I Don’t Have Any Gypsy Friends

BUS JOURNEY – GYPSIES – THE FENCE

I am sitting on the bus coming back from my father’s village deep in the mountains of Transylvania, going back to the city where I’ll catch my plane back to London.

People have been pitying me about this choice of transport.  No self-respecting person goes by bus, if they can drive or hitch a ride in a car from any friend or vague contact.  The bus is supposed to be dirty and unpunctual, but really it is a legacy of the old days when people had no cars, or if they did, no petrol could be found at petrol stations.  What it really is, is the wrong kind of status symbol.  An anti-symbol of poverty.

But I am not a local and I don’t care, and I can’t drive either, so that’s settled.

I get on the bus, half of my suitcase filled with delicious half-ripe, half-green walnuts freshly picked, a casserole of homemade cakes the goodbye gift from the weekend’s wedding, and my packed lunch of fried cottage cheese dumplings “papanasi”.

I walk through the bus looking for a good window seat on the right side of the bus.  There are very few people on board, a couple of old village ladies, a mountain guard and a gypsy woman with two little daughters, one sleeping across her lap.

I sit behind her, and half an hour into the bus ride I switch seats to the left where the window is not clouded-over and I can watch the striped hay plots with haystacks sensuously curving across hills in between patches of orange and green forest.

When my side of the view is destructed by trees close to the roadside, I look around me.

There is a failing argument running through my mind.  The liberal Londoner I pretend and try hard to be is up against the standard Romanian psyche deep in my system.

I watch the gypsy family.  The woman is young, not particularly pretty, a set preoccupied expression on her face.  She may be younger than me but aged by responsibility.  Her greying hair is a lighter shade of brown than mine, perhaps even some natural blonde flickers.  Her skin is vaguely freckled and fair.  Her long hair is platted with orange ribbon in an intricate lattice above her nape.  I study her clothes automatically, as I do with any woman that ever comes my way.  (Why?  Looking for tips, do’s and don’ts, special flavours?).  Her blouse is white with purple-fuchsia and orange flowers, the same as the skirt, a silvery blue jumper over it showing just the collar of the blouse.  A white with gold thread platted apron over the long skirt this is uncannily similar to the ancient fashion worn by the old village women, who would undoubtedly balk at the comparison and probably forever banish their platted aprons, even at the risk of spending their funeral cash, hard saved from many meagre state pensions.

My gypsy woman wears purple sandals styled socks, it is after all October and chilly.  When she gets off at the next break, she covers her head with a transparent yellow scarf.  The two daughter look may be seven and nine, ribbons in their two plaits at either side of their heads.

The daughter who is not sleeping keeps checking me out on the bus, I see the brown eyes peeking around the bus chair every now and then?  I look her in the eyes, with curiosity but no aversion.

The running commentary in my head goes something like this.

“I don’t have any gypsy friends.  None of my friends or family do.  Only an adventurous ex of mine knew some, and I was afraid of getting anywhere near them, while being attracted to his interloper aura.

As long as he kept me safe, that is, and separate from them.  Once, only once, there was a gypsy man in his house, and he took a picture of me, without knowing me.  I left the house after five minutes, offended but also afraid.

None of my family or friends have any gypsy friends.  My ex is gone now.  Everybody I know has an anti-story about gypsies.

Apart from my Norwegian friend, whose government pays her to teach immigrant gypsies Norwegian to integrate them.

And here is the Londoner in me saying I should strike a conversation.  I should find out what are “they” like.  What does it look from “their” point of view.  Does my story about “them” match theirs?

My story about “them” comes in many different ways from my family, friends and newspapers – always the same story.  “She had her hand in my handbag, and when I looked she fixated me with her stare”, said my mother when I was ten.  Petty thieves, occult hypnotists, international networks not to be messed with, their good music on my iPod, hat on the floor at the exit from their London South Bank concert.  They may win, but not for long.

There is no real dialogue.  I don’t dare go and talk to her.  I entertain the thought, and shift my passport into a deeper pocket of my handbag, then I take my handbag in my lap and hold it.

I know she has a story and may be an answer, if I found the right cord, the right curiosity, the right respect.

Instead, I assess the “rich” message my black crocodile leather bag sends, and loop through the latest versions of “their” story.

“A gypsy beggar shouted after us in Granada- “Romanians are poor and they work, we beg and are rich”.”

“A gypsy family asked after the deserted empty house in our village, but the owner refused to give it to them.”  How long before the hay stacked villages with apple orchards change owners?  There are only another ten, twenty years that the aging haystack makers will still be there.  Their children are all in town, or on the fields and building sites of rich Europe, saving money for townhouses.

I want to talk to her.  I want to tell her I don’t hate her.  I want to tell her I am curious about her.  Where do you buy those platted aprons, to start with?  Is there an apron workshop or factory somewhere?

Of course, I know the other side of the story, or rather another side.  We put them across the fence here and we never cross that fence to see what it’s like over there.

But once we are out of the country, like I am, I am put right behind the same fence too.  When I say I am from Romania, I am asked, “Are you gypsy?”  In the city of London, on Playa Paraiso in Mexico.  I shudder at the question, my knee-jerk conditioning coming out of my mouth unfiltered.  “No, and we don’t like them either.”

Yes, I have read The Economist’s studies about “them”.  I have read a PhD’s anthropology travel book, “Wild”, where she affectionately explained how the nomadic civilisations will never be like the settled ones, “they” will never be like “us”, and expecting them to be cannot work, never has and never will.

We will all have to find a “third way” and drop our expectation of “civilising” “them” with our “white and settled” – world standards.  Which, incidentally, have led to uprooting and infecting indigenous populations worldwide with crime, alcoholism and poverty.  Sounds familiar, no?  The Inuit, the Native Americans, the Aborigines, they all suffer from them.

In the meantime, I clutch my purse to my chest and drift on thoughts of innocent me befriending the gypsy woman, only to be conned by the network of her world, at the bus destination.  It’s so deeply rooted in my mind I can shake it.  It paralyses me.

The same evening I am having an orange juice with my family, four of them having just one juice in the glitzy new shopping mall.  Only one of them has a job.

Two flashy gypsy women in gold leaf jackets and platted red and fuchsia long skirts get off the escalator, accompanied by a man, well-fed, sporting a John Wayne moustache and wide-brimmed black hat.

This is our world, from this side of the fence.  Are “we” right, “are they” wrong?  Do any of us have a choice?

I am a Londoner.  I have a Rwandan friend, an Iraqi one, a Sri-Lankan, an Indian, a German, a Japanese, a French, a handful of Eastern Europeans, English, Scottish, Americans, Canadians - and these are just the close friends.  But I don’t have a Gypsy friend.  I think I’m missing something.