Romanian Gypsies

by Catalin Gruia

  I didn't go to school. I went straight to the factory. When I turned 14, some guy, Cretu (Curly), came to the door, a business man. He went around asking "You have land? No. You have land? No.” He rounded up maybe 100 people, men, women, children and he took them to the factory. The people that didn't have jobs, he took them to the factory. Dad went to the mayor's office, he gave some money, and they wrote me down as 15 years old so I could work. I got into the factory, thank God, the Virgin Mary, and St. Paraschiva.

  I got out when I was old. This was my friend – this stick. We would all wait for each other and come home. There weren't cars or buses back then. And we wouldn't go around with boots or shoes in the mud. Nooo, you had your slippers and the men had their moccasins and their pants, honey, and you walked to the factory in the mud, flip-flop, until it drove you crazy.

  At five in the morning I would leave home. And I'd be at the factory at 6, 6:20. But I had a good boss. Sometimes I'd come with my feet all wet. You didn't have time to eat. If a pipe was thin, or empty, he'd call you back. I worked ‘till I’d burst. But I'd get 1,200 communist lei (360$). And I built the house on my own, without my husband, 'cause he died in the war. The house is from about 1950.

  I worked for 30 years. I didn't steal so much as a string 'cause mom had eight kids and I was afraid of getting fired and starving to death. And that's how I ended up anyway. But now I'm weak.

  If there were factories now – What did that Iliescu do? He disfigured the people! – would you see these kids outside? To the factory, honey! But now, where can they go? Where can they go? A bunch of them went to Italy. Gypsies, Jews, Hungarians, all kinds of nationalities left. They leave out of hunger, honey, for work. To the pigs, to the sheep, wherever they can, to the olives, everywhere. You go anywhere out of hunger.

  Well, when you get old, you don't sleep like you used to…I can't sleep at night.

  It's light in the house, I look around, honey, the dog barks at those devils that broke my fence, these criminal kids: they throw rocks, bottles, jars. My fence is their hangout, it's where they meet. From eight to twelve. Every night it's a madhouse. They'll break your head if you come between them. You won't even know what hit you when they throw a rock or a bottle or a jar. And they bend over the fence. Crazy kids. It wasn't like this in my day, honey. You couldn't just talk to a girl at night in the street. Her parents would snap your neck! When a boy would come to talk to you, he'd go to your parents first. It's a mess now, honey. My, my, my. They see all that nonsense on TV. I don't have a TV. I don't even want to see or hear any of it.

  The world's gone crazy, honey. Girls want to wear their skirts up to their thighs, honey. Well, in my day if you parents saw you like that, or wearing pants, they'd snap your neck like a chicken. My, my, my! It was long skirts, loose, like the Gypsies. It was good. That was the life. You wouldn't see women with their heads uncovered, or with lipstick, or with their nails done. That was the life. A kid of 14, 15 would be in the factory. A boy like you would be a factory boss. The world is ruined, honey! It's not like it was. Ask anyone.

  8

  ”The Italian Woman”

  She stands next to the table, restless. She taps her fingers on the table or twirls her beautiful hair, dyed red. Cornelia Stan - 31, with two kids, separated from her husband, pretty, vivacious, blue eyed, with a fast tongue - is waiting to go back to Sicily, to her rich, 40 year old Italian. She was there last year, but the carabinieri caught her and sent her back.

  If you want to go to Italy, there’s Romica Poian with transport. It is more expensive – 300 Euros with customs in Austria and everything – but they take you to your destination. They take care of your passport, here in Buhusi, or wherever you're from. But if you don't have a job secured there, it's better if you just don't leave.

  I stayed there six months, and I wouldn't leave the house out of fear of being caught by the carabinieri. As soon as I went out, they caught me. They ask, “Do you have sogiorno?” If you don't, they put you in a van, they take you to the police station, and ask: mother, father, family, everything. Then they put you in a car and take you to jail. I was in jail for two weeks. It's kind of a migration center with Romanians, Chinese, Italians, Germans, all nationalities. They give you food, clothes, everything. After two weeks, they take you to the airport and they send you back to Bucharest with a ban: you can't go back. But you can go back: you have a civil union with any man and you can pass. On a bus, in two- three days you're there.

