Bury Me Standing by Fonseca

Bury Me Standing - Isabel Fonseca's History of Roma Gypsies Tradition, Change, and Interrelationships The word "gypsy" itself conjures images of caravans and dark eyes, sensuality, the devil and thieves. For centuries, the gypsy people have figured prominently in European and American literature and artwork, usually invoking images of color, mystery, or revulsion. It is therefore a curious irony that a people who have inspired centuries of stories have no written language and, consequently, no past of their own.

In Bury Me Standing, Isabel Fonseca embarks on the daunting task of weaving together the history of the Roma - from their origins in India, their flight to Persia, Armenia and Syria and their arrival into Europe in the 14th century. She then examines the next 400 years of slavery in Romania to their current situation as the "untouchables" of Europe. The Roma have no written history. Their stories are passed down orally, so "the past" usually begins with the early memories of the tribe's oldest living member.

The Roma, Fonseca writes, are a people "living outside history." Among the things that make them unique among diasporic peoples is that they "have no home...the have no dream of a homeland." Until now, the Roma have existed without an overt outside history, all as part of their strategy for the tribe's survival. For centuries, the survival of the Gypsy tribe lay rooted in their traditions of secrecy, isolation and separation. According to their tradition, the act of recording the Roma experiences would leave them exposed.

The veil that separated them from the gadje - white people/oppressors - would be removed. For centuries, this self-imposed marginalization has helped them survive as a tribe. Today, however, Fonseca observed that this isolation might serve as their undoing. Despite growing awareness of the Roma plights in European parliaments, the United Nations and even through Gypsy-edited magazines, many of the old traditions remain. For the most part, the Roma continue to maintain an "us against the world" existence.

Many Roma tribes prohibit all contact with gadje, except in cases of business. The Roma also employ a number of tactics to keep gadje away. Many Roma purposely maintain an unkempt appearance to discourage unwanted advances. They also use language as a shield, proudly boasting that no gadje will ever completely master the Romany tongue.

However, a growing number of Roma activists are realizing the drawbacks of these traditions, particularly the tradition of silence and "not knowing." For centuries, the gypsies have dealt with turmoil, war and change with silence, because, as Fonseca writes, they are "a people not making history but merely surviving the winds of change." Perhaps the strongest winds blew during World War II, when as many as 80,000 Gypsies were killed in Hungary alone, in what was later known as the other Holocaust or, in Romany, "parraimos" (the devouring).

The Gypsies, however, "rarely mention their martyrdom...The ovens of the extermination camps have been forgotten." In one of the book's most poignant chapters, Fonseca compares the Jewish and Romany reactions to these crimes of hatred, and addresses much of modern history's neglect of the parraimos.

The Jews, observes Fonseca, have responded to their persecution with "a monumental industry of remembrance." In contrast, the Roma have "prided themselves on the ability to forget, to brush themselves off and begin anew." large part of this tradition of "not knowing" stems from their status as a nomadic people. By being rootless, by overcoming obstacles (such as memory) that could cause a strong rootedness, the Roma had traditionally been able to move from place to place.

They had no shared history with any other peoples, and their traditions were solely their own. After the war, however, this nomadic existence ended. The Roma were forced into settlements, during what was called the Great Halt. Tightening immigration controls in the late 1980s meant that the Roma could no longer move freely from one state to the other. These factors also caused increasing instances of contact with the gadje, often with violent results.

Fonseca writes that the nature of anti-Roma sentiment is no longer rooted in the Gypsy's behavior, but in their very existence. "Despite a long-settled, well-integrated population of about seventy thousand German Gypsies, by appearance.