Writing Friendship: A Reciprocal Ethnography Book 9783030265410, 9783030265427

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN LITERARY ANTHROPOLOGY

Writing Friendship A Reciprocal Ethnography Paloma Gay y Blasco · Liria Hernández

Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology Series Editors Deborah Reed-Danahay Department of Anthropology The State University of New York at Buffalo Buffalo, NY, USA Helena Wulff Department of Social Anthropology Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden

This book series aims to publish explorations of new ethnographic objects and emerging genres of writing at the intersection of literary and anthropological studies. Books in this series will be grounded in ethnographic perspectives and the broader cross-cultural lens that anthropology brings to the study of reading and writing. The series will explore the ethnography of fiction, ethnographic fiction, narrative ethnography, creative nonfiction, memoir, autoethnography, and the connections between travel literature and ethnographic writing. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15120

Paloma Gay y Blasco · Liria Hernández

Writing Friendship A Reciprocal Ethnography

Paloma Gay y Blasco University of St Andrews St Andrews, Fife, UK

Liria Hernández Madrid, Spain

Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology ISBN 978-3-030-26541-0 ISBN 978-3-030-26542-7  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Takeuchi Megumi/EyeEm/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

I want to dedicate this book to my mother, Luisa, because she inculcated in us the values of nobility of character and of wisdom. She was a brave and loving Gitana woman, very much ahead of her time and of her culture, my great friend. And to my children, because of the love with which they have always stood by my side. —Liria Hernández To Huon, to my mother María Jesús, and to their friendship. —Paloma Gay y Blasco

Series Editors’ Preface

Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology publishes explorations of new ethnographic objects and emerging genres of writing at the intersection of literary and anthropological studies. Books in this series are grounded in ethnographic perspectives and the broader cross-cultural lens that anthropology brings to the study of reading and writing. By introducing work that applies an anthropological approach to literature, whether drawing on ethnography or other materials in relation to anthropological and literary theory, this series moves the conversation forward not only in literary anthropology, but in general anthropology, literary studies, cultural studies, sociology, ethnographic writing and creative writing. The ‘literary turn’ in anthropology and critical research on world literatures share a comparable sensibility regarding global perspectives. Fiction and autobiography have connections to ethnography that underscore the idea of the author as ethnographer and the ethnographer as author. Literary works are frequently included in anthropological research and writing, as well as in studies that do not focus specifically on literature. Anthropologists take an interest in fiction and memoir set in their field locations, and produced by ‘native’ writers, in order to further their insights into the cultures and contexts they research. Experimental genres in anthropology have benefitted from the style and structure of fiction and autoethnography, as well as by other expressive forms ranging from film and performance art to technology, especially the Internet and social media. There are renowned fiction writers who trained as anthropologists, but moved on to a literary career. Their anthropologically vii

viii  

SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

inspired work is a common sounding board in literary anthropology. In the endeavour to foster writing skills in different genres, there are now courses on ethnographic writing, anthropological writing genres, experimental writing and even creative writing taught by anthropologists. And increasingly, literary and reading communities are attracting anthropological attention, including an engagement with issues of how to reach a wider audience. Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology publishes scholarship on the ethnography of fiction and other writing genres, the connections between travel literature and ethnographic writing, and Internet writing. It also publishes creative work such as ethnographic fiction, narrative ethnography, creative non-fiction, memoir and autoethnography. Books in the series include monographs and edited collections, as well as shorter works that appear as Palgrave Pivots. This series aims to reach a broad audience among scholars, students and a general readership. Deborah Reed-Danahay and Helena Wulff Co-Editors, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology Buffalo, USA Stockholm, Sweden

Deborah Reed-Danahay Helena Wulff

Advisory Board Ruth Behar, University of Michigan Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz Regina Bendix, University of Göttingen Mary Gallagher, University College Dublin Kirin Narayan, Australian National University Nigel Rapport, University of St Andrews Ato Quayson, University of Toronto Julia Watson, Ohio State University

A Note on Fonts

and

Terms

This book has been written by two friends, Liria and Paloma. To distinguish our two voices, we use two different fonts throughout the book: • A sans serif font, Abadi, when Paloma speaks • A serif font, Times New Roman, when it is Liria’s turn. Liria is Gitana. Gitanos are Spanish Roma. Paloma is also Spanish but was born into the non-Gitano majority population. Members of this Spanish majority are referred to by Gitanos as Payos. This is also the term that non-Gitano Spaniards use, although predominantly when distinguishing themselves from Gitanos. Paloma is Paya.

ix

Contents

1 Sister of My Soul 1 2 Breaking Away 25 3 Two Girls 53 4 Writing Friendship 81 5 Those Who Surround Us 109 6 About God and About Anthropology 137 Epilogue 159 Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre 165 Acknowledgements 177 Bibliography 183 Index 187

xi

CHAPTER 1

Sister of My Soul

What is fear? What is fear, for a woman like me? Fear is knowing that you will be ruining the next years of your life if you decide to remake your life with a man who is not your husband and without the approval of your family. Fear is having to pretend to be brave when you aren’t, as in my case after my escape, confronting my whole family in court to fight for the rights of my son, a little boy of only nine years old, facing my father, my sisters, a whole family, with just God by my side and the hand of my friend Paloma in mine. I feared the gaze of my father, of my brothers-in-law, saying in silence, ‘There goes the woman who has abandoned her sons, who has escaped with a dirty Moroccan, a moro,1 who has left us in shame in front of our people, a people of honour and respect. There goes the woman who did not mind losing everything.’ Because that is what they always think. I was frightened because I didn’t know what could happen, maybe everything, or maybe nothing. Stronger than my fear of the fury of my sisters or of the rage of my husband was the desire to see my son again, after so many years. I did not mind what could happen, if only my son would know that I had done all that is possible in order to see him again. But my strongest fear was that I would not manage to see my son, I would not be able to explain to him what had pushed me to confront his father and my family, defying the Payo and the Gitano laws. © The Author(s) 2020 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7_1

1

2  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

My strongest fear was that my family would make me see that what I was doing was bad for my child, that I would be a bad influence for him. That it was better for him to be without me. I feared giving in, taking a step back. One morning in April 2012, I held the hand of my friend Liria as she waited to face a judge to ask to be allowed to see her child. This was the little boy she had left, asleep in his bed at dawn, already two years earlier. People kept coming in and out of the lift, a few steps away from the bench where we were sitting. There were lawyers in gowns, secretaries carrying files, women and men hurrying to their hearings at the family courts in central Madrid. Some looked at us, most didn’t. Liria had her Bible open on her lap but she was not reading it. Instead, she rocked back and forth with her eyes closed, whispering, ‘Padre santo, holy father, hold us on the palm of your hand. Help me, father. Protect us, father. We are your daughters, father. We trust in you, father in heaven.’ Every time the doors of the lift opened, she winced and tightened her grip. Her own hearing was to take place on the second floor, way below, but we were hiding at the top of the building until the last minute. We were worried sick at how Liria’s many relatives—her husband and her father, her three brothers-inlaw, her sisters and grown sons, aunts, uncles and cousins—would react when we finally met them face to face. What Liria was attempting, to use the Spanish legal system to fight for access to her youngest child, had appalled and infuriated her kin— like her, Spanish Roma or Gitanos who lived in the southern periphery of Madrid. Never to their knowledge had a Gitana woman disrespected her people so thoroughly. In 2009, Liria had fled her husband, escaping with her young lover to try to live among the non-Gitanos, the majority Spanish population that Gitanos call Payos. The unwritten precepts of the ley Gitana, the customary law, were keenly cherished in the poorer suburbs of the city and dictated that Liria should be ostracised and allowed no contact whatsoever with her child. When Liria’s relatives received the summons to attend court, they were outraged at her defiance and threatened her safety. I was with Liria because I had found myself drawn into her conflict with her family—men and women whose lives I had studied as an anthropologist for almost two decades, who had so generously supported my work, shown me so much kindness—and I had taken her side.

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

3

Liria and I met in 1992, when we were both twenty-three and I was doing fieldwork in Plata y Castañar, an isolated ghetto recently built by the Madrid authorities to concentrate, contain and control some of the 65,000 Gitanos who lived in the city. At intervals throughout the last five hundred years, Spanish governments have tried to deal once and for all with what they have perceived to be a deeply intractable problem, the continued presence of Gitanos in the midst of Spanish society. From the mid-1980s, segregated ghettos were constructed throughout the capital with the paradoxical intention to achieve the assimilation of Gitanos by providing them with housing and targeted social services. Many of Liria’s relatives were transferred to Plata y Castañar, eighty makeshift houses strewn on no-man’s-land on the edge of Villaverde Alto, one of the most deprived districts of the city. There they were removed from sight and half-heartedly subjected to a variety of interventions and re-education schemes. Today as in the 1980s, in Spain as elsewhere in Europe, Roma people continue to be one of the most marginalised and vulnerable of ethnic minorities. Gitanos experience the greatest material deprivation of all Spaniards, with 98% living below the national poverty line.2 They suffer the highest levels of interpersonal and institutional racism and discrimination,3 and they have the shortest life expectancy, approximately ten years lower than their Payo neighbours.4 In spite of regular protests by NGOs and parents, Gitano children are often deliberately segregated from their Payo peers in school, and the majority do not complete their compulsory education.5 Sixty per cent of adult Gitanos are illiterate.6 Repeatedly, governmental initiatives that have promised to improve the lives of Gitanos, like the ghettos, have been premised on popular beliefs about Gitanos as uncivilised and criminal, and have worsened their exclusion and marginalisation. The people who had ended up in Plata y Castañar in the late 1980s, including Liria’s sister, her grandparents, and her aunts and uncles, were not considered by the Payo authorities to have reached the level of cultural development necessary to live among the rest of Spaniards, in the blocks of flats that are the norm in Madrid. Most earned their living very precariously by calling for scrap, peddling or searching for recyclables at massive municipal rubbish dumps, while the better-off families had permits to sell textiles in open-air markets. Their continued entitlement to housing, and to much-needed state benefits, was made conditional on their participation in assimilation programs and re-education classes. When I first met Liria in 1992, she lived not in Plata y Castañar but nearby, in an apartment with her husband and two young children,

4  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ within an area where Gitanos evaluated as more culturally advanced had been dispersed among the poorest Payos. She went to the ghetto every day to visit her kin, take her children to the day-care centre and attend the lengthy Pentecostal services that were fast becoming the epicentre of social life for so many Gitanos. Like Liria, I had been born in Madrid, also in 1969 towards the end of Francoism, but in an affluent, uniformly Payo neighbourhood. I had studied abroad and returned to my city to research how Gitanos remembered the upheavals of the twentieth century—the Civil War, the forty-year dictatorship, the massive exodus from the countryside to the urban slums in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. When I needed a place to stay near the ghetto, Liria and her husband Pedro offered their home. Quickly, Liria and I became very good friends. I wrote my Ph.D., and later a book and several articles, about her and her large extended family, returning periodically to Plata y Castañar to observe the lives of the people who had been resettled there. I analysed how government officials designed and implemented the segregation of Gitanos, deploying urban planning and education policies to spare Payo sensibilities. I wrote about the tíos, the powerful male elders who resolved conflicts by interpreting the Gitano customary law, about the spectacular spread of the Gitano Evangelical church, and about the silence that surrounded the dead and the past. I also studied the rituals and ideas to do with women’s modesty and the female body: how they encapsulated wider Spanish concerns while helping Gitanos remain distinct in the face of a society that marginalised them so forcefully. The people I met in the ghetto made much of the care with which girls were taught to guard their virginity until it was publicly tested and celebrated at weddings. According to my Gitano friends, Payas were promiscuous and considered themselves the equals if not the superiors of men. By contrast, Gitanas were modest and chaste before marriage, and obedient and faithful to their husbands afterwards. Above all, this was what made Gitanos different from Payos and the Gitano life so beautiful and upright, and so worth living. And throughout the many years of our friendship, Liria was a model Gitana, the kind of woman who saw herself and was seen by others as an example of modesty, hard work and deference to her father and her husband. So when I learnt, early in 2009, that forty-year-old Liria had fled with a much younger Moroccan man, I was shaken by the magnitude of her transgression. Then her relatives asked me to help them find Liria and bring her to her senses, persuade her to return to her husband and her young child.

