TRAVERSE

TRAVERSE
REVEALING THE CULTURE BEHIND THE NEWS | FALL 2014 | No. 1
STATELESS

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THE CORRESPONDANT
QUIET MOMENTS AMID THE
CONFLICT IN UKRAINE
Kiev Through The Instagram Lens
12
CONTENTS
FALL 2014 | No. 1
STATELESS
The untold stories of three stateless groups—the Kurds,
who face their own struggles from the war in the
Middle East, the Hmong who are America’s neglected
allies since the Vietnam War, and the Roma who are
perceived of as the unwanted citizens of Europe.
THE KURDS
No Friends But the Mountains
20
THE HMONG
Our Forgotten Allies
38
THE ROMA
A People Uncounted
48
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE
SYRIAN CONFLICT
A Sneak Peek Into Dr. Haydar Alwash’s
Life From Doctors Without Borders
14
THE INSIDER
NEW YEARS IN AKRE
The Struggle For Liberty That Is
Embedded In Kurdish Celebration Of
Newroz
16
HMONG CULTURE
PERMEATES FASHION
The Roots Of Bohemian Fashion
47
A PEOPLE UNCOUNTED
The Release Of A New Documentary
About The Romas
62
THE WRITER
BEYOND THE FENCE
Short Story From A Hmong’s Perspective
TT Vang
66
MY GIPSY CHILDHOOD
Autobiography From Romanian Writer
Roxy Freeman
72
FOUNTAIN
Short Story From Kurdish Writer Ava
Homa’s Book Echos From The Other Land
79
THE ANALYST
HOME IS EVERY PLACE
Pico Iyer’s View On Living
Without Boundaries
90
WHERE CHILDREN SLEEP
James Mollisons’ Photography On The
Diversity Of Children’s Lives From
Around The World
94
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EDITOR’S NOTE
ATTAINING WANDERLUST can be a frightful thing.
Once you step out of your comfort zone into another
part of the world, the longing and desire to go else-w here
leaves a sense of incompleteness as you go back home to
your daily routines. The day doesn’t feel the same as it
does when you wake up to a place with different people,
a different taste, and a different smell.
Even if you return home the world doesn’t stop.
Those people you’ve seen are also going about their
routines wherever they are until an event arises. We get a
glimpse of those events in the news, but it doesn’t reveal
the people as people, as much as in numbers.
TRAVERSE was created to treat my own symptoms
of wanderlust and to create something that people the
ability to traverse to other continents while still going
about their daily routines. It’s to explore the human side
of people that we hear and read about in the news, but
still don’t know enough about. Here, the world comes
to you as it is—sometimes dark, sometimes inspiring,
sometimes uplifting or sad—and yet just as beautiful.
We start this issue with tales of the stateless as it
focuses on the idea of home. Homes and having a sense
of belonging in a community are well taken for granted.
There are the discomforts of not having a place to call
one’s home. For some, there is the comfort of having
many homes.
By law, stateless people are are often an unrecognized
group of people who are struggle to avail themselves of
the nation in which they live. A majority of these groups
are marginalized and dehumanized and face harsher
living conditions due to discrimination, redrawing of
borders, and gaps in nationality laws.
I hope that this issue, and many issues to follow, will
encourage readers to view the world not as something
dehumanized or distant, but as something tangible and
waiting to be tread. —EN
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Erika Nicks
erika@traverse.com
EDITOR
Jill Vartenigian
jill@traverse.com
DESIGNER
Emily Chamberlain
emily@traverse.com
BUSINESS DEV DIRECTOR
Simone Rosenbauer
simone@traverse.com
PROJECT MANAGER
Sara Hingle
sara@traverse.com
PUBLISHING DIRECTOR
Ed Harrington
ed@traverse.com
FINANCIAL DIRECTOR
Marc Salverda
marc@traverse.com
ACCOUNTANT
Rachel Grove
rachel@traverse.com
MARKETING MANAGER
Jones Matthew
jones@traverse.com
PROOFREADER
Amy Youn
amy@traverse.com
WRITERS
Amar Toor
Dan Stone
Jacqueline Brinn
Brodie Lancaster
Ramin Vakili
Natasha Pradan
Xay Yang
Sheyma Buali
Pico Iyer
Marie McCann
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Saskia Wilson
Ray Grover
Sophie Chamas
John Deloitte
Tommaso Protti
Phil Riitt
Roy Bradbury
COVER PHOTO: “The PKK ceasefire Announcement” by Tommaso Protti
Traverse Magazine was published at Seattle Central Creative Academy for the purpose of a school project. All content in this
publication, including but not limited to all text, visual displays, images, and data will not be used for sales or distribution. Views
expressed by authors are not necessarily those of the publisher. Email addresses are published for professional communications only.
traversemagazine.com
TRAVERSE 11

THE CORRESPONDANT
UKRAINIAN ACTIVISTS LOOK
BACK ON THE MONTHS THAT
CHANGED THEIR LIVES
WRITTEN BY AMAR TOOR
KIEV, AUGUST 10, 2014—As attention shifts toward Crimea’s referendum,
Ukranian activists look back on the months that changed their lives.
IN APRIL1977, Ukrainian activist Myroslav Marynovych
was arrested by Soviet police. He was 28 at the time, and had
become an outspoken advocate for human rights, working
to raise awareness about ongoing violations in what is now
Ukraine. In the eyes of the Soviets, though, his work threatened
to undermine state order and it carried a stiff sentence:
seven years in a gulag labor camp, followed by
five years in exile.
Today, Marynovych works as the vice rector of the Ukrainian
Catholic University in Lviv, a cosmopolitan city in western
Ukraine. It’s a far cry from the hardships he endured in the
Perm-36 gulag, but his political passions still burn strong. And
when protests broke out in Kiev’s Maidan square late last year,
he felt he had no choice but to join.
“When we all saw on TV how the special police troops tried to
destroy Maidan, beating students mercilessly and heavily, I
decided I had to go and stand there,” Marynovych, 65, said
during a phone call last week.
His stay in Kiev was short — “It got cold. I am not so young
anymore.” — but the demonstrations were not. Thousands of
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THE CORRESPONDANT
Ukrainians descended on the capital in November to protest
against President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject a
trade deal with the European Union and to forge closer
economic ties with Russia. After deadly clashes between
protesters and police, Yanukovych is now in hiding, Crimea is
holding a disputed referendum today to decide whether to
join the Russian Federation, and a new government is slowly
taking form as Ukraine’s future hangs in the balance.
“The atmosphere has changed fundamentally,” says Bishop
Borys Gudziak, 53, president of the Ukraine Catholic
University and a friend of Marynovych’s, who spent two
weeks praying with protesters behind barricades at the
Maidan. “The country and its people are in a time machine:
an hour is like a week, a week... like a decade.”
For Gudziak and other protesters, the last few months
have been a political and emotional whirlwind as the elation
felt after Yanukovych was ousted in February has since given
way to a deeper sense of unease. Despite strong warnings
from the US and its allies, Russia continues to tighten its grip
over Crimea — home to a majority ethnic Russian population
— and the regional parliament has moved to declare
independence from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation,
pending today’s vote. The US and Kiev have both said that
they will not recognize the results of the referendum,
describing it as illegal.
There’s no denying that Ukraine remains divided. The
country’s eastern region has stronger cultural and historical
ties to Russia, while its western region leans more toward
Europe. Although a sizable number of representatives from
the eastern region did vote to oust Yanukovych, they remain
fairly underrepresented in the government taking form in Kiev.
“It’s a coalition government, but it’s not a coalition of the
entire country,” Gorenburg says. “It’s a coalition that’s
dominated by the pro-western part of the country.”
Kiev resident Maria Oleksevich says there’s a palpable
sense of concern today in the capital, where many activists
fear that further Russian encroachment could reverse the
gains they made following Yanukovych’s departure. “My
friends say: we have kicked Yanukovych out of the country,
so we can expel Russian invaders,” says Oleksevich, 22, who
leads the media department at furniture design firm
ODESD2. “But subconsciously, there is a fear that everything
can happen again. It is very exhausting to live in a constant
state of conflict.”
Oleksevich and her friends played an active role in last
month’s protests, bringing clothes and medicine to the
Maidan and suspending their design projects to follow the
developments (“Who can be interested in a new designer
commode when people die?”). She says things are a lot
calmer in Kiev now, though they’re still not quite normal.
“I have not really left the Maiden. It remains in my heart,
in my thoughts, and in my dreams and nightmares.”
Moscow has gone to great lengths to discredit the
revolution in Ukraine, describing the movement as a coup
staged by fascists and ultranationalists, while insisting that
the Kremlin must protect the ethnic Russians who live
primarily in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine.
Marynovych acknowledges that there are some ultranationalists
involved in Ukraine’s revolution, but he says their role and
perceived threat have been vastly overblown by state-controlled
Russian media, dismissing Putin’s basis for invading
Crimea to protect Russian interests. His fear is that Russia is
using the same strategy it deployed in 2008, when it
effectively annexed two Georgian territories after invading.
“It’s craziness,” Marynovych says of Putin’s rhetoric. “It’s the
language of Hitler — the language of the middle of the 20th
century, not the 21st century.”
Economic difficulties continue to plague local businesses. The
value of Ukraine’s currency plummeted after unrest broke
out, making it more expensive for Oleksevich’s firm to
purchase materials, though she says they’ve taken a new
sense of pride in making their products in Ukraine, and she
hopes others will follow.
His memories from the Maidan won’t fade away, either,
regardless of what happens after today’s referendum. In
February, Gudziak was in a nearby chapel tent when special
forces opened fire on protesters. He rushed out to the stage
to implore the officers to stop, reading a statement from the
archbishop of his church. When he turned around, he saw
that the chapel was in flames. “I have not really left the
Maidan,” Gudziak says. “It remains in my heart, in my
thoughts, and in my dreams and nightmares.”
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THE CORRESPONDANT
QUIET
MOMENTS AMID
THE CONFLICT
IN UKRAINE
WRITTEN BY DAN STONE
Photographer Ed Ou describes
the challenges of documenting
the unfolding crisis and the patience
that’s required. Two weeks
into the crisis in Ukraine, tension
between Russian and Ukrainian
soldiers continues to build. While
TV screens around the world show
images of marching troops and
military hardware, Ou has tried to
capture what’s unfolding as people
talk, soldiers argue, and opinions
are expressed. The photos he has
posted on Instagram (@edouphoto)
reveal an international conflict
playing out in tones that are sometimes
more subtle, far from the
politicians and their harsh words.
How is the situation unfolding on the
ground? Can you describe the tension?
It’s weird saying this as a journalist.
From the outside world, it probably
seems like what’s happening in Crimea
is absolutely insane. But the truth is that
life is still going on. People are adapting
and doing their thing. The story most
of the world is hearing is a political one.
Here’s it’s easy to see life as normal. A
lot of the tension is in people’s minds.
Do you feel threatened photographing
Russian troops?
It’s an interesting dynamic. Every experience
for a photographer is painted by
his or her past experience. As someone
who has worked in the Middle East, my
experience is attuned to conflict. There
are periods when it seems that things
are clearly created for the media. A
few days ago, several soldiers near the
airport wanted to be photographed.
That felt orchestrated, allowing Russia
to project its dominance. Sometimes
it feels like everything is just political
theater, and we’re being used for that.
How do people react to your cameras?
People here are very supportive of the
media. They’ve been open to telling
us what their thoughts and opinions
are. But people on the Russian side
have their biases against Westerners.
I’ve had people come up to me and
accuse me of being a provocateur
or a spy. In any kind of time like this,
tensions can sometimes run high.
With isolated pockets of activity
and tension, how do
you know where to go?
Well, Crimea is huge. Keep in mind
that there are a lot of photographers
and journalists who have come to tell
this very intangible story. Every day
you have to call other reporters and
journalists to see what’s happening.
There’s this demand for pictures and
video. We’re always kind of tense, on
call, to find the flash points. Every day
there’s a rumor that a military installation
is being taken over. We just
have to gauge where we need to be.
You’ve chosen to share your
photos on Facebook and
Instagram for free. Why?
With Instagram, sometimes it’s a
personal space just to show life as it is.
A photograph doesn’t have to be frontpage
news. I’m working on assignment
now shooting video. That footage will
be published in the mainstream media.
I purposely post photos on Instagram
that probably won’t be published
anywhere else. What’s cool about
Instagram is that you can show things
that you know won’t be used otherwise
and might never be seen. With
Instagram I get to have my own way in
publishing. I get to be my own editor.
How long do you plan to stay?
I think it’d be nice to stay for a bit.
I’m finding great feature stories left,
right, and center every day. Every
time I want to photograph a culture
story, I get a call that there’s escalating
tension somewhere else.
What kinds of things have soldiers
told you?
Soldiers from both sides feel very
resigned to what the politicians are
doing. Many say they’re just trying
to follow orders. They recognize that
they’re pawns in the game that the
politicians are playing. They recognize
that if they have to fight each other, it
will be brothers fighting brother
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THE CORRESPONDANT
1. 4. 7.
2. 5. 8.
3. 6. 9.
1. Riot police load onto a bus behind
independence square in #kiev #ukraine
2. Mourners carry the coffin of a man
who was killed in the recent violence at a
procession in independence square
3. Ukrainian soldiers wave farewell to their
loves ones at a Ukrainian air force base
in Lubimovka
4. Pro-Ukraine Crimean activists discuss
politics in their “headquarters” after a
demonstration in #kiev #ukraine
5. Dogs lay in the sun on a warm day in
Kamenka near #simferopol
6. Anti-government protestors weep as
former Ukranian Prime Minister Yulia
Tymoshenko speaks in independence
square after being released from prison
7. A sea of anti-government protestors hold
up their cell phones for light during a prayer
service in independence square
8. Protestors nail spikes into the ground to
erect a tent in independence square
9. People queue in a long line to withdraw
money from a ATM machines at Simferopol
TRAVERSE 15

