By Gideon LevyA filthy yard, pungent cooking smells wafting out of the shabby dwelling, snot-nosed children, a one-legged man wandering aimlessly, flies everywhere - this is a Gypsy home in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem. It's the perfect setting for a Nissim Aloni play, but this is not "The Gypsies of Jaffa" by the renowned Israeli playwright. This home contains nothing of the mysterious, the romantic or the magical, no violin strings and no sorcery. It's just another rundown building in the Old City whose occupants, apart from one worker, are "Nawari," as the Gypsies of Jerusalem are called in Arabic.
There are 400 to 500 by one unofficial count, about 200 households by a different count, belonging to four clans - Sleem, Nimr, Shakr and Ba'rana. Until recently they married only within the community, but they have begun to open up to intermarrying with their Palestinian neighbors. Many are sanitation workers - this week one man rushed off to repair a blocked sewer drain; another was off to haul garbage for a municipal subcontractor.
Very little of the Gypsy cultural heritage has been preserved here, although one young woman is trying to salvage what she can. But she is shunned by the community, which is unwilling to accept activism on the part of a woman. We wandered for hours this week through the alleys of Bab al-Hutta, inside Herod's Gate, in search of the Gypsies of Jerusalem. Many people turned their backs on us, refusing to talk; others were stingy with their words, either largely ignorant of the Gypsies' fading identity or unwilling to divulge what they knew. In Cafe Karkour, a Nawar coffee shop adjacent to Herod's Gate, we asked a customer, a dignified-looking Palestinian named Taleb Ghit, whether he would let his daughter marry a Nawari. "No," he replied, "but I will not tell you why. There is a big difference between them and us. In ancient times they were nomads. They are not like us. But I do not want to insult them. I am forbidden to tell you what Nawar is, what Nawari is. I do not want to offend them."
Salame Shaker is a 50-year-old Gypsy who works for the municipal sanitation department. We met him in Bab al-Hutta, where he was born, though his family now lives in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz. Before 1967 most of the city's Gypsies lived in tents and lean-tos in Wadi Joz. During the Six-Day War many fled to Jordan, where they remained.
Shakr says community members of both sexes began marrying Palestinians three years ago. "We are more open-minded now," he says. One of his female relatives married a man from the distinguished Ja'abari family of Hebron, while another married into the Iskafi family, also from Hebron. He admits that "Nawari" still has pejorative connotations, like the word "Gypsy" in Europe, which has been replaced by "Roma" there. But there is no other word in Arabic for the community.
The association established by Amoun Sleem, the young woman activist, is The Domari Society of Gypsies in Israel (http://domarisociety.googlepages.com). "Dom" is the name of the community in its own, disappearing language, Domari. The language, an Indo-Aryan language closely related to Romany, Rajasthani and eastern Punjabi, originated in India.
What does it mean to be Nawar?
Shakr: "We are like anyone else. We are just a different family. The Palestinians came here at the time of wars in history; we were here before them. I have never felt different. Our food is the same as their food, we eat makluba and mansaf [traditional chicken and lamb dishes, respectively, of the Levant], just like the Palestinians. We do not have Gypsy music - our children listen to Arabic music - and we do not have [special] customs."
There is another Gypsy community in Gaza, whose women used to belly dance at family celebrations and whose men were wedding musicians. The Jerusalem Gypsies never danced. The first Intifada put an end to festivities in the Gaza Strip, and the Gypsies, who lived in lean-tos between Beit Lahia and Jabalya, apparently dispersed. The connection between the Jerusalem and Gaza communities has long since been severed, just like that between the Palestinians of the West Bank and of Gaza.
"I am 50 years old and have never been to Gaza," Shakr says. "The ties to the Gypsies in Jordan has also been lost. Those who are outside are outside and those who are inside are inside. I have cousins in Jordan. I went there and looked for them but did not find anyone. The old people have died and I could not find the young ones."
For 35 years the community was led by its mukhtar, Deeb Sleem, who worked as a scribe outside the East Jerusalem branch of the Interior Ministry, formulating requests. In the courtyard of the building in Bab al-Hutta, Shehadeh Nimr, a 43-year-old diabetic, hobbles around on his one leg. He too knows nothing about the community's cultural heritage or about his own ethnic identity. "I am Nawar," that's all.
"The Nawari are heroes," says Amar Ba'rana, his eyes lighting up with pride, as he sits in Cafe Karkour at midday. Not yet 28, he already has six children. "We marry young," he says - in his case, at 16. "I am not Nawar," he says in Hebrew, "I am Gypsy." Ba'rana's wife, Sharin Sleem, is also a Gypsy.
"Nawari is a name. I am a Muslim and my neighbor is a Muslim," he continues. "He is a human being and I am a human being. I read English and Hebrew, and I know where I come from - India - and there are Palestinians who do not know where they came from. The Gypsies of Jerusalem were here before everyone."
At the next table, Taleb Ghit describes his Gypsy neighbors: "They are people who live alone, a nation that lives alone. Who knows you? God and your neighbors. We, their neighbors, know them. They are refined, good people, but, you know, a group alone. Like the Bedouin, they do not let others come close."
Two Border Police officers, armed and in full gear from head to toe, sit on the stone steps leading to the cafe. No one inside has heard about the extermination of the Gypsies in the Holocaust. All they know is that the Gypsies of Europe are generous and donate to their small community.
The Gypsies of Europe, particularly in Finland, give to the Domari Society. Most of the Gypsies we met in the alleys of the Old City had nothing good to say about Sleem, its founding director. No one would help us to find her. Two days later we tracked her down in the small Gypsy center she runs in the north Jerusalem neighborhood of Shoafat, far from the wagging Gypsy tongues of the Old City.
Sleem, now in her thirties, seems to be a courageous woman who has decided to devote herself to preserving her community's heritage, in contravention of Gypsy expectations of a woman's role. She says most of her energies are focused on rescuing the unwritten language of the community, which only a few people can still speak. If nothing is done, she says, the language will become extinct within a decade, after the last of those who still speak are dead.
Sleem has devoted herself to the Domari Society for the past 12 years, working closely with the director of the Cyprus-based Dom Research Center, Dr. Allen Williams, with whom she has collaborated on two books on the subject. Next week she will be attending an international conference on Gypsies in Spain. Thrilled at the prospect, she says it will be the first time that Jerusalem's Gypsies will be represented in Europe. But more important to Sleem is that her community be accepted in Jerusalem as equals among equals.
Sleem's appearance does not disappoint: With her coal-black hair, giant hoop earrings, burning eyes and dark skin, she looks the Gypsy part. Visitors to the attractive apartment-turned-cultural center in Shoafat are welcomed by a receptionist from Poland. The place resembles an anthropoligical museum: photographs, traditional handcrafts, even a Gypsy cookbook published by Sleem. In it are recipes for lamb-filled pastries, date-filled cookies, a winter salad and potato salad. The cuisine is very similar to that of the Palestinians. Sleem says the Gypsies use more spices, with a nod to Indian food.
"I would like to be elected to the Palestinian parliament," says the Gypsy who is trying to raise her community's international visibility. Now she is working to create a dance company for Gypsy girls and to give crafts classes at the modest but impressive center that she established.
Labels: Gypsy, Gypsy Culture, Gypsy Family, Jerusalem, Palestinian
