“There was a conflict,” the news report would say. “Two women from neighboring Romani tribes exchanged words about a man,” says one article from 2012 about one fight that resulted in two deaths. Later in the evening, one of the families got drunk and went to seek revenge for their honor, armed with “axes, clubs, bats, metal pipes, shovels.” In the case of the murder from 2015, “the 27-year-old man was walking down the street with his 6-year old son, when he was attacked.” The report continues to say that the mass fight involved 50 people.

Another article talks about a fight between two Romani tribes that have no blood relation to each other. The reporter visited the ghetto and talked with people there, including small children. He gleaned a little into some of the dynamics. “This other tribe,” he was told, “are new to here, we don’t know if they’re Christian or Muslim.” But what was the reason for the fight? Nobody, not a single soul in the ghetto, knew. They all seem to have shrugged when asked about it by the reporter.

Here is one thing we can tell you right away. Neither police, nor news reporters or journalists, nor even long-time non-Romani neighbors and friends will ever know what caused these fights and what exactly happened. Every Roma person who was interviewed, even the grieving mother of the 27-year-old man and the grieving wife of the man killed in the 2012 fight, only give vague answers. And they know how to shift the focus. They share the grief and despair. “He was so young, only 27 years old. His son was in shock,” says the grieving mother. “I now have 6 children to feed, I have no money,” says the widow several times, after sharing that she saw nothing of the fight other than “a broken shovel.”

These are the only details outsiders can get.

Mass fights do happen in, and across, Romani communities. When a conflict escalates to a physical altercation on a mass scale and especially if someone dies, this hits national news and people believe that the Roma club each other to death at every conflict.

We’re not here to put rose-tinted glasses on your eyes. Yes, mass fights happen. Deaths also happen - just like they happen in non-Romani, mainstream society when physical altercations escalate. But these are rare - extremely rare - and they are the only thing that outsiders ever see.

Many cases from mainstream culture that result in physical altercations and death seem to blend away as isolated incidents, even the ones that hit national news. In Romani communities, such conflicts are expertly defused before they escalate. Only rare exceptions reach the levels of a mass fight.

Contrary to the stereotype, mass fights in Romani communities are not mindless, nor alcohol-induced, nor spur-of-the-moment. They only happen when a conflict has been brewing for a long time and when multiple layers of diplomacy, negotiation, and conflict-resolution have yielded no results.

A recent example in our tribe

A couple of weeks ago, a conflict escalated over here too. One man from our tribe - a nephew of Pepi’s - had borrowed money from a man in a related tribe but was struggling to pay it back. After months and months of talks and postponements, the lender showed up at the door of the borrower, together with two of his relatives. This was at the crisis center where most families from our tribe are currently living in. The creditors barged in and started hitting Pepi’s nephew. Within minutes, his father, brother, and two of his cousins were there fighting them off. Since the police station is adjacent to the crisis center, the police heard about this quickly and the three attackers were arrested for 24 hours.

Now that the line had been crossed and people were hit, neither tribe could be sure that an angry relative from the other tribe won’t escalate further. So, on the following day, as the 24 hours of the arrest were about to run out, the area outside the crisis center was fuller than a stadium.

“We’re gathering,” Pepi’s sister told him when she called, which was enough information for him to immediately call a taxi and go to the crisis center. Relatives on the maternal and paternal side of Pepi’s nephew were flooding in from 3 neighborhoods in our city. Similarly, the other tribe was calling in on all their relatives.

While Pepi was on his way, Martina received a Facebook message from one of the teenage sisters of the nephew who had been attacked. “How are you doing?” she asked. “I’m ok, your uncle is on his way,” Martina replied, assuming that she was checking up on that. “Why?” she asked. “Because of the fight,” Martina said. It turned out that she was staying with a friend, only now got online, and had no idea what was going on. As soon as she saw “fight,” she video-called to ask what happened. In the 20 seconds it took Martina to tell her, she had put on her shoes and jacket and was leaving to join the others.

You might remember us mentioning, the crisis center in front of which this congregation of two large Romani tribes was happening, is adjacent to a police station. Of course, the policemen knew what was brewing. But when they approached the Roma, they were talked into staying away. “There’s an engagement ceremony tomorrow,” one of Pepi’s sisters told the police. And it was true. This was happening a day before a planned celebration. “We’re gathering to clean up and prepare everything.”

The police watched closely but - even though the air was charged - the real reason they didn’t do anything was because nothing was happening. The large crowd was sitting calmly. People were drinking their coffee, smoking their cigarettes, chatting with their relatives.

The point here was a show of strength.

Like two armies at the ready. The goal is not to fight. The goal is to show that, if it comes to it, they will and can fight.

Eventually, representatives from each tribe started talking things out. These are usually “elders” in the tribe, very rarely the specific individuals who had been “wronged”, and the point is to understand what happened and negotiate a solution. In this case, the other tribe acknowledged that it was out of line to barge in and attack the nephew, so they offered to forgive his debt. It was also agreed that the nephew won’t file any charges against the attackers even though the police had been insisting that he does.

Then everyone went on with their day. The whole thing took 3-4 hours between placing the calls to everyone, gathering, negotiating, and reaching a solution. This is how the vast majority of such mass-fight-gatherings pan out.

Why the looming threat of violence?

Still, it can feel extreme for an outside observer to know that the implied threat here is that at a moment’s notice people are ready to fight each other - and not just exchange a few slaps, but grab rocks, or shovels, or whatever is in the vicinity. If a fight happens, it’s an all-or-nothing fight.

And this is the point. This is why the negotiations are effective. Both sides have teeth.

In the mainstream world, it’s acceptable to call the police when you feel threatened. If you gather hundreds of close and distant relatives to protect you? Not so acceptable. In the Romani world, calling the police is what is seen as too aggressive, violent, and downright an unforgivable betrayal. The Roma don’t trust the police to manage their conflicts, and rightfully so.

Justice for the Roma is something that they can only ever give themselves. They never receive it from the external world - not from police, not from institutions, not from society. Where a regular person from mainstream society will call the police, knowing full well the implied threat that a policeman will carry, a Roma person calls on the tribe. Where an average person relies on police to shoot or hit or detain someone, a Roma person relies on the tribe to be ready to use violence. And where an average person relies on the court and an entire institutional justice system to reach verdicts and solutions, a Roma person relies on the tribe.

All functions that mainstream societies have delegated and outsourced to the police and justice system, the Roma have retained within their communities. It is exactly because they, themselves, carry the weight of distributing justice that they are so connected to violence and, at the same time, extremely wise in when to use it.

How best to illustrate this? Every person walking into such a gathering is ready to both dish out and receive a beating. There are no empty threats. It’s exactly like walking into a battle with the purpose of defending your people. Which is why most of these conflicts are resolved at the negotiation level.

