Bury Me Standing Read online

  It might be assumed that people as poor as the majority of Gypsies would darn, stitch, and salvage, like the expertly patched peasants among whom they mostly lived. But whereas cleanliness, especially symbolic cleanliness, was supremely important, a tidy appearance simply wasn’t. The girls were neat and they were expected to be, but they didn’t bother to hem their dresses. A great many Gypsies, especially men, were interested in looking natty; at the same time children and adults were often to be seen in rags. Like Jeta, as she shopped for food, they had an instinctive trust that when the need arose the necessaries would be found.

  The resistance to mending in Kino was the only trace of a custom among Gypsies, who had traditionally found that looking shabby could be useful: it could inspire fear in gadje, and therefore keep them at a respectful, or anyway fearful, distance. This could backfire, however. All xenophobia is at some point linked to a fear of dirt—disease and contamination as represented in dark skin, feces, and the night.

  And a raggedy appearance could arouse pity, a sentiment properly reflected in their contempt. Gypsies laugh at the gadje who turn moist eyes on them, but they are happy to take their money. Certainly some beggars need to beg, but for many, especially among children, it is a sideline, a chance to pick up a little pocket money and simultaneously confirm one’s proud isolation from the white donor. This attitude—though not necessarily the begging—is widely encouraged by adult Gypsies, who are understandably anxious that their children should neither mix with gadje nor be thin-skinned. The Gypsies of Tirana, in any case, didn’t beg. This was left to the homeless children in the center of town, who belonged to that miserable group known as the Jevgs.

  Clothes were not generally passed down—they didn’t often survive their first owner and, more important, they could bring pollution. In many parts of the world the clothes of a Gypsy who dies are burned along with the rest of his or her few possessions. (There is a more convenient alternative: as the American sociologist Marlene Sway noted, urban Gypsies drop these items at the dry cleaners and never collect them.) Gypsies preferred new clothes, but in Kino I found a certain enthusiasm for the secondhand. When I left the Dukas I was finally traveling light. One by one, shirts, skirts, brushes, makeup, hair gadgets, and even shoes were pledged to the girls, and mainly of course to Dritta—not out of greater affection for her, but because she was the most determined, the greatest pest. (It was obvious that any attempt at an equitable distribution would be rectified after I’d gone.) Still, when the previous fall an American Pentecostal mission had given the Kino Gypsies a large batch of secondhand clothes, including much-needed winter coats, they promptly sold them.

  Jeta’s father, Sherif (just for example), like most traditional Gypsy men, wore a suit all the time, the same suit, no matter what the occasion or the weather. And he would wear that suit until it fell to pieces and had to be replaced. This habit flourished alongside the foppish tastes of many Gypsy men: they loved flash cuts and flapping lapels, in shiny, striped or stippled fabrics (young men picked fashionably off colors and wore them in winning, original combinations); they liked hats, wore watch fobs, mustaches, and lots of (gold) jewelry. When suits became shiny from wear and grease, so much the better. If they were rich, they picked the biggest cars—real pimpmobiles, whose two-tone paint jobs, diamonds-in-the-back, and custom features echo the gaudy caravans once used in Poland and still occasionally to be seen in Britain and France. In their brilliant sense of color and their taste for glitz, along with the necessary flair to carry it off, they resembled African Americans, with whom (in parts of what is now Romania) they also shared a history of prolonged enslavement by white men.

  Also like black Americans, they suffered a common and slanderous stereotyping. They were supposed to be shiftless and work-shy. In fact, Gypsies everywhere are more energetic, if not always more industrious, than their neighbors; they have always had to be quick on their feet. Sure enough, they have mainly shunned regimented wage labor in favor of more independent and flexible kinds of work. The wall of Stanbuli ovens in that soapy courtyard in Kinostudio was a testament to this; here the word “shiftless” had to do with the consumer, or perhaps with the albatross ovens themselves.