  It's hard. The first time I cried, oh my God! And if you have one of those Italian dictionaries, you pick up the language in no time. It will take you less than a month. Anyway, I'm leaving again. I was there with a 40-year-old Sicilian, and now he calls me, we talk. He has money, and land. He would come here with his car, but he doesn't know his way around and he's afraid of Romania, of being killed. In the end, if he did come, and he had money, I'd kill him myself. I'll find other Italians, now that I know the language.

  But I'll go to him. I have my man, I don't need money, I don't need anything. My mom told me, “Better a good whore than a bad housewife. If you want to live, girl, go after him. Be smart. Don't leave any tracks, don't leave anything behind.” I'm leaving in a few months. I'll pay the driver and he'll leave me in Tributina, in Rome. From there I'll take a van from Tibutina to Catania. And then, I'll call my Sicilian on the phone and he'll come and get me, ciao, arrividerci.

  9

  The Teacher

  6.30 am. Bundles of smoke-colored fog descend from the surrounding ghostly hills. Gabi carefully ponders her every step, zigzagging through fresh cow dung, but her small Cinderella-shoes often sink in the muddy alleyways. Even though she doesn’t live in Mocirla but on the neighboring hill, the mud is just as deep. When she gets to the road, she washes her black shoes in a pond and keeps walking towards the school. Gabi Gruia, 29 years old, is a Romani language teacher at the Buhusi Arts and Crafts school. She has a 4.5 million lei salary. She is the only one in the community who went to college, in Bucharest. She lives between two worlds and neither one accepts her completely: she is the intellectual of a Gypsy community with which she cannot identify, while wider society, labels her, even if not openly, as a Gypsy.

  Please don’t write about me. I don’t like it. I usually don’t like being praised. I don’t want people to look at me like an animal at the zoo just because I am the only one in the community who went to college. What’s the big deal? I simply want to be treated like a normal person. My friend, a Romanian language teacher, why doesn’t anyone praise her because she finished college? It just feels like something normal to me.

  I don’t dress like a Gypsy, I don’t act like a Gypsy. But sir, I am a Gypsy! If you want to accept me for who I am, good. If not, that’s fine too. I don’t have Gypsy friends. Not even the ones I’m friendly with. It’d be normal for me to feel comfortable around my own kind, to be one of them. But I can’t. And it’s hard for them too, to accept that one of them can rise above. If you rise above them, it’s like they have something against you, because you succeeded and they didn’t.

  They’re afraid of me. I can tell when they talk to me that they’re holding something back. They think I have a lot of acquaintances and powerful connections. I think that maybe the only solution would be for these people to be displaced, scattered among the Romanians, a family here, another one there, in different cities, among civilized people. For someone to give them jobs, houses, etc., so they can do what they see their neighbors doing.

  Just about everyone around here has seven, eight children. In Bistrita, near here, a family named Buhoi has 12 children. The schoolteacher from over there was telling me that she met with their mother, pregnant in the hospital. She had a mangy kid, with snot around his nose. She asked her why she doesn’t wash the child. “Listen lady, instead of washing this one, I’ll just make a clean one,” she answered.

  We can’t change the world. We have to adapt and move on. I’m not an idealist like I used to be. At school, I know I won�
��t be able to help these children. Before, I was different. I thought I could change them, to save them from this swamp. Now, I’ve given up.

  This year, after teachers’ strike, and with what Prime-minister did to them, I decided to leave the country. I’m going to go to Italy.

