Bury Me Standing

by Isabel Fonseca

  An unlikely leader. And yet, apart from an unpopular obsession with a Gypsy homeland, on paper he was not so different from the more charismatic black-power brokers: “We want separate schools, our own languages taught in those schools, and our own villages. We must build houses for our people, new houses in new neighborhoods, not mixed in with the Bulgarians with whom we cannot get along. We must have our own homes for our own way of life. One day we will have our own country—Romanistan. Now we don’t even have our own places. To have a home, to have a house, is, after all, more important even than to have a country.”

  I asked Manush if there wasn’t a danger of creating an even bigger Gypsy ghetto. “The greater danger,” he replied, “is to disappear.”

  The need for a homeland must be most acute in those whose right to belong anywhere at all has been most stridently questioned. (Norman Manea has called it “the psychosis of the provisory.”) But if the idea of Romanistan has not in general tempted the Roma, perhaps it is because they have experienced enough encampment on various reservations: as slaves on the estates of noblemen, as deportees to the colonies, in the death camps, or just at the bottom of the heap.

  The Gypsies were—and are—a people on the brink. They have begun to taste the power of the idea of knowing that they are Roma; at the same time, they are in danger of becoming just another “language” (in their case, little-understood dialect) of ethnic self-assertion and victimhood. “The greater danger is to disappear,” Manush had said; but there was more than one direction for the Gypsies to disappear in.

  Over the several years since Stupava I had been a spectator at many conferences. I admired the speed and apparent ease with which the Gypsy participants took up this form of politicking. I was impressed by how well they spoke and how much they had to say. But I kept wondering: Is this really it? Konferença, kongresso, parliamento? At meeting after meeting the most promising men and women, decked out in their conference clothes, increasingly retreated into the phony language of consensus and euphemism. Was their future to be like everyone else’s, after all? What kind of “existence” was this, if not another version of “etc.”? Konferença, kongresso, parliamento …

  The world of Papusza—the silhouette of traveling Gypsies—was of course long gone. No more caravans and bears, and, please, no more kings. You didn’t have to romanticize the past to feel a real loss, and an ambivalence about the new: the enclosed, and incurably sedentary, world of the conference-goer.

  Often at these events I found that I had to escape for a while, to stop listening and clear my head. I’d walk around, fanatically inhaling, and wonder how Gypsies would ever breathe the fresh air and be the insiders they now also clearly wanted to be and had to become. It was in such a mood that Nicolae once found me, pacing another conference-center parking lot. He was always rushing between a podium and a working group at these meetings, but here he paused to say hello and to give me news from Romania. He seemed to intuit my concerns; and what he described to me made me want to cry with vicarious pride.

  The Gypsies had experienced centuries of strategic chaos, of elaborate social fragmentation and epic instability, and now they were making their case, and making it publicly. In politics, but also in work. Nicolae’s report of new Gypsy initiatives didn’t sound like much just to list them: an all-Rom brick-making enterprise here, a farming cooperative there. But the farming cooperative of forty Roma families was in Palazu Mare, just by Kogalniceanu, the Black Sea town razed by a mob, the home of the rhomboid Discobar and the little girl whose legs had been melted by an arsonist’s smoldering beam. And Nicolae had news from Hadareni, in the heart of Transylvania, where two Gypsies had been lynched and a third burned in his bed. In Hadareni the church bells tolled in warning whenever a dispossessed Gypsy dared approach the town. Now those same outsiders were setting up shop—indeed, setting up a factory, in a synagogue—to make fur hats. They were not going to be kept out. They were not going to disappear. As he told me of these endeavors I thought of Luciano, the seven-year-old Gypsy boy who had died before any Romanian doctor would treat him, and who had been buried in his new panama hat. Nicolae’s news of Rom grassroots projects were, I thought, a proper tribute to Luciano.

  In the international arena Gheorghe always emphasized what Gypsies had to offer—not the specter of the desperate Rom, the eternal victim, dependent and discriminated against. I knew it would have been easier the other way around. It was expected; human rights always describes human wrongs. And I knew he was right. They were good at everything—more enterprising and energetic, more imaginative and more good-humored, than most of the people around them—when they got the chance. They were good at everything. Everything except representing themselves.

  Nicolae Gheorghe saw ethnic politics as a fool’s paradise, a new ghetto or margin or lay-by for Gypsies. But most Roma were skeptical of an international identity (Andrzej Mirga called it “self-stigmatization” and an invitation to governments to disown their least-loved citizens). Vulnerability, however dignified, ensured that for the time being Gypsies were concerned mainly with survival in the places they lived. Few shared the idealism of Gheorghe, and even fewer recognized the pragmatism at its core.

  On his travels, Nicolae had discovered that without land or a parent country, without the special claims of an indigenous population, “the Roma” in international law “have the status of trade unions, environmental lobbies, or professional associations.” He had noticed that the foreigners most interested in the Roma were immigration authorities. He got the idea that Gypsy poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, ill health, early death, and stupendous birthrates—all record-breaking for a European population—were not the real subject. And the Roma are the largest minority in Europe. It was just their existence, their being there, and being everywhere, that stirred people, and so he too made this his theme. Gheorghe promoted an alternative—and to many a sacrilegious—identity in which people could be seen and discussed independent of property. He believed that the separation between citizenship and nationality, which in Eastern Europe neatly divides territorial and cultural allegiances, could be stretched to accommodate a transnational population made up of loyal citizens from different countries.