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

5

I realised that, no matter what I did, even if it was nothing, I would be making a choice, taking a stand.

***** Everything started simply with a field trip. We never thought that it was going to reach so far, for both of us. The two of us were twenty-three, Paloma and me. We were barely starting to live life. I remember very well the day I first met Paloma. My cousin Teresa had already talked to me about her. She had told me that there was a Paya girl who came to the Gitano church and who was doing a study about the Evangelical Gitanos and about all our surroundings or anything related to the Gitanos of the neighbourhood. She needed to live with a Gitano family to fulfil her fieldwork but nobody in the neighbourhood offered their home, nobody wanted a Paya in their home, and all her studies depended on living with a family. It was necessary in order to become an anthropologist. I found it strange that, even though Paloma was already a grown woman, and she was becoming independent from her wealthy family, she depended on a Gitano family in order to realise her project. The thing is that, no matter how much money her family had, in those moments it didn’t help her much. I soon realised that the women of the church and the neighbourhood liked her quite a bit, but having her in their homes was another story. Because, although she seemed to them a very upright and serious girl, I imagined that deep down they did not trust a very pretty girl who was also a Paya. It would be like presenting their husbands with a cake that they were forbidden to eat. I too was advised not to take a Paya girl into my house because she would bring problems to my marriage. But my marriage could not go to waste more than it already had, even though back then he was not so bad with me. So I felt very sorry for this girl who had so much interest in our lives and our way of life, that we would not give her the chance to realise her project and her future. And also I acknowledge that I too was interested in knowing more about her world. Inside my Gitano life, I was different from the other women because I was very attracted to the idea of meeting Payo people. I was fascinated by the Payo world, because it seemed very different from what I lived day by day. Because Payos live more independently in their

6  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

lives, without thinking about others’ opinions or gossip, and I liked very much their way of being, so simple. In my Gitano environment, everything revolves around the idea that if a woman does anything outside of the family, of the father, the mother, the husband, then there is a hidden intention and what you are really wanting is to go to bed with a man. I liked it that among the Payos a woman does not have to demonstrate constantly that she is not doing anything bad. It has always bothered me, having to do things so that people will let you be and not be criticised for no matter what. And I was bored by the daily routine of the market, the children, the house. It seemed to me that having a Paya in my home would break the monotony of my life of Gitana wife. For this reason, I wanted to have a Payo friendship in my life. I thought that Paloma’s work as an anthropologist consisted in knowing about our life, and that she was going to write a book and tell the whole world. I always thought that Paloma was going to write a book about the good side of the Gitanos. I wanted to show the world through her voice that the Gitano world was not the world of drugs, of scrap dealing, of shanty towns, of the one who goes stealing at the shopping centre. Instead, it was another world, and Paloma could make a friend, overnight, who was Gitana, and so break away from fear. I wanted Payos to change their opinion of Gitanos. I thought that when Paloma entered my family and told about it, the world would see us from a different perspective. Because people always expect the worst from us Gitanos. And I thought that in future this would help, so that my children will be given opportunities, and that they will find jobs and that we will not be marginalised so badly. And so, listening to my heart and my instinct, I said yes, Paloma could come to my house to live with us and finish her research. In some ways, I also researched her, because I was fascinated by her world and her way of life. It is true that the inequalities between us stalked us, and that there were many distances between Paloma and me. She was born in a Payo family, and wealthy, and I in a very humble Gitano home, even though my parents lived quite well. And to this, we must add that Paloma was single, and I already had two children and was married. Yet she needed me and depended on me to help her, and I opened my life and my heart to her.

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

7

And this is what has made us different from other people: even though we were from separate ethnicities, in unequal conditions, this never separated us from each other, but completely the opposite. No matter who depended on who on each occasion, we knew how to hold out our hand, without looking anywhere else and without caring about the alien gazes of the people who surrounded us. Although one was Gitana and the other Paya, and although she had so many more opportunities than me, and we had different customs and we had grown up in such different environments, we knew very well how to share our ideas and our tastes. I even believe that this is what was interesting about our friendship, the wish to know new worlds, to leave the daily routine and to cross borders, meet people who were different to what we were used to. Both of us had an experience, we both discovered worlds that were new for us. At first sight, Liria seemed to me certain of her place in the world and fulfilled by her path. At twenty-three, she was already a respected matron, a loving if sometimes hurried mother, and a skilful street vendor and moneymaker. She was quick on her feet, capable and assertive, and no pushover. Although she often argued back, loudly and with flair, she mostly ended up deferring to the will of the men in her life. Liria dressed modestly in long skirts but also took meticulous care of her appearance. Because she was so busy and was always running late, she often had to do her make-up in the van on the way to the mall or church while shouting at the children to sit down or quarrelling with her husband. In the midst of the jostling, her precision was enviable. I never saw her make a smudge or stick the pencil in her eye. And she often made me laugh. She was an ingenious raconteur with a talent for uncovering the poignant in everyday life and would imitate voices and demeanours with revealing exactitude. Living among people who relished the acidity of a well-landed riposte, she was tender and compassionate. Liria’s parents were prosperous by comparison with other Gitano families nearby, and they were well liked even though her father’s patrigroup was large and powerful and controlled much of life in the ghetto. Day after day, her life unfolded within the embrace of her kin: she worked at her stall with her husband, in the same open market as her father; she went shopping for stock with her sisters; and she sat

8  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ with her mother at the daily Evangelical service, surrounded by cousins, aunts and uncles. When Liria was fifteen, her mother had betrothed her to her cousin Pedro, and she had married prestigiously at an expensive wedding where her virginity had been verified by an elderly woman, a muchfeared ritual expert, rather than by eloping with a boy like some other girls. She seemed to fit in, and yet I soon learnt that she felt restless and discontent, with her marriage to a man she did not love and who could not love her, with the routine of wifely everyday life, and with the restrictions that being una gitana decente, a decent Gitana, imposed on her. And I too was unsettled and dissatisfied. I had grown up in a welloff, conservative, thoroughly dysfunctional Payo family. My parents were alcoholics and our home life was consistently volatile and unpredictable. As a teenager in 1980s Madrid, I felt walled in by the multitude of petty conventions that ruled life for the people of my social class—manners, upbringing, occupation, dress, accent. These, I was told, placed us, the familias bien, good families, above the people who surrounded us. I looked to anthropology as an escape into imagined, alternative worlds, but all I managed was to exchange the inward-looking, suffocating atmosphere of the madrileña bourgeoisie for the inward-looking, suffocating atmosphere of a Cambridge college, and I was at ease in neither. In the ghetto, I was even more out of place: by the time I met Liria I had been there for nine months and still felt utterly out of my depth. The anthropological myth of acceptance—the belief that a proper anthropologist must be adopted into the community and become ‘one of us’—haunted me, and I was constantly worried that my fieldwork would fail. Soon Liria and I started taking what seemed to us huge risks, lying to Pedro and going on secret outings into Madrid so that she could see what my life was like. Once or twice a week, while her children were at nursery, we would pretend that we were going to buy stock for the market stall, or to visit a relative in hospital. We would put on what Liria elatedly called ‘Payo clothes’—jeans and trainers—and visit museums, parks, and middle-class cafés and restaurants in the leafy avenues in the centre of the city. These were places where the people of the ghetto would never have thought to venture and where definitely they would not have been welcome. And, since she had opened up her home and her life to me and she was so curious about mine, Liria and I went to my mother’s large flat, where she met my family and also the women who worked as maids

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

9

for us, and to the university, where we had lunch with my childhood friends, Payo boys and girls who studied business, law or economics. Having spent all her life in the poorer suburbs, Liria learnt a new Madrid. And at the university, she talked freely with Payo men for the first time in her life. Our outings were interludes—from the strain of fieldwork for me, from the monotony of everyday life for her—and they made us accomplices. In our early twenties, we were exhilarated by our friendship. We talked endlessly, while selling in the streets, cooking, taking care of the children and at night while Pedro watched TV. We talked about men and about sex, about our pasts and futures, about being Gitana and Paya, and about anthropology. We argued about whether, as a Paya, I really had more freedom than her, and of what kinds. I read to Liria from Teresa San Román’s classic ethnography, Gitano Neighbours,7 written in the 1970s, and we discussed together the rights and wrongs of the anthropologist’s account. I also read to her from my field notes, and we laughed about things we had said only days or weeks before. I do not remember either of us giving much thought to the deep inequalities between us, which now worry me so much, or to the potential consequences of our escapades—that her husband or her father might beat up Liria if they found out about our lies, or that I might be expelled from the ghetto. And it never occurred to us that, by opening my family and my home to Liria, I might be doing wrong or behaving unethically. Many years later, when talking about our work at seminars or conferences, I have occasionally been challenged for not considering that seeing my middle-class life might make her dissatisfied with her lot. Back then, both of us were certain that I could not ask to be let into Liria’s world while keeping mine out of her reach. And yet, I knew that I could not be completely open and transparent, and it troubled me. I did my best to explain the aim of my research to Liria and to the other people I met in Villaverde, and how I would benefit from getting a Ph.D. Later, I described how I earned my living as a lecturer at British universities—by writing and talking about their lives so that foreign Payos could learn and obtain their degrees. But I often felt that the distances between the ghetto and Cambridge or St Andrews were so great that I could only convey an imprecise, distorted impression of my life in the UK, of what I taught my students and why, and of the purpose of academic anthropology. The theories through which I interpreted the lives of my informants were so arcane and impenetrable that I did not know how to communicate them fairly to Liria and her relatives. And the fact that I worked in the UK and needed to write in scholarly English for English-speaking audiences to

10  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ keep my job and progress in my career meant that the people of the ghetto could not even try to decipher what I produced.