THE CORRESPONDANT
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE
SYRIAN CONFLICT
WRITTEN BY JACQUELIN BRINN
NEW YORK, AUGUST 13, 2014—The international medical humanitarian
organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières
(MSF) today launched “The Reach of War,” a multimedia documentary
feature exploring a single day in the life of the ongoing conflict in Syria,
through the perspective of medical workers, patients, and refugees.
Watch the documentary at:
reachofwar.msf.org
The war is never far away in Ramtha, a city in northeastern
Jordan just three miles from the Syrian border and only a little
further from the Syrian town of Daraa. Explosions echoing in
the distance are one indication of the conflict’s proximity. The
steady stream of wounded arriving at MSF’s trauma surgery
program at Ramtha Hospital is another.
Dr. Haydar Alwash, an MSF surgeon, hardly needed a
reminder, but he got one anyway when he tried to use an
unexpected afternoon lull to conduct a training session for
hospital staff. Drawing on past experience in MSF surgery
programs in Liberia and Libya—not to mention the work he
and MSF had been doing since opening this program in
September 2013—Dr. Alwash was talking about putting casts
on fractured arms and legs, injuries the teams were seeing
frequently. Before he could finish, however, a call came in
saying that three badly wounded patients were on their way
from the border and that there were children among them.
Dr. Alwash had already performed a surgery that morning
and had others scheduled for the next day. He and his team
had performed dozens in the weeks prior as well. “All our
patients are newly injured in this conflict,” he says, usually by
bombs or gunshots. “Our work mainly concentrates first on
saving lives—surgical procedures that can save lives or limbs.”
In Ramtha, MSF runs two operating theaters with 33 beds
and two wards at a Ministry of Health hospital. MSF gets
patients through a network of medical professionals inside
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THE CORRESPONDANT
Syria who run field hospitals but cannot provide all of the
surgical and post-operative intensive care that severely injured
people need. Instead, they steer them across the border to
waiting ambulances that transport patients on to Ramtha.
When the ambulance arrives on this day, the team learns
that there are two patients rather than three, but that one, a
child, has already died. Another, a man with shrapnel in his
leg, has a ruptured artery and has lost a great deal of blood.
He is rushed into surgery.
Dr. Alwash hurries into the operating theater as well.
Originally from Babylon, Iraq, he was himself a refugee after
the first Gulf war in the early 1990s. While living in a squalid,
overcrowded camp, he got support from MSF to open a clinic
for his fellow refugees. He was thrilled that he could offer
assistance and he later determined that he’d find a way to
work with MSF in the future, “to repay the favor.”
On this morning, Dr. Alwash started his rounds around 8:30.
Among the first patients he saw was Sami, 22, who had
again one day. Other patients also show uncommon fortitude
given their circumstances. Malik, for instance, is usually up for
a game of chess with anyone willing to play, patients and MSF
staffers alike. Others say they hope to return home as soon as
they can walk again.
Their resilience helps mitigate, to some small extent, the
difficulty of seeing the injured and maimed arrive one after
another. On one particularly hard night, Dr. Alwash says, three
children—a six-month-old baby boy, a two-year-old girl, and
an eight-year-old girl—arrived in the same ambulance, “all of
them with severe injuries,” none of them with any relatives.
The baby boy had severe head wounds. “He passed away a
few minutes after he arrived,” Dr. Alwash recalls. The team
stabilized the two-year-old and managed to resuscitate the
older girl, who was almost completely white due to blood loss.
Still, her legs were mangled and one had to be amputated.
Later, they worked with contacts in Syria to bring her
grandmother to Ramtha to be with her.
“Originally from Babylon, Iraq, he was himself a refugee
after the first Gulf war in the early 1990s.”
undergone four surgeries since he was admitted a month
earlier after being shot in the leg. Then there was Malik, a
14-year-old boy who lost one leg and suffered serious injuries
to an arm and his other leg when his house was bombed
during a wedding party. “I didn’t feel anything,” Malik says.
There was also a 23-year-old man with injuries to his eye,
leg, hand, and chest who is expecting to be here at least five
more weeks, and a young girl, an infant, who lost a leg when
her house was hit by a tank shell that killed most of her family,
including a baby sister. “What has this child done to deserve
this, that she has to have her leg amputated?” asked her aunt,
who was staying with her while she was in the hospital, and
who lost her own 16-year-old son to the war.
Dr. Alwash later reached the bedside of a girl named Rukaya,
14, who was out walking with her mother and a neighbor in
their hometown when a shell hit nearby. She woke up in
Ramtha, where she learned that she’d lost both legs and her
mother was dead. Seven surgeries followed, and Dr. Alwash
will perform another tomorrow as part of the process of
preparing her for the prosthetics she will have to use.
Rukaya smiles when she talks to the doctor, and she smiles
once more when asserting her determination to be happy
Though that patient has a long road of rehabilitation ahead
of her, she is now in good condition, Dr. Alwash reports, and
though he is visibly rattled when he recounts that night, the
story also reminds him why he and MSF are there. “You are
doing an activity that the patient needs now, not tomorrow,
not [in] another week,” he says. The work is grueling, but
“these projects, the surgical projects for war wounded, they
stand alone, because you see exactly the importance, the
vital importance, of the services you are doing.”
On this day, he finishes with surgery in the late evening and
heads home around 8, hoping to get some rest before
another busy day. At midnight, however, he gets a call
updating him on the status of this afternoon’s surgery patient.
And at 2am, he gets another call telling him that two teenage
boys are on their way from Syria with serious blast injuries.
As of June 1, 2014, MSF teams in Ramtha had carried out
1,315 surgeries on 430 patients arriving from Syria in the nine
months since the project opened. MSF is also assisting Syrian
refugees in Jordan at the Al Zaatari refugee camp in Mafraq,
at a maternity project in Irbid, and through a reconstructive
surgical project in Amman.
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THE CORRESPONDANT
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THE CORRESPONDANT
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STATELESS
THE KURDS
No Friends but the Mountains
WRITTEN BY BRODIE LANCASTER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SASKIA WILSON
KURDISTAN WAS ERASED from the world’s maps after World War
I when the Allied Powers carved up the Middle East and denied the
Kurds a nation-state. More than twenty million Kurds live in parts of
Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. Throughout the 20th century their struggles
for political and cultural autonomy were opposed by the region’s
countries and the Kurds were often used as pawns in regional politics.
The Kurd is a member of an ethnic and linguistic group living in
the Taurus Mountains of eastern Anatolia, the Zagros Mountainsof
western Iran, portions of northern Iraq, Syria, and Armenia, and other
adjacent areas. Most of the Kurds live in contiguous areas of Iran, Iraq,
and Turkey—a somewhat loosely defined geographic region generally
referred to as Kurdistan (“Land of the Kurds”). The name has different
connotations in Iran and Iraq, which officially recognize internal entities
by this name: Iran’s northwestern province of Kordestān and Iraq’s
Kurdish autonomous region. A sizable noncontiguous Kurdish population
also exists in the Khorāsān region, situated in Iran’s northeast.
Their is a West Iranian language related to Persian and Pashto. The
Kurds are thought to number from 25 million to 30 million, including
communities in Armenia, Georgia,Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Syria, and
Europe, but sources for this information differ widely because of
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STATELESS
THE KURDS
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STATELESS
differing criteria of ethnicity, religion,
and language; statistics may also be manipulated
for political purposes.
The traditional Kurdish way of life was
nomadic, revolving around sheep and goat
herding throughout the Mesopotamian plains
and the highlands of Turkey and Iran. Most
Kurds practiced only marginal agriculture. The
enforcement of national boundaries beginning
after World War I (1914–18) impeded
the seasonal migrations of the flocks, forcing
most of the Kurds to abandon their traditional
ways for village life and settled farming;
others entered nontraditional employment.
Initially, the Kurdish Ottoman diplomat
Mohammed Serif Pasha managed to insert
language into the Treaty of Sèvres—the negotiated
surrender of the Ottomans to the
allied powers—that would allow for an autonomous
Kurdistan in the new regional order.
But the envisioned state never materialized.
Kemal Atatürk’s Turkish nationalist
movement rejected the treaty, which would
have conceded chunks of eastern Turkey to
the Kurdish state. Atatürk renegotiated with
the Allies, and the new peace—known as the
Treaty of Lausanne—divided the Kurds between
Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Armenia.
“The reputation for military prowess has made them
much in demand as mercenaries in many armies.”
SCATTERED BETWEEN NATIONS
The prehistory of the Kurds is poorly known,
but their ancestors seem to have inhabited the
same upland region for millennia. The records
of the early empires of Mesopotamia contain
frequent references to mountain tribes with
names resembling “Kurd.” The Kardouchoi
whom the Greek historian Xenophon speaks of
in Anabasis (they attacked the “Ten Thousand”
near modern Zākhū, Iraq, in 401 bce) may
have been Kurds, but some scholars dispute
this claim. The name Kurd can be dated with
certainty to the time of the tribes’ conversion
tto Islam in the 7th century ce. Most Kurds
are Sunni Muslims, and among them are many
who practice Sufism and other mystical sects.
Despite their long-standing occupation of
a particular region of the world, the Kurds
never achieved nation-state status. Their reputation
for military prowess has made them
much in demand as mercenaries in many
armies. The sultan Saladin, best known to the
Western world for exploits in the Crusades,
epitomizes the Kurdish military reputation.
Scattered throughout five newly birthed
nations, the Kurds still shared a cultural affinity,
says Djene Bajalan, an expert on Kurdish history
who lectures at the American University of
Iraq. “But as the region got divided into ethnic
nation-states, the Kurdish community was excluded,”
he adds. For the next 90 years, Kurdish
minorities largely retained a connection to their
unique language and culture, yet they remained
strapped to the political fate of their host nations,
in limbo between autonomy and dependence.
Consequently, the nearly four million Kurds
of northern Iraq never truly became Iraqis, and
their political leaders did not accept the authority
of Baghdad. Unlike Kurds in Syria and Iran,
who live dispersed throughout their respective
countries, Iraqi Kurds (like Turkish Kurds)
are heavily concentrated in the north, where
they enjoy demographic majorities in three
provinces: Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Dahuk.
There are only a few Kurdish towns that
exist in the area: Diyarbakir (a sort of capital
for Kurds) and Van in Turkey; Erbil and
Kirkuk in Iraq; and Mahabad in Iran.
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STATELESS
Top: Female Kurdish fighters prep their ammuniation
Bottom: A female Kurdish fighter sleeps, but ready
for ny instances of ISIS coming
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STATELESS
Left: A family in their humble
abode in one of the biggest cities
in Southeastern Anatolia
Right: A woman looks out the
window of a coffee shop in Bakur
SEEKING A HOME IN TURKEY
The Kurds of Turkey received unsympathetic treatment at
the hands of the government, which tried to deprive them
of their Kurdish identity by designating them “Mountain
Turks,” by outlawing the Kurdish language (or representing
it as a dialect of Turkish), and by forbidding them to wear
distinctive Kurdish dress in or near the important administrative
cities. The Turkish government suppressed Kurdish
political agitation in the eastern provinces and encouraged
the migration of Kurds to the urbanized western portion of
Turkey, thus diluting the concentration of Kurdish population
in the uplands. Periodic rebellions occurred, and in
1978 Abdullah Öcalan formed theKurdistan Workers’ Party
(known by its Kurdish acronym, PKK), a Marxist organization
dedicated to creating an independent Kurdistan.
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Operating mainly from eastern Anatolia, PKK fighters
engaged in guerrilla operations against government
installations and perpetrated frequent acts of terrorism.
PKK attacks and government reprisals led to a state
of virtual war in eastern Turkey during the 1980s and
’90s. Following Öcalan’s capture in 1999, PKK activities
were sharply curtailed for several years before the party
resumed guerilla activities in 2004. In 2002, under pressure
from the European Union (in which Turkey sought
membership), the government legalized broad-casts and
education in the Kurdish language. Turkey continued
to mount military operations against the PKK, including
incursions into northern Iraq. The Turkish government
had then suppressed Kurdish political agitation
in the eastern provinces and encouraged migration.
IN THE HANDS OF IRAN AND IRAQ
Kurds have felt strong assimilationist pressure from the
national government in Iran and endured religious persecution
by that country’s Shī’ite Muslim majority. Shortly
after World War II (1939–45), the Soviet Union backed
the establishment of an independent country around
the largely Kurdish city of Mahābād, in northwestern
Iran. The so-called Republic of Mahābād collapsed after
Soviet withdrawal in 1946, but about that same time the
Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) was established.
Thereafter, the KDPI engaged in low-level hostilities
with the Iranian government into the 21st century.
Although the pressure for Kurds to assimilate was less
intense in Iraq (where the Kurdish language and culture
have been freely practiced), government repression
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STATELESS
“The idea of a
Kurdish nation has
now become an
undeniable reality
for millions.”
has been the most brutal. Short-lived armed rebellions
occurred in Iraq in 1931–32 and 1944–45, and a lowlevel
armed insurgency took place throughout the 1960s
under the command of Mustafā al-Barzānī, leader of
the Iraqi Kurdish Democratic Party (IKDP), who had
been an officer of the Republic of Mahābād. A failed
peace accord with the Iraqi government led to another
outbreak of fighting in 1975, but an agreement between
Iraq and Iran—which had been supporting Kurdish
efforts—later that year led to a collapse of Kurdish
resistance. Thousands of Kurds fled to Iran and Turkey.
Low-intensity fighting followed. In the late 1970s, Iraq’s
Ba’ath Party instituted a policy of settling Iraqi Arabs
in areas with Kurdish majorities—particularly around
the oil-rich city of Kirkūk—and uprooting Kurds
from those same regions. This policy accelerated in the
1980s as large numbers of Kurds were forcibly relocated,
particularly from areas along the Iranian border where
Iraqi authorities suspected Kurds were aiding Iranian
forces during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). What
followed was one of the most brutal episodes in Kurdish
history. In a series of operations between March and
August 1988, code-named Anfal (Arabic: “Spoils”), Iraqi
forces sought to quell Kurdish resistance; the Iraqis
used large quantities of chemical weapons on Kurdish
civilians. Although technically it was not part of Anfal,
one of the largest chemical attacks during that period
took place on March 16 in and around the village of
Halabjah, when Iraqi troops killed as many as 5,000
Kurds with mustard gas and nerve agent. Despite these
attacks, Kurds again rebelled following Iraq’s defeat in
the Persian Gulf War(1990–91) but were again brutally
26 TRAVERSE