A few words about the deaths we mentioned at the beginning

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In the fall of 2020, Martina was part of a meeting between the non-profit ATD and the district mayor of Ilinden, where the quarter of our Romani tribe is located. ATD wanted permission to organize a festival for the children. The mayor spent the meeting venting some racist thoughts in an attempt to make an argument how there’s no point in doing anything for “these” kids.

One of the things he listed out, with disgust, was how, an year ago, when he arrived with the gendarmerie to demolish part of the Romani houses, he discovered in one of them that a woman was sleeping on the ground next to a pig. This was supposed to show that the Roma are subhuman and by demolishing their homes he did everyone - even the Roma themselves - a big favor.

One of the most prevailing stereotypes against the Roma is that they ruin things. This, their critics say, is why they haven’t built anything lasting. And the most common example used to underpin this statement is how when Roma are “given” social housing, they break things and move in their horses.

Across Europe, the Nomadic Roma have often been described as messy and loud, arriving in a pristine location, setting up camp, and leaving everything in disarray when they leave.

How much of this is true?

Sharing a home with pigs and horses

What we find ironic is that outsiders maintain two contradictory stereotypes against the Roma as equally valid, without pausing long enough for cognitive dissonance to set in. “The Roma abuse their animals” and “The Roma share their homes with their animals.”

The reality of Romani communities living in poverty is that they rely on their horses to survive. We have talked about this in depth here:

This is one of several reasons why the horse is regarded with great respect in Romani culture. Horses have been companions and comrades of the Roma for centuries and are seen as members of the family.

So, what happens when a Romani family is plucked from their community and open-air quarter with small houses and put into social housing in a Soviet-era building? What do they do with the horse? Abandon it? Kill it?

“The only possible step is to sell the horse,” Pepi says, “But this is done as a last resort because it means, essentially, that you’re cutting off both your arms.”

Without the horse, the family loses its main source of income and plummets further down in poverty.

So, most Roma bring the horse with them.

The horse eats before the children. If there’s only enough money or food to feed the horse or the children, it is the children who don’t eat. The horse has to always be comfortable, fed, well-rested, and warm. Romani families sacrifice from their own table if they must, so they can take care of their horse.

The problem with Romani families bringing a horse into a Soviet-style residential building is really not a Romani problem. The real issue is that social policy is inadequate and mainstream society has low emotional intelligence and no understanding of social, economic, and cultural context to see why destroying the house of a Romani family “in the ghetto”, forcing them into a hostile living space and then sitting back and judging while waiting for them to be grateful, is in no way “inclusive” or a solution to anything.

And the woman sleeping on the ground next to a pig? Passing judgement here is not even a racist thing, though racism naturally plays a role. But the big problem is the much deeper disdain, shared far and wide, for people living in poverty. And this, too, is not a Romani problem but very much a problem for our modern, “civilized” world.

But enough about the animals. Because what outsiders blame the Roma for is that they themselves, with their own hands, break and destroy things.

Are the Roma serial destroyers?

We’ve talked before how, after the partial demolition of the Romani quarter of Pepi’s tribe, the majority of families were placed in a crisis center with abhorrent conditions.

All of the families are regularly threatened with eviction, but some more than the others. Because they break things.

It’s always men. 3-4 men in particular. It’s always when they’ve had a little too much to drink. And it’s always when a deep undefined rage sets in and they pummel the window of their single room with their bear hands or kick down the door. Sometimes the sink. “He went wild again,” is what the surrounding community says.

The question here is not the obvious “It’s only 3-4 people, not the entire community.” The question is why do these men destroy the only place they can tentatively call “home”?

It’s an easy answer. It’s not their home. It will never be their home - they are reminded of this constantly by the social workers whose offices are in the same building. Their actual homes were bulldozed to dust.

If your home is destroyed or taken away and you are placed in a bug-infested, decaying building, given a single small room, and there is no escape route, no other place for you to live - won’t you be consumed by a burning rage? When the mayor demolished the quarter he also removed it as an official address, and as a result the majority of the tribe don’t have valid ID documents. Without an ID document, you can’t sign anything, specifically a lease - even if we assume a scenario where a white middle-class homeowner would rent out to a Romani family. Because, as we all know, they break things.

The Roma themselves take care of their rooms in the crisis center. They paint the walls, repair the plumbing, haul in second-hand furniture from besides garbage containers, and do their absolute very best to create a home. But they still grieve for the quarter that they were born and raised in, the small houses that they built with their own hands, and the community that has been living there for a century. So some of the men spiral into a rage when they get drunk and break the room that is both their home and not. And the next day, when they sober up, they repair the damage again with their own two hands.

Pepi’s niece Vela, together with her husband Nicky and their 4 children, was recently evicted from the room they had in social housing since the demolition of their home in 2017.

They left the room in complete disarray when they moved out. Trash, ripped wallpaper, discarded clothes.

“It’s a middle finger to the municipality,” Pepi explains. “They took care of this room for 7 years, only to be thrown out like garbage.”

When Vela and her family moved in 2017, the house had recently been through a fire. The walls were charred black. The boards in the ceiling of Vela’s room were so fragile that her blind cousin on the floor above would fall through Vela’s ceiling. One time he broke his leg.

The fire damage was repaired by Vela herself, her husband, and several other relatives. The municipality refused to reimburse them because they couldn’t show receipts for the repairs, even though the fire was no secret to anyone.

“There is no way they were going to leave this room in a condition ready for someone else to move in,” Pepi says. “They left it in a way that would make the municipality work in order to be able to rent it out again.”

Perception versus reality

In his long rant, the mayor kept repeating that the Roma do not know nor want to take care of their living space. They are surrounded by trash, he said. The river splitting the ghetto in half is full of trash, he said. He has not been alone in this belief - there is an entire Initiative Committee in the neighborhood that has been on a years-long mission to remove the Romani quarter and its inhabitants.

So, are their perceptions true?

Not only that. The entire community would regularly clear the river, repair broken things, and make their shared space livable and beautiful.

Every single house in the “ghetto” is built, painted, and furnished with their own hands.

“But it’s easy for outsiders to think we lived in the trash,” Pepi says. “If you bring several dozen kilograms of metal or wood or appliances, you store them outside of your house. There’s just no room.”

“On the outside, a Romani house might look in decay. But,” Pepi says, “once you open the door you might even feel humbled and unworthy to enter.”

The Roma don’t destroy things. They beautify them, if they’re left alone long enough by a society tearing down their walls.

“They cheat.”

“They beat their wives.”

“They sell their daughters.”

“They are rapists.”