When I met Paloma in that moment everything about her seemed fascinating to me, her seriousness and enthusiasm to work studying the Gitano people, even though I could not manage to understand that interest in a marginalised and discriminated people. And, sincerely, whenever I looked at her she seemed to me so fragile and vulnerable, facing a world so different from her own, with a culture that was so misunderstood in the eyes of the Payos, that it seemed that she might give up on her commitment at any time. When Paloma took me to meet her family, her home, how she had grown up, it was necessary so that our friendship would become stronger and so that there would be more trust. And along the years I think that we both have realised that our relationship as friends has been very strong and sincere, because even when we were separated by a great distance when she had to work in England nothing prevented us from keeping in touch, either by letter or by phone, and always when she came to visit her mother during the holidays she dedicated some days exclusively to share with me. Nothing has prevented our union as great friends. When I met Paloma, my whole world revolved around a Gitano environment, and when Paloma was living with me so many years ago just seeing her opened my eyes very much and made me see that a woman is not only good for marrying and having children and cleaning, even though inside the Gitano world I used to go out in the company of my sisters in the summers to the beaches and in the winters to the malls and shopping. But with Paloma I did different things, like visiting museums and riding the cable car or going to the university, and many more things that I loved. And above all, she made me see many of my qualities as a woman. She always used to tell me that I was intelligent and a very good person, but in my family I was always treated as a something of a moron. In particular with Pedro, he only knew how to have me all mixed up psychologically with the idea that I wasn’t sufficiently clever, or pretty, and he told me so often that I almost came to believe it. And one of the people who helped me see which qualities I had and my worth was Paloma. From the first time I met Paloma, I opened my heart to her most sincerely because as time went by I realised that I could tell her any secret because I knew that she would keep it, and she knew that she could also tell me anything, because with me it would be safe.

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

11

And at the same time, I smile when I tell this about Paloma, because sincerely I don’t know when Paloma listens to me as a friend and when she listens to me as an anthropologist. Because along the years, especially since we started to write the book, really I have realised that as anthropologist she never stopped studying or investigating constantly. Before, I thought that she only worked when she had a pen in her hand or a tape recorder, but later I realised that her work went much further, it’s twenty-four hours a day. And years later, when I escaped from my family with my partner Younes, when Paloma rang me at the start, I didn’t know whether to answer or not, because my fear was that my family somehow would convince her to say where I was. It’s not that I didn’t trust Paloma, but the situation Younes and I had made us think that any person to whom we gave information would lead to the place where we were, and fear was always present. They were searching for me in the train and bus stations, and in the street markets, asking the people that they knew. Finally, I ended by telling Paloma everything. In reality, she was the only person that I believed could understand a bit all that was happening, although I was not sure, because I didn’t know her opinion. Being Paya, I thought that maybe she would understand a little bit more, but Paloma was a mother like me, and maybe she would think that what I was doing was wrong. In that moment, since Younes and I had no other people that we could trust, we accepted talking with her and trusting her, given our situation. I thought that Paloma could explain to my family that nobody kept me kidnapped, or obliged, but that leaving had been my decision. And on the other hand, I felt well knowing that I could talk with her, because it did us a lot of good, to Younes and me, that there was somebody who supported us and who was by our side independently of what they thought. I realised immediately that Paloma was going to help me psychologically which is what I needed the most. The truth is that in this life you never know when you are going to need your friends. I think that in life, if you do good, in future it can be returned to you, although when Paloma needed to live with a family I never helped her out of any kind of interest, and she knew it. Because when I helped Paloma I never thought that later on she would return the help to me. When I decided to leave my Gitano environment to find my happiness in a completely different world with a Moroccan partner who was

12  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

prepared to fight for our love, Younes is his name, that is when I received the support and the love from my great friend Paloma. This is why we decided to write together. We both know that we have many experiences to tell, together and apart, but always intertwined, the lives of two people, a Paya anthropologist with a great heart and the other a sincere Gitana. Liria’s escape from Villaverde in 2009, and my collusion, brought us even closer than before and made us take stock of our friendship. Our actions often challenged directly the convictions of Liria’s kin, their most cherished certainties about womanhood, motherhood and the Gitano life. As the days, weeks and months passed and we took decisions that convulsed their lives, our own and that of Liria’s partner Younes, we asked ourselves many questions—about each other and our different places in the world, about our communities and about anthropology, which had brought us together in the first place. We saw Liria’s family suffer, and I saw her suffer very deeply too, and our need to understand their choices and our own became urgent, even desperate at times. So we dissected every action, every conversation. We scrutinised our worries and our fears but also considered bigger questions. We wondered about the pull of tradition and the capacity of only some people to challenge beliefs that the majority take for granted. We debated what obligations individuals have to others and to themselves, the place of informants and anthropologists in each others’ lives, and whether the subordination of women and the marginalisation of Gitanos are inevitable. In the meantime, Liria and Younes were in dire need of money. They had to hide from Liria’s relatives, who were searching throughout the city to force her to return to her home, and so they lost their livelihoods. Liria could no longer sell at her stalls, and Younes could no longer unload stock for Gitano market vendors, like he had since soon after arriving from Morocco. This was 2009 and, in the surge of the economic crisis, finding work was impossible for many Spaniards. Without connections or papers, the only jobs Younes was reluctantly offered were sporadic and extremely badly paid. Liria had only ever worked within the fold of her family, peddling or selling in street markets, and had left school aged eleven and without qualifications. Occasionally, she managed to work for two or three euros per hour, washing up in bars, as an office cleaner, or as a domestic. And she was often fired when her Payo employers became aware of her ethnicity.

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

13

My husband and I helped Liria and Younes with what we had, but we knew that we would struggle to support them on a long-term basis: we had two young children and dependents in Spain because the crisis had damaged my family too. Grasping at straws, I asked my manager at the university whether I could use what was left of my yearly travel allocation, intended for conferences and research trips, to pay Liria to write down the story of her time protesting against the segregation of Gitano children in the schools of Villaverde in 2008. Unexpectedly she said yes. This was a ruse: after seventeen years writing about Gitanos, I was excited to have changed course recently to research child adoption and had no intention to use whatever Liria produced towards any project. Nonetheless, Liria began work, eventually sending me forty handwritten pages about her harrowing experiences leading the protest. She wrote slowly and laboriously, all in capitals on a large ruled notebook. Once that part was finished, she seamlessly went on with the next episode of her life, describing her first meetings with Younes and her escape from her community. I was unsettled and moved by Liria’s writing, by the human drama of the events she described, by the strength of her voice as she narrated her sorrow. And, in the midst of so much upheaval, she found the process of writing cathartic and encouraging. Soon we decided to use her texts as the starting point for a book that we would write together, one where we would try to disentangle the very questions that worried us so much, and do in writing what we had done verbally for so many years: reflect together on both our lives, as Gitana and Paya, anthropologist and street vendor, Spanish women, each one interrogating herself, the other and the world around us. Since I had become a key player in Liria’s life, we knew that we would tell her story and my own, and that we would have to examine the place of anthropology in our friendship. And we also knew that we did not want to reduce Liria’s writings and voice to the status of data, to treat it as material for me as an anthropologist to analyse and interpret. Instead, we had to be co-authors.

***** It may be that when anthropologists read this book they will not think it interesting that a Paya anthropologist and a Gitana would do a book together. To start with really, at least on my part, it was done out of necessity. When I escaped from home, Younes as much as I were left without work, without any kind of help from the government, given that Younes had

14  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

no papers, he didn’t have any stable job or contract, and I only had at my disposal a basic disability pension. If we paid for a room, we could barely make it to the end of the month. The first thing I wrote to be able to get some money somehow was the story of how a Gitana lifted her voice to fight for the Gitano children, and later the story of a Gitana confronting her family and their traditions and customs. And later it was like an escape from my pain, and I felt that I screamed in silence while I wrote. And I loved the idea that, besides Paloma, people could read from my own hand what my world was like at that time, everything that was happening around me, so many brutal changes that were very hard but also exciting. I felt very much drawn to working with Paloma on something that fascinated the two of us. And when for the first time we showed what we were writing to the anthropologists, what I was writing, I was amazed that they liked it so much. Paloma saw in me a capacity that until then was hidden in a corner, she knew how to see it in me. I discovered that I can do things that I would never have imagined. But the most beautiful thing is not just that I should write about my life with my own words and perspectives and conclusions, the life of a Gitana, but that I should write about Paloma’s life as well, a Payo life. It was fascinating for me to be able to write not only about my life, but also about Paloma’s life. We think that this has not happened very often, that an average Gitana woman would write about a Paya woman, although the other way around it has happened, and often. And so our book is also the story of a Paya girl that had grown up in a world that was completely different from mine and in which she had also undergone and suffered much in her childhood. Now the two of us together were starting to tell our experiences, our ways of living those circumstances, with so much pain. But we also told about beautiful things. It is not the case that we want to deny that there are differences between us. On the contrary, we want to explain and understand these differences, and how our friendship was born. We both know that our two lives told together will be something never done before. Because I have always been the informant, but we have broken with the classic schemes. Two women, one Paya and the

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

15

other Gitana, but very close from youth. Reaching across the barriers of two different levels of life, although that distance never separated us. For me, anthropology is a beautiful work, which opens borders to new worlds. Because it is not just writing about other people, but getting to know their lives, their customs, religions and their ways of life. Since I started writing about anthropology, I have found it wonderful to have the opportunity to express my feelings towards other people, to understand them. Because as I write about Paloma, I also learn to see things in different ways, especially because we two have been brought up in very different ways, in our customs, with our ways of thinking and of living. What I know for sure is that what I am doing right now is that I would like to do for the rest of my life, because getting to know people, their customs, their experiences, their sorrows and their joys, and especially having another person opening their heart and their life to you, is wonderful. I am not saying that our stories and our ways of seeing life will be the greatest best-seller in history, but I am saying that we are doing something big and different, risky but gratifying at the same time. Because I at least don’t want my voice to be quiet, with nobody knowing what my life has been like, and all that I have fought and suffered to manage to see my son, and that I achieved something that I had never done before, something that I didn’t even know that I could do, which is to write this book. And so what we are doing is not writing for the sake of writing. Instead, Paloma and I believe that we can break with all the stereotypes. We both know that what we have done, we haven’t done it simply because we were excited about writing a book, but because we can demonstrate that our hearts joined when we were young, and I think that this marked us forever, even though we were two different people, one Paya, one Gitana, one with good studies and a good economic position, the other very humble and with hardly primary school studies, completely different cultures, an immense separation of beliefs on both sides. And I want people to know what the world of a Gitana is like, told by her very self, and at the same time how my life because of circumstances has become involved in the Payo world, and how I see this, and how my life changed for me and for Paloma and for those who surround us, like Younes, Paloma’s husband Huon and her children. To be able to become united with other lives while you work, that is what makes