  Final picture

  Limbos and another seven or eight men were at old Sava’s pub again last night, gathered around a 1$ bottle of liqueur. They were celebrating one of their returns from Italy: a very big guy, with a tight shirt, with a mean face, with expressionless, predatory eyes that looked you right in the brain. Then, another one came down from the hill, with clay on his head, dead tired. He had worked all day at sticking together a house with clay for 3$. And with that 3$, he bought everyone drinks: “Drink up guys, ‘cause now I have money!” The conversation that followed was hypothetical – although the most frequently pronounced word was da burli (fuck) – about what was better: to steal and cash in big all at once or to work honestly for almost nothing?

  Alone, the one that came from the clay, the one that defended working, the one that was made fun of, left, bowing his head and saying, more to himself, “Whatever. Better I stay here and work than take it in the butt from everyone in jail…”

  They hang around like this all the time, fierce, joking.

  Sidebar 1

  Rich Roma, Poor Roma

  The same hunter-gatherer instincts, in the same “transitional” social conditions, may lead to opposite results.

  Dan “Finutu” died in august 2012 in a car accident. His palace in Buzescu is a faithful replica of the Caracal Court (the only court of law that ever caused trouble for Finutu). Ciprian Limbos from Mocirla neighborhood of Buhusi, spent two years in jail for a pack of underwear. Finutu's wealth is estimated at 4 million Euross, Limbos is dirt-poor.

  Buzescu is one of the richest Gypsy communities in Romania, Mocirla lives hand to mouth on stealing, welfare and money sent by relatives abroad. The demise of Ceausescu marked a crossroads for the Roma population: while some got rich by fishing the troubled waters of transition, most sank in poverty. What made the difference between the rich Roma and the poor Roma?

  Romanian Gypsies have met freedom twice: in 1855-56, when slavery was abolished, and in 1989, when the communist regime fell. Both then and now, most of them got badly burnt, but some fared marvelously. In both cases, Gypsies massively migrated toward the West. Between 1977 and 1983, the last 65,000 nomads and semi-nomad Roma were settled under a PCR program. Local authorities were forced to provide housing and employment for them. During the dark years between 1980 and 1990, a part of the Roma population went back to their traditional lifestyles, but in modern forms.

  The Gypsies became specialists of the black market. In 1989, they were already well-versed. “After the revolution, even a stupid person could build five villas buying and selling metal”, says Marin Nicolae, a former boiler maker in Buzescu. Romania emerged from communism with a technology perfect for being sold for scrap. People started collecting and trading in scrap metal. Capitalizing on the absence of any regulation in the field, hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment were cut up to be exported as scrap metal. Even power line towers, railroad tracks or manhole covers were stolen. It was only in 2001 that the Emergency Order no.16 was published - and approved by Law no.456 – , regulating recyclable waste management.

  “My son is also in Bucharest, he's staying at the Intercontinental”, Gica from Buzescu, living across from Dan Finutu, told me.

  It was around 1993 in Alexandria, Teleorman, where I spent my school years. I was applying to the School of Journalism and looking for lodgings in Bucharest, and he had come to my father to buy some doors for the palace he was building. I recall two things from that conversation: that Gica didn't want to pay with money, but with gold, and that he mentioned his boy who “was staying at the Intercontinental Hotel” – the biggest and most expensive hotel in Bucharest at that time.

  The Buzescu Gypsies were already fabulously rich then, and I couldn't understand why. I understood it, after spending some time in the Gypsy community of Mocirla, Buhusi. Those Gypsies also had the extremely alive hunter-gatherer instincts that had helped those of Buzescu gain from the regime change. But the Moldavian Romas lacked the mastermind, the astute leader to understand and unite them around the opportunities created by the old regime burial, turning a handful of poor people into an organized and dangerous mafia worthy of Kusturica's “Black Cat, White Cat”.

  Sidebar 2

  Gypsy Clans

  Why and how are Gypsies divided into clans

  In the past decades, more and more Gypsies have forgotten or have begun to ignore the tribes they belonged to. A third of the Roma in Romania no longer define themselves as members of a particular clan, according to a 1992 study by sociologists Elena Zamfir and Catalin Zamfir. Most of those who still consider themselves part of a clan are: settlers (13,8%), braziers (5,9%), woodworkers (4,5%), tin workers (3,7%), silk weavers (3,2%), bear trainers (2,7%), brick layers (1,5%), Gabors (1,4%), and florists (1,2%).

