A Romani is often in someone else's shirt

And they make unsentimental poetry out of used things.

Pepi serenades our daughter, oblivious that he’s wearing Martina’s tunic. Picture by Martina Petkova

Pepi, having been left in an orphanage as a baby, experienced quite a shock when he tracked down his birth parents at age 16. He followed the address on the document he got from the police station and ended up in one of the largest Roma ghettos in the city. He did not find only his father and mother. He also found 12 older siblings and dozens upon dozens of cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, and nephews.

In typical Roma and Balkan spirit, the reunion was marked by setting out big tables under the open sky and filling them with food and alcohol. Stories and tears started pouring in. And at one point, one of Pepi’s brothers did something that Pepi always mentions when he talks about the day he reunited with his family.

He took Pepi’s shirt off his back and threw it up in the air. It landed on the roof of one of the barracks nearby. It was an expensive shirt so Pepi tried to protest at first, …