A Gypsy Girl, the Tarot, and My Fortune by Daphne Carpenter
The young woman was hard to miss. She sat on the ground with a long burgundy skirt flowering-out around her body. Long beaded and shelled necklaces hung around her neck and her slim arms were filled from wrist to elbow with shimmery metallic bangles. A deck of tarot cards was spread out face down on a folded velvet blanket in front of her, with weighted sun and moon charms holding it down on the all sides .
It was her eyes that first caught my attention—green cat eyes, outlined with black kohl (only later I realized that she wasn’t wearing any make-up). They were intense, but warm and inviting, the kind of eyes that attract you, but also make you look away because they are so deep and intimidatingly beautiful. Her skin was dark amber-colored; her complexion flawless. As I walked past her and we made eye contact, some unknown force made me stop. Could it be that she had special powers, I thought?
As the desert heat slowly slipped away into a cooler shade of night, the evening’s festivities began. Snake charmers with flutes in hand set up their ornately designed wicker baskets, from where the snakes would rise up, entranced by the hypnotic sound from the instruments. Men and woman were setting up their food stands as elegantly dressed dancers scampered from one end of the plaza to another, still putting on their long, dangling earrings. Floating through the air was the scent of saffron and other exotic spices; also warm couscous, mint teas, incense and burning oils. You could see that the visitors and tourists wandering around the marketplace were almost in disbelief, spellbound by the magic there in Marrakesh, a place where time seems to stand still.
I stopped in front of the young gypsy woman and sat down; I wanted to know my fortune. She welcomed me with a sensuous smile and then said something in French with an unfamiliar accent.
“Sorry, I don’t speak French,” I said.
She just paused, and then, as if to scan through her memory bank of languages, said, “Think of something that you are in question of.”
Immediately something came to mind. I concentrated on my question for several minutes as she worked her way through the cards with a soft intensity. She never looked up once. It seemed like a mysterious force was controlling her hands and movements. For some reason I really believed she knew what she was doing.
After a few repetitions and rounds of cards she looked at me with those eyes and said, “It is true. He did not want you to leave.”
It felt as though my heart stopped.
The gypsies are nomadic people who migrate from place to place in search of work. You’ll see them bathing in fountains in Italy, telling stories under the trees in orchards, selling their crafts along the Seine River in Paris, or reading your fortune in Morocco.
Their ethnic origins can be traced back to the Sind area of India, which is today South Central Pakistan. Their ancestors made the earliest official appearance in Europe in modern-day Turkey around AD 855, after emigrating through Egypt (hence the name “gypsy”), the Middle East and Armenia. They made their way through the mainland of Europe and eventually arrived at the British Isles in the 1500s.
Throughout history the gypsy life has been difficult. They have been enslaved, forbidden to speak their own language and even sterilized. As has been well-rooted in the Western mind, dark skin denotes inferiority, so by the time they reached the British Isles, they were singled out and met with discrimination.
Their lifestyle aroused suspicion and they were often misunderstood and feared. In a Christian society, gypsy cultural norms such as fortune telling, palm reading and the use of talking sticks were seen as “pagan rituals,” which often caused uproar.
European society had become industrialized and had moved from the untamed countryside and into cities. The trend of that era was to settle down into permanent residences, and as Europeans became more “settled,” the ethnocentric belief that their lifestyle was “normal” caused them to see the gypsy culture as primitive and backwards. Their nomadic and wild existence was viewed negatively and so “poor and vagrancy laws” were put into effect—laws against hawking and being on the highways. They were also told that they couldn’t live the way they did and so housing and education acts were passed. Gypsy children did not attend school, so their parents were fined for this. The culture was singled out and prosecuted (or threatened with prosecution) for offenses such as lighting fires, having dogs without licenses or collars, damaging grass by camping, and begging. In other words, to be a gypsy meant that your whole lifestyle was essentially, “against the law.”
This discrimination has been widespread, and wherever they have gone and settled, the eccentric gypsies have historically been treated in a hostile manner by their adopted countries.
In Budapest, I lived near the train station on the North “Pest” side, in a poorer neighborhood, and when I would tell people where I lived, the response was usually the same; “Oh, you live near the gypsies—be careful, it’s dangerous over there!”
