When you've seen it all: How the Romani respond to non-Roma suffering

the Romani don't compete in suffering - they simply understand

Pepi offering a cigarette while sitting next to his stepson Rasim in the crisis center they were placed in after their home was demolished | February 2020

Imagine you are a regular middle-class person belonging to the ethnic majority of your country.

What is the worst thing that has happened to you?

A devastating breakup or divorce? Complete financial ruin? The death of a loved one - a parent, a sibling, a child? Homelessness? Prison? Sexual abuse? Debilitating illness or disability?

If you pick anyone from our Roma tribe and look into their life, you will find they’ve experienced worse. Not just one tragedy. Many, many tragedies. This is usually the case with every Roma community.

In our tribe, we can tell you about how a building collapsed and killed two of Pepi’s brothers. About the unspeakable, brutal violence from police. About the demolition of the Roma houses and the loss of documents, birth certificates, family pictures. About loan sharks breaking people’s limbs. About a woman who was murdered and cut up in pieces. About a child who recently fell into boiling water and barely survived.

“We have so many dead, Marti,” Pepi’s sister Nana told Martina recently. “We have so many dead.”

She didn’t refer only to the elders who have passed away naturally.

But this is not a competition about who’s got it worse. It’s a question about compassion.

If you are a regular middle-class person belonging to the ethnic majority of your country and you happen to talk to an average Romani and share with them the worst tragedy that has befallen you - what would the average Romani feel, think, and say?

“This was the worst year of my life,” Martina was telling Pepi’s nephew Little Pepi after having a few drinks at his 33rd birthday party in October 2021. It had indeed been a horrible year. But this party and conversation were taking place in the crisis center Little Pepi was living in, following a few months of eviction threats, dealing with lawyers, and fighting municipalities. Little Pepi and his entire family were hanging by a thread. They were almost left out on the street and social services were ready to pounce and take their children. And this was only one of the problems Little Pepi had that year. What was he thinking and what did he say when Martina was telling him how bad she had it?