Lidia Ostałowska

Roma are Roma

About the book

Six in the morning, but a fair number of people at the port. French people, Germans, English, Spanish. Newcomers with exotic, dark faces, too. Disembarking from the ferry that came here from Calais.
Welcome to Dover! Discover the secrets of the cliffs!
How to spot Roma in a crowd like that? From Slovakia, from the Czech Republic. By their skin color? It’s easy to confuse the Roma for Turks, or Bulgarians or Indians. By their flowery trousers? They might be wearing something else. By their wide cravats and perforated shoes with the long, pointed toes? Too few. By their Czech and Slovak? But what if they’re speaking Romani? And how to discern Romani from the hubbub of languages resounding in the ferry terminal?
Look carefully. You’ll see a family. They make their way to the door, behind which works an English Immigration Officer. The man walks in front. The woman a few steps behind. Then the children. Roma. The formation says it all.
The adults are exhausted, with their bundles. But the children are happy. Their hair like black coffee; eyes, too. They look around unselfconsciously, curious. And there’s a lot of noise. And it’s fun. And there’s movement. Jumping up and down in their too-short blue shorts: Forward, backward, rightward, leftward. That helps make the road to the door more interesting, meandering.
The Roma have been on the road for millenia. They know it well. It’s good to keep that in mind if you’re trying to spot them in a crowd.
Suddenly a cry, a shout. The children got out of hand with their monkeying around. But their parents aren’t angry with them. They put down their bundles, take them by the hand, comfort them. That’s how they are, Roma. They disappear behind the door.
Badzio (a Roma forename) left his house on Sunday evening. It happened to them quite suddenly. It was like this: Thursday, the kids out in the courtyard, Badzio warming himself at the stove, watching a movie. Ilona walks in: “Julius, Stefan, Tezider, Holub and Mrs. Holubová... They’re all in England. Their children live like princes there. There, no one writes graffiti on the walls: ‘Gypsies to the ovens.’ Badzio! My sister, Vlasta, she’s going there, too!”
It was all because of Josef Klíma from the Czech cable television station NOVA, which got reception in Slovakia, too. Klíma filmed a report, “The Gypsies are Going to Heaven.” Last year they showed it at the end of September, about Ladislav Ščuka, a bricklayer from Košice, and his family, who live in Dover. The segment showed how England was paradise for the Roma.
Whatever they said on television nova was taken as the God-given truth by Badzio’s neighbors. Previously, in August 1996, Klíma had said the same thing about Canada. That Czech citizens no longer need visas. They love Gypsies there. Easy to get asylum, work, a flat of your own. They’d run out of airplane tickets, so flights had to be booked months in advance. People sold whatever they had. The Roma of Ostrava wrote a petition to the alderwoman of their district, to get funding for the plane. She was only too happy to assist. Two weeks after the Canadian asylum program was announced, over four hundred Roma had applied for it. And even more would have done, but Canada immediately reinstated the visa requirement. It was a good thing some of them made it. The moral: If there’s something you have to do, do it quick.
Badzio stood up from the oven. I’ll sell an engine. We’ll have something for the trip. They didn’t take long to pack. They took with them no more than they would have taken for a visit to their aunt’s in Toporec. They left the keys with their mother-in-law. They told their neighbors: Not a word to anyone, what do the Slovaks need to know for. They bounced and jolted their way to Bratislava in a cousin’s Škoda, then they got in a bus and rode to Calais
through Austria, Germany, and France. Finally they found themselves on the dock.
What they saw there was neither a pond, nor a river, nor a lake. But, for the very first time: The sea. And they undertook this first sea journey of theirs in the dark: The smell of wet herring, salty lips. It’s easy to fall asleep to the sough of the open water. The children had only just succumbed when the wake-up call came. Open your eyes, we’re in Dover! Their journey to the country where racism doesn’t exist had taken three days. They would be happy here.

Translated by W. Martin