When Martina scandalized her white middle-class peers by falling in love with Pepi, a Romani man, and starting a relationship with him, she received a lot of warnings based on the above stereotypes.

Outsiders are convinced that the Romani see women as inferior to men. Roma culture is often described as patriarchal: The man is in charge. The woman cooks, cleans, and bears children.

Is any of this true?

“The woman gives the signal.”

It was funny when a friend asked us what was the moment we realized we had feelings for each other. We gave different answers.

For Martina, this happened during a conversation. In this conversation, Pepi confessed his feelings and Martina confessed hers.

For Pepi, it happened a couple of weeks earlier when we were sitting next to each other, and Pepi put his arm around Martina’s waist for a few moments. Martina didn’t push him away, or move away, or - what he also fully expected - slap him.

If she had flinched or moved or showed any discomfort, Pepi would have never made another attempt. We would have remained friends.

For Pepi, this was Martina “giving the signal.” If a woman doesn’t “give the signal,” a Roma man will not make a move.

To use modern, post “Me Too” language, Romani men are masterful at seeking out consent. If they don’t get consent, they don’t pursue the woman. They might be driven mad by love, they might suffer the biggest heartbreak, but they will never pressure a woman who is not giving them “the signal.”

The signals of consent are non-verbal but very clear. Romani women are fluent in navigating them and never have a single shred of doubt on whether to invite someone to pursue them or stop him dead in his tracks.

The stereotype that Romani men are rapists is probably among the most outlandish ones for exactly this reason. They always accept the “no.”

And the drive to dominate over a woman, to bend her to your will, is foreign to Roma culture.

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The Roma woman is a Queen

While gender roles in Roma culture are clearly defined, there is no hierarchy in them. The woman is in charge of the home and the family but this doesn’t make her inferior to the man.

The man is in charge of providing, which literally translates to caring for the woman and the family. Everything the man does is for the woman and the family. The woman “gives soul to the man,” as one of Pepi’s sisters said once. Most modern-day Romani don’t have enticing or lucrative career paths ahead of them. Money is earned with back-breaking manual labor that pays very little. It is a given, in Roma culture, that men sacrifice greatly - especially their health and longevity - to put bread on the table.

It is another given for the Roma man to immediately hand over the money he earned to his wife as soon as he walks through the door. Being in charge of the home, the woman is also in charge of how the money is spent. While the man is traditionally the one earning money, this does not put him in a more powerful position than his wife. The money he makes is for her.

What if he makes a lot of money? Historically mistrustful of banks, and knowing that liquid cash gets spent too easily, the Romani save their money by buying gold. When they decide how to spend it, the gold gets pawned. But until then, it is worn proudly and joyfully by the women as earrings, bracelets, and rings.

Do Romani men begrudge any of this? No, exactly the opposite.

A Roma man would feel most proud, most in his element, and most in tune with his masculine energy, when his family is fed and his wife wears gold. Even if he is in rags, dirty from manual labor, and exhausted in his bones. He wants his wife to look like the Queen that he already sees her as.

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The litmus test: Is a pregnant woman beautiful?

You can tell a lot about how a certain culture treats women by looking at how it sees the image of the mother.

In modern mainstream societies, pregnant women are not considered beautiful. Pregnancy, and its effects on the female body, is something that the woman should “bounce back from” as fast as possible after giving birth.

Women are not meant to get big. They are meant to stay lean and thin. In mainstream cultures, it is a common occurrence for the man to lose attraction once the woman advances in her pregnancy. It is common for the woman to lose some self-esteem.

In Roma culture, the most beautiful woman is the pregnant woman.

Getting big is celebrated. It means that things are going well and the baby is growing.

When Martina got pregnant, one of Pepi’s sisters, Nana, gave her some advice over a cup of coffee because this was Martina’s first pregnancy. After telling her to drink a lot of water, and to walk a lot for an easy birth, she then spread her arms and, with a big grin, roared: “You’ll become a bear, Marti!” It was a joyful statement of fact, without a tinge of shame. A few weeks earlier, a friend of Martina from her white, middle-class circle had also shared some womanly wisdom about pregnancy. “You’ll gain weight,” she said in a somber tone as if she was giving a terminal diagnosis.

Of course, this was all advice and wisdom exchanged among women, but at its basis lies a woman’s desirability in the eyes of men. What do Roma men think about a pregnant wife?

For one, they brag about how big she’s getting. For them, this is not a negative thing. She’s even more beautiful, in their eyes.

A Romani man will lift heaven and earth for his pregnant wife, not only because she’s bearing his child but also because he’s now even more madly in love. “If she wants a single strawberry,” Pepi explains, “He will go get her a strawberry even if it means he steals it.”

In the Romanes language, khamni means pregnant. And khamnie, pronounced kham-nee-eh, is what a man calls his pregnant wife. It is best translated as “my pregnant one,” and is the most loving and intimate term of affection, next to romnie, which translates to “my wife.”

“Khamnie,” Pepi would say on the phone, “I’m coming home from work. Want to grab coffee?”

“What shall we have for dinner, khamnie?” He would ask.

“Khamnie, let’s watch a movie.”

As Martina’s due date approached, she realized that being called khamnie by Pepi would be one of the things she’d miss most about being pregnant.

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The mother in Roma culture

In our Balkan context, it is a real eye-opener to see how the Romani treat, see, and talk about their mothers.

In all Balkan and Eastern European countries, swearing always involves the mother.

We don’t say “F off.” We say “F your mother.”

When we want to say something bad happened, we say “It F’d its mother.”

When we want to say that something bad happened to us, we say “It F’d my mother.”

The list goes on, but you get the gist.

The Romani never, ever involve anyone’s mother when they swear. And they do get angry, they don’t avoid conflict, and they do get very fiery with their language. But where most Bulgarians would say “F your mother,” a Romani would say the much more creative “May fire burn your head.” Sometimes they’ll add, “and melt you.”

There is an area where the Romani mention the mother with the same frequency as Balkan people mention her in swearing.

Songs.

There are many, many songs in Roma culture devoted to the mother, filled with gratitude, grief (if the mother has died,) and deep appreciation for all the care and sacrifice.

But even putting this aside, most songs mention the mother as if the song itself is a confession to the mother.

“I love this girl, mother, I will die for her.”

“I’m all alone, mother.”

“My back broke, from all this work, mother.”

It is very, very hard to find a Roma song where the word daje (“mother”) is not mentioned at least once.

In the everyday reality of the Romani, mothers are always present in the lives of their adult children. There is no shame in being close to your mother, going to your mother for advice, crying on your mother’s shoulder, and just wanting to hang out with your mother.

When mainstream culture shames adults for being too close to their mommies, this is a commentary on stunted emancipation, perceived or real. You need to break free from your mother in order to become an adult.