STATELESS
suppressed—sparking another mass exodus. Kurds were
particularly successful in that country’s 2005 elections.
With the help of the United States, however, the
Kurds were able to establish a “safe haven” that included
most areas of Kurdish settlement in northern Iraq, where
the IKDP and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan created an
autonomous civil authority that was, for the most part,
free from interference by the Iraqi government. The
Kurds were particularly successful in that country’s 2005
elections, held following the fall of Saddām Hussein
and the Baath Party in 2003, and in mid-2005 the first
session of the Kurdish parliament was convened in Irbīl.
Left: Kurdish people are seen in the
village of Akus that was destroyed in
1993 by the Kurdish army
Right: A view of the ancient Harran
in the Southeastern Antolia region
near Syria
A NEW REALITY
But there are still major hurdles, many of them geographic
and demographic, ahead. Iraqi Kurdistan is landlocked
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STATELESS
Left: Two young Kurds seen during
a moment of intimacy in Baglar
Right: Two young Kurds express
joy for the beginning of the peace
process between the PKK and the
Turkish government
Bottom: Residential District recently
built in the “unofficial capital”
Diyarbakir
28 TRAVERSE

STATELESS
and reliant on its neighbors for access to the sea. An
independent Kurdistan would have to transport its
oil by land with the cooperation of its neighbors.
And while ISIS’s advance has allowed the Kurds to
expand their territory, Kurdistan now shares a 600-
mile border with the Sunni militants—a dangerous
and permeable frontier that threatens Kurdish stability.
As a result, Iraqi Kurdistan has also become a safe
haven for Kurds fleeing ISIS and the Syrian civil war.
The hundreds of thousands of refugees are
putting a strain on Kurdish resources, and gas
shortages are now commonplace. If Iraq breaks
into pieces, the security and stability of Kurdistan
are not assured, and so far Kurdish leaders have refrained
from declaring outright independence.
While the new reality brings challenges, the disintegration
of the Iraqi state is without a doubt a
game changer for the Kurds. “The idea of a Kurdish
nation has now become an undeniable reality for
millions,” Exeter University’s Allison says. “In the
future, Kurdistan will be very difficult, if not impossible,
to eliminate from any political picture.”
TRAVERSE 29

THE KURDS INSIDER
NEW YEARS IN AKRE
WRITTEN BY RAMIN VAKILI
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAY GROVER
ACCORDING TO KURDISH MYTH, Kawa the
blacksmith lived with his people under the
tyrannical rule of Zuhak. Zuhak’s evil reign
caused spring to no longer come to Kurdistan.
March 20 is traditionally marked as the day
that Kawa defeated Zuhak after which he is
then said to have set fire to the hillsides to
celebrate the victory leading to spring returning
to Kurdistan the next day. For thousands
of years since that legend, Newroz has been
a symbol of resilience, highlighting the fact
that nations cannot be annihilated by tyrannical
regimes.
30 TRAVERSE

THE INSIDER
An elderly man in traditional Kurdish
clothes dances during the festival
before the sun sets
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THE INSIDER
I
n Kurdish, New Year’s day is called Newroz, the contemporary struggle. This region also recogwhich
means a new day. Newroz has been nizes Mazlum Dogan, who also burned himself,
celebrated as a national holiday since 612 as a contemporary “Kavah” against colonial
B.C. It is important to the Kurds not only domination. Since then, many young men and
because it is the beginning of their new year, but women burn themselves to salute and celebrate the
also because it marks the day that their national struggle for independence on Newroz in north
existence was first recognized. It was on this day in western Kurdistan.
612 B.C. that the ancestors of the Kurds united to In many Newroz celebrations the main message
resist and rebel against the leading great power at has been the unity of the people. In 1988, four
the time, the Assyrian empire and constitute days before Newroz, in southern Kurdistan, over
confederation of Median principle.
eight thousand Kurdish people were massacred by
The victory against this empire resulted in liberation chemical weapons. Today many thousands of the
for the people of this region. This is the reason why victims still suffer from this inhumane act by the
the people of Kurdistan, Iran and Afghanistan all government of Iraq.
celebrate Newroz, but in their own different ways. Newroz of 1992 had a certain significance for
There is another side to Newroz. Newroz falls north-western Kurdistan, since this is a day of
on the first day of spring. Spring is a time of “betrayal”. For the first time in seventy years, the
transformation on Earth. After a cold and dark Turkish security force, police and army, agreed to
winter in the mountains of Kurdistan, spring allow for a peaceful Newroz celebration. However,
brings warmth and new life to the land and the going against their word, they attacked the
people whose beliefs are bound with nature. For defenseless Kurdish civilians. Newroz of 1995 was
those who have never seen the spring of Kurdistan no different than the last few years since Iranian,
it is hard to imagine. The beauty is indescribable. Iraqi, and Turkish governments still continue to
Newroz has become an important event in the terrorize Kurdish people. Kurdish people have
life of the Kurdish nation. After World War I, been recording intimidating military build-up that
Kurdish borders were determined by regional and has been occurring in the middle of Kurdistan
international political powers, therefore disuniting from the aggressive powers. More and more
the Kurdish people. Today, Kurdistan is divided Kurdish people believe that in order to destroy
into five regions which have been occupied by Iran, the un-united Kurdistan the boarders need to be
Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and the Soviet Union. Because changed to one boundary not five borders.
of this, Newroz is celebrated in five separate A Chinese proverb claims that a thousand mile
regions in the middle east.
journey starts with a single step. This is true for
The festival is not legal in every part of Newroz which began as a single day in a year.
Kurdistan. This Kurdish national day was prohibited
by the Turkish government since 1923 and is people and country. In the 2607 years that have
Newroz is a single step towards liberating our
one of the reasons why Kurdish people of
passed, our beliefs concerning Newroz remains
north-western Kurdistan demonstrate extraordinary
resistance against aggressive rules. In Newroz celebrate it as the New Year and as the day of
the same. When we celebrate Newroz, we still
1982, one of the original founders of the “Kurdish national unity and revolution that lead to liberty
Worker Party and Liberation Struggle” burned for the Kurds in the past and will lead to liberty
himself to death to celebrate Newroz and salute once again in the future.
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THE INSIDER
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THE INSIDER
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THE INSIDER
“It is not just a dream that one day we will be
able to stop all the killing in Kurdistan.
It is not just a dream to be able to live in our
homeland like any other nation on the earth.
This century or the next, we will salute the Country
with United Independent and democratic Kurdistan.
Long live the Country
Long live the revolutionary struggle
in every part of Kurdistan.”
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THE INSIDER
Kurdish men march with torches as
part of the Newroz festival
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STATELESS
THE HMONG
Our Forgotten Allies
WRITTEN BY NATASHA PRADAN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SOPHIE CHAMAS
THE HMONG ARE AN ASIAN ETHNIC GROUP from the mountainous
regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Hmong are also one of the
sub-groups of the Miao ethnicity in southern China. Hmong groups began a
gradual southward migration in the 18th century due to political unrest and
to find more arable land. They still remain in SouthEast Asia.
During the first and second Indochina Wars, France and the United States
governments recruited thousands of Hmong people in Laos to fight against
invading military forces from North Vietnam and communist Pathet La
oinsurgents, known as the Secret War, during the Vietnam War and theLaotian
Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of Hmong refugees fled to Thailand seeking
political asylum. Thousands of these refugees have resettled in Western countries
since the late 1970s, mostly the United States, but also in Australia, France,
French Guiana, Canada, and South America. Others have returned to Laos
under United Nations-sponsored repatriation programs.
Hmong people have their own terms for their subcultural divisions with
Hmong Der (meaning “White Hmong”) and Hmong Leng (meaning “Green
Hmong”) being the terms for two of the largest groups in America and East
Asia. White Hmong and Mong Leng people speak mutually intelligible dialects
of the Hmong language with some differences in pronunciation and vocabulary.
The Hmong groups in Laos, from the 18th century to the present day, are also
known as Black Hmong, Striped Hmong, White Hmong, and Green Hmong.
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STATELESS
Left: A Hmong woman falls to the ground, praying and
begging for help from the outside world
Bottom: They call themselves America’s abandoned
soldiers who are still in threat of being killed
40 TRAVERSE

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been enemies of the lowland Vietnamese. They
entered the conflict against Vietnamese first as
scouts for the French and later as guerrillas for
the Americans.
Under the guidance of the CIA and American
special forces the Hmong rescued American
pilots, identified targets for American bombs,
fought Lao and Vietnamese communist forces,
manned strategic mountain and jungle areas
“The war had been overtaken by a conventional war
and the Hmong had outlived their usefulness.”
Others include the Flower Hmong or the
Variegated Hmong , so named because of the
bright colorful embroidery (called pa ndau,
literally “flower cloth”). Vietnamese Hmong
women continuing to wear ‘traditional’ clothing
tend to source much of their clothing as ‘ready to
wear’ cotton (as against traditional hemp) from
markets, though some add embroidery as a
personal touch. In SaPa, now with a ‘standardised’
clothing look, Black Hmong subgroups
have differentiated themselves by adopting
different headwear; those with a large comb
embedded in their long hair (but without a hat)
call themselves Tao, those with a pillbox hat
name themselves Giay, and those with a checked
headscarf are Yao.
FATE CHANGED BY WAR
A dark history is tied to the story of the Hmong
beginning with the Vietnam War. Stories of
Hmong refugees being deported back and forth
between Laos and Thailand still exist today as a
result of the hatred and disapproval that has
grown from the Hmong’s alliance with the U.S.
during the Vietnam War.
From 1959 to 1973, the CIA trained Hmong
tribesmen to fight against Communist insurgencies
in Laos. Many of the first recruits were
Hmong guerillas who fought under the charismatic
leader Vang Pao and had worked earlier
with the French. The Hmong have traditionally
occupied the strategic highlands in Laos overlooking
North Vietnam and have traditionally
used by U.S. forces, disrupted and sabotaged
supply lines, gathered critical intelligence and
defended navigational sites in Laos that allowed
precise, all-weather U.S. air strikes against enemy
targets in northern Laos and North Vietnam.” .
About 35,000 Hmong were recruited for the
war effort. About 30,000 of them were They
were key in thwarting attempts by the
Vietnamese army to make major inroads into
northern Laos and slowing the movement of
supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Hmong
had problems with helicopters though. American
pilots usually kept the motor running when they
landed and Hmong who had never seen them
before walked right into them. More than twenty
Hmong died this way in a twelve year period.
Hmong were called “damned good fighters”
by the CIA. They fought bravely against some of
the toughest North Vietnamese and Lao troops
for 13 years and suffered from casualty rate five
times higher than the rate experienced by U.S.
soldiers. Over time so many Hmong were killed
that by the end of the campaign many of the
fighters were Thai troops recruited to take their
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STATELESS
“Being in South America has allowed him to be
more free to be Hmong.”
place. But that time the war had been overtaken
by a conventional war and the Hmong had
outlived their usefulness.
As many as 20,000 Hmong soldiers died
during the Vietnam War. Hmong civilians, who
numbered about 300,000 before the war,
perished by the tens of thousands.
POSTWAR STRUGGLE
During the war the Hmong in Laos had been
sharply divided, with some factions supporting
the royalists, some supporting the opposition and
some remaining neutral. About the only thing
that unified them was their opposition to the
Communists. In Thailand, ironically, many
Hmong supported the Communist Party of
Thailand in their struggle with the Thai government
in the 1960s and 70s. In both Laos and
Thailand the Hmong ended up on the losing side
and suffered as a result.
After the Americans left Laos in 1975 and the
Communist Pathet Lao gained control of the
country, the Hmong were quickly overrun by
Communist forces, who later launched a
campaign to eliminate minorities—-particularly
the Hmong—-who had assisted the Americans
during the war. Hmong villages were burned and
by some estimates thousands were massacred.
The new pro-Vietnam Communist government
in Laos used Soviet artillery, napalm and
chemical weapons against the Hmong. An
estimated10 to 25 percent of all Hmong in Laos
were killed during and after the Vietnam war. By
one count there were 400,000 Hmong in Laos at
the beginning of the Vietnam war and only
300,000 when it was over.
FINDING A SAFE HAVEN
Many Hmong are now dispersed across several
continents; some whose lives have greatly
improved. Many have found new peace and a
home in the country of French Guiana. Long
viewed as outcasts in Laos and other parts of
Southeast Asia, the Hmong here are known for
their success, on display in their large homes
with new Peugeot and Toyota pickup trucks
parked outside. Their nearly homogenous
enclaves in Cacao and two other villages,
Javouhey and Régina, are unlike anywhere else
on this continent.
Walking Cacao’s dirt roads one hears mostly
Hmong, interspersed with a bit of French. Some
women wear sarongs. Merchants sell tapestries
depicting the saga that led them to this jungle,
after treks in the mid-1970s to Thai refugee
camps from their mountain homeland in Laos,
a former French colony.
France gambled that the Hmong refugees,
some of whom were living in French cities, could
successfully develop a hinterland that repelled
earlier colonization efforts. “The gamble worked
because after all the years of war we were ready
to do something else,” said Mr. Ly, the agronomist.
“We were even ready to work the soil.”
The first Hmong arrived from France in 1977
and were greeted with protests from the Creoles,
an ethnic group descended from African slaves,
who chafed at what was viewed as preferential
treatment for a new ethnic group in an impoverished
area. French authorities initially gave each
Hmong a few dozen francs a day to survive. The
settlers pooled those payments to buy fertilizer and
tractors. Slowly, after years of labor, the Hmong
42 TRAVERSE

