The Romani love pawning their valuables

Or what does it mean to truly "own" a thing

Weighing gold at the pawnshop | Picture by Martina Petkova

Within our Roma community, it is very common to see someone with a smartphone today and with an old Nokia 3310 tomorrow.

“Where’s your smartphone?” you ask.

“In prison,” they answer.

Prison is the pawn shop.

In a week or two, they’ll have the smartphone again. For a while, until it’s sent to prison again. And on and on it goes.

To an outside observer, this is a meaningless process that only ends up costing more because of the interest rate owed to release the phone.

But to the Roma community, the sentiment above is petty nickel-and-diming that misses the entire point.

Your daughter’s golden bracelet

“You gave our daughter a golden bracelet,” Martina said to Pepi. “To me, she should hold onto it for the rest of her life. The value of the bracelet having been gifted to her by her father far exceeds its value in cash.”

“Yes,” Pepi said, “but one day she will grow up. She will have a family of her own, children of her own. We will not always be around. If she ever goes hungry or her children go hungry, this bracelet can tide her over. It would kill me if she stays hungry while holding onto the bracelet.”

To the Roma, a valuable gift is something you can pawn. A phone. A watch. Above all, gold. Golden rings, golden bracelets, golden earrings, golden chains.

When we got together, Martina intentionally got gifts for Pepi that can not be pawned. She wanted them to have sentimental value, to feel like they are uniquely “his.” To Martina, pawning meant “giving up” and not truly valuing the gift.

Pepi, on the other hand, slowly started adorning Martina’s hands with gold. One ring, a second ring, a ring for almost every finger. A bracelet, and then another bracelet.

One of our few disagreements came when Pepi suggested pawning one of the rings in order to buy something else.

“To me, it’s not about the gold,” Martina said. “It’s about the rings being a gift from you. If they were from copper, I’d hold onto them the same.”

Before the golden rings, Martina wore silver rings from Pepi, and a few iron ones. She did love them the same. But every time he had the means to, Pepi deliberately bought gold.

“We always gift gold, if we can,” Pepi explained about his Romani family. “For birthdays, for weddings, for any occasion. And we do it specifically with the intention for it to be pawned, when life calls for that.”

To a Romani person, when the gold is “in prison” it doesn’t stop being theirs. They still refer to it as “my gold.” They would still describe it to you with affection. But they are not bothered by its absence. It doesn’t need to be on their skin for it to be “theirs.”

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“I like sending my music to prison,” Kamen said once.

By “music,” he meant his quite expensive sound system - an item, that comes after gold and smartphones in the valuables that the Roma most commonly buy and pawn.

“It’s safe there, and they always keep it clean. If it stays too long with me, it gets scratched and drinks are spilled all over it.

Kamen, a 17-year-old Romani boy, takes great pride in his sound system. If there’s a party being planned soon, he saves up cash to release it from prison. Then he enjoys it for a while until he needs cash and pawns it.

The pawn shop is almost like a vault, but not quite.

Because to the Romani, owning something is a fluid experience. The “thing” is neither just a decoration, nor just a piece of technology, nor something to chain your wrists to, nor something to entomb in a safe and lock with a key.

The “thing” participates in life.

“I couldn’t care less about the phone”

Another one of the few arguments we’ve had was, again, related to the pawn shop.