In Roma culture, this emancipation happens gradually. The mothers don’t stop it and their children remain close to them throughout their entire lives.

When you have a Goddess

What makes it impossible for the Romani to develop misogyny is that, deep down, in their value and faith system, they recognize both masculine and feminine divinity.

The fact that they worshipped a Goddess when they arrived in Christianized, Medieval Europe centuries ago, got them branded as devil-worshippers and sentenced them to unspeakable violence.

Now, on the surface, they have abandoned their old religion. But only on the surface.

In real life, from how they approach a love interest, to how they treat their wives, to how they treat their mothers, it is plain to see that the Goddess worship is very much alive.

Do you think the sentence above is true? Do you think it is even a little bit true? Does it sound exaggerated?

We will tell you the facts. But first, let’s look at the bigger questions. Do the Romani lie? And more importantly: what makes them lie?

“In case they don’t believe me”

Recently, Pepi had a health problem that forced him to spend 20 days out of the month on sick leave so he can rest at home. Because of that, he received only a small portion of his salary. The rest would be paid out, in a week or so, by our national insurance agency. So, Pepi called the office of a private judge where he makes monthly payments on an old loan. He wanted to tell them that he’ll be late on the payment this month.

“I’m in hospital,” he told the lady on the phone. “I’m very sick, and had to be hospitalized.”

Then, he continued.

“I didn’t get my full salary. I only received 40 BGN (= 20 USD.)”

The lady told him they understand, and can wait until he receives his full income.

Later, Martina asked him:

“Why did you exaggerate? The truth, alone, was going to be enough to get you an extension.”

“It’s a precaution,” he said, “in case they don’t believe me.”

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It’s an ironic vicious cycle. You expect not to be believed. You expect to be dismissed and disregarded. So you lie in an effort to make the truth more true.

Did it matter, to that accountant in the office, if Pepi was hospitalized or recovering at home? Did it matter if he received 40 BGN or 100 BGN or 500 BGN? The correct answer should be “no.” What should matter is that he was sick and the bulk of his income was delayed.

But the Romani don’t deal with “shoulds” when it comes to institutions and anyone with authority or power. They don’t expect to be treated fairly. They don’t expect to be extended the some courtesy, rights, and even attitude, that everyone else receives. Fair treatment is, to them, an exception that they need to orchestrate and arrange for themselves.

Pepi wanted to communicate two things on that phone call. “I have been sick” and “My salary is being delayed.” He did communicate those two things. They were true. The detail he added, while untrue, was meant to penetrate the indifference and hostility and ensure that the actual truth is heard.

Did the boy really keep falling through the floor?

In 2017, a number of houses in the Roma “ghetto” our tribe has lived in for a century, were demolished under the supervision of the mayor and police. The people who lost their homes were later placed in social housing, specifically: old two-story buildings nearby.

Vela, together with her husband and children, was placed on the first floor of these houses. Her aunt, Todorka, together with her children and grandchildren, was placed right above them: on the second floor.

The house had just been through a fire, when Vela and Todorka moved in. The walls were charred black. The wooden boards that served as a floor for Todorka and a ceiling for Vela, would creak and break. Todorka and the children quickly learned to step around holes and weak spots on the floor.

However, one of the kids, Kerim, is almost fully blind. So he wasn’t always able to step on solid ground. Often he would step into a hole and the entire board around it would collapse under his weight.

“Kerim has fallen through our ceiling at least a dozen times,” Vela said when Martina asked her once if Todorka’s story was true. One of those times he even broke his leg.

The house was eventually repaired by Vela and her husband, and other members of the tribe. Not enough for it to be considered in a livable condition, but enough to mend the fire damage.

When Vela tried to get reimbursed by the municipality for the repairs, she was told she had to provide proof.

“I had pictures of the fire damage on my old phone, but it broke a long time ago,” Vela says.

What other proof can she provide? There are no receipts, no officially hired repairmen, no witnesses other than the Romani themselves.

Even with the repairs, the building is still officially considered dangerous. The municipality is, on paper, obligated to do a full repair before placing anyone there, let alone families with children.

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Even with all this information, when Martina was talking with a human rights lawyer about Todorka’s living situation, it was only when she showed the birds-eye picture of the house taken from a nearby bridge that made the lawyer’s eyes grow wide.

“This is absurd,” the lawyer said. “Look at these walls. Is this tarpaulin on the roof? Can you send me the picture so we can add it to the file?”

Yes, it is absurd. It is so absurd that when you tell someone about it, they can barely believe it.

And this is exactly the point.

The Romani are put in so many absurd situations by the surrounding hostile racist society, that when you hear them talk about it, you think they are exaggarating. Until you see it with your own eyes.

How do you make truth sound true?

The reason Martina was meeting with a human rights lawyer on behalf of Todorka in 2021 was because Todorka had been served an eviction notice by the municipality due to unpaid rent. She was about to be kicked out on the street.

Did Todorka really not pay rent?

The lawyer told us to look for receipts. Todorka brought out all of her documentation, filed away in a folder under the mattres.

She had receipts for the entire time she had been living there except for several months earlier that year.

“Did you pay rent for these months?” Martina asked her.

“I went with cash to the municipality counter every month,” Todorka answered, “but they kept saying I should pay it all in bulk later.”

The municipality declined Todorka’s rent. Not in writing. Verbally, over the counter. When she came to pay the entirety of the debt she owed, on the day the municipality official had told her, she was rejected again. They couldn’t accept backpay, they said.

Todorka lost her court case. After several appeals, she was finally evicted in the fall of 2023.

The municipality is unrelenting in wanting to free up this house. Vela and her family have been facing similar pressure and threats of eviction.

Do you believe their stories?

And the more interesting question.

If you were them, and nobody believed you when you told them what has been happening, what would you say to make the truth sound true?

Originally published by Martina Petkova in the magazine “An Injustice” on Medium in April 2021.

The new WandaVision series struck a chord for me. Something about the character of Wanda Maximoff felt very familiar.

At first, I thought, “It’s because she’s Eastern European, like me.”

Then I thought, “It’s because she’s struggling with grief and loss, like me.”

But no, there was more. Hexes. “Chaos” magic. Indomitable, reality-altering power — “wasted” on a woman who just wants a simple life with her husband and children.

Why did that feel so familiar?

Turns out, it was because I was raised right next to it. I was raised to fear and hate it.

The original character of Wanda from the 1970s Marvel Comics was Romani. Here’s a paragraph about her childhood, from Wikipedia.

“After Django steals bread to feed his family, the locals attack the Roma tribe burning down their homes. The Maximoff wagon is set on fire with Marya still inside and Django is beaten by multiple attackers.”