  Learning to Speak

  IT IS NOT hard to see why linguists like Marcel are so fond of Romani. Jan Yoors was also intoxicated by the language—and by the life. At the age of twelve he left his bourgeois home in Antwerp and with his parents’ permission traveled with a group of nomadic Lovara Gypsies. Yoors stayed with them on and off for six years; and when in 1940 it came time to leave them, he despaired:

  I would no longer express myself in the wild, archaic “Romanes,” unfit for small talk. I would no longer use the forceful, poetic, plastic descriptions and ingenious parables of the Rom or indulge in the unrestrained intensity and fecundity of their language. Old Bidshika once told us the legend about the full moon’s being dragged down to earth by the sheer intensity, weight and witchery of the Romany tongue. And it almost seemed that it could be true.

  I had hoped that staying with a family would give me a chance to learn some Romani. But as a guest of the Dukas I was inhibited by the strict Roma etiquette. Each time I rose or tried to do something useful, I was ordered: Besh!—Sit! I was an honorary man in this respect and in others—such as eating with the boys, before the women and children. And so while the women worked, I sat, and I watched, and sketched, and wrote in my notebook. Reading was out of the question. Reading plain worried the Dukas. So keres?—What are you doing?—was the usual puzzled response to an upheld book. But as often I would be asked: Chindilan?—Are you fed up, weary?—as if any quiet, or stillness, was a sign of infirmity or depression. Like most nomadic or once-nomadic peoples, the Gypsies were not readers. Even literate Roma (a minority everywhere) are not readers.

  Lili was not a bori and so she didn’t do washing; she was charged with keeping all the pitchers and dozens of empty pop bottles brimming with fresh drinking water, and with roasting and grinding coffee. She often sat beside me in a mocha-scented cloud on the porch step, a tin tray of the blackened beans at her feet. And there was the polished brass grinder that she was hardly seen without; it wasn’t much more than a long pepper mill inside which spoonfuls of brown dust were painstakingly produced. The children sat around eating their fig-spread bread, still stung with sleep and quiet, and I asked for words: my “work.” Luckily for me, my efforts to learn Romani became a family project and entertainment.

  After a question, and sometimes, it seemed for a long time, after every word anyone said to me, I would have to ask: So?—What?—and hope for a good clue. So was unspecific enough to elicit a wide range of replies, all of them apparently very funny. The whole family, from little Spiuni to old man Sherif, fell about in tearful and helpless familial laughter. And the good mood ensured that my lesson would go on longer and be less guarded.

  Disinforming inquisitive gadje has a long tradition. It is a serious self-preserving code among Gypsies that their customs, and even particular words, should not be made known to outsiders. It is also a time-honored source of fun. One of the earliest glossaries, collected from English Gypsies in 1776 at a Windsor fair by an antiquarian called Jacob Bryant, gives the word ming for “father.” (Minge comes to British slang from the Romani, in which it has the same pronunciation and meaning: the female pudendum.)

  Sometimes the Dukas’ disinformation was accidental. In many cases each of them gave me Albanian words. Though bilingual, they themselves were often unable to distinguish between the two languages: it was just what they spoke. And the ways in which family members attempted to teach me (or even to reach me) at least told me something about them.

  Lili was playful, as if she imagined the whole thing was just a children’s game and that any minute I would be rattling along in Romani, chatting with the rest of the grown-ups. “Okay!” was the only word of English I managed to interest her in; otherwise she would just make a low gurgling noise and shake her head vigorously—a gesture
that for all Albanians (as for Bulgarians) meant the opposite of what you imagined: yes.

  Like many shy people, Artani, the youngest son, made exchanges even more excruciating for himself by talking very fast and intimately to his armpit, so that he always had to repeat himself. He seemed unable to accept that with all my worldly experience—I had, had I not, traveled all the way from America?—I couldn’t understand them. And, like many others, if I understood one phrase, he would charge ahead, assuming that I had suddenly mastered the whole language. O Babo’s solution was to translate difficult words into Albanian: I was a gadji, his logic seemed to go, so surely I spoke the language of the gadje. Tatoya, Jeta’s beautiful, blushing sister, employed a technique as delicate as her features: instead of speaking she mouthed the words. And Kako, their hoarse old uncle who along with Sherif often visited our courtyard, attempted to convey the meaning of words just by shouting them.