STATELESS
Top: A Hmong woman lowers her shirt to reveal a scar,
where she says she was shot by the Lao People’s Army
during a raid
Bottom: A young Hmong mother holds her distraught
children inside their secret camp
TRAVERSE 43

STATELESS
Above: Hmong communities in the US continuing to
commemorate their culture through festivals and events
became self-sufficient. They now grow large quantities of
previously scarce vegetables, like lettuce, and tropical
varieties of fruit like cupuaçu, which is oblong, has a white
pulp and is found in the Amazon basin.
And academic studies have shown the Hmong here
to have more robust physical health and less pessimism
about their circumstances than their brethren in the
United States, where some Hmong communities have
had difficulty adapting to cities or suburbs and have
been plagued by suicides and health problems.
The rhythms of existence here seem far removed from
the cities where many Hmong have settled in the United
States or France. On the weekends, young Hmong play
pétanque, a game that, like bocce, consists of pitching
metal balls at a target. Older men, sipping bottles of
Heineken, boast of jungle hunts for peccaries and tapirs.
As in any small village, some younger Hmong complain
of boredom and isolation. Hmong Lee, 40, who
moved to mainland France for 10 years before returning,
decided to settle for something between the farm founded
by his parents and the bustle of a European city. He
now works at a furniture store in the capital, Cayenne,
with a family and two kids.
Hmong Lee says that it isn’t like Paris, but being in
South America has allowed him to be more free to be
Hmong. He is comfortable to be away from the discriminations
that Hmong in the countries like the France,
Australia and U.S. might be facing.
44 TRAVERSE

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STATELESS
THE HMONG
HMONG CULTURE
PERMEATES FASHION
WRITTEN BY XAY YANG
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN DELOITTE
EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN luxury designers
have created entire fashion collections based
on Hmong fashion, meanwhile numerous
magazine editors, stylists, and bloggers have
featured beautiful Hmong clothes or Hmong
inspired clothes in their fashion spreads.
From the fashionable Tokyo street kids to
the most esteemed fashion designers in the
world, the fashion world has collectively
embraced and taken centuries old classic
Hmong fashion full throttle into the mainstream
consciousness.
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The origins of Bohemian fashion roots
back to the ancient Bohoemians
in Europe who were the first group
of people to really stand out in
European society with a culture and way of life
completely different from the norm. “Bohemian”
became a term for almost anything colorful,
unique, and different. Turkish rugs, Indian tapestries,
Tibetan jewelry, and many more culture
artifacts were referred to as “bohemian” when
they first entered Europe and the United States.
Amongst the many influences that exist
in Bohemian fashion is traditional Hmong
clothing and jewelry. Search results for Modern
Hmong Fashion leads to similar results found
when searching Boho Fashion. Similar styles
involve bright and geometric patterns that create
intricate and visually exotic patterns, as well
as intricately carved and multi-pieced trinkets,
necklaces, bracelets, and head pieces.
The influence of Hmong tradition is not
widely talked about in high fashion magazines,
but the influence is very much there.
The growth of this fashion proliferated during
the hippie movement the 1960’s and 70’s, when
people drew inspiration from Indian, Chinese,
Native American, Gypsy and many other
cultural styles. Since the 1960’s and 1970’s,
Bohemian culture has spread beyond the seeds
planted by the hippie movement. Today, ethnic,
tribal, colorful, gypsy fasion refers to the jewely
clothes and accessories which make a statement
of standing beyond the norms of mainstream
society and declaring something new and free.
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48 TRAVERSE

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THE ROMA
A People Uncounted
WRITTEN BY SHEYMA BUALI
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PHIL RIITT
THE ROMA ARE A HISTORICALLY NOMADIC, widely dispersed
people of South Asian origin. They live primarily in Europe, where they
constitute one of the largest ethnic minorities, and have done so for more
than 1,000 years. Despite a millennium of shared history with Europeans,
Roma remain one of the Continent’s most marginalized groups.
A 2012 report jointly compiled by the United Nations Development
Program and the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency found
that only 15 percent of Roma adults surveyed “have completed upper-secondary
general education, versus more than 70 percent of the majority
population living nearby.” Similarly, less than 30 percent of Roma
surveyed were employed in an official capacity at the time of questioning,
and roughly 45 percent “live in households lacking at least one of the
following: an indoor kitchen, toilet, shower or bath, or electricity.”
Discrimination against Roma goes back hundreds of years, culminating
in the Nazi Holocaust that saw up to 25 percent of their population
killed in concentration camps, according to the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
Aside from wide-scale poverty, European Roma are regularly victims of
“racism, discrimination and social exclusion.” The report found that “a
significant portion of Roma respondents said that they have experienced
discriminatory treatment because of their ethnic origin in the 12 months
preceding the survey. The proportions range from more than 25 percent
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STATELESS
in Romania to around 60 percent in the Czech
Republic, Greece, Italy and Poland.”
Also commonly referred to as Gypsies,
Bohemians, Manush, Romany, and Sinti, the
Romanis have no written traces of their origin,
and can only be based on linguistic theories.
These linguistic theories have shown conclusively
that the roots of the Roma language is India:
Their language has grammatical features of
Indian languages ​and sharing with them a large
part of his vocabulary, such as body parts or
common words. Specifically, the Roma language
has the same basic vocabulary that Punjabi and
Hindi. From a phonetic point of view, it has
many similarities with the Marwari, while its
the parties have the legal age in their country of
residence. Conversely, a Roma patriarch Florin
Cioabă, went against the Romanian laws in late
2003, when he married his youngest daughter,
Ana-Maria twelve years old, well below the
age legal marriage, which does not seem to be
an isolated case.
Abduction of girls for marriage are considered
a common practice among Roma. Girls of twelve
years shall be removed to be married with
teenage boys. This practice has been reported in
Ireland, England, the Czech Republic, the
Netherlands, Bulgaria and Slovakia. It is
assumed that the kidnapping is a way to avoid
paying a dowry or a way to avoid a girl to marry
“Also referred to as Gypsies, Bohemians, Manush, Romany,
the Romanis have no written traces of their origin.”
grammar is close to the Bengali. In addition,
genetic discoveries from 2012 confirm these
linguistic theories: Roma are from the
north-western India.
They began to migrate between the 6th and
11th century. In the 14th century, the Roma
migrated to the Middle East, before spreading to
the Atlantic coasts of Europe. Since the 19th
century, some Roma have also migrated to the
Americas. There are an estimated one million in
the United States and 800,000 in Brazil. Some
came voluntarily from Eastern Europe, others
were deported by Portugal during the Inquisition,
to the colonial era. At the end of the 19th
century, other Roma have also emigrated to
Canada and other countries in South America.
Roma place a high value on the extended
family. Traditionally, it is a patriarchal society
and virginity is considered essential to unmarried
women. Men and Roma women often
marry young. Roma practice of child marriage
has been controversial in many countries. Some
Roma want the marriage to be banned before
a boy she likes of whom her parents did not
approve. The normalization of the tradition of
kidnapping puts young women at a higher risk of
being victims of human trafficking risk. This
removal of the bride and child marriage practices
are not universally accepted by all Roma. It is
sought after by Roma women and men that
these customs are abolished.
The worst punishment for Roma is the
expulsion of the community. A deportee is
considered “contaminated” and is ignored by
other Roma. Because of their nomadic way of
life and often differences in language and culture,
the Roma and their sedentary neighbors have
always been suspicious of each other. The
popular image of Roma as thieves and vagabonds
unemployable contributed to their
widespread persecution. Terms are still being
thrown around with negative connocations. This
belief is often cited as the etymological source of
the word Gyp (hence gypsy: Gypsy), meaning
“cheat”, as in “I got gypped by a con man.” (I got
screwed by a scammer).
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A Roma community in Marseille with
makeshift stoves made of large oil cans
TRAVERSE 51

STATELESS
Left: A little boy around 3 years old had
been found by his grandfather
Right: Armando watches his infant sister
teething; Armando is theoretically the only
child from the camp who attends school
During the Enlightenment, Spain briefly and unsuccessfully
tried to assimilate the Roma to ordinary people
by forcing them to abandon their language and way of
life. Even the word gitano was declared illegal. The
persecution of Roma reached a peak during World War II
in Porajmos, genocide perpetrated by Hitler, who claimed
between 220,000 and 1.5 million deaths (The West
Germany formally recognized the genocide in 1982).
There are still tensions between the Roma and the
majority population around them. The most common
complaints are: The Roma fly and live on welfare.
Generally, people do not see a very good eye installing a
Roma camp near their homes. Roma are probably the
most hated minority in Europe. In Denmark, there has
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STATELESS
been a huge controversy when the city of Helsingor
decided to put all Roma children in special classes in
public schools students. This provision was dropped
after he admitted it was discriminatory and Roma
were reintegrated into regular classes.
ROMA IN EASTERN EUROPE
In Eastern Europe, the Roma often live in squatter
communities with very high unemployment. Only a
few are fully integrated into society, including the clan
Kalderash in Romania, working as boilermakers and
prospered. Although some Roma still have a nomadic
lifestyle, their migration is generally imposed, because
most people do not accept their installation anywhere.
Many countries that were once part of the Soviet Union
have large Roma populations. The level of integration of
Roma into society remains limited. In these countries,
they usually remain in the margins of society, living in
colonies, similar to isolated ghettos.
Only a small fraction of Roma children are high
school graduates, although many efforts have been made
official, past and present, to force them to go to school.
Roma often feel rejected by the state and the population,
which creates a barrier to integration. In the Czech
Republic, 75% of Roma children attend schools for those
with learning difficulties and 70% of adults are unemployed,
against a national rate of 9%. In Hungary, 44%
of Roma children attend special schools, while 74% of
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“Romas usually
remain in the
margins of
society, living in
colonies, similar to
isolated ghettos.”
men and 83% of women are unemployed. In Slovakia,
Roma children are 28 times more likely to be sent as a
special non-Roma school. .
In some countries, the fact that Roma rely on welfare
systems is part of the problem. For some Roma families,
it is often better to live on welfare than having a low paid
job. In 2004, Livia Járóka and Viktória Mohácsi,
Hungary, Roma have become Members of the European
Parliament. Finally, seven former communist countries of
Central and Southeastern Europe are the source of the
“Decade of the Initiative of Roma Inclusion” in 2005 to
improve socio-economic conditions and the situation of
the minority Rom.
In countries outside the European Union, such as
Albania—which, according to the World Bank, has the
fourth-lowest gross domestic product per capita on the
continent (ahead of Ukraine, Kosovo and Moldova) and a
national G.D.P. ranked between that of Chad and
Zimbabwe—the plight of the Roma is especially dire.
Albanian Roma are especially long-suffering. Many were
forcibly expelled from the country during the Albanian
rebellion of 1997, also known as the Pyramid Crisis.
Out of fear for their lives, many Roma fled to neighboring
Greece, where they would live as refugees for more
than a decade. A large number of Albanian Roma are
now returning to their home country. The economy is
growing, unemployment is shrinking, and national
politics are generally calmer. But life for the resident
Roma community is still quite dismal.
ROMA IN FRANCE
Gennevilliers, France—The camps weren’t much to begin
with: They had no electricity or running water. Grocery
carts served as makeshift grills. Rats ran rampant and
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STATELESS
fleas gnawed on young and old alike. But they were home
- and they were better than the new reality for thousands
of Gypsies who have been forced into hiding after France
launched its latest campaign this month to drive them
from their camps.
The last big sweep came in 2010, when France expelled
Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria. Then the European
Commission imposed sanctions and thousands of French
came out to protest in sympathy for the Gypsies, also
known as the Roma.
This time, the Gypsies left quietly, gathering their
belongings and heading into the woods with plans to
re-emerge when the coast is clear.
“Why did God even create us, if Gypsies are to live like
this?” cried 35-year-old Babica, as bulldozers moved in to
tear down the camp in Gennevilliers, on the outskirts of
Paris. This was her second home demolished in three years.
Left: Nadia passes the broom
Right: Wide corridors and no running
water or electricity
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STATELESS
Like other Roma quoted in this story, he did not give
his last name out of fear of arrest or deportation. Most of
the Gypsies have no plans to return to Romania, where
their citizenship would at least allow them to educate
their children and treat their illnesses. Amid a dismal
economic environment across Europe, they say, begging
in France is still more lucrative than trying to find work
where there is none.
France has cast the most recent demolitions as
necessary for public health and safety. It’s hard to
pinpoint how many camps were taken down. At least five
around Paris were demolished and several hundred of
their residents were ordered out; others came down in
Lille and Lyon but still remain.
Photojournalist Phil Ritt tells a story with his image
of a Roma in Fontaineu—the northern suburbs of
Marseille, France. Starting his story in April 2013, he
returned several times to try to monitor the changes in
the lives of Roma in the longest period possible. On
Wednesday, August 20, 2014, the buildings occupied by
the Roma community were permanently closed on
prefectural decision. He has not heard from them since,
but the accounts of his time spent are recognized in his
collection of photos.
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MESSAGE FROM THE
PHOTOGRAPHER
These collection of images come from a moment that I wanted to do a photo essay
on the Roma, who have such a bad reputation in Marseille, France as well as other
parts of Europe. I started this story in April 2013 and returned several times to
monitor changes in the lives of Roma in France over the longest period possible.
On Wednesday, August 20, 2014, the buildings occupied by
the Roma community were permanently closed on prefectural
decision. I have not heard from those families since then.
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In this community where Roma live together, quite a number of families
all have a relationship. It is not inbreeding, but family ties. This way of
living has not been adopted in France, but it still exists in Romania.
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STATELESS
Between the sitting Roma woman and the crouching boy,
we see hanging on the wall an Orthodox icon. Roma usually
adopt the religion of the country in which they live.
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FIN.
TRAVERSE 61

THE HMONG
A PEOPLE UNCOUNTED:
DOCUMENTARY
WRITTEN BY CHRIS KNIGHT
A RECENT DOCUMENTARY has been released
in August 2011 by director Aaron Yeger who
was awarded best documentary producer of
the year by Producers Guild of America.
Visiting 11 countries and interviewing
dozens of Roma artists, historians, musicians
and Holocaust survivors, this revealing film
documents their culturally rich but often
difficult lives, taking us back to ancient times
and forward to the little-known story of
Roma genocide of nearly 500,000 at the
hands of Nazis during World War II.