Wanda and her family were victims of racial persecution. By locals, like me.

Why Westview?

This is not breaking news. Wanda’s Romani heritage has been well-known among Marvel fans. When she was introduced in the MCU, played by Elisabeth Olsen, accusations of “whitewashing” followed right behind.

There are many think pieces online about how the MCU struggles to get Wanda’s heritage “right.” How it doesn’t know how to represent Romani culture so it completely erases it. Another wave of criticism was stirred recently by the WandaVision Halloween episode where Wanda says she’s disguised as a “Sokovian fortuneteller” — a double-whammy of playing on the racial stereotype of the Roma fortuneteller and at the same time not even acknowledging the character is Roma at all.

WandaVision is a remarkably introspective show for a superhero franchise. It’s a character study, a deep exploration of grief, loss, childhood trauma, and identity.

And yet, Wanda’s Roma identity only flashed briefly as a mislabeled Halloween costume.

Didn’t it?

I feel it was always there. I feel Wanda’s Roma identity cannot be escaped regardless of whether MCU writers incorporate Romani culture.

It was a distant echo but a powerful one.

WandaVision is not at all about Wanda being Roma. It is, however, inadvertently about how the Roma are seen, experienced, and (mis)interpreted by outsiders.

In what was probably an unconscious decision, the writers are telling us as much: The entire show takes place in the fictional town of Westview.

We examine Wanda’s journey through the eye of Western culture.

Wanda’s super-powers

I’m from Bulgaria, one of the countries with the largest Roma minorities. The Romani are generally despised, marginalized, and scapegoated here. An average Bulgarian will tell you they are thieves, lazy, and good for nothing.

Like with any case of scapegoating, there is much more going on under the surface. Much like all Europeans, Bulgarians are, in fact, terrified of the Roma. We are afraid that the Roma “have many children and will one day outnumber us and take over our ancient country.” We are afraid the Roma will rob, rape, and murder us when we encounter them in the streets.

And we’re afraid of hexes. Few will ever admit it but it’s still part of our collective psyche. We don’t believe in curses, but a “Gypsy curse” works. If a Romani person casts a curse on you, only a priest might be able to save you.

Of course, these are all stereotypes, and how little they have to do with reality is beside the point.

The point is the fear. The specific brand of fear that is born when you scapegoat someone. On the surface, you attain a lot of power. But unconsciously, you also give up a lot of power. This is why the most vicious racists and abusers are, deep down, people who shrivel in fear.

In WandaVision, Wanda claims her identity as the Scarlett Witch: the most powerful being in the Universe. Her brand of magic — chaos magic — can literally end the world but also create reality out of nothing.

What an incredible symbol for the Roma after a thousand years of brutality, persecution, and enslavement across Europe because they were seen as “tricksters” and “bringers of chaos.”

Wanda’s traumatic childhood

In the comics, Wanda and her twin brother are raised by a Romani couple — Django and Marya. The backstory having been retconned, in some comics Django and Marya are the twins’ parents, while in others Django is their uncle.

In any case, the twins were raised by this Roma couple in a Romani camp. One day, Django stole a loaf of bread to feed the family. As punishment, his wagon along with the entire Romani camp was burned down by angry villagers.

This piece of backstory could be taken out from a history book.

Except, here in Europe we don’t really include these stories in our history books. Anti-Roma violence is ingrained in Europe, specifically the punishing kind of violence — the burning down of entire villages and the erasure of entire communities as a reaction to one transgression. It has happened consistently throughout history and continues to happen today.

But we don’t write about it and don’t talk about it.

In the MCU, this backstory was rewritten completely. Wanda and her brother are from the fictional Eastern European country “Sokovia” and lose their parents and home through a bomb experiment gone wrong.

Clearly, the writers felt explosions are more compelling than stolen loaves of bread and burnt wagons.

But even if you take away the racial persecution, the disproportionate violence, and the centuries of brutality, you can’t take away the symbolism. Bomb or not, it’s still fire. Childhoods still go up in flames. Children are still rendered orphaned, homeless, and outsiders to society — and then, still viewed as if they are the dangerous ones.

Wanda’s true desire

Where the writers of WandaVision got very close to Wanda’s Romani heritage was in her deepest desire.

She is incredibly powerful — in fact, the most powerful being in the Universe — and yet, she has no lust for power. What she does want, is a peaceful life with her family.

Her nemesis, the witch Agatha, is appalled at how the Scarlet Witch “wastes” her powers on suburban family life.

The Roma have always been criticized for being “unorganized” — having never formed their own state or owned any land, they are seen as inferior by “civilized” societies.

In reality, the Roma have always been master craftsmen, artisans, musicians, passing down their unique skills generation after generation. They have always been very organized — in their communities, in their groups, in their culture and customs, in their Nomadic lifestyle.

The thing is, this has always been very internal. The Roma don’t force it on outsiders. They don’t explain themselves. They don’t care about markers of prestige or about hoarding property. They have never, not once in their thousand years of history, tried to colonize or enslave others.

Romani culture is very rich and varied but if there’s one way to generalize it, it’s probably this: The Roma are highly skilled, intelligent, entrepreneurial, and talented people who don’t care about tooting their horn. They care about living their life with joy, in their communities, with their families, practicing their crafts.

Wanda’s complete lack of interest in colonizing the Universe despite her immense power is, actually, a true — if accidental — homage to her Romani heritage.

Agatha’s desire to steal, to own this power, to put it “to better use,” is a true — if accidental — homage to how Western culture views the types of craft and skills traditionally practiced by the Roma.

Whose guilt is this about?

Of course, in WandaVision, Wanda does colonize an entire town. In her grief, she casts a hex and creates an entire reality where the love of her life is still alive and the residents of Westview are quite literally enslaved to keep up the illusion.

It’s a story about grief, denial, and then, acceptance.

Also about guilt.

In a scene during the finale, the hex is lifted briefly. The residents of Westview regain their autonomy, surround Wanda, and in an escalation of aggression tell her how she has made them suffer.

A man says, “When we sleep, we have your nightmares.”

“We feel your pain,” a woman says.

“Your grief is poisoning us,” another woman says.

Wanda has captured an entire town and made the oblivious residents feel the grief over the violence and loss that have marked her life.

WandaVision captures a lot of truths about the Romani in this scene. I think it was probably unconscious, the way myths and fairytales are created. The Marvel Universe, with its undeniable resonance in today’s culture, is also modern mythology.

What we know about myths, legends, and fairytales is that they channel archetypes from our collective psyche. They can never truly resonate if they don’t draw from unconscious truths.

What truths did WandaVision channel, without intentionally meaning to?

We can pretend the Roma are insignificant and inferior. We can pretend there is no real violence against them or that it is always deserved. We can even pretend they don’t exist.

