What will happen if you walk into a Romani ghetto?
What will happen if you walk into a Romani ghetto?
You will get what you're looking for.
Martina was in the throes of grief and depression when she met Pepi’s tribe in the neighborhood Zaharna Fabrika. She was in a volunteer group that visited twice a week to organize games for the children. She quickly realized that the interaction with the Roma children did more for her than she could ever do for them. These visits were soul healing and, for months, the only thing in life Martina was looking forward to.
One day, the volunteer group was holding an event in another city, and there was going to be no organized visit to Zaharna Fabrika. That day also happened to be one of the three big annual days in Bulgaria commemorating the souls of loved ones who have died. Scores of people visit the cemeteries to light candles and honor the close ones they’ve lost. Martina, together with her immediate family, was at the cemetery in the morning to honor her father, who had died just a few short months ago. By the early afternoon, all the traditions had been followed, all the usual surface-level things said, all the customary food eaten, and Martina was back home feeling even more alone in her grief. In a state of near-madness. The walls were closing in, the sky outside was grey, and the unexpressed, unshared sorrow had her in a chokehold. Opening a bottle of wine with the full intention to down it all, Martina realized that it was now about the time she would usually leave for the visit to Zaharna Fabrika.
“The kids,” she thought, “will still be waiting for us. I should tell them there will be no games today.”
During COVID there were several skipped visits, and the kids always waited, and always asked afterward why no one came. With the mission to not let them down today, Martina hopped on the bus and, half an hour later, for the first time, walked into the Roma neighborhood all by herself.
The kids were already out playing despite the gloomy weather. When they saw Martina, they quickly surrounded her, one pulling her by the hand, another showing her his new soccer ball.
“Where are the others?” Asked 8-year-old Sadik.
“They’re not coming. There will be no games today, this is what I came to tell you.”
Sadik’s eyes grew wide. “You came alone?”
Martina spent an hour in Zaharna Fabrika. A few of the adults in the tribe were sitting on a bench and invited her to sit next to them. One of them sent his granddaughter to buy a drink. “Tell me,” he insisted, “tell me, what is your favorite juice? Orange? Peach?” He wouldn’t take no for an answer even though Martina didn’t want to be a bother. “Orange,” she relented finally. Within two minutes, the granddaughter had run to the store and returned, handing her an ice-cold Fanta. The kids were playing, joking, and laughing. The adults were chatting idly and telling Martina funny stories from the tribe.
At one point, as she was sitting down, Martina told them her cover story. “Our group is in another city today so I came to tell the kids there will be no games.” Of course, she knew the reason she was there was because her soul was beckoned and it was the only place on Earth she felt there was human connection. “Oh, okay,” nodded the adults, and quickly moved on to another topic. Of course, they knew the real reason Martina was there had nothing to do with announcing the obvious absence of the entire group. Did they sense Martina’s grief and sorrow raging under the surface? Probably. But they never would have even inquired for a reason for her to be there. They just welcomed her like a fellow human being and, miraculously, made her laugh and laugh with their stories.
After almost an hour, it started to rain. “I better go,” Martina said and got up. The kids surrounded her, one holding one hand, another holding the other hand, the others running around and jumping in the puddles. They walked with her to the bus stop.
Martina returned home with a lighter heart, having swapped an afternoon of pain with an afternoon of laughter; and a bottle of wine with a bottle of Fanta.
“You get what you’re looking for”
The white middle-class residents of Zaharna Fabrika want the Roma community gone. They want “the ghetto” gone. Because of “all the theft and danger.” In many interviews on national television, during many protests against this very ghetto, you see trembling white women complaining to the camera how afraid they are of the Romani because they are so dangerous.
The fear of theft and physical violence in Romani ghettos is unshakable among outsiders. It is a given, in their mind, that if you walk into a ghetto you’re inviting trouble.
But the truth is that it is the outsiders who bring the trouble.
“What will happen to an outsider,” Martina asked Pepi, “if they just walk into a Roma ghetto?”
“Depends what they’re walking in for.”
Very few, and we mean very, very few outsiders walk into Roma ghettos with good intentions.
They usually go there to destroy, beat, exploit, or steal. Policemen hungry for punishment, racists hungry for violence, politicians and activists looking for votes, religious groups looking for clout, non-profits looking to profit, mobsters and loansharks looking for people to exploit and blackmail.
The violence, lies, and scams that the Romani have seen from outsiders can fill up several books.