THE INSIDER
Several documentaryies have been released
about the tragic tales of the Roma, but the
numbers are still small. Some span the
stories of those who have migrated to
America or Canada. A People Uncounted adds a
refreshing outlook on the Roma who have been
affected by Hitler’s attempt to wipe out the gypsies
at the same time he attempted with the Jews. It’s
common knowledge (at least I hope it is) that the
Nazi death machine affected more than just the
Jewish population of Europe. Also caught in the
steamroller were homosexuals, the disabled,
Communists, Poles, Soviets, political dissenters
and the Romani.
Aaron Yeger’s 2011 documentary focuses on the
Romani’s fate under the Nazi regime. As a call for
remembrance, this is a powerful document. Yeger
tracks down numberous Romani survivors of the
camps, uncovering horrible stories of abuse. One
woman breaks down as she recalls eating human
flesh to survive. Another man tells of a nightmarish
encounter with the infamous Angel of Death,
Josef Mengele.
The film is not trying to shoulder aside memories
of the Jewish Holocaust; merely to add another
chapter to the Nazi’s list of crimes against humanity.
Modern Romani have even suggested Parrajmos
as an equivalent to the Hebrew word Shoah, and a
label for the half million or more of their people
slaughted in the camps. That is one reason why the
eyewitness accounts collected in this film cry out
to be heard.
“Sobering”—Now Magazine
“Deeply moving”—Toronto Film Scene
“Never loses the fine balance between portraying harrowing experiences while
maintaining its optimistic tone. It is very stirring and helps carve a niche for the
Roma community in history. A must-watch.”—Box Office India
NOW AVAILABLE FOR COMMUNITY SCREENINGS IN THE US
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STORIES TOLD FROM THE EYES OF
THE STATELESS
“Beyond the Fence”
by TT Vang
66
“My Gipsy Childhood”
by Roxy Freeman
72
“Fountain”
from Echoes of the Other Land
by Ava Homa
79

