The teenage gypsy bride carving a feminist future

Updated

On a snowy moonlit night in Transylvania, I found myself at a Roma gypsy wedding. My shock at the bride's age — just 14 — soon gave way to awe and admiration.

Picture a community hall with fluorescent lights, a heaving mass of men in black hats, and women in traditional Roma dress dancing furiously to the sound of frantic violins and accordions.

Amid the celebrations, a young bride-to-be alternates between laughing and crying.

After an unexpected detour on a trip through Romania's northern province of Transylvania, I'd found myself at a wedding ceremony normally closed to outsiders.

I learned the bride's name was Perty, and she was just 14 years old.

She barely knew the groom, who was 16. Their families had arranged the match.

It immediately grated with my Western feminism to see a young girl in such a position.

But the man who'd invited me, an American writer named Chuck Todaro who has spent years chronicling the Roma people, told me it was more complicated than a girl marrying against her will.

"I was against it. Then as I got to know their point of view and what it's about and why they do it … I no longer have an opinion," he said.

"I understand that it's really very important to the communities."

After speeches and a mock fight between the families, the wedding ceremony was strikingly simple.

The older women removed ribbons from Perty's hair, symbolising the end of maidenhood.

I joined the queue to give gifts — usually cash — and was surprised to find Perty spoke fluent English.

But she was too busy and overwhelmed to say much to a stranger.

After more ear-splitting music, vodka and dancing, guests peeled off into the freezing night.

As I walked back to my hotel in darkness, navigating by the light of passing trucks, I knew I would have to return to find out more.

A form of protection

For outsiders, Transylvania can conjure dark images of mythical vampires.

In reality, it's one of Romania's most beautiful regions, dotted with walled medieval towns built by Saxon knights.

It's also home to one of Europe's most vibrant Roma communities, who, in defiance of politically correct terminology, proudly call themselves gypsies.

They've managed to preserve a unique culture since their ancestors migrated from northern India in the 12th century.

One of the most important ways of doing that is through marriage.

In Romania, it's illegal for underage minors to wed. But Roma gypsy communities continue to hold unofficial wedding ceremonies for children as young as 13.

Nine months after her wedding, I met up with Perty in her home town of Velleni, and found her heavily pregnant.

"It's a bit hard. Sometimes I'm getting panicked because I get pregnant only at 14," she said.

"But I know that I have mum there and my dear sister. So, that calms me down.

"But, of course it's hard. I was too young for that. And I really felt that. My body wasn't prepared for something like this."

Despite the difficulties, she says she understands her parents' wish for her to be married so young.

Her father, the local police chief, took her out of school when she was 11, afraid she might be 'bride-napped' — a practice of mock or actual abduction.

Girls can refuse, but it creates potentially dangerous grudges between neighbours.

At 14, her parents judged it better that she be married to a teenage boy whose family they knew, rather than risk her being claimed by someone older or unsuitable.

"My father was frightened someone would kidnap me," Perty said.

"There were a few families that were calling my father and telling him, 'we don't care if you don't want to give her to us. We will steal her anyway and we will go in your house and take her out of the house, and with force'.

"He got scared and he [married] me. This way I'm a lot more protected."

Gypsy feminism

Perty insists she's not a victim.

She's consciously walking a line between the modern world and a traditional way of life where women are typically subservient.

"People, like Romanian people and Hungarian people, think that it was my decision to get married at this young age. No, actually it wasn't. It was my parents' decision, but I agreed," she said.

"They think that if we are getting married we have to move out and to support ourselves. It's not like that.

"Until we are at a certain age, like 22 or 23, we are not moving out, we are staying with our parents."

Perty's role model is her older sister Klara, 27, who has been married twice.

She left her first husband after her new family tried to stop her going out, and her second husband when she simply decided she no longer wanted to be with him.

Both sisters call themselves feminists and Perty insists she will not be controlled by her new husband.