16  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

anthropology beautiful. For me, anthropology is complicity and union, so that among all of us we will build a better world, a world with more love. Once Liria and I decided that we would try to write a book together, we spent many hours discussing our lives and our friendship, recording our conversations and sometimes interviewing each other. I went to Spain often, and Liria flew on an aeroplane for the first time to come to the UK, something unthinkable while she lived in Villaverde because her husband and her father would not have allowed it. She met my colleagues and my students at the university, afterwards returning two or three times a year. And she began getting to know my relatives in Madrid too, interviewing them, staying at the home of my sister Leticia when she and Younes needed a place to sleep, visiting my mother in hospital. When Leticia finally found work after a very long period of unemployment, she helped Liria get a job in the same office and they too became friends. Over the next years, Liria examined me and my family in Scotland and in Spain, as I had examined her and her family for so long. She observed our care and love for each other, but also our quarrels, our anger and our prejudices. And she witnessed our privilege: how comfortable, secure and affluent our lives are by contrast with her own, and with those of the Gitanos from Villaverde or of the Latin American migrants who welcomed her in their church after her escape. In this, Liria and I departed from the norm in academic anthropology, because it is still common for anthropologists to keep field and home separate. As well as writing longhand, Liria sometimes recorded her thoughts, and at other times dictated to me directly. When she had surgery on her wrist, she wrote using the dictation facility on WhatsApp on her phone. I transcribed, edited and translated our conversations and Liria’s texts into English, trying to stay as close as possible to her tone and style, to her distinctive mannerisms and turns of phrase. Together we read through the letters that Liria had sent me throughout fifteen years because, unfortunately, the ones I had written to her were lost when she escaped from her home. And of course I wrote too, always in English first and then translating my work for Liria: because I have lived in the UK for over thirty years, and because I studied and teach in English, writing in this language is what comes most naturally to me. I moved constantly between Spanish and English and always worked at the same time on two drafts of every text, one in each language. Once we started to discern what we would talk about, I organised the structure of each

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

17

chapter, making a selection of materials, and also editing for pace, theme, coherence and style. Liria then suggested changes, on occasion substantial, and we continued to re-write in this way. The text that eventually became this book did not fit easily into any genre, within or outside anthropology. It was a patchwork of dialogues, interviews, reminiscences, personal reflections and letters. Through these different materials and formats, we found ourselves tracing the unfolding of our lives and our changing understandings of ourselves and of each other. Our manuscript had the feel of a memoir, a personal account of the past as seen from the present, but it was also very much a depiction of a world, an attempt at deciphering the interplay between our individual circumstances and the broader social and cultural flows that run through them. Often our complicity came strongly to the foreground in what we wrote and how we wrote it, but at other times it was the clashes, disagreements and negotiations that seemed most urgent. I came to see our work not just as a reciprocal memoir but as a reciprocal ethnography, one which approached transgression, Spanish womanhood, and Payos and Gitanos through the prism of our dialogue. And while Liria and I worked, life did not stop. The conflicts and tensions with her family continued, and so did the ups and downs of her relationship with Younes, and her attempts at making a good life for herself outside the Gitano community, in inner-city Madrid. Navigating this new environment—getting jobs, places to stay—continued to be extremely difficult, and Liria and Younes repeatedly found themselves in very precarious situations. Liria’s son Rubén turned nine, then ten, eventually becoming a teenager. My own children grew too, and Liria became an important person in their lives, a much-loved aunt. My mother fell very ill and then died a difficult, hard death. Liria helped us take care of her in the last days and was with me when I went to see her body. I remember Liria’s hand on my back, steady and warm, as I bent to kiss my mother’s wispy hair one last time. And when Liria’s own father died, still refusing to see or forgive her for her elopement ten years on, she happened to be in my house in Scotland, working on a chapter, and it was my turn to support her. So when Liria and I discussed and wrote about the past—her escape, my first fieldwork, our childhoods—we did it from a present that was often full of uncertainty and urgency, where the same issues we were writing about were still worrying, painful and unresolved. This is why, in our collaboration, it is impossible to separate where life finishes and writing-up starts: our dialogue undermines the disconnection between field and desk, ethnographer and informant, which continues to be so fundamental to academic anthropology.

18  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

It is important that as Gitana woman and as Paloma’s informant during so many years I should now tell my own life, with my own words, that she should not be the only one who speaks. Anthropologists study informants, and it is true that they know many things about us. I know this because I have lived it with Paloma. But there have been times when she has not understood well our way of life, and she has misinterpreted conversations or actions of people. Besides, anthropologists depend on their informants since there are other things inside me that, unless I tell her about them, Paloma as anthropologist cannot know: how I really feel, or what I think, or what my life is really like, and my custom, or what I think about her life and her customs, and about everything that surrounds us both. For this reason, I think that the informant must also give her own vision of what she sees and what she thinks. Not only the anthropologist’s opinion is important. There are always two voices that must be seen: what you see and what I really feel. For Paloma and me, the most important thing is that the Gitana informant should tell things from her point of view, as she feels it and sees it, because the anthropologist sometimes sees it in a different way. There are some things that, in order to know what they are like, they must be lived. But on the other hand, there are things that from the outside can be seen but that from the inside seem hidden. We combine the two points of view. In this book, the two of us are anthropologists and the two of us are informants. Besides, when we started to write the book, along the months and the years that we shared ideas and thoughts and our way of seeing things, we realised that sometimes each one sees the book differently to the other one, each one from her point of view. And although on most things we agree, about how we would like the book to be written, on occasion we have to dialogue quite a bit so that our two viewpoints can unite, so that the book will be accessible and transparent. Because my knowledge is not the same as Paloma’s and her knowledge is different from mine. For this reason, I want to understand the whole text that Paloma and I are writing, because as an informant I think I have the right to understand everything that is written about me, and as an author I must understand everything that carries my name. And I believe that anthropologists must be able to write in a plain way so that all will be able to understand.

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

19

I would like our book to be understood not only by anthropologists, but also other people who don’t have that quality of understanding that way of writing. I am very interested in the support and the opinion of anthropologists, but I would like them to grasp why I also want other people to read our book, in particular women who have gone through situations similar to mine, who have seen themselves cornered, not knowing what to do, because nobody held out a hand to them. I hope that reading this will give them hope, and it will help them face up to their circumstances, because no matter how difficult it seems, or even if they come from families with very harsh customs, it is always possible to fight to achieve a future. If we write our book only with anthropological words, other people who have gone through situations like mine will not be able to understand it. Even though we know that in principle this book is for anthropologists and students, we also want regular people like me to be able to understand it. The story that Liria and I tell is not seamless but made of glimpses and snapshots. There are holes, repetitions, disagreements and contradictions that show how each comes to know the other and herself in patchy, changing, uncertain ways. So we always describe the situations in which we have tried to make sense of things, whether apart or together—an interview, a phone call late at night, a chat in a Madrid café, a letter or a text message. Anthropological knowledge, the knowledge of monographs and articles, often appears firm, definite and enduring. It is easy to attribute the same qualities to the truths that we think rule everyday life: good mothers do not abandon their children; good daughters love and respect their parents. Yet, over the years it has taken Liria and me to write this book, and to live through the episodes that we describe, we have learnt that knowledge of the world, of the other, and the self is necessarily evanescent and elusive, that it is precarious and unstable. In these pages, Liria and I try to convey our attempts at finding a ground, at constructing a reliable interpretation of our lives and our world, and also our difficulties in touching the solidity behind our stories, the centre. The moments of telling—each to herself and to the other, recording, writing, transcribing, editing, speaking to an audience, re-reading, re-editing, talking with each other again—layer upon one another, but not in the firm way the layers of an onion overlap. Instead, they feel like the foamy patterns made by the waves as they repeat on the shore of the beach.

20  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ The diverse formats and materials that we draw upon—the conversations, monologues, letters and so on—reflect the various ways we approach each other, but also reveal this instability: they are the different viewpoints from which we try to access our experience. Sometimes we speak in the present, trying to understand events as they happen; at other times, we attempt to construct versions of the past. We meander through topics, jumping in and out, and fail to reach definite conclusions. Our interpretations are often at odds with those of important people who surround us—not just each other, but our families and friends—and so the possibility that we have got things wrong, that life is not as we describe it, always permeates our endeavour. Each one sees herself and the world at once through her own eyes and through the eyes of the other, and so our work is not just collaborative but reciprocal. In fact, even during the years when Liria was my informant and I wrote in obscure journals articles that hardly anybody read, in a language that she could not understand, the enquiry already went two ways. It is important for Liria and me to emphasise this reciprocity, and to encourage other anthropologists to consider how much the work that they produce owes to the intellectual input of the people they leave behind in their field sites. The reciprocal potential of anthropology is thwarted by the many ways it excludes the very people whose lives it analyses. I think about how over so many years I turned Liria’s spirited, often humorous insights into lifeless data. Anthropological texts are written down, often in a foreign language, and in the opaque style of academia, and they address debates and aesthetic conventions local people know little or nothing about. They are esoteric objects that reveal only to a few and that hide from many. There are many benefits to this approach: theoretical depth, interpretive richness, descriptive complexity. However, one of our main concerns while writing this book was to ensure that there would be nothing in it that Liria would not find necessary, clear or relevant. She had to be a full participant in the conversation and so we decided not to engage in elaborate theoretical discussions and not to quote anthropologists whose work she could only access through my summaries. Instead, we hope that our readers will be able to make their own connections with other experiences and texts, that they will weave their own interests and paths into our writing. I have written an Appendix where I summarise briefly how we have benefitted from the insights of other scholars, but we ask our audience to leave it to the end and to allow our experiment to speak to them directly in the first instance.