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BEYOND THE FENCE
R
azor-wire fence rounded and rounded Phanat Nikhom Refugee
Processing Camp where the days were filled with a bustling market
and freshly-made ice cream, Cantonese love songs blasting off from
old cassette players, and the young and old learning about American
culture and language; and where the nights were taken by children
gathering around a story-teller, young men courting the lovely cheekburnt
girls, and adult males joking and drinking beer to kill time as they
took turns guarding the camp against a possible reprisal from their war
enemy. This was the place that we were trapped inside and watched
closely like law-violating prisoners. We couldn’t go past the barbed-wire
fence. Thai security guards patrolled the camp’s borders like vicious dogs
that bite if one went near. They wore gun-packed dark-lilac color uniforms
with black helmets, and in pairs—they rumbled around the camp
in their black motorcycles eying for offenders.
I heard that if a boy was caught going outside of the fence, no matter
how old he was, he would be beaten and sold as a slave. If a girl was
caught, she would be sold as a prostitute. And then there were the others,
who would be locked up for life unless their parents bailed them out with
a large sum of money. These stories sent shivers down my spine and
goose bumps across my skin more than the ghost stories I heard at night.
I hoped I never get caught or sold as a prostitute, or worried my parents—
especially worrying my parents. They would undeniably hit me if they
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heard I was captured. But still, my curiosity about what was beyond the
fence often overcame me and drove me to sneak past the fence many times.
There weren’t many things to do inside the camp. I didn’t like school
much either. I went when I felt like it and skipped when I felt like it too.
No one forced me to go and no one forced me to stay. I showed up on
movie days only, which we often watched a movie about an almost naked
man who lost his son and daughter while trying to get rid of a glass bottle
that fell from the sky. It was something different for me and I liked to see
the strange fruits that the two kids gorged on so deliciously.
While not at school, I followed my mother. Sometimes, her teacher
taught the class to make American food like sandwiches but when I was
offered one to eat, the abundant flavors tasted funny to my tongue. I
didn’t like it. So I skipped off and peeped into other classrooms. Once,
I sneaked into a class and watched a movie about a boy in a green outfit
wearing a pointed hat with a feather. He could fly and played with some
mermaids in a waterfall. Other times, I squeezed in with a crowd of
women and children to watch Nkauj Ntsum and Tub Tuam. I never got
tired of that movie and was disappointed if the movie about a big guy in a
red suit riding a sleigh or the one about seven men in seven different color
shirts flirting with seven women was shown instead.
I learned to like watching movies. Whether a motion clip was a movie
or a television show, there was no distinction in our mind. We all knew it
as “movies” only. It became a window out of the bland life of Phanat
Nikhom. Aside from getting to watch shows at school, we have the option
of paying two-baht to watch a movie inside a theatre—operated by Thai
businessmen and consisted of a large room filled with rows of plastic
chairs and a twenty inch television, positioned roughly three feet from the
ceiling. I went in once, after ditching a friend because I hated people who
clung onto me like superglue. That morning, an episode of Japanese
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power rangers dubbed in Thai was shown. Once the half-hour children’s
show was over, a Thai boran lakorn about a princess who lived in a
bamboo grove and had a magical golden hair band came on. Depending
on the time of day, there were different shows. Chinese dramas and
Indian movies dubbed in Thai tended to be screened during the evening
time. But me, I enjoyed the power rangers and Thai ancient dramas more.
When I didn’t have money, I sneaked out of the fence with a bunch of
other children to watch Thai dramas at a little Thai snack shop right on
the outskirts of the fence. Sometimes, I bought a snack with the one baht
allowance my father gave me and sat down on the dirt ground to munch
on the sweet candy while waiting for the Thai boran episode to come on.
Other times, I just sat there in front of the shop for hours, watching some
younger kids running in and out of the fence, naked, under the scorching
sun. But just sitting there was risky and dangerous. The kids and I knew
about the Thai security guards, so we were always watchful. When we
heard the slightest sound of their motorcycles’ guttural, yet thunderous
retort and crackling at times noise—we all rushed back inside the fence.
Even when none of us were caught, the Thai security guards knew that
we were outside of the fence. So to fulfill our television needs and discourage
us from stepping out of the fence, they set up a free black and white
television at their station by the camp’s entrance. But me, I didn’t like
watching people in black and white. I wanted to see them in color because
the presence of color was much more appealing and interesting. So, I was
pulled to the Thai snack shop over the fence almost every day despite the
fact that I was violating camp rules.
One day while outside of the fence and waiting for my show to come on,
I began picking flowers next to the shop. I thought I had heard the rumble
that we were all terrified of but it sounded so far away. I looked at the
other children and they were still there. If they haven’t left yet, it was okay
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for me to stay as well. So I continued to pick flowers. Then, in the blink of
an eye, I saw them. There in front of me, they sat on their motorcycles
looking like giant, angry elephants about to stomp over me. The other
children had vanished and I was left alone there.
A million thoughts ran through my mind. What was I going to do?
Would my parents kill me if they found out? Would I end up being a
prostitute? I was scared.
I was not sure if it was the fright in my eyes or that I was young and
innocent or that it was my luck, but one of the guards nodded to me to get
back inside the fence. Without hesitating, I took the chance to rush back
inside. It was better to be a prisoner with my family than to be an abused
prisoner alone.
As I walked away from the fence, a myriad of women and children
stared at me like I had committed a capital offence. I felt embarrassed
and was afraid that one of those people would definitely tell my parents
about what I have done. If they found out, I would absolutely be whipped
by my mother. The trip home that afternoon through rows and rows of
shingle-roofed bungalows took longer than I remembered. But the strenuous
walk to our cramped living quarter had made me decide to keep my
mouth shut of the experience for as long as I could. It was not until many
years later when I gained enough confidence that I finally revealed the
incident to them. My mother laughed about it. However, I knew that it
was definitely not something laughable then.
Since that day, I never dared step past the fence again. Although my
body could not physically travel past the fence, my mind often wondered
beyond it. Sometimes, I leaned on the fence facing the Thai snack shop
and thought about what America was like. Did it lie just beyond the
rusting, brown shingle-roofed barn in the distance where the sun shone
like it never set or was it over the lush hills afar the barn?
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America seemed so close, yet so far away. I wished it was just beyond
the fence. But I knew that I would get there someday. I would.
When I was bored staring past the Thai snack shop, I walked toward
the camp’s entrance and stared past that fence. There was a nice, smooth
cement-lamented road ahead that stretched from nowhere and went to
somewhere. Now and then, a car—a brown pickup truck, a white van, or
a red convertible came on the road and raced past the camp. I often
wondered where the cars were heading to. Would a car stop and ask me to
see if I wanted to go on a ride? Were there a lot of people inside the car?
Perhaps there was a little boy, who out of curiosity, would stare at me—a
strange, dirtied-face little girl who was confined behind the fence and
staring peculiarly at him too? If there was such a boy, how does he look
like? Where is he going? To the city of angels? Does he have a better life
than I do? Did he come to participate in the social gatherings I often saw
happening near the camp. There were two white towers, nicely decorated,
and often filled with short-hair ladies in nice gowns and dresses—wearing
big belts like the one my mother bought for me for Hmong New Year.
They drank fluids in nice clear v-shaped cups, and danced and laughed
with gentlemen in black suits. Why were they permitted to be free to
enjoy so much fun and laughter while we were trapped inside the camp?
It was not until my college years that I found out that Phanat Nikhom
was less than a mile from a beach and the wide, crystal-clear blue ocean.
Like the Thai dramas, the cars racing by and the people in nice clothing
probably came there for a vacation by the ocean. They spent their days
splashing in the cool water and their nights enjoying music and dance.
Something that we were so close to, neither my fellow camp members nor
I ever got to experience until after migrating to America.
So if I was not thinking about America, I was by the fence counting
the cars speeding by. Who was inside the car? How did they look like?
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Where were they heading to? The sound of rushing cars gave me hope
and a chance to kill my boredom. I often ran toward the fence to stare at
them whenever I could. The cars looked so free, like a flock of birds
soaring through the sky without limitations. I yearned for that ability
very much. I yearned for freedom.
Many years after leaving the camp, I however, am very tired of noisy
traffic sounds that even in the depth of the night—disrupted and woke
me up from my sleep. In my years of college, I met many people.
Sometimes, I wonder if any of my Thai classmates was inside a car that
sped by or participated in those parties during that time I spent staring at
them from inside Phanat Nikhom. If so, who would imagine that we
would finally end up at the same place? A place that offered us the same
chance toward enlightenment. But I never asked. At least for the moment,
I won’t have to wonder about what was beyond the fence again.
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MY GIPSY CHILDHOOD
The receptionist looked at me with disdain when I walked into
Suffolk College asking to enrol. Their access course for mature
students didn’t have any entry requirements as such, but the receptionist
warned me it was an advanced, intensive course, and there seemed to be a
blank space under “educational history” on my application form. When I
explained that I wasn’t a dropout, I just hadn’t gone to school, she looked
even more scornful.
I was 22 and had never spent a day in a classroom in my life; an alien
concept for many people but common in Gypsy and Traveller families.
There are more than 100,000 nomadic Travellers and Gypsies in the UK,
and 200,000 who live in permanent housing. Many, like me, never attend
school, while others are illiterate because formal education is not a priority
in our culture.
My upbringing was unusual, but not unique. Until I was eight my
family lived on the road, travelling around Ireland by horsedrawn wagon.
I was one of six children, with three more half-sisters, and our family was
considered small. Having 12 or 13 children was common among
Travellers in Ireland.
Marrying first cousins is also common among Gypsies (and a potential
genetic timebomb), my parents come from very different backgrounds.
My mother was born into an upper-class American family. On her gap
year she literally ran away with a Gypsy—my father, who bred horses.
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Both are extremely intelligent and open-minded people who wanted to
bring us up in a stimulating, free and fulfilling environment.
Instead of going to school, my siblings and I, like many children from
travelling families, were taught about the arts, music and dance. Our
education was learning about wildlife and nature, how to cook and how
to survive. I didn’t know my times tables but I could milk a goat and ride
a horse. I could identify ink caps, puff balls and field mushrooms and
knew where to find wild watercress and sorrel. By the age of eight or nine
I could light a fire, cook dinner for a family of 10 and knew how to bake
bread on an open fire.
Not that it was always idyllic: life on the road could be harsh. As a
child with younger siblings I had to work hard: my daily routine included
fetching water, cooking and changing nappies. We also struggled financially;
my dad’s passion has always been breeding Gypsy cobs.
Sometimes he would get a good sale, but a lot of the time we were penniless.
Then we worked as a family, fruit picking. One summer, I remember
practically living off mushrooms as we worked on a mushroom farm. We
also picked daffodils; after about five seasons I developed an allergy to
the liquid in the stems and my skin would blister on contact with it. Any
money we earned went straight to my mother and father.
Our life was always lived outside; working, playing and socialising was
all done around the fire or in the woods and fields. Wet weather was a
curse and we would huddle up around a wood burner in one of the caravans.
For many years we had no electricity, no television, no radio; nothing
electrical. We had china dolls but no other toys. And we played
cards—thank God for playing cards! If it wasn’t for them, I would have
no mathematical ability whatsoever.
Unlike some of my siblings, I learned to read when I was quite young.
My mother and grandparents bought me books and, with mum’s help, I
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could read by the time I was about nine. By the age of 12 or 13 I had
devoured all of F Scott Fitzgerald, EM Forster, Louisa May Alcott and
Emily Brontë. I bought them in charity shops or asked for them as birthday
presents; together, books and cards gave me an understanding of
words and numbers in the absence of any formal education.
I was, though, completely unaware of the outrageous way the media
portrays the Gypsy population. As children, we had very little contact
with people living in houses and because we didn’t go to school or watch
television, I was oblivious. My mother didn’t take us shopping, as there
were so many of us. I remember once when we were camped on a lane
close to a council housing estate, children would walk across the field
towards where we were playing in the trees to hurl abuse and throw
stones at us. But when I asked my brother why they were angry, he didn’t
seem particularly bothered, saying perhaps it was “because they didn’t
understand and thought we were dangerous”.
If it hadn’t been for literature, maybe I would have remained unaware
of the way we were described. But a love of books evolved into an interest
in magazines and newspapers, and that exposed a world of prejudice and
ignorance to me. In my early teens, I realised for the first time that there’s
a widely held view that everyone who lives in a caravan or on the road is a
dirty, thieving Gypsy, never contributing to society while living for free
on land that doesn’t belong to them.
Gypsies and Travellers are the only social group that it is still
acceptable to insult. In part, I think this stems from our levels of
illiteracy and lack of social involvement; if people are unaware of what
is being written about them, they’re not going to dispute it. And if
they don’t dispute it, it will carry on.
In England, Gypsies were ruled as a distinct ethnic group under the
1976 Race Relations Act. Irish travelers were granted this status in 2000.
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But it has made very little difference to popular opinion or attitude, and
even less difference to the lives of the Travellers themselves. Gypsy and
Traveller people still have the lowest life expectancy, the highest child
mortality rate and are the most “at risk” health group in the UK, as well
as being excluded from many of the basic social and legal structures.
Although I didn’t go to school, some of my siblings did. And like so
many other Gypsy children, they faced bullying. Often I would turn up
at the high-school gates to find them in floods of tears because children
had been picking on them.
It can be hard to reach your full potential without schooling, but
compared with traditional illiterate Gypsy or Traveller families, we had
good opportunities and were not expected to marry young, have lots of
children and follow in our parents’ footsteps. As a child, my passion had
been flamenco (the music of the Gypsy community in Spain). My mother
took me to a dance class after we settled in Norfolk when I was about
nine, and I was hooked.
We had rented a piece of land for our wagons and been granted special
residency rights by the council. We moved into mobile homes and eventually
built a wooden structure to house a bathroom, kitchen and communal
area. This meant I could have regular lessons and I became a
professional flamenco dancer. By the age of 17, I was filled with a desire to
leave the chaotic comfort of the camp behind. After saving money doing
care work I travelled around the world for years, dancing in flamenco bars
in Australia, flamenco schools in Spain and on beaches in India.
But even when I was travelling, I never really told people about my
upbringing or family, for fear of negative or ignorant responses. Without
school it is hard to make lifelong friends, and I know that only my family
understand my fears, emotions and background. My family was so large
and close that I never felt I needed friends. But while I was away, a sense
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of discontentment grew inside me that I knew wasn’t going to go away.
This suddeen lifestyle of stillness scared me.
I had toyed with the idea of going to college in the past, but it had
seemed unnecessary, difficult and somehow unobtainable. Now, aged 22,
I was ready—but it wasn’t going to be easy. Before I was accepted, I had
to write 3,000 words on why I wanted to enter the education system so
late—quite a challenge for someone who had never written more than a
letter before. But I got my place and, for the next nine months of the
course, spent my nights in our caravan home reading GCSE-level text
books, desperately trying to gain the basic knowledge I was expected to
have. I didn’t know about the atrocious crimes Hitler was guilty of, nor
when the Battle of Hastings took place. I had no idea what the respiratory
system did and I couldn’t punctuate a sentence. But I had a good vocabulary,
a lot of determination and a hugely supportive family. Trying to
study among them was another matter.
Finding peace and quiet had always been impossible. When I was a
little girl I dreamed of living in a terraced house on a cobbled street,
because in wagons and caravans you never get any peace. You live on top
of each other, privacy is non-existent and the only place you find solitude
is by hiding under a tree or walking across a field. As a child I would
wander off alone whenever I got the chance, to find a patch of moss to sit
on and spend the afternoon watching ladybirds and picking flowers to
press.
Moving from one culture to another is incredibly difficult, and
knocking down the barriers and misconceptions is even harder. Perhaps
I shouldn’t have been surprised—there has been a long history of
persecuting Gypsies in Europe: the Egyptians Act of 1530 banned
them from England, while later acts forced them to give up their nomadic
existence or face death. The Nazis considered them
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“nonpersons”, and some experts believe around 600,000 European