"I cannot accept that a man is higher than me because he's my husband," Perty said.

"A husband means to be equal with me and to by my partner, right? So I just cannot accept that he's my boss. No, he's not my boss, I'm not working for him, he's my partner."

Being headstrong and breaking the taboo of divorce has earned Klara a reputation as a rebel.

The sisters both learned English from watching YouTube programs and English movies. Klara says it's had an impact on her way of thinking.

"I just wanted to be free and I wanted to do things that are normal for everybody, and gypsy women were not allowed to do those things," Klara said.

"I just wanted to have that independence, that freedom that everybody had.

"Sometimes I was seeing these office movies and women were entering, and she was talking and all the men had to listen to her. I said, 'I want to be like that. Why I cannot be like that?'"

The caste system

Their family is part of one of the largest gypsy clans, the Gabor.

Like their Indian ancestors, they maintain a stratified social system similar to castes. The Gabor consider themselves middle-class gypsies and live in settled communities in large, comfortable houses.

Mr Todaro arranges for visitors to meet the Gabor families through a non-government organisation, the Tzigania Project.

While the women wear colourful traditional dress, Klara laughs at the old gypsy stereotype of wagons and crystal balls.

"I always bust that myth. Sometimes visitors are disappointed: 'Ah! we thought that you going to do some palm reading for us'," Klara said.

The Gabor clan is large and multi-layered. There are different layers of class within the Gabor who can be found across Romania and Hungary.

"We kind of still try to keep the caste system," Klara said.

"It's kind of keeping up with your family and your name. My family has a history. I didn't meet my grandmother's grandfather but I heard a lot about him."

The untouchables

On the other end of the spectrum to Gabor is a group known as the Kashtalo. They are the poorest community within Transylvania and most clans deny they're even Roma.

Mr Todaro says other Roma see them as similar to the Indian 'dalit' or 'untouchables'.

"The caste system here in Romania, or tribal system, there's really three parts. It all evolved from the slavery trade because the gypsies here in Romania were slaves, and they were put into three locations, three categories," he said.

"The first category was state-owned, second category was the privately owned, and third category was the church owned, or monastery owned. Each one had a different master and a different trade, and different rules and regulations."

The Kashtalo were under the church's wing and were discouraged from keeping their language and cultural traditions.

The Tzigania project runs tours to a Khastalo community with its full cooperation, bringing the villagers much needed income.

The roads in are so bad it can only be reached by horse and cart.

Mr Todaro says the Romanian Government has discouraged this kind of cultural tourism, preferring visitors to see more affluent Roma.

We arrived at a small village with no electricity or running water. One man was laying bricks at his house and told us he had learned the trade doing labouring work in Western Europe.

Some women were cooking what looked like Indian Roti bread in an outdoor wood-fired stove. A teenage girl clutching her baby told us her day consisted of manual labour and taking care of her children.

There was no internet to learn another language and, for now, none of the opportunities to improve their lives that the Gabor women had.

The future

Klara has already defied convention by becoming the first woman in her village to get a driver's licence and is building up an online business designing clothing.

She sources reams of colourful fabric printed with faux Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Versace logos from online outlets, turning them into flowing skirts and dresses using a heavy old sewing machine.

She sells the garments to other gypsies, normally for events like weddings, christenings and funerals, but has also started to sell to foreigners through the Tzigania program.

"I'd like to do more with online business, but it's not easy," Klara said.

Perty and Klara both say they hope to be the last girls in their family to have arranged marriages.

They want their own children to choose who and when they marry.

But they will encourage them to marry within the Gabor clan as a way to protect their ethnic roots.

Perty has since given birth to a healthy baby girl and insists her daughter will be encouraged to choose her own path in life.

"My daughter, she won't get married this young like me, that's for sure. And she will be a really modern girl," she said.

Topics: human-interest, history, community-and-society, marriage, family-and-children, romania

First posted