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

21

We have taken this approach because we want to ask whether the conversation of anthropology can be opened up, so that more kinds of people and not just scholars can participate—in particular, the people whose lives we anthropologists study. What would anthropological texts have to look like in order for this to happen? In which directions would we need to bend the rules and values of academic writing? What about our working patterns? How would they change? What would be won and what would be lost? There are probably as many answers as potential collaborations, and ours is merely one—a provocation if you like, its flaws as revealing as its accomplishments. Just as we are excited by the reciprocal dimensions of our work, we are very aware of the drawbacks and limits of our undertaking, of the ways it does not live up to our own desires or expectations, and of the possibility that it might not be seen as appropriate or acceptable by others. The venture is based on our friendship, and we speak from our own perspectives, rather than from the point of view of the relatives Liria left behind in Villaverde, of the Latin American women who have received her into their Baptist church, or of my Payo family and acquaintances, many of whom figure in the book. We know that the accounts of all these people would be very different from ours in crucial ways, and that it is likely that some will be disappointed, offended or even outraged by some of the statements that we make in this book, and even by our very project. Although we have done our best to be as fair as possible, to grasp how others may see the events that we narrate and why, to take their viewpoints seriously and convey them accurately and respectfully, the fact is that we do leave many important voices out. This is a dialogue between two very specific individuals, two friends, rather than collaboration between a community or a group and an anthropologist. We may also have excluded these various people as audience, by writing an anthropology book rather than producing the kind of document that they might find more useful, relevant or interesting—a documentary, a popular biography or a book of photographs perhaps. Reciprocity, returning the gaze, does not mean uniformity, symmetry or equality. Liria and I want to stress this point. The disparities and distances between us complicate our relationship but are also the source of our joint strength, and we want them to be as obvious as possible in what we write. We lay our two voices side by side to make our two kinds of knowledge, and contrasting ways of engaging with anthropology and the world, equally visible and relevant. So, for example, whereas my anthropological training urges me to find a structure and an argument, review and re-write, and re-write again,

22  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ and I tend to look to the social and cultural contexts of people’s lives, Liria writes much more spontaneously and often looks for the internal motivations for our actions and those of others. We also have very different hopes and aims for this project. For Liria, this is a work of testimony: she wants others to know what being an ostracised Gitano woman is like, and she believes firmly that our friendship and our collaboration are examples for others to follow. And she is a firm Evangelical believer and is certain that God will speak to our readers through this book. She explains this at length in Chapter 6. For me, the project has been an opportunity to change and grow as an anthropologist, to question in depth the purpose of my work, stretching in directions that I could not have imagined before Liria and I started writing together.

All the chapters in the book have something special, because we have studied, looked at and revised each one before telling it to you. Our intention has always been that you will appreciate reality, and the moment, and the circumstances we went through. What makes this book interesting is that Paloma and I have tried, not just to tell our stories following our lives, but to transport you to the most difficult, emotive, sad or happy times, explaining all the circumstances so that you will be able to live these moments while you read. We tell you about my escape, and how I became separated from my children and how I lost my whole family, and how I moved from one house to another without any stability and with great uncertainty. And Paloma very often acted as the intermediary with my family, always trying to placate my relatives. For Paloma, for Younes and for me, those first months were full of uncertainty and we found no rest. It was as if the three of us, Paloma, Younes and I, were holding onto a thread that could break at any moment. But to understand how we came to find ourselves in that situation you need to understand many things that happened before, how I came to marry and what my life was like, and also Paloma’s. And that Paloma and I, as we worked together our two points of view were transformed: we realised that some things were similar in how Paloma had grown up and lived, and how I had lived and grown up. Our worlds and our upbringings seemed completely separate, because one is Paya and the other Gitana, but at the same time they were also always interconnected, even if we did not know it. And throughout our lives, both of us had lived in

1  SISTER OF MY SOUL 

23

a way locked inside the beliefs and the moral principles of our people, especially because of being two women. And what is also important is how, after we first met, Paloma and I managed to sustain our friendship over so many years so that later we could come together and she could support me when I needed it. After Paloma left Spain to finish her thesis, to start with I found our separation quite difficult. Because when Paloma came to my house to live, she was no longer a friend but a part of my family, like my sister but even more special because I felt free with her. We were hermanas del alma, sisters of the soul. And our letters were our only tools to remain united and ensure that the ties of our friendship would not disappear. Even before we started writing the book, each one opened her life and her family to the other one. For this reason, this book is not just about Gitanos, about the Gitano world, but it is a book about the two of us, and about the world that includes both of us, Paloma and me. For me now, not being with my Gitano family, this is Younes who is Moroccan and specially the members of my Baptist church, mostly from different countries in Latin America. For Paloma, this includes her Spanish family who are Payos in Madrid, and also her family and friends and work colleagues in Scotland. We try to talk about how the lives of all these people touch and crosscut each other. So it may be that many people will find it strange: what is an anthropologist doing, writing with a Gitana, a woman with no education, almost illiterate? But this is precisely what makes this book so moving, and what makes my dream come true: the fact that people will hear, will see, will read how two women—one Paya, one Gitana—have worked together, with one voice, united by our youth first and then by the love of our friendship over so many years. I want you to appreciate our experiences, families, friendships. And, most importantly, I want you to see our teamwork, collaborating always to make each chapter as vivid as possible, with the outmost detail and also the outmost respect. All this to build a connection between you, our readers, and us.

Notes 1.  Translating the word moro, which is very widely used in Spain and which appears several times throughout the book, has been challenging. Moro is listed in the Real Diccionario de la Lengua

24  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ Española, the main Spanish dictionary, as a neutral term to refer to people who inhabit the area of North Africa that borders with Spain. The term has a long history and it can indeed be deployed descriptively, to refer, for example, to Muslim groups that lived in the Peninsula during the Middle Ages. In current popular usage, the term very often refers to Moroccan citizens and does so with strong pejorative connotations. We do not feel that, within the context of this book, translating moro as ‘Moroccan’ would communicate adequately these connotations: the term does not just convey a regional origin but negative ethnic and religious stereotyping. To try to convey this stereotyping, we have chosen to translate moro as ‘dirty Moroccan.’ 2. FRA European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2016, 14). 3. Fundación Secretariado Gitano (2017). 4. Fundación Secretariado Gitano (2009). 5. Fundación Secretariado Gitano (2013, 7; 2018a). 6. Fundación Secretariado Gitano (2018b). 7. San Román (1976).

References FRA European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. 2016. Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey: Roma, Selected Findings. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Fundación Secretariado Gitano. 2009. Health and the Roma Community, Analysis of the Situation in Europe: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Spain. Madrid: Fundación Secretariado Gitano. ———. 2013. Roma Studies in Secondary Education in Spain: A Comparative Study. Madrid: Fundación Secretariado Gitano. ———. 2017. Discrimination and the Roma Community. Madrid: Fundación Secretariado Gitano. ———. 2018a. Educación, Situación. Madrid: Fundación Secretariado Gitano. Viewed online on 17 August 2018. https://www.gitanos.org/que-hacemos/ areas/educacion/en_cifras.html. ———. 2018b. Empleo, en Cifras. Madrid: Fundación Secretariado Gitano. Viewed online on 16 August 2018. https://www.gitanos.org/que-hacemos/ areas/empleo_y_formacion_profesional/en_cifras.html.

CHAPTER 2

Breaking Away

If you don’t fight for what you want, it’s as if you didn’t exist. Because what does it do for you, to be in a life where you will still last thirty, forty, fifty years, and you’ve never had what you really want? But maybe I’m asking too much, maybe they, my family, they are right. Maybe I have gone mad, or I’m possessed by the devil. On St. Valentine’s Day 2009, twenty-four years into an unhappy ­marriage, Liria ran away with Younes, a Moroccan youth who had only recently become her lover. Knowing that her relatives would search every corner of the city, and fearing for her and Younes’ safety, they hid in the tiny flat he shared with a Romanian couple. By betraying her husband with a much younger man, abandoning her children for a despised Moroccan, Liria challenged every familiar dictate, every gut feeling, about proper female behaviour. Other Gitanas we knew had broken the rules, but none had been so thorough, so scandalous and blatant. Over the next years, I saw Liria discover a joyous new life and a new way of being a woman alongside Younes, but also grieve deeply for the sons she had left behind. Remorse accompanied her constantly. Eventually, she gathered her courage and challenged the Gitano customary law, turning to the Payo courts to get access to her youngest child. For her family, this was an even greater treachery and once again they were heartbroken and enraged by Liria’s actions. How come Liria was able to take this sequence of radical steps? For almost forty years she had been a paragon of Gitana virtue—virgin bride, compliant daughter, stoic wife, respected grandmother. Yet her © The Author(s) 2020 25 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7_2

26  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ sense of herself and of her place in the world opened up beyond her own convictions and expectations, and those of the people around her. Questioning the necessity to be above all a good Gitana matron, she made space for other desires, hopes and capabilities. These were fantastic and elusive to start with and then became increasingly tangible and compelling: to be loved, to love, to seize the fleeting opportunity of the present moment and finally to risk her future. In Liria’s telling, her transgression has its roots in her compliance, in the years she spent alongside Pedro, obedient to her father’s diktat that she keep returning to her abusive husband, never really expecting her life to be any different. Throughout this period, the beauty and the righteousness of Gitano custom—nuestra forma de hacer las cosas, our way of doing things—seemed unquestionable to Liria. She knew that, unlike the loose and amoral Payas, Gitanas deferred to men and that good women endured their marriages, no matter how difficult or unhappy. Yet her acquiescence grew desperate and rebellious. So whereas anthropologists have often depicted Gitano gendered mores as sets of shared, uniform beliefs and practices, we have to talk about compromise and struggle, coercion and betrayal. Confronting Liria’s heartache and the desolate anger of her family, we find ourselves entering those moments when certainties are reified and discarded, and when normative convictions and deep emotions clash and entangle. Throughout her twenty years as a wife, her marriage was the constant subject of debate and negotiation by her family. Her parents, her sisters and their husbands, her grandparents, cousins, in-laws, all participated very actively in the marriage, dictating, commenting, pushing and pulling Liria and Pedro and each other into action. In this, Liria’s relatives were similar to other Gitanos we knew in Villaverde, who made much of the intense love they felt for their kin, spent their days in close physical and emotional proximity to their extended families, and appeared propelled into the intimate trajectory of each other’s lives. Yet they attempted, and managed, to keep secrets from each other too, and I often lost track of who knew what and why, and who should be kept ignorant. Loving kin meant having a strong moral and emotional stake in their lives and actions, and being loved often meant trying to keep judging eyes out. So the story of Liria’s elopement is the story of her involvement with her relatives, and of her capacity to break away from them and from much of what had once seemed to her obvious and good. It is also the story of their resolve to prevent her detachment, attempting to force her to return to Pedro and the Gitano life, ostracising

2  BREAKING AWAY 

27

her and stopping her from seeing her son. Again and again, since she left Villaverde, Liria and I have tried to disentangle her motivations and theirs, not just in front of the computer while writing but in the kinds of conversations friends have with each other. Faced with urgent choices that would transform her life and the lives of her children, we have tried to tease out the intricate workings of moral rigidity and flexibility, principle and compassion, love and anger. So what follows is one attempt to provide a coherent narrative for these years of upheaval, for ourselves as much as for our readers. We do this by reflecting on feelings, motives, doubts and certainties, and on the broader cultural and social environments that help mould them. When paying attention to this larger context, we confront the rootedness of Gitano lives in Spanish society. Both for Liria as she reached for a different existence and for her family as they tried to protect the ties and values that they cherished, the Payos provided the imaginative counterpoint to their own Gitano way of being. Since childhood, Liria had believed that Payas chose freely the course of their lives. As she grew desperate in her marriage, she increasingly experienced Gitano custom as a burden and saw in the Payas around her, including myself, a compelling alternative to the unhappiness of her life. When she escaped, her relatives interpreted her motivations and behaviour as apayados, Payo-like: sex-driven, uncontrollable and selfish. Full of remorse for her children, she often judged herself in the same light. Caught in an intensely dramatic cascade of events, both Liria and her kin grappled with the differences between Gitanos and Payos, with what made each better and worse than the other, and with the notion that a rigid divide must separate them. Throughout the years following Liria’s elopement, I also met the urgency of this divide in intimate and forceful ways. While Liria asked for my help to start a new life with Younes, her relatives asked me to help them bring her back, appealing to my familiarity with Gitano life and values, and reminding me of the support they had given me over almost two decades. As I tried to find and follow my own moral compass, I too struggled to determine what was Gitano and what wasn’t, what was and was not simply human and humane. I made my choices and became a participant on a par with the rest. So if what follows is our attempt at understanding the reach of Gitano gender mores, it is also an invitation to reflect on the ways anthropologists take stances and determine their allegiances when they enter into their informants’ lives. Liria takes up this theme at the end of the chapter.