So the very first thing you’ll see, walking into a Roma ghetto, will be mistrust.
If you don’t know anyone there, you will be greeted by friendly children chatting you up and collecting information, and by adults who will directly walk up to you and ask you what or who you’re looking for.
This is the crux.
“Whatever you’re looking for,” says Pepi, “you’ll receive, tenfold.”
“If you’re looking for a fight,” he continues, “you will get a very big fight. If you’re looking to get drunk and dance, you will drink and dance with the tribe all night. If you’re looking to rob or scam someone, you’ll leave without your wallet and phone. And watch.”
Martina has never had a bad experience with the Roma tribe even though before she “married in,” she paid many visits by herself after the initial one on the rainy day at the bench. She got drunk with the tribe a few times, and along with the jokes and dancing, people were always making sure she was feeling well and having fun, and got her safely in a taxi when she decided it was time to leave. Her phone or wallet never went missing.
But telling this to fellow white people has been like sharing a fairy tale. Or rather, a scary horror story. As if, it was by sheer luck, that Martina narrowly escaped with her life, dignity, and money.
It was no luck. The Romani quickly scanned Martina, as they do with every outsider, and knew she had no ill intentions. They knew she was a friend. And they treated her with respect, love, and warmth.
The people who have bad experiences are the ones who want the Romani to have a bad experience.
“You’re different.”
Years ago, the white residents of Zaharna Fabrika formed an Initiative Committee that pressures the municipality to do this or that. The demolition of the Roma ghetto has been at the top of their demands for all these years.
The chair of this committee, a woman named Annie, had a scary experience about a year after some of the houses in the ghetto were demolished. Her son was crossing the railroad tracks and was attacked by a stray dog. Pepi, who was nearby, rushed to the boy and fought the dog away. Full of gratitude, Annie resolved the impending moral conundrum as most racists do. “You’re different,” she would tell Pepi every time she saw him walking by. “Not like the other ones.” She would stop and chat with him, treat him like a human being, but only because in her mind he no longer belonged to the rest - the ones who are not human. She would even shake her head and empathize with how difficult life must be in the crisis center - which is where he was living because his house was among the ones demolished per her demands.
Of course, Annie is not beloved by the tribe. She has never been attacked in any way by anyone, but one time her son - the same one who got chased by the dog - realized his phone was missing when he came home after he had brushed past a group of Roma kids in the streets of Zaharna Fabrika. Annie sought out Pepi for help and, the same day, the phone was in her hands. Pepi delivered it himself.
“Who stole it?” Annie kept asking, fishing for justice.
“It doesn’t matter who,” Pepi kept answering. “It’s back now, is it not?”
“There’s no fixing these people,” Annie would shake her head. “See what I’m telling you? You’re different, but the rest are trash.”
Because a missing phone is the true tragedy. Not a missing home.
The strange strangers
If anyone can say, quite literally, “I’ve seen it all” - it’s a person living in a ghetto. The people who walk in are from all walks of life, wearing varying degrees of mask and pretense, driven by all kinds of needs and desires.
One time, the wife of the then-president of Bulgaria visited with an entire entourage and announced she would fix the plumbing in the ghetto. She was wearing expensive clothes and knee-level boots. “Fix this,” she would point, talking to a person scribbling notes in a notepad, “and this, and this.” Pepi walked up to her. “You know what this reminds me of?” He then told her a joke that is both dirty and makes fun of the empty promises of politicians. The people from the tribe around them burst into laughter. The president’s wife left in a huff, offended and not being given the chance to feel like a savior. She felt ridiculed. The Romani also felt ridiculed by her visit. Everyone knew that the plumbing was never going to get fixed.
Mobsters in big cars would drive through the muddy paths, looking for a woman in the tribe known for her healing and fortune-telling gifts. Some found her, some didn’t. All of them parted with piles of cash.
Reporters would come in with their cameras and agendas, looking for a story. They all get thousands of stories. The Romani interrupt each other adding detail. What is factually true and what isn’t, is a whole different question.
The list of visitors is endless.
You will see a mirror
Roma culture is very closed. It is extremely hard for outsiders to experience it or even witness it beyond the surface-level fanfare. There are layers and layers to walk through before you can truly enter.
This is one of the reasons it has survived 1,000 years of genocidal and assimilation attempts.
So the very first thing you’ll see if you walk into the quarters of a Roma tribe will be a mirror.
Who are you?
The Romani will see it even if you can’t. And they’ll show you.