equally the romanticized version of the ‘others’, it would be worthwhile to follow the works by Maria Papadimitriou as she discovers Tama“Tama is located in Aviliza, a run-down area in western Athens 10 Km from the center of the capital and very close to the new Olympic village. Itinerant populations such as Gypsies and Vlach Romanians from north of Greece use this area as a pied-a-terre…

…when I found myself there, (what) attracted me (was) the place itself; haphazard layout, unexpected events, unplanned art works, strange people. What I saw there is the concept of a makeshift settlement, a kind of mobile post-urban city which serves its inhabitants’ temporary housing needs and economic activities. Everything forms part of this small town. Landscape-clothes-interiors-unfinished buildings-streets – cars – the sky – the people. I started to visit Aviliza everyday – I became an addicted visitor.”

Seen through the eyes of artists, it will become ever more important to hear their music while following the movements both when at work or when swirling around the camp fire. For crucial is that they remind everyone as to what existed ‘before us’, that is prior to the car making every remote area accessible and thereby bringing with it the destruction of nature and places or niches for people to exist outside of ‘normal’ society, if they so would wish. Especially in a world demanding from everyone ‘full co-operation and compliance’ to the authorities, this reminder evokes another association as to the difference between ‘nomos’ and ‘physis’ while beginning to comprehend that in their world people and nature are akin to one another in a more natural way than what seems still possible in an over commercialized, equally from nature alienated urban society:

Before us

Water did not sicker away

Fires did not extinguish

The wind made love to the leaves

 

Before us

The earth was pregnant

No one dared to touch her insides

Neither the dew

Nor the ant

 

Before us

The wild animals were tame

And still

Trees welcomed the arrival of the birds

Flowers became birds’ nests

The fishes lived in harmony

 

Before us

The winds were excited about heights

The water murmured in depth

Cracked the dreams in the fire

 

Before us

Nothing

 

Before us

Neither grave

Nor native soil

 

If poetry of the Romas can inspire to take another look not only at nature, but equally at human nature so as to discover other languages, including the love of the wind in leaves, then it will matter what society understands and is willing to learn from the others.“Tama in Greek means offering but also the promise of an offering to a Saint in return for his or her help – a VOW.” , op.cit. Maria Papadimitriou, T.A.M.A., p.

Poem is taken from LICHTUNGEN 100/XXV.Jg./2004. Rajko Djuric was born 1947 near Belgrade and grew up in a Roma family; today he lives in Berlin. He studied in Belgrade philosophy and sociology and was general secretary of the Romani P.E.N. center. In German he published partly in German, partly in Roma-Serbian language poetry editions such as “Gypsy – people made out of fire and water” (1986); Gypsy Odes (1988); “Roma – a voyage into the hidden world of the gypsies” (1989). Translation from German into English Hatto Fischer

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