But we can’t escape our fears, our prejudice, our history, or our guilt. The guilt, of course, is largely unconscious. We can only feel it “when we sleep.”

We can set out to write a story about a grief-stricken superhero, completely erasing her Romani heritage. But our unconscious mind — where all stories come from — will still infuse it with truths about the one thousand years of Romani history and our role in it.

We did end up with a great story. Sadly, it’s not about a Roma heroine. It’s about why we’re so afraid to tell stories about Roma heroines.

Horse-driven carts are a source of great shame for the ethnic Bulgarians living in the capital city, Sofia. “What kind of European capital is this,” they say, and very often add a compassionate, “Those poor horses.”

Not counting rural villages, here in Bulgaria the horse-driven cart is a vehicle used exclusively by the Romani. People look down on these carts. They are seen as a sign of low class, poverty, and aimlessness. Also, as a relic of a long bygone time. In today’s modern world, there is no place for wooden constructions being dragged by animals on the busiest boulevards of our capital city.

And speaking of the animals: exhausted, malnourished, on the brink of fainting. Clearly abused by these savages, the Romani.

Now, let’s see how much of this is actually true.

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What are the carts for?

In our piece addressing the stereotype that the Romani are lazy, we talked about how the Romani, employed or not, exploited or not, never choose to take a day off. Regardless if they have just woken up in the morning or just returned home from their day job, they always venture out to a different, unregulated, looked-down-upon but very much needed kind of work.

The best way to describe this work is recycling but the reality of it is much more nuanced than what most people would imagine.

The Romani collect all types of metal, sort it, clean it, and carry it to scrap shops.

They collect broken tools, appliances, and electronics, repair them, and resell them.

They scan the streets for people doing renovations: carrying out heavy bags or furniture; and they offer to help.

They scan shops, garages, and all types of small businesses in need of help with cleaning, shelving, heavy lifting, and transportation; and they offer to help.

Most Romani do this with their two bare hands. A smaller number are fortunate enough to afford a horse and a cart, so they work in bulk, are able to transport bigger loads, and make much bigger earnings.

The horses, obviously, play a huge role.

Are they abused? Are they exploited?

“If the horse is hungry, the whole family goes hungry,” says Pepi. “If the horse is sick or tired, everything stops.”

Putting feelings and sentiment aside for a brief moment, the practicalities of owning a horse demand constant, vigilant care. Buying a horse is an enormous investment, the cost sometimes exceeding that of a car. To employ the horse in the job you need it for, you have to ensure that it is strong and healthy. Otherwise, you sink even further down into poverty.

But the role of the horse goes far beyond the practicalities.

Members of the family

Nicky, the husband of one of Pepi’s nieces, was telling a story once about one of the many police raids in the Roma ghetto. The police would show up unannounced and start pulling people out of their houses, beating them, threatening them, insulting them, and finally, arresting them. Often, nobody knew what the raid was for. They knew the police enjoyed it. “One time, they poured my Fanta onto my head while I was lying down after they were kicking me,” Nicky said, “and they were laughing and laughing.”

One evening, Nicky was just outside the ghetto when he heard the sounds of yet another police raid.

His first instinct was to run away. His wife and children were already there with him. They were not in danger. He told them to run and all he needed to do was join them.

But instead, he ran straight into the ghetto.

Because his horse was still there.

“The policemen sometimes go straight for the horses,” Nicky said. “They hit them and sometimes shoot at them. The horses can’t escape on their own because they’re attached to ropes.”

Nicky couldn’t just hide while his horse was at the mercy of the police. So he dove head-first into another night of violence.

The horse died years later. Nicky still tears up talking about him and has pictures of him on his phone. “I loved this horse.”

“The horse is a full member of the family,” Pepi explains about his Roma tribe. “With the one caveat that, if you have only enough money to feed the children or the horse, you feed the horse. A horse cannot stay hungry for even a single night. Humans can, but horses - no.”

There are people who abuse their horses, whip them too hard, rush them, and drive them to exhaustion. The tribe doesn’t tolerate them. “As much as he beats his horse, we beat him twice as hard,” is a common sentiment.

Yet, many horses do go hungry or grow weak and tired. This is not a signifier of love or care. It shows the state of the entire family.

When mainstream society sees a cart driven by a weak, tired horse, their hearts break for the horse. Not for the doubly weak, tired, and hungry people inside the cart.

Nicky’s current horse, Rino, is loved by all of his 4 children and respected as an earner on equal footing as Nicky himself. Rino is Nicky’s buddy, comrade, and brother. One time, when Nicky was in the hospital for a week, the entire family went hungry - a common side-effect of the Roma reality where your living depends on constant work, every day. If you don’t work, you don’t eat.

Nicky didn’t work for a whole week while lying in a hospital bed. His wife, Vela, was left in full survival mode. When we saw her, she talked about being worried for Nicky and how she pawned things “to feed Rino and the kids.” After we saw her, she went to feed Rino first, while her kids were waiting at home.

If you open Nicky’s Facebook profile and do a quick scroll through his uploads you will see pictures of him, his wife, his children, his nieces and nephews, and Rino.

Sharing a destiny together

Horses are a big part of Roma culture. Entire tribes have honed the craft of horse trading for generations. One of the big Roma annual festivals is centered around horses.

But what about other animals?

Do the Romani share the same love for animals they can’t make money from?

Yes. Yes, they do.

When a stray dog or cat walks into a Roma house, it finds a bed, food, and the ecstatic cuddles of children. Nobody chases the animal away. Nobody forces it to stay either. The tribe, a microcosm of many families woven together, doesn’t close the doors to keep anyone out or in.

Recently, a dog found shelter under Vela and Nicky’s bed. She gave birth to a few puppies and nursed them for a while until it was time to roam further. Vela and Nicky shared their food and water with the dog and puppies without a second thought. They still think of them as “our dog” and “our puppies” even after they left the nest.

Before that, they had a cat. It still visits them. And before that, many, many more family members.

“I’d go hungry first before my dog,” Pepi’s 23-year-old son says. Pepi himself has had many dogs and cats, one of which is Sarah. She bonded with Pepi as a puppy and has stuck with him through many tumults, including the demolition of his house in the Roma community. Pepi was moved to a temporary center and tried a couple of times to take Sarah but she found her way back to her neighborhood. Now, Pepi lives even further away, but she still greets him at the bus stop every morning when he comes to work.

Another one of his dearest dogs was struck by a car years ago, right in front of Pepi’s eyes. He took the dog off the road and hugged it under a tree, still feeling its heart beating. They stayed in this embrace for a few short but eternal minutes.