  Shkelgim, a young cousin, tried speaking to me in Romani with what he imagined was an American accent. I know this because he told me. I couldn’t have guessed, even with the giveaway pelvis-thrusting, hair-combing Elvis gestures. Nicu was a great performer; indeed he only joined in when there was a crowd, and it was he who was the primary source of dirty jokes. He never stayed long, though, and having squeezed the most from one line or another he would shimmy his shoulders, swivel his hips, shake his belly like a Turkish dancer before slipping out the front gate. This joking of Nicu’s was cute and his brand was rare: not many Gypsy men would risk compromising their macho images, not even in jest.

  A joke before dinner: Kako, Lela, Spiuni, Viollca, Marcel, Jeta, Liliana, and Nuzi on the front porch in Kinostudio, Tirana, 1992 (photo credits 1.3)

  Jeta tried to scold him. She called him bengalo, or devilish, but it was said with the gleaming pleasure reserved for those who make one laugh. She found it difficult to be stern with her first boy, whom she adored—as she publicly admitted with characteristic candor—just a smidgen more than the others. (And he did have great charm: cheap, childlike charm, unlike the moody, more subtle appeal of the middle son, Nuzi, or of the tender, tortured Artani.) Jeta’s face could switch from horror-witch to granny bear in a second, alternately for the control and comfort of her grandchildren. Either way, no one, not even I, could mistake her meaning.

  The Romani language has a small basic vocabulary—a limitation which forces the speaker to be resourceful. And so, for example, they say “ears” for “gills”; an earthquake is just described: I phuv kheldias—The earth danced. As in Turkish, there is one verb—piav—for both smoking and drinking (two crucially contiguous occupations); chorro stands for both “poor”—indigent—and “bad.” There are no words for “danger” or “quiet” (though some Romani speakers use strážno and mirnimos respectively—recent borrowings from Slavic languages).

  Donald Kenrick, a British linguist and Gypsiologist, took up the challenge of translating Romeo and Juliet into Romani for Pralipe, a Rom theater group from Skopje. In London he showed me some of his solutions for the balcony scene.

  Romeo But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

  It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!

  Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

  Who is already sick and pale with grief

  That thou her maid art far more fair than she.

  Be not her maid, since she is envious.

  Her vestal livery is but sick and green,

  And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.

  Romeo Ach! Savo dud si andi kaja filiastra?

  O oriento si thai Juliet si O kham.

  Usti lacho kham kai mudarel O chomut,

  nasvalo thai parno si O chomut thai na mangel ke tu—leski

  kanduni—si po-lachi lestar.

  Lesko uribe si zeleno thai nasvalo

  sade O dinile uraven pes andre, chude le.

  This we retranslated as follows:

  Romeo Oh! what light is in that window?

  It is the east and Juliet is the sun.

  Arise good [or nice] sun and kill the moon

  Sick and white is the moon which doesn’t want you

  Its servant is more beautiful than it.

  (Donald couldn’t find a word for “envious,” so in the Romani version neither the moon nor the maid was going to be envious.)

  Its clothing is green [or blue] and sick

  Only fools dress themselves like that, throw them out.

  Things got trickier. Farther into Romeo’s speech we got to:

  I am too bold; ’tis not to me she speaks.

  Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,

  Having some business, do entreat her eyes

  To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

  Kenrick had come up with:

  Na tromav. Na kerel mange duma.

  Dui lache cerhaia ando bodlipen

  si len buti averthane—mangen lake jakha

  te dudaren ando lengo than

  zi kai aven palpale.

  We ran this back into English:

  I do not dare. She is not speaking to me.

  Two good [or nice] stars in cloudy place [the cloudiness]

  They have work [or jobs] elsewhere—they want her eyes

  To give light in their place

  Until they come back.

  Apparently the production was a great success and, last I heard, Pralipe had taken it on tour in Germany.