I witnessed how badly they were marginalized, blamed for petty crimes like pick-pocketing and literally spit on by passersby. But honestly, I never felt intimidated or in danger while walking home at any hour of the day or night. And yes, there was always something going on in that wild neighborhood—something musical, something loud—because music and dance is their form of communication.
One night after a full evening of celebrations, an accor-dion-playing, robust and rosy-cheeked man named Serg (who was a Roma, a Romanian gypsy, as most of them were) told me that music is “in their blood.”
It’s something that’s taught and passed down to children from family members, not something they go to school to study. They simply “feel it,” because throughout the years, under the repressive circumstances that they have had to endure, music is the only thing that is true and pure
It was only in 1864—a year before African-American slaves were freed—that Roma slavery was abolished in Romania. Because of their parallel histories, many see similarities between gypsy music and jazz.
“Romanies [brought] an inventiveness and a radical way of thinking about making music to Europe in the same way that African-Americans, like Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, have done in America,” says Garth Cartwright, author of Princes Amongst Men: Journeys With Gypsy Musicians.
As true of most traditional cultures around the world, the Romas use dance as body language, and as a form of communication. Women, men, children, and the elderly all dance ecstatically during rituals and rites of passage. Weddings are embellished with an unwavering shower of music because this is the single most important event in a gypsy’s life. The marriages are usually arranged by the parents, unless a young couple can convince them that they have found the right one (child marriage is common and has even provoked criticism). If the bride is lucky, depending on the economic ability of the family, she will be gifted a belly chain made out of pure gold coins.
Once married, the bride joins her husband’s family where her role as caretaker of her husband, her in-laws and her children begins. Although it’s traditionally a patriarchical family, the wife earns respect once she starts having children.
In Budapest I felt perfectly suited to them—this tribe of people—because I, myself, am a gypsy—just traveling through, working temporarily, stopping to make music when I can, singing, dancing wildly, wearing bright colors to reflect the beauty of nature and seeking out my fortune.
In fact, many of you may perceive yourself to be one as well. Being a gypsy is not merely a particular ethnic origin, but rather, a state of mind. The term has come to symbolize someone who embraces a nomadic, unconventional way of life, which could mean travel, or just moving around a lot and/or doesn’t like to stay in one place for too long.
For a gypsy, travelling is not merely a pastime or leisure activity, but a way of life. They have certain codes of behavior which prevent them from working certain jobs that would cause them to settle for too long. Therefore, they must take to a profession which allows them to be mobile.
Men are inclined to sell and trade animals and livestock, and whatever items they can. A gypsy woman will inherit fortune telling and palm reading abilities, so that might naturally become her profession (something done only by women). And as a family, they tend to take seasonal work in orchards and on farms during summer and early autumn (it is not uncommon to see families with eight children, as this ensures a sufficient workforce and survival). This kind of employment is plentiful, regular, and temporary and thus perfectly suited to their nomadic lifestyle.
On Shakira’s newest album She Wolf, she sings a song called “Gypsy,” with the lyrics, “Broke my heart on the road, spent the weekend sewing the pieces back on, friends and thoughts pass me by, walking gets too boring when you learn how to fly…I’m a gypsy, are you coming with me?”
This kind of sums it up. Life is about being on the road. Even though we may live in a settled location, we are constantly journeying, taking unknown paths, getting our hearts broken, remembering those who we’ve encountered along the way. And on this journey, we realize that we can actually fly.
The belly-dancing singer, Shakira says that she relates strongly to her new single. “It’s how I live my life; like a nomad,” she said. “Ever since I became famous, I’m constantly traveling, which is great as I get to see so many different cultures and traditions. I definitely live like a gypsy!”
Embracing gypsy culture means to embrace our eccentricities—to be loud and to possess an unfaltering zest for life. We’ll stop at nothing to get to our next location because it is wanderlust, and our strong sense of survival that inspires us and keeps us traveling the road of life. We get knocked down, we get back up, we’re told no, but we keep going. We gypsies are always finding new routes, learning new dances and staying connected to the forests of our imaginations.
Are you coming with me?
Daphne can be found either sitting in a tree, laughing hysterically, dancing wildly in a drum circle, wandering through gritty and beautiful urban areas at night or sitting at her computer writing this. Read her blog about homeless youth in Brazil at www.sublimeadventures.blogspot.com.