Column To the Gypsies, suffering brings soul
By JEANNETTE BATZ
With the third cup of thick, sweet
Bosnian coffee, every nerve jerks awake, and I scribble madly, finally
caffeinated enough to get my hosts crisscrossing, broken-English stories
teased apart. Accuracy is even more important than usual: These refugees are
Roma, otherwise known as Gypsies, forced to St. Louis when no European country
would take them. Now, in the quiet corner of southwest St. Louis where
theyve settled, stereotypes are raging.
Assumptions about the Roma can be summed up in a few labels:
dirty, noisy wanderers; thieves, liars and bamboozlers. Im not worried
about falling into that particular trap -- no one has borne it out yet.
This family, for example, speaks with great scorn of the
other kind of Gypsy, those who move from place to place begging. Their
own father worked as a tailor, and sent them to school. Yet all their lives,
theyve been tarred with the same old Gypsy brush. Judging by
the fire in their eyes, they never deserved it.
There. Thats what Im afraid of. Fire in their
eyes, dark skin, brilliantly colored full skirts. ... Im tipping backward
into the other stereotype: the last nomads, the free-spirited, passionate
bohemians with mysterious rituals and powers.
The romance is nearly as unfair as the fear and hate, distracting
us from the hardships and persecution these carefree people have
endured for centuries. In Europe, the Roma have been cast out, burned in
medieval pogroms, sterilized, ghettoized, forced to give up their way of dress
and life, caught in other peoples wars, more than half a million
slaughtered in the Holocaust. Last fall, residents of a small town in the Czech
Republic built a wall in the dark of night to segregate two Roma apartment
buildings. It was hardly a romantic awakening (the wall later came down after
wide protests; see NCR, Jan. 21).
I am so determined not to buy the stereotype that I ignore their
invitation to hear Gypsy music -- until Mirela explains,
Music is something beautiful to us, and her nephew tells me how
other Bosnians seek out their music. I weaken. Yes of course, please play
some for me.
The tape starts, and the 16-year-old son translates the
ballads sad story. He finishes by announcing that gypsies feel pain more
intensely than other people; they give more of their deepest selves. They have,
he says firmly, better souls.
I almost dont write it down.
But later, when I ask his mom to define the essence of Roma
culture, she says immediately, We have good souls. When I talk to
another Roma, from a completely different family, he mentions soul
not once, but three separate times. A Bosnian man remarks that Roma music is
like no other in its ability to touch the soul.
Is this the stuff of stereotype or a deeper truth? Can whole
peoples have soul? The only other group Ive heard thus
described is African-Americans. Suddenly I remember how, when I first started
researching the Roma, several Bosnians said to me, Gypsies are our
blacks.
Close your eyes and listen to Muddy Waters singing the blues, or
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg playing violin melodies of the Hungarian Roma. You
know immediately, this music has soul. White pop music does not. It stays close
to the surface, whining or bopping or lusting coyly, with the emotional range
and depth of a 13-year-old in the suburbs. Theres even soul food in these
cultures -- spicy, abundant and satisfying, readily shared, easily turned into
a celebration.
But what does it mean to say that an entire subculture has more
soul than the rest of us?
More than 95 percent of the Roma in America are illiterate,
its said. Until recently, they thrived in an oral tradition. Many still
shun school as a contaminant to their culture; they do nimble calculations in
their heads, no computers in sight, and speak an array of languages without
ever reading a book.
Is illiteracy, the scourge of civilized society, linked to
soul?
Books have shaped and colored my entire life. I am loath to brand
them soul killers. Yet the unschooled men and women I interview are remarkably
articulate, expressing complex emotional truths with wit, vividness and
precision -- as though they stole color and wisdom from sources that scholars
had long forgotten.
People with soul are not brittle or defensive. They are not
shocked when the world damages their dreams. They bend. They do not break. The
rest of us know this and are drawn to them.
Soul, by the Greek etymology, animates; it brings all aspects of
the self to life, nothing smothered under a pillow or stuffed into a closet.
The mother of this family readily admits, eyes full of pain, that she had three
abortions during the war years; that shes begun taking antidepressants;
that she tried to kill herself in Holland. Yet she answers in a flash when
asked lifes purpose: For family, children.
When a Rom dies, the other Roma in his world know within hours,
and they will travel across countries to attend the funeral. They are connected
in a way no cell phone can replicate. When they are together, they eat from a
single plate, and they party with gusto. Gadje [non-Roma] just eat
pita, joked one Rom. We eat the whole lamb.
How can I not romanticize this sort of soulfulness, in a society
thats forgotten how to share and is so terrified of sadness or
helplessness that it pops pills to control the bodys chemistry?
Antidepressants have their role, to be sure -- the Romani need them, too, to
survive the worlds cruel challenge. But they are not afraid of the
melancholy thats an inescapable part of human life and they are not
afraid to admit the power of fate. Theyve had no choice.
Adversity, its said, builds character.
But its suffering that deepens soul.
Jeannette Batz is a staff writer for The Riverfront
Times, an alternative newspaper in St. Louis.
National Catholic Reporter, May 26,
2000
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