  Transnationalism appealed to others as well, though, and it could mean many things. To Kawczynski, for example, it meant that Roma should have a special right of passage—and to this end he had even produced a beige, passportlike document complete with fake stamps and available, through him, for one thousand deutschemarks a pop. Ian Hancock imagined a transnational identity in the form of “reunification,” which he sought through a web of organizations across the diaspora and through the standardization of the Romani language. “We came out of India as one people, sharing one language and one history. We only fragmented since we’ve been in Europe,” Hancock told the congregation. “We must be one people again.” The stressing of Indianness has never amounted to a call to mass repatriation; any Gypsy, wherever he or she lives, has had enough experience of the stranger to need no confirmation in the subcontinent. Rather, Hancock’s insistence on “reunification,” like Gheorghe’s case for a “transnational identity,” expressed the idea that a people could themselves act as a country. The use of the term “nation” to describe what were once known as tribes already widely acknowledges that possibility and that need.

  Rudko wanted to “take back the streets”; Hancock wanted to take back the narrative. Like many who champion the cause of the powerless against the abusers of power, against the usual writers of history, Hancock was entirely engaged in the redressing of wrongs, wrongs flagrant and invisible. For thirty years, his aim had been to correct the history of the victors—and thereby to reroute the destiny of the victims—and sometimes this justified what others, mainly gadjo historians, rejected as exaggerations. Hancock’s theory of a single-tribe, mass exodus out of India was not much endorsed, nor was his claim of 1.5 million Roma Holocaust victims. But who would doubt the gist of his history? And who would deny hi
s propriety in telling it? Was it possible to exaggerate the wrongs committed against Gypsies? Victims’ versions certainly had spiritual and moral truth. Among Roma, “talking back” (in Hancock’s phrase) was a particularly radical development. Frank from Los Angeles was wrong to despair.

  On the panel from left to right: Dr. Mirga, Dr. Hancock, Dr. Gheorghe, Dr. Orgovanová. On April 14, 1994, these four Rom intellectuals gave testimony before the first-ever congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., on the humen-right abouse of Roma. (photo credits 8.6)

  The governments of the formerly communist countries regard the plight of Gypsies mainly as an occasionally useful gambit in their bids for foreign aid. Minorities are a test case for democracy, or, as Havel had properly refined it, for a civil society. In theory. Nicolae Gheorghe understood that minorities, and particularly Gypsies, might at least be a showcase. And so he sought—and got—government sponsorship for a follow-up meeting in Stupava a year later, at the large summer palace of Ceausescu on Lake Snagov. (This venue had a different resonance: Romanian Gypsies in particular seemed to enjoy occupying the dictator’s garish residence; better still, on the lake was an island, and in the middle and far from his Transylvanian home, Vlad Tepes, the Impaler himself, was buried—presumably by some of his hundreds of Gypsy slaves.) And then, only a few weeks after an apparent breakthrough, Nicolae was publicly denounced by his own sponsors at a high-level international congress on minorities. The Romanian representatives complained that “Mr. Gheorghe was introduced as a ‘representative of the Romany people,’ ” whereas “this seminar is about minorities, not about ‘peoples.’ There is no question of self-determination. Minorities remain under the jurisdiction of sovereign national states. Anyway, Nicolae Gheorghe is not the representative of the Romany people; where is his ‘King’? Where is his Emperor?” For once, and understandably, Nicolae was speechless.

  Elsewhere, Manush Romanov always had something memorable to say, especially, and sweetly, in farewell. (Comings and goings also always entailed his courtly kissing of all the ladies’ hands.) Once, at the end of a visit in Sofia in which he was practically in tears for his Gypsies, he dramatically called after me, “Prohasar man opre pirende—sa muro djiben semas opre chengende”—“Bury me standing. I’ve been on my knees all my life.”

  Within the crusading Roma community every step forward also entrained a half-step back, as a reactionary and growing Roma movement sought to thwart any organization in the public eye. Sar laci and’ekh vadra, like crabs in a bucket. Violent attacks from fundamentalist, anti-intellectual Gypsies, or just from some envious, frustrated individual, were a feature of all meetings and they would not be understood by most gadjo observers, who would walk away with their prejudices confirmed. These Romany “crabs” didn’t see how far and how fast their own elite had come. They weren’t impressed that Andrzej Mirga, whose mother was an illiterate fortune-teller, was now publishing scholarly books and running for the Polish Parliament. On principle, they would identify less with the Hancock they knew than with his beloved grandfather Marko, a rat-catcher, or his great-grandmother Granny Bench, who was born in a wagon off London’s Vauxhall Bridge Road. No, the crabs wouldn’t see any progress in the move from kidnap to Capitol Hill, from kris to congressional hearing.

