We walked into a lawyer’s office. They were polite, invited us into their conference room, and offered us water. We were there with Atanaska, a woman from the Roma community whose husband was being denied life-saving medical treatment because - like most people in the Roma community - he did not have valid ID documents.
A small piece of background: This has been an ongoing campaign across our country. Mayors close down address registrations of Roma communities, preventing them from issuing and renewing ID cards. Without an ID card, you can’t sign an employment contract, a lease, collect benefits, open a bank account, sign up your children to school, or even get medical treatment.
Atanaska was in despair. On the way over, she was complaining about how without an ID card you are completely erased from the system, how you don’t even officially exist. We assured her the lawyers had experience in winning such cases both in the national courts and in the European courts. All she needed to do was sit down with them for one meeting and share what she knows so they can get the ball rolling.
So we sat down. Across Atanaska were two lawyers. They had their pens and paper ready to take notes. One of them invited Atanaska to describe her situation.
And she did. In one sentence.
“We’re like dead people.”
The witchery of the Romanes language
The key to how the Romani express themselves lies in the Romanes tongue: the native language of the Romani, even if they have lived for generations or centuries in a specific country. It originates from ancient Sanskrit and even though there are multiple Romanes dialects spoken over the world today, they have all retained the same roots and intensity for the past 1,200 years.
Here in Bulgaria, except for people who have been uprooted as young children and raised in mainstream society without a link to their community, Romanes is the primary language for all Romani.
Roma people who are fluent in Bulgarian and express themselves in conventional ‘Bulgarian’ ways still cannot escape the poetry of Romanes: it’s short, to the point, and paints a visual that demands your attention and tells you an entire story.
Vasil Chaprazov, an intellectual and activist of Roma ethnicity, was talking in a forum about all the obstacles society has put in the way of Roma emancipation. Here’s how he put it:
“They sense we’re at some distance from point zero? Scissors.
They sense we’ve taken 3-4 steps forward? Scissors.”
Jan Yoors, a multi-talented Belgian artist who ran off with a Roma tribe at age 12 and lived with them for the next decade, had this to say about the language.
“I would no longer express myself in the wild, archaic Romanes, unfit for small talk. I would no longer use the forceful, poetic, plastic descriptions and ingenious parables of the Rom or indulge in the unrestrained intensity and fecundity of their language.
Old Bidshika once told us the legend about the full moon’s being dragged down to earth by the sheer intensity, weight and witchery of the Romany tongue. And it almost seemed that it could be true.”
Whatever other language is spoken by a Roma person, it is shaped and colored by Romanes.