28  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ We have chosen to tell the tale of the elopement and its aftermath in the form of two autobiographical accounts, two memoirs, Liria’s first and then my own, that move the reader forward in a linear manner. Although each account seems to have originated as we look to the past from the present, they are pieced together out of materials which we produced at particular moments within the story itself, and which we later gathered and edited. There are brief impressions that I jotted down as events happened, conversations that we taped as we debated our choices, reflections that I later typed and Liria recorded, and an excerpt from her autobiographical narrative, produced in return for payment from my university to write down her life story. Generated between 2009, shortly after Liria escaped with Younes, and 2016, these texts give Liria and me only some access to what each of us thought and felt when the uncertainty of the future seemed most overwhelming. And we know that these are just our retold recollections, our stories, and that the same events described by any other of the characters who figure in this chapter might appear very different.

***** I went on as always, to the everyday rhythm of the markets, my house and my children, a life that every day became harder to bear because my marriage was truly a farce. And even though I distracted myself with my children and my grandchildren, I spent my days from work at the market to work at the house, and some days I would go out with my sister to the mall, or to the centre of Madrid. I tried to grab onto the things of God. I would go every day to the church and every time there were dances, or theatre plays or any other thing, I put my name down for it, to be always entertained and also to please God of course. But there was an emptiness within me that in reality was never filled completely, even though God was always by my side. That is how I felt it. That was the time when I began to think that I could not go on, I’m going to tell you why. It was the day I came back from hospital after my appendix, and Pedro was choking me, holding me by the neck, and my feet were off the ground. Because that was the time that Josué my eldest came up the stairs like a madman, it was summer and that is when the boys are in the street, and at the shouts of his brother through the window he came up like a madman because he already knew what was going on. And to the noise of the door Pedro let me go.

2  BREAKING AWAY 

29

And the little one, ‘Ay! Ay! My mama!’ I didn’t dare saying anything to Josué. ‘What’s happened? He’s already hit you?’ And to his father, ‘What have you done to her? What have you done? She’s just back from the hospital! What have you done to her?’ And Pedro, ‘Shut up you shit! You shut up!’ My son threw himself on him. I had to get in the middle, pay attention, being the way I was, get in the middle, and it was a very disagreeable thing. ‘Let’s go, let’s leave,’ I was saying. And he, my son, ‘I’m leaving because otherwise I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!’ That was my Josué. ‘I’m leaving because you’ll get me into a feud! You are going to ruin me, you are!’ And I to my little one, ‘Let’s go, let’s go.’ You see, the little one was kicking him. He might have been four or five. Kicking his father. ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!’ And I picked up the bag and I took almost nothing, a change of clothes for each of us, while the little one was saying insults to his father. ‘You’re disgusting! I’m going to tell on you! I’m going to tell my grandfather!’ That’s what he was saying. And I, ‘Be quiet darling, be quiet, let’s go from here, leave it.’ And we went on the road, and like that, walking. This time up to the house of my brother-in-law. And my brother-in-law, incensed. And he called Pedro on the phone. ‘Don’t come here because I’ll kick your head in! You’re not a man! You’re nothing!’ And Pedro, ‘But she called me an insult! She’s disrespected me!’ ‘Well, if she doesn’t respect you and you lose it, you go hit your head against the wall! But don’t you touch her! Don’t you touch her again!’ And to me, ‘Don’t worry, you don’t have to leave here.’ Fifteen days later or so I said to my brother-in-law, ‘I don’t want to leave yet.’ And he said to me, ‘No, no! But, who’s told you to leave? You can stay here as long as you want, don’t worry.’ But what happened was that after a month and a half or two, Pedro turned up. And my Josué said to him, ‘I’m going to tell you something. Forgive me for telling it to you like this, but whoever tries to harm my mother will have to face me.’ That was engraved inside me. And I said to myself, ‘Mother! This is going to end up badly.’ Because my son couldn’t stand it. And the

30  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

likelihood was that Pedro would be the one to hurt my son, because my Josué was still a child, a baby. So that is how it was, yes. Because in the world where I have grown up, the respect to the family, to your parents, siblings and children, matters more than your own happiness. Because among us if you abandon your husband, whether you love him or not, whether it’s worked out or not, if you get together with another man it’s a dishonour, since you do not have the right to start your life again with another man. When things don’t go well in a marriage you can leave for a short time, you go back to the house of your parents, or of a relative, it’s an escarmiento, a lesson. Sometimes we call the elders, the tíos, the hombres de leyes, the Gitano men who know about our laws, and they help sort out the marriage, and they decide what is to be done. Every time I left Pedro my father and the tíos wanted to join me again with him because they thought that I would go with another man, or that he would find himself a woman, or that he would start taking drugs or become a drunkard, and all that would not be good. Because people think badly of you if you are apart, and they think that if a marriage can be fixed, it should be fixed. And it is true, many times escarmientos work and marriages are fixed, but not mine. Because you cannot fix something that never has even existed. Look. My sisters, Ruth, Lucía, Rosa, they have love with their husbands. They may have even quarrelled, they may have been angry, but when there is love there is forgiveness. But Pedro did not love me. He did that to me, and the same thing again, tomorrow, the day after and the one after that. To Pedro, I would say, ‘Don’t do this to me,’ and the next day he’d do it twice as bad. It’s because he doesn’t love you, he doesn’t feel you. It’s all the same to him. I abandoned Pedro many times but after a week or some days my father always told me to get back to him, that this was the last time Pedro would do something like that, or that I should give him another opportunity, that I had to consider my children, that if Pedro hit me again my father would break his arms. In sum, he wouldn’t stop until I got together with Pedro again. My father was a very respected man, who lived a lot for what people would say, and he had much pride in his daughters for being honest women, hard-working, clean and good, because we have also had much respect for him, I in particular. They

2  BREAKING AWAY 

31

often called him to resolve troubles between couples so it mattered much to him that his daughters should give a good example. He thought it was more important to close people’s mouths and stop their gossip than my own feelings, that is how I felt it. I was at my father’s house, and he wanted me to go back to Pedro. ‘Don’t you worry!’ I was shouting at him. ‘Right now I’ll gather my clothes and leave your house! Since I bother you so much I’ll leave right now! I’m off to eat shit again! Don’t you worry! In a couple of days I’ll come back in pieces!’ ‘It’s not that you bother me! Why do you say that? No!’ And of course, my sister Lucía started getting involved. She started telling him, ‘Why do you join her with him? Why do you have to force her? Why do you force her if she’s fine? Don’t you see she doesn’t want to?” ‘You shut up!’ And he made to hit her. And I said, ‘Eh! Eh! Calm down! Don’t make her pay! Get my clothes, Lucía, and let’s go. Let’s go, I’m off to my house.’ ‘Wait,’ my father said. ‘Wait! The tíos, the old Gitanos are coming.’ I say, ‘I don’t want any more tíos! Nobody will speak for me any more! What good does it do me, the tíos coming?’ ‘Stay, and I will tell Pedro’s charges.’ He meant he would explain to the old men what Pedro had done wrong. ‘Why will you tell his charges? What will you say? What charges are you going to tell if he’ll do what he wants anyway? You’ll cross the door of your home, you’ll live happily, and in three hours he will do to me what he always does. So don’t tell me you’ll set out the charges! When has he paid attention to you? When has he respected me? Never! Is he going to do it now?’ ‘Yes, yes! Tío Antonio and…’ ‘No!!’ I didn’t pay any notice to him. I got my clothes to return to my house. ‘Wait, girl! I’m coming! Well, you go ahead if you want to and I’ll follow!’ He was pleased that I was doing what he wanted. ‘I don’t need you to come with me!’ And he realised I was very angry. I collected my clothes in a very bad way, with very bad manners. ‘I am going to my house because I can’t stand this! I can’t endure it!’ My sister Lucía was saying no and no and no, that I shouldn’t go. That’s the truth. She said, ‘I’m taking Liria to my house.’

32  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

‘No! I’m off to my own house! But listen!’ I was saying this to my father, because he was making me return to Pedro. ‘I’m going to warn you of something. The day I throw myself off the balcony, the day I die, it will be on your conscience! Because it’s like this! Because either I end up killing myself, or I don’t know what I’ll do one day! The day I jump you’ll see the mess you are in!’ So I was walking down the street with my bag. And he was driving along. ‘Get in the car, get in!’ He even got down himself. I got in the car, and we came to my house. Pedro arrived because my father had phoned him, and he started talking with my father. I didn’t even sit down with them in the living room. I went straight to the back. And my father, ‘Girl! Come here!’ That was my father, being in charge. Serious. ‘Girl! Come here because we are going to state things properly.’ And I look at him and I say, ‘Yes, yes, whatever, I know the story already, this has happened many times before. Don’t you worry, talk with Pedro all you want. Be happy.’ My father didn’t like that I answered back. ‘Look at her! Look at her! She doesn’t respect me!’ ‘If I didn’t respect you I wouldn’t be here, putting up with everything again! Right? So there, don’t you worry!’ One tío arrived, one of Pedro’s uncles, then the other. I say, ‘Look, you know how it is. He does this and this and this to me. What else do you want to know? Are you telling me to swallow it? To put up with him? Don’t you worry, I already have. I’m already here, see? No need to talk about it any more.’ More than anything they wanted me in my place. So there I stayed. I say to them, ‘Do you want a coffee? Do you want a little biscuit? Let’s see. There. Is everybody comfortable? Yes? What do you want to say? That I should stay with Pedro? Well there, I’m already here.’ Sometimes even though I was dying of rage inside because of what Pedro did with me, I wasn’t good at fighting with my father. I respected him so much that I would allow him to join me with Pedro against my will, but I did not dare telling him to his face what I really felt. And it was the greatest mistake of my life. Like the time when I asked Pedro if he loved me because I was curious and wanted to know, and he said that after a while you even become fond of a dog. That is what he