“I felt he wasn’t allowing himself to die because of me. I was forcing him to keep struggling. So I laid him on the ground and took a few steps away. He died within seconds.”

The Romani are not possessive and radically unsentimental about anything, much less animals whom they see as beings with their own dignity and agency, as fellow souls who share this Earth with us. They cherish the bond with an animal. If they are rich, the animal will be taken care of like a royal. But most of the Romani are not rich. So they share what they have, even if it’s just bread, and the humans, the dog, or the cat, or the horse are all a bit hungry, a bit tired, but - in this moment - together.

A prevailing stereotype about the Romani is that they do not like working and avoid it at all costs. The narrative around this is cyclical and hits the same 3 points:

1. The Romani are thieves by nature and prefer theft to hard work.

2. The Romani abuse the social benefits system and have many children with the purpose of collecting larger amounts of child benefits.

3. They are lazy and like to just sit around all day.

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So are the Romani lazy? People who say that use some very specific and narrow observations as evidence for what is, essentially, a racial stereotype.

They see the Roma street cleaners hiding in the shade or having a coffee and think, “There they are, sitting around, instead of cleaning the streets.” What they don’t see is how they’ve already done the bulk of the work while everyone else was asleep at 6:00 AM.

They see them going through trash and think, “There they are, parasitizing off of us again.” What they don’t see is the back-breaking but intricate culture of recycling and renewal in the hidden Roma world.

The Romani are not lazy. The Romani never take a single day off.

A brief peak at history

Here in Bulgaria, people like to say “During Communism, the Gypsies were at least working! They were all lined up in factories and were contributing to society. And now…”

In the four decades of satelliting for the Soviet Union, Bulgaria had a contradictory approach towards its Roma minority. For a time, there was a boom in Roma culture and activism. A Roma newspaper, Roma theaters, recognized Roma musicians, activists, writers. Then, this was all scrapped and the government refused to even acknowledge the existence of the Romani. Under the contorted idea of unity, the official narrative declared that “We are all Bulgarian” so there are no Romani, no Turks, no one else, no one different. In a Nazi-like effort to jolt the confidence of Bulgarians back to life, Muslim communities had their names changed and were gradually torn apart.

The part about the Romani being lined up in factories, however, is the only part of our Soviet-era history that people like to remember nowadays. But these years were a blip, dwarfed by the ten centuries during which Roma culture has been in existence.

And this culture has survived relentless persecution for these ten centuries because it has maintained a very strong sense of identity. Identity based on two things: family and craft.

Here in Bulgaria, entire Roma communities have been displaced, destroyed, and melted together into ghettos. Their crafts, sense of identity, and pride in their ancestral skills: long forgotten.

Street cleaning: the “default” Roma career path

Wiping streets, unloading garbage cans, removing the snow in the winter and the fallen wet leaves in autumn, hosing down boulevards during the night: in Bulgaria, this is low-class, underpaid labor reserved for the Romani. Society considers it the only thing they are good for because they are seen as illiterate and unskilled. While many Romani are able to get a good education and overcome the innumerable obstacles the system has erected against them, they are still seen as an exception and “not like the real Gypsies.”

When Martina and Pepi got together, the first shock Martina experienced was a call Pepi received from his boss at 3:00 AM.

“It’s snowing,” she said. “You have to come in.”

This was nothing new for Pepi or for anyone in his community. When it snows, everyone is called in early, to make sure the streets are clear before the city wakes up. This overtime labor is taken for granted and nobody gets paid for it.

This job is minimum wage. It’s dangerous as multiple injuries and accidents happen because people are expected to work in all weather conditions and on boulevards regardless of how heavy the traffic is. There is no protection for them - not physical, not in the form of adequate labor conditions. Depending on the company, you get four to six days off per month. Missing one day of work is penalized with a fine that exceeds twice the daily wage.

But if you ask Pepi’s boss - or any person in a managerial position in these companies - the Romani are the real problem here. They’re seen as unreliable because they sometimes skip work, come late, or leave on the spot without giving notice.

“What if you had a job where the pay reflects your efforts and your boss treats you with respect?” Martina asked Pepi.

“I would work overtime every single day,” he said.

Broken things in the trash: the Roma “side hustle”

What we, in mainstream society, throw away is either something we consider useless or something we’ve replaced with a newer shinier version. In the latter case, people here in Bulgaria, feel a resistance in this valuable item ending up in the hands of a Roma person. They prefer to find a “more suitable” owner or “someone in need.” The useless thing, however, they are generous about. In fact, people leave out broken tools and appliances and old furniture specifically because they know the Romani will take that off their hands.

To the Romani, the entire concept of trash is flipped like in a mirror. What is thrown out as useless is what they spin into gold - with a lot of hard work and a lot of patience. And what is still usable as-is - clothes, a phone, jewelry - is incorporated into the unsentimental flow of life where ownership is fluid.

Frying pans, old phones and tablets, cutlery, tiny brass components in appliances, and more, are collected piece by piece, bit by bit, and then carried by foot or in a horse-driven cart to scrap shops. The materials are inspected and weighed in their “pure” form. If you’re selling brass, you have to remove everything that is not brass. If you’re selling copper, then you’re removing everything that isn’t copper.

Once the material is weighed, you get paid.

Nobody is making bank with this work. But when done consistently, you earn more than at the street cleaning job.

And we arrive at the true answer to the question “Are the Romani lazy?”

The Romani never take a day off

The workday starts early in the Roma world. Before sunrise, they are up, their first coffee already a distant memory. When they finish work sometime after 1:00 PM, they don’t go home and collapse after a back-breaking shift. They have another coffee, a bite to eat, and then off they go to hustle. If they have one of the rare days off from their job, then they still start from the early morning. The hustle can take many forms. Collecting material for scrap is always a given. Repairing and reselling broken electronics and tools. Helping people with renovations or issues in their homes and getting paid far less than an “official repairman.” Helping grocery stores stock up and move deliveries. The list is endless, and no two days are alike.

“Lying down to relax is like dying,” Pepi says.

He means that very literally. If you don’t hustle, every single day, then your survival is at risk. Perpetually underpaid and discriminated against, the Romani have learned to rely on themselves and only themselves. Their psyche does not occupy the modern world of comfort. They are much more connected with the ancient reality of hunter-gatherers where if you stay in one day you might end up without food.

Even if in this very moment they are stable, with a stocked-up fridge, and money stashed away, their bones implore them to keep hustling.

“If I don’t bring something in, it’s a wasted day,” Pepi said. “Even if I only bring one loaf of bread, or one broken pan for scrap, I need to bring something into the house. Or I am useless.”

Many people of Roma origins accomplish great things by the measurement of mainstream society. There are countless Roma academics, artists, politicians, activists, doctors, engineers.

