"Be a woman": The Romani have no King. They have Queens.
The invisible power of the Roma woman
We were at a wedding. Vela, one of Pepi’s adult nieces, was getting married to her partner of 15 years. The celebration was winding down by 10:00 PM and the people who hadn’t left the restaurant yet were now getting up to continue celebrating back home.
On the long walk from the restaurant to the main road, we broke up into smaller groups. Pepi grew annoyed with one of his cousins who had gotten a little drunk. They argued over who was spoiling whose mood and Pepi decided in a huff that we were going home.
When we reached the main road and the rest of our group, Pepi announced angrily that we were leaving. Vela, her mother, her sister, and a few other women immediately walked over. They passed by Pepi and surrounded Martina.
“What happened?” Vela asked.
“I don’t know,” Martina shrugged. “They had an argument about something and Pepi said we’re leaving.”
Vela gently put her hands on Martina’s shoulders and pierced her with her black eyes.
“Martina,” she said, “be a woman.”
This was still in the early months of Pepi and Martina’s relationship when Martina had just started to dip her toes into the ocean that is Roma culture. For Martina, Pepi’s relationship with his cousin was none of her business. She is also a firm believer that when one person says “We’re leaving,” then we’re leaving. And she absolutely didn’t know what, if anything, she should share about the argument with the group of women that were now around her.
“It’s interesting,” a friend of Martina said when she heard this story. “You so often hear ‘Be a man!’ but you never hear ‘Be a woman.’”
What did Vela mean with this simple sentence, spoken amid conflict, in the darkness, on her wedding day?
Who’s in charge of the family?
On the outside, Roma culture looks patriarchal. Gender roles are clearly defined: the man provides, and the woman looks after the house and the children. After the wedding, traditionally, the woman moves in with her husband’s family. It is also common, especially among tribes living in poverty, for the Romani to “marry” young and for girls to become mothers as early as 16 years old.
“A daughter is a stranger,” the Romani say because it is the custom for a daughter to leave the family when she marries. A son, by contrast, stays and brings a wife into the existing nest.
But even in these customs that make it seem as if the Roma woman has little agency in her life, you hear some echoes of the truth. A common advice given to young brides when they are about to join their new family is not “Listen to your husband.” It’s “Listen to your mother-in-law.”
The Romani do not uphold hierarchies. They don’t accept external authorities, they don’t accept intermediaries in their connection to God, and they consider mainstream structures of power to be a house of cards.
The closest thing resembling a hierarchy, for the Romani, occurs within the tribe. Not in the top-down flow of power typical to militaries or corporations. But in a circular flow, like ripples in a lake. And at the center of these ripples stands the Roma woman.
For the Romani, the woman is in charge of the family, but this is in a culture that upholds the family as the highest value. Everything is in service of the family. Every day of back-breaking work is for the family. The woman is not in a position of a slave or a servant. She is a Queen. Aside from taking care of the food, the home, and child-rearing, she is in charge of the entire energy flow surrounding her family.
The woman sets the tone and the atmosphere in the Roma house. To quote Pepi’s sister, Nana, she “gives soul” to the man. It is for her that the man finds an abundance of strength every day to go out in a hostile world and earn a living against multiple odds. She kindles an energy that makes the home a safe and happy haven for both her husband and her children.
The custom for Roma men is to hand their paychecks to their wives the minute they walk in the door. The man is in charge of earning but the woman decides how the money will be spent.
When Pepi and Martina first got together, Martina was very unsettled when Pepi kept handing her the money that he earned. Quite a few times we’d go out, Pepi would withdraw his entire salary from an ATM and put it in Martina’s wallet and then we’d go grab lunch or dinner. When the time came to pay, the money came out of Martina’s wallet and she could see the eyes of the waiters and cashiers scanning us both and confirming their stereotypes. People immediately clocked Martina’s white skin and Pepi’s Romani ethnicity and assumed that Martina was generously or pitifully treating poor Pepi to a meal. Cold looks of disdain towards Pepi always accompanied these meals. Martina hated that and argued with Pepi a lot, insisting that he keep at least some of his money on him. Pepi, not once in his life having cared what people think, kept handing Martina his money.
When a Roma man from our tribe finds himself with a lot of cash, the first thing he does is “tie up the money” by buying gold. Not ones to trust institutions, least so banks, the Romani buy gold and then pawn or sell it if the money is needed for something else. But the gold they buy doesn’t get locked away in a safe. It goes on the fingers, wrists, and ears of the women.