Gypsies were eradicated, most gassed in Auschwitz.
There are several different groups within the travelling community.
Roma Gypsies, who originated from the Indian subcontinent around
1,000 years ago and have now spread across Europe; Irish Travellers, who
have a common language (Shelta) and are believed to have became nomadic
in the 16th or 17th century; plus new age travellers, hippies and
crusties. Some choose a nomadic life because they want to be more in
touch with nature; others to live on the edge of society without a national
insurance number or fixed address.
Yet when Gypsies and Travellers do want to settle down, there are
extra complications. More than 90% of planning applications submitted
by Gypsy families are refused, compared with 20% of non-traveller
applications. Also, Gypsies may be buying pieces of land on green belts
and have little or no knowledge of the administration system. A planning
application by a Gypsy family is always met with an extreme number of
objections by the local residents (I know this from experience). And it’s a
fact that having Gypsies in a neighbourhood lowers the price of property.
My siblings and I were born into this lifestyle, but we weren’t taught
to carve clothes pegs and sell lucky heather. We were brought up with
strict morals, values and guidelines. We don’t look or act particularly
different to anybody else. We just had a different path, and weren’t
brought up living in a house.
After completing my access course (thanks to a wonderful tutor, I got
distinctions in all the units), I did a degree with the Open University, and
that meant completely changing my way of life. Last November, at the
age of 30, I moved to Brighton to study at Brighton Journalist Works. I
live here with my boyfriend in a flat, which is bizarre and alien to me.
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My family are, admittedly, no longer truly nomadic, and my parents
support my decision to transform my life, but I have never lived within
bricks and mortar before, and I feel completely out of touch with nature
now.
I can’t see or feel the change from one season to the next, I crave
greenery, and I constantly wrestle with the emotion of feeling trapped. I
spend half my life opening doors and windows, trying to get rid of the
airless, claustrophobic feeling that comes with being inside. I get woken
up by bin lorries, the rush-hour traffic and my neighbours shouting,
instead of birdsong and the wind in the trees. I can’t sense when it’s
going to rain because I can no longer smell it in the air, and when it does
rain I can’t hear it landing on the roof.
I live near the sea because it gives me some sense of openness and
freedom, but I don’t think I will ever feel truly settled here—or anywhere
else. My instinct is to travel, and when you have grown up waking to
different scenery every day, it’s easy to feel trapped. But to reach my
dream, I have to put down roots.
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THE FOUNTAIN
Anis leaned against the kitchen table. She squeezed and opened her
left fist. The small pink pill had stained her palm. She put the tip of
her right forefinger on the pill, swivelling it. Alie entered the living room,
which adjoined the kitchen.
“Where’ve you put the bank passbook?” he called out.
Anis clenched her left hand.
“Where?” he asked again.
“I don’t have it.”
“Find it,” Ali said and walked back to the bedroom.
Anis threw the pill in the trash basket and washed her hands. She
walked out of the kitchen to the living room, picked up the headscarf
from the hook next to the outside door, an dput it around her forehead,
tying it tightly at the back. The headscarf was there for her to cover her
head whenever she opened the door; this is how Ali made sure no man
would see his wife’s hair. Lately, Anis has been using the scar to squeeze
her head whenever it ached. She paused, went back to the kitchen, and
picked up the watering can near the fridge. She went to the balcony from
the kitchen and watered the flower pots.
Ali entered the living room wearing a suit. “Where are you?” he called.
Scanning the room, he noticed a small object among the lilacs. Ali went to
the coffee table and picked up the falcone-shaped plastic toy which landed
on the plant. “Falcons everywhere in this apartment!” he murmured. The
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balcony door opened and Anis emerged. “Headache again?” he asked. He
threw the toy on the sofa and frowned.
She dropped the empty watering can down near the table and sat down
at the computer in the living room.
Ali came closer and looked at the screen. Anis was writing a computer
program in C++. He went to the kitchen, lifted the glass from the kitchen
table, and drank the water. From the corner of his eye he watched Anis
typing rapidly.
“Dirty dishes! Dirty dishes everywhere,” he said, slamming down the
glass in the sink.
Anis remained hunched at the monitor.
“Didn’t I tell you to find it?”
She did not answer.
“I am talking to you,” he yelled, going towards her.
“I said I didn’t know,” she replied.
“What do you know then? Huh?” He took the mouse and smacked it on
the desk. “Who knows where anything is in this place?”
Her eyes were fixed on the keyboard, hand on her mouth. “You are
the one who always has that bank pass thing, Agha,” Anis said under
her breath.
Ali hurried to the bedroom and took his Samsonite bag out of the
closet. The booklet was inside. He went to the mirror and combined his
hair. Examining himself, he raised a thick black eyebrow, inclined his
body to the right and lifted his chin. He was patting his beard when he
noticed a drawing above the mirror, seeing a lion in its reflection. Ali
removed it, tore it into pieces and put them in his coat pocket.
There was a knock outside. He perfumed himself, glanced again in the
mirror, and walked out of the room. His friend Esi was at the door.
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Anis had untied the scarf to have it cover her hair and was greeting the
man. She had almost closed the door after them when Ali looked back.
“Hey!” He put the pieces of the drawing in her palm and said, “Gimme
your cell. Mine’s dead.”
Anis was staring down at her palm. “I’m expecting a phone call,” she
said, raising her head.
Ali pushed through the door, went to the small tea table next to the
sofa, and picked up her cell. Anis stared at his dirty footprints that now
stained the floor.
* * *
After they had left the bank, Esi and Ali stopped in front of a juice
shop. Ali ordered two glasses of cantaloupe juice and looked out at the
street. Men and women formed two separate lines at the bus stop. An old
man was buying his tickets from the small booth next to the stop. His
hair was white and there was a newspaper tucked under his left arm. A
tall, young woman with a swarthy face, in a dark blue manteau and
headscarf stood behind the old man. She bought a ticket and walked over
to a tree across from the juice shop. She looked around, and then leaned
against a tree, pushing back the sole of one foot and the back of her head
against the trunk. Her book bag was clutched to her chest under her
folded arms. She closed her eyes.
“Here you are.” Esi gave Ali the glass of juice and followed his gaze
towards the girl. “No eye candy.”
Ali took the glass, continued looking at the girl.
“Want me to invite her here?” Esi asked.
“Nah.” Ali took a sip.
“Let’s have some fun.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
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“You sure?” Esi asked.
Ali nodded. “She’s just…”
“Just what?”
“Nothing....” Ali took another sip.
“Doesn’t she look like Anis?” Esi asked, looking back at the girl.
“Yeah…” Ali nodded. “And she looks exhausted…”
“Anis looked tired, too,” Esi said, watching the girl carefully.
Ali was silent. Esi finished off the rest of his juice.
“Hey, don’t choke.” Ali laughed. He tried to chug his drink too, but a
piece of ice got caught in his throat. He started coughing. Esi laughed.
“What did you say?” Ali asked, his face red from the coughing.
“What did you say about Anis?”
Esi put his glass on the counter. “I said she looked tired.” He shrugged.
Ali gave the vendor a blue banknote and muttered, “She enjoys working
her ass off.”
They walked down Valiasr street. Traffic was at a standstill as usual.
Noise and fumes filled the air.
“Hey, have you still got Yalda Night?” Asked Alia, as they walked by
the cinema, looking at the poster of Cease Fire. Two good-looking actors,
a man and a woman, were leaning back against a tree trunk, frowning.
“Yalda Night?” Esi asked. “Sounds familiar.”
“Where the woman goes abroad...then divorces.”
“Oh, yeah. Didn’t we watch it?”
“Yeah. Wanna watch it again?”
“I’ll look for it,” Esi said, observing Ali through the corners of his eyes.
They entered a park and walked down the stairs leading to a pond and
fountain. They strolled around it. People had already filled the benches
around the pond.
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“How many times do you want to walk around this pond?”
Esi asked.
“I want to sit somewhere and watch the fountain.”
“The fountain? What’s so interesting about the fountain?”
“I need to know what it has.”
“What it has?” Repeated Esi.
Ali nodded. “She loves it.”
“Let me buy two sandwiches. What would you like?”
“No difference.”
“Drink?”
“Beer.”
“Islamic beer.” Esi winked and left.
Two middle-aged women got up from a bench. One was on crutches
and wore a loose milky manteau matching her hair. The other was fatter
and helping her friend walk. Ali went and sat down on their bench and
stared at the streams of water that rose, fell, and rose again.
A young couple stood near the fountain. The girl lowered her head and
put both hands in her pockets. She appeared to be in deep thought. The
boy put a hand on her shoulder and talked rapidly. Ali sighed, placed his
elbow on the back of the bench, and stared at the couple.
Esi returned with a bag. He stood in front of Ali and looked down at
him. “You look like death.”
“Shut up.”
Esi gave Ali his sandwich and drink and sat. “What’s wrong?”
After a long pause, Ali pointed to a grey shirt on a short man. “I
bought a shirt just like that for my pigheaded boss.”
“Mazaheri?”
“Yes.”
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“What did you do, finally, with him?”
“Nothing! I haven’t been working lately.”
“Really, I didn’t know that.”
“Yes...I’ve been spending savings so far.”
“You’re lucky Anis has a job.”
Ali turned to Esi without warning and said sharply, “I use my own
savings, man!”
“Really? What endless savings! Heh, have you been winning lotteries?”
“A few million dollars each time,” Ali scoffed.
A young woman with a pink headscarf and a white manteau passed
them, pushing a baby stroller with colourful animal dolls dangling from
its stop. Ali stared at her pink lipstick and matching scarf. She had
bleached highlights in her black hair, strands of which showed from the
front and back of her narrow headscarf.
“She’ll be arrested for sure, as soon as she steps out of the park,”
Esi said.
“She deserves it, Esi. That’s non-Islamic dress code!” affirmed Ali.
“Oh yeah, everyone has to be a Muslim in this country, even tourists,”
Esi said.
“When you are in a country you have to obey its rules.”
“Screw a country where you’re not free to choose even your look. Police
now tell random boys in the streets to raise their hands: if the front of the
shirt is not long enough to cover their stomachs, the boys get arrested.
This county has no other issues except young people’s hair and dress.”
“Shhhhhh,” Ali said. “Are you looking for trouble?”
The young couple passed them again. Ali slouched forward and gazed
directly at them, one elbow resting on a leg, his chin in his hand.
“You remember the first time I showed you Anis?” Ali asked.
“Yes. I was behind that tree.” Esi pointed to a big old tree.
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“How old can that tree be?” Ali asked.
Esi looked at Ali over his beer can and said after a pause, “You said she
was your girlfriend.”
“I was sure she would be. I knew something no boy knew. I knew her
too well.”
“What about her?”
“Well, she’s a strange girl, the only girl from her island to have gone to
university in Tehran.”
“She played really hard.” Esi crossed his legs.
“And she left her fiancé when she was in high school, a fiancé her father
had pitched,” Ali continued.
“How did you do it? Really.” Esi turned to him.
“It’s a secret.”
“Come on. Not that you had any luck with other girls. And you don’t
want me to die a bachelor, do you?”
“Well.” Ali shrugged. “You must look noble and kind—a true gentleman.
She must think there is no one else like you.” Ali winked. “She
knew I was different from other men and I was the only one who knew
how afraid she was of men and of marriage.”
“So that’s it. There no one else like me.” Esi smirked and drank his beer.
“When her father issued his ultimatum…”
“Which one?” Ali jeered.
“The last one, you know…” Esi hesitated. “He’d never let her step on
Qeshm Island again, if she married you...She’s just incredible. I never
thought she’d dare go against his will.”
“He didn’t hate me personally...just didn’t want her to marry
anyone not from the island—which is something she’d never accept.”
Esi ate his sandwich and watched the fountain. The couple had approached
the fountain again. A young boy in poor, dirty attire was now
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selling chewing gum there. Ali went back to his thoughts. Esi watched
the shabby boy.
“The number of beggars increases hour by hour,” Esi said. Ali was
quiet. “Eat, man,” Esi continued.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat. Don’t think about it.”
“Whatever it is that you’re obsessed with, lately.”
“I’m not obsessed.”
Esi drank his zero-percent alcohol beer. They were both quiet. Ali’s
gaze was fixed on the couple near the fountain. The girl had raised her
face and opened her palms to catch the spraying water.
“Why are girls so in love with the fountain?”
“Not all of them are,” mumbled Esi, looking at Ali who seemed
agitated. “Ali!”
Ali turned to him.
“No woman can go abroad without her husband’s permission. You
know that,” Esi said suddenly.
“What?” Ali turned to him. “What did you say?”
“You heard what I said.”
There was a long silence.
Ali touched his beard. “How can you be that sure?”
“My friend, in the Islamic Republic of Iran a wife is like a personal tool,
like a toothbrush.” He laughed and drew nearer to Ali. “Seriously!
Legally speaking, women have no right to step out of the house without
their husband’s permission, let alone go abroad.”
“Absolutely! It’s the fault of nice men like you and I that women can
make themselves up and go out.”
“I know. We’re being too nice.” Esi laughed.
“You think there would be no way to escape the law?” Ali asked.
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“Canonically, commonly, and legally, no way.”
Ali didn’t say anything but kept looking at the couple and pulling
at his beard.
“But….seriously! Let me tell you something. I’d let her go. I would, if I
were you...trust me. I’d go myself. One is not always lucky like that, you
know, to have a wife like that. You don’t need to worry about English.
You’ll pick it up.”
“Sure, I’ll give her formal permission to go,” Ali said sarcastically.
“PhD scholarship! Thirty thousand pounds! That’s alot of money, man.
She’s a genius!”
“How do you know all that?”
“I know, everyone knows. That’s not something anyone would hide.”
“I shouldn’t have let her do a masters. My first mistake,” Ali thought.
“Uhmm anyways, my father’s ill. You know I can’t go,” h e said.
“Say!” Esi exclaimed, swallowing a morsel. “Did I tell you I saw your
father in Mellet Park yesterday? He had your athletic clothes on running.”
“Yes. He’s a real sportsman.”
“He’s healthier than you, man.” Esi took another bite and continued.
“You were wrong to bring your parents to Tehran though. People are
escaping this crowded, polluted, and expensive city nowadays.”
“I’d love to leave this city. Anis refused to go.”
(Continued in Echoes from the Other Land)
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
TT VANG
TT Vang is the author of To Live Here, winner of the 2014 Imaginary Friend
Press Poetry Prize, and co-editor of How Do I Begin?: A Hmong American
Literary Anthology (Heyday, 2011). Soul is a poet and a teacher. She holds
an MFA in poetry from California State University, Fresno and is an editorial
board member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC).
ROXY FREEMAN
Roxy Freeman is a freelance journalist and lifestyle writer based in Brighton.
Her articles have appeared in the Guardian, Daily Mail and YOU Magazine
among other publications. Born in 1979 and self-educated for most of her
life, Roxy graduated from The Open University in 2008 and completed her
NCTJ certificate in February 2009. Her most well known novel is Little
Gypsy, published in 2011.
AVA HOMA
Ava Homa is a writer, teacher and editor. Her collection of short stories,
Echoes from the Other Land (TSARbook, Toronto, 2010), was nominated for
the 2011 Frank O’Conner Short Story Prize and secured a place among the
ten winners of the 2011 CBC Reader’s Choice Contest. Homa is well-known
in the Kurdish diaspora and at home. Her writing on Kurdish women’s
issues has served as a basis for discussion at various schools and universities.
FURTHER READS
ECHOES FROM THE OTHER LAND
by Ava Homa (left)
These haunting stories beautifully evoke the
oppressive lives of modern women in the Islamic
Republic of Iran. The weight of traditional attitudes,
the harrassment of the religious establishment,
and the attitudes of men make for a
frustrating, confining, and sometimes unlivable
existence.
GYPSY BOY by Mikey Walsh (right)
Mikey was born into a Romany Gypsy family.
They live in a closeted community, and little is
known about their way of life. After centuries of
persecution Gypsies are wary of outsiders and
if you choose to leave you can never come back.
This is something Mikey knows only too well.
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new bottle
FROM THE FRENCH ALPS
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HOME IS EVERY PLACE
WRITTEN BY PICO IYER
PICO IYER WRITES ABOUT THE INFLUENCE JAPANESE AMERICAN
ARCHITECT, ISAMU NOGUCHI, HAS ON HIS PERCEPTION OF HOME
BEING IN EVERY PLACE. THIS IS A PERSPECTIVE OF LIVING WITH-
OUT BOUNDARIES BY CHOICE. FOR IYER, “HOME IS NOT JUST THE
PLACE WHERE YOU ARE BORN—IT’S THE PLACE WHERE YOU BE-
COME YOURSELF.”
When I walk out of the little apartment where I live, for much
of the year, in Japan, I have to shake myself and tell myself
I’m not in southern California. The little lanes are straight,
and run between two-storey Western houses with two-car
garages and name-plates on their front walls to commemorate
their owners. Many of the cars parked outside of them
are Jaguars, BMWs, even Cadillacs, clearly never meant for
streets as narrow as these. There’s no hint of tatami in the
area; there are no temples or shrines or neighborhood sushi
bars or jagged lanes in the entire neighborhood. We are
living in a sanitised, synthetic world here, in the shadow of
the ancient capital of Nara, Stephen Spielberg’s suburbia
polished to a high, strange sheen. And then I notice that the
maples, in our small park, are turning
with a five-pointed brilliance in the
warm October days. There’s an almost
indefinable sense of elegy, of gathering
chill in the blazing aftrernoon, a suggestion
of what the Japanese call “monoganashii,”
or an exquisite sadness.
The little children are playing neatly
in their school uniforms, their grandparents
seated on benches taking in
the stately sorrow of the scene. But
the mix of elegy and celebration in the
air, the sense of coming darkness and
even death, under skies more exalted
and cloudless than any I have seen in California, remind me
that I’m on the far side of the earth, and caught up in a frame
that sings a faintly Buddhist tune of impermanence and loss.
And then–since I am an Asian at heart, Indian by blood,
if not by residence–I go back to Santa Barbara to visit my
mother (who lives alone there) following the ancient logic that
parents are more to be listened to than pleasure. And when