  As in India the family profession was, as a rule, inherited and practiced in the family – the secrets of the trade passed down from father to son – the majority of the Roma clans have been formed, some since the migration towards Europe, around various occupations with which Gypsies earned their living.

  The main Gypsy clans in Romania and their characteristics.

  Blacksmiths

  • Occupation: Manufacturing of iron tools and objects.

  • History: They held a monopoly over iron manufacturing throughout the Romanian Medieval Ages. In the 20th century, many became farmers, industrial laborers, or construction workers. After 1989, few blacksmiths who remained in the towns still make wagons and tools.

  • Characteristics: They were wealthy Gypsies, among the first to settle down, but also among the first to lose their language. The majority of their descendants have lost their Gypsy identity.

  Tin Workers

  • Occupation: Tin-coating the pots and dishes of pension owners around whose houses they would periodically settle; begging.

  • History: After collectivization, the majority became farmers.

  • Characteristics: They are the descendants of the Turkish Roma. They were among the poorest Gypsies; they traveled in tilt-wagons pulled by oxes.

  Bone Carvers

  • Occupation: They manufactured objects from animal bones (ex. combs, handles, ornaments).

  • History: After industrialization decreased demand for their products, the bone carvers became mainly trash collectors or dealers of feathers or kitchen plates.

  • Characteristics: Bone carvers are the descendants of Indian ivory workers.

  Braziers

  • Occupation: Manufacturing of buckets, pans, pots, alembics, glasses, etc. from brass foil or, more recently, from aluminum.

  • History: From the beginning, they lived in tents, traveling in colored wagons. Many have maintained their traditional lifestyle until very recently. Of all the Gypsy clans, they were the last to settle down.

  • Characteristics: Among the braziers, the position of bulibasa (chief) is maintained and the kris (trying) is still practiced by the community elders.

  Woodworkers

  • Occupation: Searching for and working of gold, carving of softwood, berry picking.

  • History: From the end of the 18th century, when finding gold became increasingly difficult, the woodworkers dedicated themselves more and more to wood-carving.

  • Characteristics: Woodworkers are the descendants of the old Indian goldsmiths; they are known as bath makers, spoon makers, and dish makers.

  Settlers

  • Occupation: Various jobs for boyar courtyards or monasteries; agriculture.

  • History: Gypsies “of the hearth” were tied to the land before slavery abolition and the 1864 agricultural reform. Several decades after the emancipation laws, the notion of “settlers” became synonymous with “sedentarization
.” Many Gypsies without trades or plots of land entered the settlers’ family.

  • Characteristics: The Roma “of the hearth” were the first to lose their traditional language and way of life. The settlers are the most integrated within the majority of the population.

  Fiddlers

  • Occupation: Music

  • History: The fiddlers are a clan that detached themselves from the settlers in the middle of the 20th century.

  • Characteristics: The fiddlers from rural settings played at celebrations and were farmers by day. In the city, they were more specialized and lived easier lives. Some of the most talented became renowned musicians.

  Florists

  • Occupation: Flower commerce

  • History: They are a relatively new clan which appeared in the interwar period.

  • Characteristics: They are the most homogenized, and relatively rich, Roma category.

  Bear trainers

  • Occupation: Training bears.

  • History: Their forefathers were magicians, trainers, tightrope walkers, etc. During the Middle Age, they wandered through towns and cities with trained bears, earning a living from shows. After the profession disappeared at the beginning of the last century, bear trainers learned the trades of other clans.

  • Characteristics: After settling down, they formed relatively compact groups, maintaining their language and tradition.

  Gabors

  • Occupation: Commerce, tinsmithing, modern professions.

  • History: They are Roma from Ardeal who took their name from the landowner of the estate on which they worked.

  • Characteristics: They do not have a specific trade.