But even this, being in charge of the nourishment and money in the family, only scratches the surface of the Roma woman’s power within the tribe.
Where you hear the woman’s voice
The true realm of the Roma woman is the deep wisdom about human nature. The love for her loved ones that extends far beyond possessiveness and sentimentality. A love that sees and cares for all aspects of a human being - the beautiful ones, the hidden ones, the rough ones.
One of Pepi’s sisters, Nana, lives on the second floor of a small, run-down house with her younger daughter, son-in-law, and two toddler grandchildren. The two small rooms they occupy are one of the hearths in the tribe.
When there are conflicts, people crash at Nana’s place to sleep it off. When there are celebrations, Nana either offers to host or doesn’t want to host despite people asking her, and then, in the late hours, ends up with a bunch of people in her home anyway. “Let’s go drink at Nana’s” is how most celebrations conclude in our tribe. They go there knowing they’ll have a good time and then drift to sleep. Nana is a safe haven. A home. When her son, Little Pepi, spent the night being beaten up at the police station one time, he didn’t cross the 5-minute walking distance to his home to sleep it off. He took the 30-minute bus ride to Nana and slept in one of the two small beds, crammed against his nephews. In Nana’s home, people have gotten very drunk, had arguments and even physical fights, cried till they fell asleep. She knows when to nurse them, when to talk things through with them, when to kick them out - knowing they’ll cool off and come back within an hour. She is warm but by no means meek. “Sleep it off, you idiot, and then go home to your wife,” she’ll say to nephews and brothers who walk through her door after a fight at home announcing “I’m leaving for good,” while sharing her food with them and freeing up one of the two beds.
When there are big conflicts, she is one of the diplomats in the tribe - all of whom are women. She talks with everyone involved, negotiates, and looks for a solution. Not in a way that stomps anyone’s boundaries or dismisses their hurts. In a way that hears everyone out and seeks common ground.
There is no scapegoating. No division of loyalties. Nana’s power doesn’t come from fostering conflict and resentment among her people. She wouldn’t even see this as power or ever think of herself as a Queen. To her, this is all unsentimental but ocean-deep love. She doesn’t badmouth people, she doesn’t gossip. She wants the family and tribe to be united. She wants people to get along.
She doesn’t need to be needed. She doesn’t want to make people weak or dependent on her.
When they come to her, she restores their strength.
When Nana’s older daughter, Vela, said “Be a woman” to Martina, this is the wisdom she was imparting.
Martina’s “I don’t know” accompanied by a shrug was, in the Roma world, an abdication. What Vela, Nana, or almost any other woman from the tribe would have done in Martina’s place would be to try to diffuse the conflict - if not directly with Pepi and his cousin, then by eliciting the support of the other women.
Martina comes from a culture where women like to gossip and relish other people’s conflicts. Where women treat families like a territory to carve out. She has learned to be very cagey.
Romani women, by contrast, are a part of a sisterhood. Each one is in charge of her own home and family, and all of them are in charge of holding the tribe together.
When we started our relationship, Pepi announced it to the tribe. Martina received a bunch of calls that evening - all from men: Pepi’s nephews and brothers. They were jovial, congratulatory calls (“Welcome to the tribe, sister!”), full of humor (“Should we come with the horses now to steal you?”, jokingly referencing common racial stereotypes against the Romani.)
Then came the female welcome.
A few days later, Nana called and asked Martina to meet for coffee. When they met, Nana opened her arms, kissed Martina, and said:
“Once a woman of my brother, always my sister.”
Then, over coffee, she told Martina stories about Pepi, about his past, his character, what kind of a person he was 20 years ago, 10 years ago, who he is today. The stories were not meant to praise him or “sell” him. She spoke about him in a nuanced way: about qualities, flaws, good times, bad times. They were honest, human stories, shared with deep love and wisdom. From one woman who loves him to another woman who loves him, new to his life: “This is who he is.”
This is the kind of quiet but formidable power of women in Roma culture. It’s all-encompassing, like a web that connects every person to the rest of the tribe.
When Vela said “Be a woman” to Martina, she meant: “Tell us. Trust us. Let’s figure this out together. Let’s fix it together.”
When a Roma woman is voiceless
Nana, her daughters, and the majority of women in our Roma tribe are strong, opinionated, and fierce. Just as they can resolve conflict, they don’t fear initiating it when a boundary is crossed. The power centers in the tribe all revolve around women.
But what about the quiet ones?
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