  All languages are expanded and invigorated by loan words, but perhaps none so markedly as Romani. This is because its speakers have frequently crossed borders, and because a common language has not yet been fixed in writing. A store of mainly “domestic” words—those relating to home and hearth and mostly of Indian origin—has been retained over the centuries, and it is this which is shared by the speakers of the many dialects of Romani (there are around sixty in Europe alone), their notionally common language. More pervasive is the spirit of the language or that which it seems especially well suited to express—hyperbolic, gregarious, typically expressive of extreme emotion. Vivid usage is of paramount importance and original images are prized. The tale is never as important as the telling, and great storytellers are highly revered members of the community, tending to specialize in ghost stories, fairy tales, shaggy-dog yarns, or riddles.

  With the simple addition of the ancient Indic suffix pen, like “hood” or “ness,” one can create abstract nouns, such as Romipen, Gypsiness; or else such words may be borrowed from another language. But among Romani speakers these big-concept, encompassing words are not much needed. Without these generalities, the language flows like a good poem, rich in detail, in concrete images, and in fresh, inventive use of simple words. So, for “I love you,” you got (as in Spanish) “I want you,” but just as often “I eat you,” or even “I eat your eyes.” “I want to eat your face” (or “I want to eat your mouth”: the word for both “face” and “mouth” is muj) is a request for a kiss.

  The highly aspirated, raucously guttural vernacular is unusually expressive, especially when produced by an old, deep, and tobacco-stained voice. Although a new “political” language is emerging, Romani is generally phatic—that is to say, its function is to express sociability rather than to exchange ideas (which are likely to be shared already).

  Jeta’s style was typical. She was rude and funny, applying unexpected images to unlikely targets, and often conveying terror and irony at the same time. “Why can’t a gadji make a good bori?” Jeta put the question seriously, following the jokey proposal in the courtyard that while they considered prospective brides for the ten-year-old Djivan, why not consider me? Because “A gadji wouldn’t know how to take out her own eyes.” Jeta’s reply conveyed the primary meaning that, compared with a proper Gypsy girl, a gadji would lack the necessary training and sensibility for her role. But she also managed to convey that such a wife would be no fun, for the taking out of one’s eyes was also a Romany expression for orgasm.

  Considering how priggish Gypsies c
ould be about sex and about the female body in any context, Jeta—with the license granted to a grandmother or, rather, to a woman past menstruating—was exceptionally ribald: “The salted ones, into the mud” was her kind of remark about women she didn’t approve of. On the other hand, if a place was nice—say, the new coffee bar in town—she might say, “O manusha khelaven tut”—“The people make you dance.” She would call out after the children, if they walked in front of her while she was talking to someone, interrupting her flow: “May I pee on your eyes?” or “Are your guts falling out?” (So that you didn’t have time to go around?) Or, if she was really pressed, she might say: “Te bisterdon tumare anava!”—“May your names be forgotten!” Her style was one of mock fierceness, and everyone loved it.

  I never met a Gypsy who didn’t have a sweet tooth. Although salt, pepper, vinegar, and pickled foods are considered baxtalo, lucky, they like things but guli, very sweet, and were alarmed and revolted by my preference for the salty, or bushalo (sour). Sugar was a luxury in Albania, and Jeta may have thought my demurral was self-sacrificing, which she could not tolerate in a guest. Fed up one morning, she dumped a heap of sugar into the plain yogurt I was settling down to eat, shaking her head as if to say, Where did she grow up? What she actually said was: “If you put that yogurt up a pig’s ass it would fly away.” It was that sour.

  She was also in the habit of adding the exclamation Ma-sha-llah! or “As God wills!” after everything. Jeta explained: “It is to let whoever you are talking to know that when you say that their newborn baby is such a darling cupcake you aren’t really deep down in your heart saying may his brain dry up.” It was also a useful precaution. “If you do not show that your heart is pure it is your own fault if something terrible happens.” Ribald, rude, and, for ballast, unshakably superstitious.

  Wit was the province of Kino women. The male idiom more often involved the ponderous intoning of statements of fact (or of ludicrous nonsense) to convey ancestral heft and the wisdom of proverbs. Kako, Jeta’s hoarse old uncle, was a tireless intoner, always using this two-part formula: “Just as the mare beats the road, so the young wife wants the penis.” And of course there would follow a sagacious nod.