I get there, I find myself surrounded by Japanese gardens,
the small pieces of stillness and meditation that friends have
built in their back yards, stepping stones to tiny ponds of koi,
or stone lanterns set next to hermits’ sheds, and I see how
the people in the New World try to escape their immediate
surroundings through these little splashes of the East, like a
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single foreign term thrown into a sentence (wabi, sabi, Zen).
There are many more sushi bars in Santa Barbara than I ever
see in Kyoto, and my friends are all talking there of giving
things up, going back to the country, finding a self that my
Japanese neighbors have never had a chance to lose. It’s a
song of homesickness they’re singing silently, perhaps, and
sometimes it seems to rhyme with the songs of longing, or
restlessness that surround me on the far side of the globe.
The person yearning to put a frame around his freedom, the
woman wishing she could find more room for her destiny
than the tight grid around her allows: sometimes they meet
and find that their impulses are reflections of one another’s.
I think of all this whenever I see the work of Isamu Noguchi,
and especially when I lose myself in the roaming, fascinated
works he made between 1949 and 1956 on a series of trips
across the globe funded by the Bollingen Foundation (named,
appropriately, after the little village in Switzerland where
Carl Gustav Jung made his personal retreat). Each side of the
world longs for the other, and occasionally the longings meet
in mid-air, in the place where transformation happens. Japan
is Japanese enough to take in large swatches of America
without losing its soul or its sense of continuity. America is
American enough to call judo and origami and green tea its
own now. The son of a Japanese poet (who wrote in English,
in San Francisco), the husband of one Yoshiko Yamiguchi,
depicted in many of his photographs (sometimes known as
Shirley, sometimes as Li Xanglan), Noguchi could afford to
move ceaselessly around the globe because everywhere was
equally foreign to him, and unforeign. “My longing for affiliation,”
as he wrote, “has been the source of my creativity.”
It’s a commonplace now, but it wasn’t when Noguchi
was born, that East is West to some, and the frustrations
of one culture the possibilities of another. In the age of
frequent fliers and multinationals, we take it for granted
that our identities will be assemblages, makeshift things
drawn from this world and that one and the children of
them both. You can’t place nationalities on art any more
than you can on fire or water or grass; the passports they
carry are as irrelevant, finally, as their patent numbers.
Noguchi intuited all this, I always feel, and lived it by
always remaining on the move, not allowing his art to settle
down, and playing games with our expectations of it (and
of his name), long before we had heard of Issey Miyake or
Kazuo Ishiguro or Arata Isozaki. He took on his father’s name
when he went to Europe in 1923, knowing that it would
open some doors and close others. He kept the company of
artists from Mexico and India and Europe, knowing that his
own work “had to be universal or nothing at all.” Later he
would move from the Pyamids to Sri Lanka to Stonehenge
to Burma, always on the lookout, one senses, for whatever
could link cultures and steady them beneath the presence of
borders. Movement, the converging of traditions, became
the slab of granite out of which he would shape a life.
At the time he took off with his first thirty-six month
fellowship from the Bollingen (on what is now known as
“The Bollingen Journey”). A sense of trust, perhaps, of connections
across boundaries. At 45, he was half way through
his life; and as the world stumbled into what would be called
the atomic age, it was obviously searching for new certainties
to protect it from new fears. The dropping of nuclear
bombs by America on Japan could only have reverberated
strangely inside a shifting soul who was born in Los Angeles
and raised in Tokyo, never entirely a part of either place.
Noguchi arrived in 1949 in his adopted home of Paris–
home to his adopted father, Brancusi, who had told him
to forswear decoration–and from there looked in on Italy
and Spain and Greece, before hurling himself into Egypt
and then India, Bali, Angkor. Looking at the many drawings
and photographs he brought back from the trip, one can
see something of what he was after. Buildings that seem
to be hewn out of the earth, and statues that sit next to
children as if each is a part of the same unchanging story.
It wasn’t exactly serenity he sought, or the pristine, but,
rather, something aboriginal, uncontaminated, that stands
in our midst as opaque and irreducible as the monuments of
Stonehenge in the Wiltshire countryside. The eyes he caught
in his images are often unquiet, and at the edge of what look
like ruins; many of the people look to be marginals, tribals,
like himself, peering out at the modern world with a stare
of defiant bewilderment. But most of all, these spirits are
dancers, sculptors, craftsmen, players with masks, as seen
by someone with a familiarity with all those arts; compare
his photographs with those Henri Cartier-Bresson brought
back from India and Bali at around the same time and you
see focus, intensity, fear where the French master delighted
in something human. Noguchi’s faces are often half-veiled.
In some ways, it is a touching image, the one we imagine
behind the camera or with his sketchpad: a universal Other
who, in every work, seems not entirely inside the culture
he describes, and yet never entirely removed. The restless
soul who will never be tourist or resident. When Noguchi
had volunteered his services to America in the wake of the
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shocking attack on Pearl Harbor, he had been dismissed as
a “half-breed,” and yet when he had taken himself to an
internment camp for Japanese in Arizona, to teach, he had
felt himself “completely alone” even there, neither captor
nor captive. In the West he would be called a “wily…semi-oriental”
by critics, while in Japan, with his blue eyes, he would
always be a “gaijin,” or outsider person. Returning to Japan
on the Bollingen Journey, for the first time in 19 years, the
man who had previously been looked on with suspicion as an
“irregular verb,” in his own nice formulation, was now hailed
as an emissary from the conquering West (he is commemorated
these days on Japanese postage stamps). The traveller
who listened to such praise no doubt acknowledged that it
was not he who had changed, but the world around him.
What makes Noguchi’s work lasting, and original, and
what lies behind his Bollingen works is, to me, what he made
of his permanent outsiderness. He looked, at every turn,
for those moments in art and worship and expression–in
ocean and tree and stone–that make a mockery of the
divisions we impose on things. He mixed up East and West
so thoroughly that it became impossible to tell one from
the other, as it was inside himself. He kept out every trace
of national division, or imposed distinction, from the art he
brought back from his travels; it celebrates, in fact, that part
of humanity that will always be larger than its institutions
or labels. Out of his predicament he conjured possibility.
Perhaps this begins to account for the unique mix of
solidity and transparency you see in his art, as if the lightness
of rooted Japan danced around the gravitas of mobile
America. Perhaps this explains, too, how he was as indifferent
to borders between genres–seeing landscape as a
form of sculpture, painting as a kind of dance–as between
cultures. He worked for the most part in silent forms, like a
man who brings different worlds together not to speak in a
common language that neither of them knows well, but to
touch one another, glance at each other, mingle in silence
and pause and gesture. In Zen, the world that exists ouside
and beyond names and black-and-white distinctions, he
found (as he said of Kyoto) an art of life “which was beyond
art objects.” If the map celebrates lines and divisions,
he would hover above it, in the air that belongs to all.
In this way, his work was “global” before the world existed,
and anticipated, you could say, the convergences of Salman
Rushdie, the curiosities of American Buddhism, the harmonies
of World Music, which sense that the tabla and the digeridoo
can say things to one another that they could not say to members
of their own traditions. It seizes on the space between
fixities as the place of potential, unclaimed, hostage to no
past, subject to the enmities of neither side. And it speaks
to people like me who shuffle between Indian and American
and British passports while realising that we belong somewhere
deeper than such categories, in a mock-Californian
suburb in Japan, perhaps. Noguchi lived, one feels, in a nation
of his own, whose flag and national anthem and constitution
were nothing other than the work that he produced.
At times, therefore, the world he outlined on his journey
reminds me of Michael Ondaatje’s novel (and Anthony
Minghella’s film), The English Patient. In the wake of World
War II, in the rubble of exploding nationalisms (where people
die for being English–or not English), four wounded characters
assemble in a battered nunnery to interact with no
thought of race or passport, and to try to find the human
core that plays havoc with such distinctions. They woo,
they tell stories, they remember and they read, and try to
stake out a domain that provincialisms can’t touch. One,
fittingly, is a nurse; another is a defuser of bombs. A third is
a map-maker, and the fourth, no less importantly, is a thief
(since, in this vision, as in Noguchi’s pictures, the notion of
universalism is not smoothed down into a child’s jingle or
something universally benign; it is unsettled and outlaw and
draws blood). The order they root themselves in, in place
of ideology, is art–”We are communal histories, communal
books,” the novel says–and those who read the book carefully
see that there is a fifth being in the house with them,
not coincidentlly, an “old mongrel, older than the war.”
Noguchi’s life story is itself an art form of sorts that he
constructed to show how he would try to do something that
would correct the recent collisions of Japan and America. He
got married in the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, and would work
on the U.S. pavilion at the Osaka World Fair. He designed the
garden for the Reader’s Digest building in Tokyo, and worked
on a playground for the newly formed United Nations. When
the mayor of Gifu, in western Japan, pointed out to him that
the city’s paper lantern industry was suffering, he came up
with Akari Light Sculptures, which suddenly gave Japanese
lights a new and universal identity. It is often mentioned
that his design for a bell tower in Hiroshima–what might
have been his crowning work in this collaborative vein–was
rejected at the last minute, perhaps because his mother
was American. Nationalism does not die quickly, even after
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it has been responsible for millions of deaths. But if you visit
the new, revived city that bustles along around its Peace
Museum, you will find that the railings he designed for two
bridges there are still guiding you from the busy streets into
the place of peace, on both the east side and the west.
The more I looked at the images contained in this book,
“It’s a commonplace now, but it wasn’t
when Noguchi was born, that East is
West to some, and the frustrations of
one culture the possibilities of another.”
therefore–thinking back to an elderly Zen master I know in
Kyoto, who has made it his life’s work to go every year to
America to teach his discipline (“I am attached to only one
thing,” he told me once, “the image of a bridge”)–the more
I began thinking back to the days that led me to the place
where I live now. I remembered how, penned up in a New
York City skyscraper in 1983, I took off for the East–India,
Bali, Burma–and then ended up, as expectation decrees, in a
Zen temple in Kyoto. I had grown up, in Santa Barbara, on the
novels of Yasunari Kawabata, the clear-water haiku of Basho,
the Prussian-blue landscapes of Hiroshige, which pierced
me with a sense of familiarity, of homesickness even, that
I could not explain away. They were telling the real story of
my life, I felt, which somehow I had forgotten in my sleep.
I arrived on the back streets of the eastern hills on a bright
day in early autumn–cloudless blue and only the faintest
tracings of color on the trees–and stepped into a temple.
A life of simplicity is what I wanted, free of categories and
bare as a classic Kyoto tea-house. Stillness, silence and the
moon. Modern Kyoto is not very hospitable to such precious
notions, however–perhaps Noguchi found the same
in his restored samurai house in Kamakura, Japan’s second
great Buddhist town. I wandered out through the temple
gate, and found myself more at home with the Japanese
replicas of America I discovered in the clangorous (but
always decorous) modern arcades of the old capital.
I drifted for a year around this dreamland and then
returned to Santa Barbara to write up the story of my
pilgrimage (interested, as Noguchi would put it in the
context of his Bollingen Fellowship, in leisure both contemplative
as well as active, in play as a form of leisure,
but also prayer, or doing nothing at all). As I was about to
complete my account, I walked upstairs to our living room
and saw 70-foot flames cresting above the picture windows,
the heat pricking at my neck.
A couple of years later, my family built a
new house on the same property, thanks
to our insurance company, and fired,
perhaps, by that born-again innocence
that lingers in the Californian air, and that
drew us from our old worlds of England
and India to its clement light. It was a solid
building this time, sturdy as a Tibetan
fortress, sitting on its ridge overlooking
the town and the Pacific Ocean, blue in the
distance, and matching the adobe and white stucco homes
that were coming up around us in the hills, rebuking the
past and the elements with their air of defiant rootedness.
When the house was complete, we were in a whole new
construction of our lives with two wings and a forecourt,
and planar roofs that made a pattern as of birds above
a ship. But the place was entirely empty. I decorated my
bedroom all in white, with hand-made bamboo screens
on the windows, and nothing–nothing, nothing–on the
walls or floors. In California I would make the empty Zen
room I had once travelled all the way to Kyoto to find.
As I was about to settle into my empty space, a
friend said, “There’s only one thing you need.”
“What’s that ?”
“A single Noguchi. To offset the emptiness.”
I sit in my all-white room in California now, back from
my mock-Californian suburb in Japan to visit my mother,
and feel the emancipation of no possessions, no
history, no nationality. The luxury of simplicity that is
one of Japan’s most elegant bequests to the world.
In one corner, though, there’s a single lamp, as light
as an autumn leaf, and yet as quietly refulgent as a
Japanese sky in early autumn. An Akari Light Sculpture,
making old Japan universal, and available to all of us. I
turn it on, I turn it off, it doesn’t matter. It lights up my
life the way these images, I hope, will light up yours.
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WHERE CHILDREN SLEEP
WRITTEN BY MARIA MCCANN
SOME CHILDREN GROW UP IN POVERTY, LACKING FOOD AND
SANITATION, WHILE OTHERS ARE BORN IN COUNTRIES WHERE
BASIC NECESSITIES ARE TAKEN FOR GRANTED.
You can learn a lot about children by studying their facial
expressions, or hair, or clothes, or body language. But if you
really want to understand what matters most to a child, you
must enter that distinctive sanctuary: their bedroom.
After all, as documentary photographer James Mollison
notes, a bedroom represents a “personal kingdom” for many
children. “When I was a child, my bedroom was my one space
that I was allowed to personalize and make my own,” Mollison
said in a telephone interview from his home in Venice, Italy.
“If you saw my bedroom, you would have known more about
me than if you just saw a photograph of me.”
Mollison started thinking along these
lines back in 2004, when he was approached
about doing a photography
project tied to children’s rights. He knew
he wanted to do something that stood
apart from the familiar, haunting images
used by many charities.
“A lot of charities use photos from a
war-torn place or a disaster area, and in
the photos the children are always smiling
or kind of pleading with you with their eyes,” said Mollison,
37. “They work on a very emotive level, but you’re left
knowing very little about the kid.”
The result is “Where Children Sleep,” a Mollison photo
book published by Chris Boot that is arresting both for the
astonishing differences it exposes, and the astonishing
similarities. No matter how unalike the kids in the book may
seem, it quickly becomes clear that they would almost
certainly be friends if they could just spend a little bit of
time together. Mollison’s hope was that the book would
resonate with both children and adults.
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Tristan, 7, New York, USA
“I thought it would be interesting to include children from
both richer situations and poorer situations, and show that we
all live together on the same world,” said Mollison, who was
born in Kenya, grew up in England and moved to Italy in his 20s.
Many of the children photographed for the book are desperately
poor, and a significant percentage don’t have bedrooms
of their own — or rooms that they share with siblings. Alex, a
homeless 9-year-old from Rio de Janeiro, sleeps outside on an
empty bench or discarded sofa if he’s able to find one;
otherwise, his bed is the pavement. Another 9-year-old boy, an
orphaned refugee from Liberia, sleeps in a concrete shack
alongside other pupils at a school for ex-child soldiers in Ivory
Coast. But even the book’s darkest accounts carry a measure of
hope. Prena, a 14-year-old domestic worker who works
13-hour days in Kathmandu, Nepal, earns about $6.50 a month
for her efforts and sleeps in a tiny, cell-like space. Despite that,
she does manage to go to school three days a week, and she
dreams of being a doctor when she grows up.
All the photos in “Where Children Sleep” are accompanied
by substantial captions that are written simply and clearly.
Mollison said he’s not trying to push an agenda or advance a
campaign with the book; instead, he’s simply sharing images
and stories that moved him. While working on the project,
though, he found it provided a compelling way to examine
complex social issues.
“Of course, a child isn’t to blame for his surroundings,”
Mollison said. “Children are just born into certain situations.
But this becomes a way in, to look at something and really
think about it. This was most pronounced when I spent a
week with Israeli kids and a week with Palestinian kids. You
see how both groups are being brought up completely
blinkered from each other’s experiences.”
In his introduction to “Where Children Sleep,” Mollison
writes about how his encounters with so many different
children and families affected him: “I came to appreciate just
how privileged I am to have had a personal kingdom to sleep
in and grow. “I hope this book will help children think about
inequality, within and between societies around the world,
and perhaps start to figure out how, in their own lives, they
may respond.”
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Anonymous, 4, Rome, Italy
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Douha, 10, Hebron, West Bank
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Lay Lay, 4, Mae Sot, Thailand
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Jaime, 9, New York, USA
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Bilal, 6, Wadi Abu Hindi, The West Bank
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Where Children Sleep
jamesmollison.com
Nantio, 15, Lisamis, Northern Kenya
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