Society likes to ignore their existence or treat them as a miraculous exception.

But even if we pretend they don’t exist, even in today’s dystopian reality for the Romani where their ancestral crafts have been put to the fire and entire communities are surviving with low-wage back-breaking work, even then the Roma contribution to society is invaluable. Unseen, unacknowledged, underpaid, looked down upon, mocked even. But invaluable. They live in stark contrast to mainstream consumerism and excess. And every single day they sort away and make better the very things we refuse to look at.

The negative stereotypes against the Romani make up a colossal list. At the top of it, ever since the Romani entered Europe centuries ago, is the conviction that they are thieves.

Does thievery occur within Roma communities? The honest answer is “yes.” This is also the incomplete and lazy answer.

Before we tell you about the values and beliefs held by the Romani regarding thievery, we will list some better questions to ask for anyone who wants to understand the context and the facts. And we will give answers.

A quick “Are the Romani thieves” Q&A

Are the Romani more likely to commit petty theft compared to other ethnicities?

Roma communities that live in poverty are likely to more often find themselves with other people’s wallets. Studies show that poverty and social exclusion contribute to higher rates of criminal activity among Roma populations, just as they do among other populations living in poverty.

Have I heard this before? It sounds familiar.

These same factors apply to other communities of color, like for example Black and Hispanic communities in the United States who face the same racial stereotypes as the Romani when it comes to crime and violence.

These stereotypes rest on the idea that darker skin somehow makes a person more likely to thirst after your earrings or wallet. “It’s just how they are,” goes such thinking.

In reality, this is how poverty is. It’s not the ethnos, race, or skin color that makes people steal. Poverty makes them steal.

Why are people of color more likely to be living in poverty?

People of color face social exclusion, discrimination, and multiple systemic barriers to quality education, employment, and health care. This effect is compounded generation after generation. The origin stories may vary a little - an invaded territory here, a genocide there, some slavery here, some violence and forceful assimilation there. But the result is pretty much the same: people of color tend to find themselves in a society that weaponizes laws and institutions against them and then blames them for the side-effects.

How does this look for the Romani? Here is a personal example of just one problem that is impacting Roma communities nationwide here in Bulgaria.

Most members of our Roma community have lost the right to have an ID card (a mandatory document here in the EU, similar to a passport.) Without an ID card, a person cannot sign an employment contract or a rental contract. They cannot buy a car. They cannot sign up their children for daycare. They cannot receive medical care. If a police officer catches you without an ID card, they can hold you in jail for 24 hours.

Why can’t our Roma friends and relatives have ID cards? Because the mayor erased their official address registration when he demolished their houses in the segregated community (called “mahala”) they’ve been living in for the past century. Municipality and government officials are then unlawfully but systematically refusing to issue ID cards without an address registration.

Why did the mayor demolish the houses? Because they were deemed “illegal” even though the Roma community had taken steps to officially “legalize” them. This mahala, like most Roma ghettos in Bulgaria and Europe, originated in the outskirts of the city as a result of forceful exclusion of the Romani. Now, a century later, the city grew around it and, yet again, the society wants the Romani to go away.

There is nothing new or original in this approach. Roma communities have been chased away, their homes burned down and demolished, for centuries. Read more about this in our piece below.

The Sky and Earth Know

“They ring the church bells when they see one of us”

In September 1993, something very ordinary happened in the rural Transylvanian village of Haderani. A fight erupted between two “Gypsy brothers” and a young “local man” and his father. The young local man was stabbed and died. So far, this is a story of tragedy and violence. What happened afterward — that is the ordin…

Read more

4 years ago · Martina Petkova

What happens to a Roma thief?

They go to prison. They serve long sentences. Before that, they have a brush or two with policemen who are all too happy and excited to be dishing out justice.

Among the many racial slurs, the policemen and prison guards have an interesting derogatory term for the Roma thieves, here in Bulgaria. Кокошкари, pronounced kokoshkari, which translates to “chicken-men”, as in “men who steal chicken.” In other words, men who aim too low and steal too little. So little, that it’s funny. And yet, enough to spend years in a prison cell.

Our criminal justice system is unforgiving of petty theft committed by a Roma person but it doesn’t work in such decisive ways when it comes to crimes committed by the “elite” or well-connected people. Just in the span of a few months we’ve had two cold-blooded murders by ex-military, several fatal car accidents caused by sheer arrogance and drugs or alcohol, multiple cases of brutal violence against women. We are also a country stewing in corruption and reaping the consequences of stolen national resources, stolen EU funds, stolen money, taxes, pensions, savings. When it comes to any of these examples, our justice system seems to lose its mojo.

Meanwhile, a Roma man we know went to prison for stealing a lighter.

For an educated and witty analysis of this universal problem through an American lens, we recommend this resent episode of Jon Stewart’s Podcast “The Problem.”

What do the Romani think about theft?

The Romani today hold the same value system they have been holding for the past 1,000 years. They do not attach their souls to material possessions. They have zero interest in claiming anything that is not theirs. If they are not living in poverty, they will not steal. And when they do steal, they still little and they follow a code.

“The Romani steal to survive and to feed their children. It’s as simple as that,” says Pepi.

The stealing itself only happens from a source perceived as abundant. Wallets, for example, are stolen only from people who are visibly wealthy. The reason is only partially that the wallet is more likely to be full. A bigger reason is that the Romani avoid inflicting permanent harm. It’s in their culture to only take that which can recover. If they see, for example, an elderly woman putting her pension in her purse, she is not seen as a target. Romani who rob vulnerable people are a big exception and looked down upon by their own community.

Roma tribes applied these same value system during their nomadic days, before nomadism was outlawed across Europe. They were often persecuted, with the same zest we see today, for stealing chickens and letting their horses graze in other people’s land. Jan Yoors describes a conversation with a Roma boy about this exact thing in his book, “The Gypsies.”

“Putzina explained to me that stealing was not really a misdeed as long as it was limited to the taking of basic necessities, and not in larger quantities than were needed at that moment. It was the intrusion of a sense of greed, in itself, that made stealing wrong, for it made men slaves to unnecessary apetites or to their desire for possessions.

Gleaning a little dry wood for the fire, from the forest, was no misdeed. There so much of it, and anyway, if they did not take it, it was left to rot. Putting a few horses to pasture overnight in someone’s meadow was not that bad. Grass grew without the owner’s active contribution or effort.”

The Romani condemn greed but they don’t condemn theft the same way mainstream society does. Their understanding of possession and ownership is different.

Ironically, this does not make them the insatiable criminals that outsiders believe them to be. On the contrary, this makes them steal only when they are forced to and only enough to survive in the moment. So little that law enforcement mocks them as they walk into the prison cell.