"They were born here and died here."
Do the Roma have a right to live where they've always lived?
“We were on our way out of the mahala, and I realized this might be the last time I’m seeing it. So I took a picture of the house in front of me, where it just so happened that a child’s birthday was being celebrated. I wanted to capture this moment, probably the last moment, before the house is destroyed forever.”
Maria Dacheva
activist, filmmaker, photographer, and our very dear friend
We don’t know when our Romani quarter was born. There’s no paperwork for it - which is part of the reason why everyone around feels it has no right to exist.
But if you ask the Roma, they’ll say the quarter - also called mahala - has existed for “90 years” or “a century.”
And they’ll add, “My mother was born here and died here. My grandmother and grandfather - they were born here. And died here.”
They don’t mean this symbolically. Up until very recently, women in the mahala gave birth there, in the barracks, or under the open sky, with fellow women acting as midwives. Pepi, co-author of this publication, was born under the open sky almost 46 years ago - back when the mahala was much larger. Today, there’s a McDonald’s at this exact spot. “I was born at the McDonald’s” is how Pepi jokingly talks about his birth.
“I was born under that tree,” is how his sister Nana relays her own birth. The tree is still there, even if the tiny houses that used to house Romani families around it were razed years ago.
Just as much as being born there makes the mahala their home, dying there makes it the Roma’s home too.
Even when someone dies outside of the quarter, like at a hospital for example, the body is always brought back to the mahala for the final farewell from the community.
When someone from a Romani tribe passes away at a hospital or some other ‘foreign’ place, the first thing the tribe does is to bring them back home. This ‘handover’ is the last time outsiders have any involvement in the funeral of a Roma person.
from “With our own hands:” Romani funerals are a profound act of love
The Roma from our community would tell you “We know we are illegal.” This means that their houses were built illegally, without the proper paperwork and permissions from institutions. And when we say houses, we don’t mean mansions. We mean barracks, very small but cosy, which people in the tribe have built with their own hands.
The thing about these so called “urban Romani ghettos” is that they emerge on the outskirts of cities as a result of very intentional marginalization from mainstream society. The Romani way of life, ancestral crafts, and traditional ways of making a living, were all outlawed, punished, and - in one word - destroyed. And the people were pushed outside, out of sight, sinking into poverty.
Our Romani mahala is now part of a busy neighborhood that has ambitions to be “middle-class.” The Roma want to make things work. They even worked with the municipality to officially legalize the houses - and the municipality was in the process of making it happen when it abruptly stopped and sold the land underneath.
But a century ago, this was not a residential area. It was outside of the city, which is where the Roma, with their own hands, built small houses.
The white middle-class residents in the neighborhood today want the “ghetto” gone, and are tirelessly insisting from institutions to demolish it. Where would the Roma go? Out of sight, of course.
In 2017 and 2019, the municipality razed part of the mahala. Pepi’s house was one of those destroyed in 2019. Over 30 families have been living in dystopian conditions since then, in social housing and crisis centers. Their address registration was erased and they have been facing an unthinkable bureaucratic hell. They are under constant threat of being left on the street and child protection services taking their kids.
And now, the municipality is gearing up to raze the remaining houses.
Over 200 people, but this time, there’s nowhere to go. Not even a dystopian crisis center - because there’s no room. The Roma were told by an official to “figure it out.”
They were all born there. The remaining 200+ people and the hundred more who are now fighting for survival in government-owned buildings.
But they will no longer have the comfort of knowing that they will die there. Because this place will be gone forever. They will die in foreign places. Their loved ones will hold their final farewells in foreign places - just like they are now holding weddings. With municipality workers and policemen peaking over their shoulders.