2  BREAKING AWAY 

33

said. Because many things have happened to me, and I have endured everything for not knowing how to confront my father. But from the time you are a very small girl they teach you and get into your head that in life you must keep the utmost respect for your father, above all your principles. I would take it all out just by crying, and in the end I would do what my father wanted. I came to stop asking God that all should change and that we should have friendship or understanding as human beings. I gradually lost my hopes, and every day I began to think a little more about myself, that I wanted to be happy and to find a person who would offer me affection and understanding, which is the least that a man can offer a woman. But little by little I became tired of that sad empty life, without even realising it. I don’t know what happened, that God did not remove him from my path. All I know is that I have always asked God, before doing things, that if He wants me to follow a path he should open it. To make me understand what He wants. Otherwise, well, to prevent it. And the fact is that He did not prevent it. Somehow all went ahead. I had already noticed that boy working at the market helping with the unloading, a Moroccan boy much younger than me, and I never imagined that anything was going to happen. But that morning, out of the blue, something made me look at him and I found that he was looking at me already. I felt that he talked to me with his eyes and my face went hot and my heart started beating faster. I had never felt like that before. Since then I could not wait for each Thursday, and also Sunday, because we both worked in those two markets. When I saw him something happened to my body, I don’t know what, I would even get nervous, and his gaze would be nailed into mine. Every week we continued looking deeply into each other’s eyes. One Sunday I was walking through the market as usual and I saw him. He was facing the stall and I don’t know why with some of my fingers I tapped him on the back. He turned around fast and said, ‘Hello, what’s up?’ And I, ‘Hello.’ But I escaped quickly between two stalls. Sometimes I’d say to myself that this was not good, that it was a madness. But later when I’d see him in the mornings, looking at me with those beautiful eyes, because his eyes are lovely, I would not be able to

34  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

resist his gaze. I had never dared looking at anybody before. I thought I would never give a man a chance because it went against all I had ever believed in. And Pedro saw him and he thought something was up, and said very rudely, ‘Who’s this who comes here so much?’ I said to Younes not to come to my stall, even though in those days there was nothing between us. But Pedro had a hunch with that boy. Weeks went on passing until one morning I went to where he worked. He’d cut his hair and said, ‘Do you like it?’ And I said I did, and he smiled very much, but embarrassment made me leave quickly. And the week after he could not endure it any longer and when I went over to his stall to buy a dress he came very close to me and said in a whisper, ‘You like my haircut but I not only like your hair but your face and your whole body.’ I thought I’d faint right there, from so much emotion, even though it was not the first time that a man paid me a compliment. But when I met Younes a spark was lit in my heart. And even though he seemed unreachable, because of all that surrounded me, I could not avoid falling in love with him. Then, when he finished telling me all those beautiful things, he asked me for my phone number to meet later, and I was silent some minutes without answering because I didn’t dare giving it to him, because of a mixture of embarrassment and fear. And later I said to him, ‘But how old are you?’ And he said, ‘Twenty-four,’ and I said to him, ‘It’s madness, you are very young,’ because I was forty. And he answered very quickly, ‘I don’t mind that, I like you and nothing else matters to me.’ So that very afternoon we met. Back then he had long hair but very short on the sides, and his face was shiny and white like mother-of-pearl. We walked along the street and halfway, we don’t know why we were talking and suddenly we kissed for the first time. We stayed by the side of the road, next to a set of traffic lights. The lights were going red and green, and people in the cars that stopped looked at us but we did not see or hear anything until a good while went by. Then when we realised that policemen in a car were looking at us we stopped, but not for long. I never thought that in the street I was going to kiss anybody, and much less in that way. Because those kisses I thought only existed in films and not in real life, because when two people kiss each other with much desire and love it is the most wonderful thing in the world. In those moments, it seems that the world stops and that the only people who exist are those two people who are kissing and forgetting all their

2  BREAKING AWAY 

35

problems and the harassments of this life. Because his gaze penetrated my soul and my heart and he repeated constantly, ‘How beautiful you are, how beautiful you are.’ I told him I’d had three children, three caesareans, and that my tubes were tied, and he jumped, ‘So you are not going to give me a child?’ And I said I could but with surgery and he calmed down. That was the thing that made me trust him the most, because I think that a man who talks to you about having children in the first date is a sign that he wants a woman to make a home and not just to pass the time. And so after something so special happened in my life I felt very different, from that very moment my life changed completely. I felt a new woman with much more desire to live, I realised that I could be happy and have a new life although, as I said to Younes, it was not going to be easy at all. And he answered, ‘I don’t mind, I have no fear of the Gitanos or of the police or anybody. For my love, I am ready to do anything. If you want, nobody will keep us apart.’ With those words he didn’t lie, in that sense he fulfilled his word. And so we went on seeing each other at each market. We gazed at each other in secret and we called each other on our cell phones every day, two and even four times. We talked all night. At the beginning, it was difficult for me because I didn’t know how to send text messages and he spent whole days trying to decipher them. When we met and kissed, my heart would go so fast that I would feel faint. Imagine, after forty years at last I had found my love, somebody whom I desired. And he desired me because his passion was such that it surprised me and made me happy at once. And from the first time that we were together, I knew that our love would be very different from the love of any other couple, because we were two people in much need of love, I for not having loved and not having been loved, and he because he came from another country and was far from the warmth of his parents and his family. He too was looking for a good woman so that he could rest his troubles on her shoulders and feel secure, loved and cared for, because he really likes that. Today I don’t know in reality who needed me most, him or my children. Because maybe it was that Younes needed me very much, that he was in grave danger and that if I hadn’t turned up in his life he would have had a different end, a bad end. Although many times I am afraid,

36  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

thinking that because of all that I have done I may not have God’s forgiveness. Because maybe it was only a test, and I did not resist. You see? I did not want to elope. We were just getting to know each other. And I knew that if I wanted to keep my children I had to do it well, with a plan. I could not say, out of the blue, ‘Pedro, I’m leaving you, goodbye,’ if he had done nothing to me. My intention was to wait, because I knew that Pedro would stick his foot in it soon. I said, ‘Well, I’m going to wait. I’m going to wait for him to do something to me. I need an excuse to split from him.’ I needed a good excuse to be allowed to keep my little boy, to retain my shame so that nobody would be able to reproach me anything, and further on, with time, maybe be able to get together with Younes. But things did not work out like that. My youngest boy asked. He said, ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Nothing, I’m off, my aunt is in hospital. She doesn’t want anybody to know. I’m going to see her and I’m going to stay with her, and this way she won’t be alone.’ What happened? That when they went to church my cousin Teresa asked the boy about me. ‘Where is your mother?’ ‘It’s just that my mother doesn’t want to say, but Tía Juana is in hospital.’ Of course, Teresa called her. ‘What’s wrong, auntie? What’s happened to you? How come you didn’t tell me?’ And my aunt said, ‘What hospital? I’m here, at home, here! But what are you saying?’ And of course Teresa immediately thought that I was with a man, and talked with my sisters. Because what is a Gitana woman up to outside her home at ten at night? Teresa is very clever and she had realised that I had changed that last month, and she’d had some dreams warning her a bout me. Younes and I were having dinner when my sisters started calling. ‘Ay! Papa is looking for you!’ Do you know how I panicked? Do you know how fearful I am? And I said, ‘Ay! But even my father is already looking for me?’ I knew my father very well, and when he gets angry you would prefer to be swallowed by the earth.

2  BREAKING AWAY 

37

And so Younes said to me, ‘Look, if they have already found us out and you are frightened I’m not going to allow you to go. So you are coming with me to my house and that’s it. We have tried to keep it secret, to do things properly, but all has turned out this way, so let’s get on with it.’ The truth is that his way of acting at that moment gave me a lot of confidence and security, because not every man would want to take you to his house knowing that there would be no way back. And I said, ‘If I stay with you, it has to be for ever.’ And he didn’t hesitate, he said that it would be forever. And so that very night we escaped. They went after him while I was at his flat so at ease, because six days had already gone by and they had not found me. And also I didn’t believe that they would go so far since normally when a Gitana woman is married and she elopes with a man they don’t look for her because the husband no longer wants her. But in my case Pedro told my sisters that he didn’t mind what I could have done, and to look for me everywhere, and to return me to my house, that he would not reproach anything to me. And so my sisters took that to heart very much, without considering what I wanted. And what I wanted was to be with a kindly man, who would understand me, value me, and who would know how to be grateful for my efforts, and above all who would love me with all his heart. And I found all those virtues in Younes. Those days we were together he knew how to console me when I became sad and I cried for my children. He had something special, he would start to play and joke and would not stop until he made me smile. And that is not easy, having that patience being such a young boy, and being so understanding. In those days, we became very hooked on each other, him as much as I, because he too was lacking in love. Because we were two people who had no love and kindness, understanding and company. He too felt alone and for that reason we grabbed onto each other, as a last hope. And my sisters searched everything, and they found my handbag, and in my handbag his phone number, with his name, it said ‘Younes.’ And they called us, me and him, they didn’t stop ringing us day and night. My brother-in-law Ricardo said to Younes ‘I’m going to find you, even if you hide.’ After a week they found us in Parla. Not me directly, but Younes.

38  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

And how did they find him? Because I had told my aunt that I thought that a boy in the market fancied me. And quickly they said, ‘There, she met him in some market.’ They began to ask around and investigate in different places, in the markets. To see who was called Younes, in this market, in that one. With such bad luck that, precisely, the only Younes that there was in the market was him. ‘Has Younes been here?’ And a Gitana who knew my father said, ‘Yes, he’s just been. Yes. Why?’ ‘Well, look, we’ll tell you the truth.’ She told them, ‘If you hurry, you’ll catch him at Parla station, because he’s just left. He lives in Parla.’ Then, of course, since they took the cars they arrived before him. There were two exits at that station. Some of them stood on this side, and some on the other, like that. They caught him. And my brother-in-law Ricardo was saying to him, ‘Tell me where she is, tell me where she is.’ Younes says that Ricardo put his arm over his shoulder, and said, ‘I told you I was going to find you, and I have.’ And yes, Younes says he almost died of fright then. They were suffering, very much. They were desperate on my behalf, my sisters and my cousins, and my brothers-in-law, and my children. ‘Look, we don’t want anything from you. All we want is to know that she is well and that she is with you, but it has to be from her own mouth. We haven’t come to hurt you. Because we know, we have been told in the markets that you are a good boy, this and that. We haven’t come for you, we have come for her. But of course, you’ve got to tell us.’ ‘No, because you’re going to hurt her.’ And they said, ‘No, we give you our word, nobody is going to touch even a single hair on her head. We just want to know where she is, and that she, with her mouth, that she says it, that she’s here of her own will.’ ‘But she is here of her own will. I’m not forcing her!’ ‘Yes well, but we don’t want you to say it, if she doesn’t say it herself… Then we will trust, then we will leave her here with you. And that’s it.’

