Wandering hands

BEEN AROUND A WHILE: A depiction of gypsy celebrations in Saintes-Maries-de-la-mer, France, on the front page of French newspaper Le Petit Parisien, May 24, 1908

If you have been to Paris recently, then my stories will not surprise you. On the Champs Elysee, next to the big and expensive shops, young girls, from the ages of 10 to 15, roam the streets asking tourists for donations to some charity that nobody has ever heard of. Tourists sometimes stop to give them money, but Parisians never ever stop. Instead they clutch their bags tightly, check their back pockets to make sure their wallets are safe, and mutter a curse.

At the Louvre, you will be approached by a group of young boys, probably as you are queuing up to buy your ticket. They will ask you to sign a petition — perhaps for the rights of 
ethnic minorities in France — and will offer you a pen. As you stop to read the petition before signing it, one of the boys will pick your pocket.

At a train station, just as you are struggling with your 
bags (the French are not big on porters or trolleys), four or five children will surround you and ask for money. As you struggle to find change in your pocket, one of them will grab your attache case and run off. There is no way you can chase her, because you have a big suitcase to look after. But if you do leave your bag and set off in pursuit, rest assured that not only will you never catch up with her, but that your suitcase will have also disappeared by the time you return, defeated and exhausted.

Sometimes, there is violence involved. Last summer, I watched an agitated American tourist complaining to the concierge at my hotel. He had been mugged, he said, “Right here on the Place Vendome, can you believe it?” The muggers had taken his wallet and iPhone. But, he was going to get them, he said. The muggers did not realise that his iPhone had an application that allowed him to track its whereabouts. He showed the concierge the phone’s current location on his computer. The concierge checked the map closely. The phone was located in a woody area on the outskirts of Paris that the map showed as uninhabited. How could this be?

THE ROAMERS: A file photo of a couple of Roma children at a recent 
demonstration in Paris

“It is a caravan, monsieur,” the concierge said apologetically. “Your phone has been stolen by gypsies. It is lost forever. Do not go to the police. They will not care. And if you try and find the caravan yourself, then your life, it may be in danger.”

As you’ve probably guessed, all of these crimes, thefts and scams are related. And they are the cause of a major outbreak of panic and anger in France. The French say that the crimes are committed by members of Roma, the European term for people they call gypsies in England. Further, many allege, the Roma are Romanians who have entered France illegally, and should be deported.

French politicians have succumbed to public pressure and some members of the Roma have been deported. But this has led to an outcry from liberals who say that what the Roma face is racial discrimination and have bitterly opposed the deportations. As the controversy has grown, tempers have risen and, last year, the staff at the Louvre went on a one-day strike to protest crimes committed by the Roma on the 
museum’s premises.

I have been intrigued by this sustained burst of anti-Roma anger because, till recently, the French made much of gypsy culture, lauding such musicians as the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and also the Gypsy Kings. What has changed now? And are the kids who accost us on the Champs Elysee really from Romania?

Not only poor Bucking the trend are gypsies like Alfie Best, a multi-millionaire in the UK, and a few others. Chronicling gypsy lifestyles is Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, a British documentary series that explores the lives and traditions of several Irish traveller families and Romanichal (British gypsies)

Well, actually they are not. The Roma are Indians. There’s no doubt about that. Around a thousand years ago — according to some accounts, and only 400 or so years ago according to others — the Roma, who were banjaras (the banjara tribes still exist all over India) from North India took to the road 
in search of fortune. The Roma start turning up in British and French accounts in the 19^th century, so presumably they remained in other parts of Asia and Europe till they reached the Anglo-French world. To this day, Romany, their language, is distinctly Indian in origin and includes words that the Hindi speaker would have no difficulty in recognising.

There are around 15 million Roma in the world but only around 20,000 or so live in France. An even smaller number live in England, where most of the population does not like them though liberals frown on the use of the world ‘gypsy’ and ask that they be called ‘traveller’. The rest live mainly in Central and Eastern Europe.

Until around 2000 or so, the French Roma occupied a special place in France. But then the Eastern European Roma began spreading westwards. They came to Western Europe from Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria and, yes, Romania. Until the collapse of Communism, they had been content to remain in their Eastern European homes. But once they were free to travel, many decided to make a quick buck in France and Germany.

Just as quickly, a Roma mafia grew up cutting across borders. A year ago, the French police arrested a Roma from Bosnia called Fehim Hamidovic who ran a pick-pocketing ring, using children to commit thefts in Paris, Rome, Madrid and Brussels. Hamidovic turned out to have made millions from crime (he urged his operatives to target Asian tourists who were the most vulnerable) and from the exploitation of children.

The French now say they do not know what to do. Obviously, it is wrong to target all Roma. And it is crazy to send people back to Romania only because Roma sounds like 
Romania (why not send them to Rome in that case?).

And yet the problem is not going to go away. If you go to Europe (anywhere, not just Paris) then be very suspicious if you are approached on the street by children. But don’t fall victim to European prejudices. The child-thieves are not 
Romanian. They are, in a sense, Indian.