  Long before 1989, a French Rom called Mateo Maximoff used the journey of his own family to illustrate the dilemma which is central to the future of Romany emancipation. In 1947 he published his first novel, Le Prix de la liberté; its hero, loan, is based on Maximoff’s own grandfather, who was born a slave. The novel is set in the last period of slavery in Romania, after the revolutions of 1848, which had given some of the captives the courage to revolt. In the novel, a group of them escape from their estate and flee to the mountains and the Resistance. loan is left with a problem. He has been educated along with his master’s children and now must decide: Will he join the mutiny or stay in the library? Is he one of us or one of them? It is of course loan’s knowledge of “the library,” of the gadjo world, which will decide the outcome of the uprising, but despite or because of this he is called a traitor—as was Nicolae, as were others, and as was Papusza, who had so inspired Mirga. The new leaders were indeed “career Gypsies,” as accused. They were also the only hope for millions of Roma who had never heard of them, the ones who live in the Black Towns, the toxic slums and townships across Eastern Europe with no names, or with names like Take-It-or-Leave-It, Like-It-or-Not, No-Man’s-Land, Cambodia, and Bangladesh.

  Simione Mihai, a Kalderash boy, in his camp at Sintesti, Romania, 1992(photo credits 8.7)

  SELECTED AND ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  An asterisk indicates that the source is not specifically about Gypsies.

  General Studies

  Balic, S., et al., eds. Romani Language and Culture. Sarajevo: Institut za Proucavanje Nacionalnih Odnosa, 1989. A large collection of papers produced for a conference of the same name held in Sarajevo in 1986.

  Clebert, J-P. Les Tziganes. Paris: B. Arthaud, 1961; English translation, The Gypsies. London: Vista Books, 1963. Dated and unreliable, this is nevertheless a source of Gypsy lore.

  Fraser, A. The Gypsies. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992; revised edition, 1995. The most thorough, reliable, and readable general history, with detailed accounts of origins, migrations, and the linguistic arguments, along with extensive documentation of European persecutions.

  Grellmann, H. M. G. Die Zigeuner; English translation, Dissertation on the Gipsies. London: William Ballantine, second edition, 1807.

  Hancock, I. The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution. Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1987. The prominent Rom activist and linguist draws on many sources in his account of persecution through the ages.

  Kenrick, D., and Puxon, G. The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies. London: Sussex University Press and Chatto-Heinemann, 1972. See the Holocaust section for notes.

  Kogalniceanu, M. Esquisse sur l’histoire, les moeurs et la langue des Cigains. Berlin: Behr Verlag, 1837.

  Liegeois, J-P. Tsiganes. Paris: La Decouverte, 1983; abridged English translation, Gypsies: An Illustrated History. London: Al Saqi Books, 1986.

  ———. Gypsies and Travellers. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1987; revised edition, 1994. Reliable and useful overviews. Liegeois includes less documentation than does Fraser and more sociological analysis of, for example, official policies and prevalent attitudes towards Gypsies.

  Rehfisch, F., ed. Gypsies, Tinkers and Other Travellers. London: Academic, 1975. An excellent selection of essays.

  Vaux de Foletier, F. de. Milles ans d’histoire des Tsiganes. Paris: Fayard, 1970.

  On the Asian background and the linguistic arguments see also:

  Goeje, M. J. de. Accounts of the Gypsies in India. Delhi: New Society, 1976. Contribution to the proceedings of the Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen of Amsterdam in 1875.

  Hancock, I. “On the Migration and Affiliation of the Domba: Iranian Words in Rom, Lom, and Dom Gypsy.” International Romani Union Occasional Papers, series F, no. 8 (1993). Looks, through linguistics, at whether Middle Eastern and European Gypsies are related.

  Kenrick, D. Gypsies from India to the Mediterranean. Toulouse: CRDP, 1993.

  Rishi, W. R. “History of Romano Movement, Their Language and Culture.” In Romani Language and Culture, edited by S. Balic et al. Sarajevo: Institut za Proucavanje Nacionalnih Odnosa, 1989).

  Sampson, J. The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926.

  Turner, R. L. “The Position of Romani in Indo-Aryan.” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (third series) 5 (1926): 145–89. Sampson’s comments on this article and Turner’s reply can both be found in Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (third series) 6 (1927).

  Social Anthropology/Sociology

  Okely, J. M. The Traveller-Gypsies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. The result of field work on the campsites of British Travelers in the 1970s, this study offers insights into the maintenance of symbolic boundari
es (she explores, for example, how Gypsy notions of cleanliness inform their attitudes towards animals), economic survival, and the lives of Gypsy women. It is considered controversial because Okely rejects the widely accepted theory of (and the linguistic arguments for) the Gypsies’ Indian origins, suggesting instead that the Gypsies were indigenous folk who became outsiders with the collapse of feudal society.

  Sutherland, A. The Hidden Americans. Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland, 1975. A model study of the Gypsies’ internal social organization and their complex relations with non-Gypsies based on the author’s field work among a group of Vlach Roma in California.

  Sway, M. Familiar Strangers: Gypsy Life in America. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Particularly interesting on the Gypsies’ economic adaptability.

  Despite their regional focus, all of the above studies offer insights into Gypsies in general.