2  BREAKING AWAY 

39

Poor innocent. But at least he said, ‘No, don’t all you come up to the flat. Stay here.’ He took my cousin and my sister up. Teresa and Lucía. When I saw them I shouted, ‘Mother! What have you done?! But what have you done?!’ And he, poor thing, he was shocked. And he told me, ‘Don’t worry, they won’t do anything to you, they’ve promised me they won’t do anything.’ And that’s when I understood him, that he’d acted out of ignorance. Of course, and then they started. Well, Lucía didn’t insult me. Because Lucía all she did was cry. ‘Ay! My sister! Ay! What bad time we are having!’ She cried like that. Poor thing. Younes had to sit her down, give her water. Because she was a sea of tears, I won’t lie to you. But Teresa… Teresa did insult me, and insult me, and insult me. Everything. She swore at me with a curse. I’ll never forgive her for that. And doing horrible things. And she said to me. ‘Come on, get your things, we are leaving!’ ‘No.’ ‘What do you mean, no?! Take your things!’ ‘I’m not leaving.’ ‘No, no,’ my cousin told me, ‘you are not staying here!’ ‘I’m not going with you.’ ‘So, you aren’t coming?’ ‘No.’ And she comes close and says to me in whisper, ‘If you don’t come… There are five men downstairs with him. Your choice.’ Of course at that I said, ‘Yes.’ For his sake, for Younes. For my own sake I didn’t care because my life, already, I felt it was lost. I’m telling you. In that moment. I said, ‘I want to die. Because I can’t stay and, if I return, I’m not the same who left. Nobody will take me into account. Before, they had me on a very high pedestal, very high. Too high. Now, from the point of view of the Gitanos I was going to matter nothing, less than nothing.’ I was saying to myself, ‘There is nothing for me there anymore. Because I’m going to be seen as a whore.’ And so I said, ‘All right. I’ll come down. Wait for me in the hall.’ Younes and I hugged each other crying, and we promised each other that we would only be apart for a short time.

40  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

Later I found out that Younes spent the next three weeks crying, from the morning to the night, crying and crying, ‘Ay! They’ve taken her away from me! Ay! They’ve taken her!’ ***** They called me to ask for my help. They said that I had to ring Liria and that she might pick up the phone if she saw it was me. Then I should find out where she was and tell them. Liria’s cousin Teresa spoke first, in charge, forceful and stern. ‘You know how serious this is! She cannot act like a Paya! You understand our laws! We don’t do things this way!’ A devout Evangelical, she knew exactly what was behind Liria’s inexplicable transformation. ‘This is the devil, Paloma, he wants her! Don’t you be fooled by him as well! She’s encoñada, she’s ruled by her cunt! And he’s a moro, a dirty Moroccan! And a young boy! They do this, to get their papers, they lie to old women and fool them. She’ll end up in the streets! She’ll end up a whore! Do the right thing, convince her to come back! And when you talk to her let me know straight away. We are not Payos, Paloma!’ Liria’s niece Noemí just sobbed. ‘Ay, Palomi! Ay! My auntie has gone mad! Tell her to come back! I’m begging you! She’ll listen to you, Palomi!’ Even one of the uncles talked to me, to say he felt he’d become dust, estoy hecho polvo, and that shook me because we’d never had a personal conversation before. ‘Palomi, you have to help us restore our family. We helped you, we had you in our homes! Now you have to help our Rubén, our boy. He needs his mother! You know that, you’re a mother too!’ I was surprised that they believed I would have any influence, because Liria and I had been drifting apart for some years, writing less and less often, seeing each other rarely. I no longer worked on Gitano issues, hadn’t for a while, and my visits to the neighbourhood had become rare. I’d had no idea that Liria was having an affair, and I thought that by calling me they were grasping at straws. Now I wonder if they did not also fear that, being a Paya, I would encourage Liria to break away, and were trying to prevent it. Either way, they were right because after I texted her—‘Where are you? Everybody is worried. Is everything ok? Please get in touch’—she rang me back, agitated and fearful. But when I gave them her message, that she was well and not to look for her, I did not feel I could betray her trust, and I did not say I knew where she was hiding. I did not have to make up my mind to choose Liria over her whole family, I don’t remember any hesitation. Teresa, who had been my dear

2  BREAKING AWAY 

41

friend for many years, Liria’s sisters, her sons whom I’d seen grow up… they were the voice of reason, ‘the Gitanos’ of whom I had written throughout fifteen years. Everything they did and said in the midst of the crisis seemed to fit the portrayal I had built in my work: protecting women’s virtue was essential to how they confronted a threatening world. They were also people who loved me, who had helped me and supported my work. And like them I was aghast at the enormity of Liria’s actions and at the uncertainty of her future, and anxious about Rubén who was only seven, like my own boy. But she was Liria, my accomplice and my friend. She had done something truly tremendous and was now alone. So I kept her secret and when they found her it was without my help. After a month, I flew to Spain to find the family in turmoil and Liria under constant surveillance. Her father, her sisters and brothers-in-law, her children, Pedro, and also her cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews… they were all stunned by her treachery and each one felt her desertion as a personal blow. In the flat where she lived with her husband and her children Liria had been the core, not just the main breadwinner but the one who guided, organised, soothed, encouraged and supported. And in the jigsaw of the larger extended family she had been a key piece, a senior matron and a model woman. To each, she had been mi Liria, my Liria. ‘We can’t trust her, Palomi!’ Noemí lived with her in-laws but now spent her days in the apartment, watching her aunt. ‘After what she’s done! And with a moro de patera!’ She meant one of the North Africans who arrive in Spain illegally, crossing the strait on makeshift boats, in her eyes the lowest of all Payos. ‘I’m sure she’s got a phone, hidden somewhere. Get her to show it to you, and tell us where she keeps it.’ ‘Of course her father won’t see her! And the other men neither!’ Teresa snapped. ‘Don’t you understand what she’s done? Don’t you grasp it, la vergüenza, the shame?’ After lunch, I helped Liria tidy the kitchen and load the dishwasher. ‘I can’t even go down to the shops on my own,’ she whispered. ‘They watch me all the time. Pedro wants to have sex! But I’ve been with Younes and I just can’t! It’s like a jail! I’m in the loo doing my things and I hear them listening outside. I’m nobody now! I can’t ask my daughter-in-law to do what I say! I can’t ask anybody to respect me anymore!’ She grabbed my arm, made me turn to face her and leave the glass that I was holding on the counter.

42  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ ‘Do you understand?’ she asked. ‘I’ve become a whore!’ That same afternoon they trusted me to keep an eye on Liria and allowed us to go out for coffee. I was to be her chaperone. We took the children along, Rubén and my own two. From the café, she decided to ring Younes, using the phone she had indeed managed to hide, and we met him at an underground station, a busy place not frequented by Gitanos. I was immediately repelled by his carefully gelled curls, his back-tofront cap, oversized jeans and branded trainers. His Spanish was poor, he said little and hesitated often. He kept looking around, fearfully scanning the platform with large protruding eyes. I was appalled and could not believe that Liria had gambled her future on this fashion victim, this ugly child. We sat in a row on a bench, a bit apart, pretending not to be together while noisy trains arrived and departed in front of us. The three kids, absorbed in their Nintendos, never realised that Younes was there. After a while, we went back to the flat and talked to the others as if nothing had happened. Two weeks later I was back at home, watching the mist drift gently off the hills across from my Scottish garden and listening to Liria say that she was leaving with Younes again. She was disgusted when Pedro touched her and overwhelmed by her new status as despised adulteress. She seemed in shock at all that she had lost and certain that things at home would not get better. ‘We’ll try tomorrow and if that doesn’t work, the day after. I’ll find a way to get out of the house and jump on a taxi. We are going to Alicante, to my cousin. Her father was Payo, and her husband is Moroccan, don’t you remember? They are different, that side of the family. She’ll take us in.’ I asked several times if she was sure, and about Rubén. I’d never before listened to a mother as she planned to abandon her child. ‘I can’t take him with me! One thing is for me to leave, the other is to take him when I’m escaping with a Moroccan. If I do, they’ll kill me for sure!’ I didn’t think she believed this, then remembered hearing about an aunt who knifed the Gitana who stole her husband. ‘And I don’t have a single euro! I haven’t got a flat! He’s better off with them, with the things he knows. I can’t put him in danger!’ I remember not knowing what to do or say. Nothing in my training or indeed my life had prepared me for this. I tried just to listen, not to persuade her to stay or go. But I was concerned about her safety and we talked about practicalities—bus schedules, meeting points. I knew

2  BREAKING AWAY 

43

she and Younes would have very little to live on, and we agreed that I would wire her some money to tide them over those first few weeks. The cataclysm of this second elopement left its marks on the bodies of Liria’s relatives, and they described their symptoms to me in awe, as evidence of her wickedness. Liria’s niece Noemí told me that she lost her periods, and her sister Ruth that her mouth broke out in sores— ‘It’s the pain of not being able to swear and shout.’ She spent days in bed, hardly able to eat or speak. David, who has a chronic illness, had a succession of attacks and the extended family spent many hours with him in hospital, bereft and furious. The others too became unwell and spoke of their utter distress at Liria’s actions. Throughout the next months, they asked me to persuade her to return. Yet they also accepted that I knew where she was—first in Alicante, then sharing a flat with migrants in Madrid—but that I would not tell them. I thought they were relieved to have a link to Liria, however fragile. They sent letters for me to forward to her and I read them over the phone, doing as she asked and skipping over the worst bits, where a close relative threatened to set her on fire, or where others said she was possessed, una comemierda, a shit-eater, and they wished her dead. I imagined little Rubén, sitting down at the table in the dining room, head sideways as he pressed down too hard with his pen, and maybe one of the grown-ups hovering over him, making suggestions as one would with homework. I imagined Teresa folding the pages, carefully writing my address on the front of the envelope and theirs on the back, then waiting in line among the Payos to buy a stamp. I gave them Liria’s messages. ‘She says that you have to apply for the school grant for Rubén, otherwise you’ll miss the deadline and he won’t get free meals’; ‘The benefits have come in, she says please let her send you the money’; ‘All the doctors’ notes are in the box in her wardrobe. She says you have to take them with you for Josué’s review, it’s coming up next month.’ Each time I did as Liria asked, supporting her as she stepped further and further from her family, I sensed I must be crossing a new ethical line. Yet the rights and wrongs were tied into knots I could not untangle, and I was unsure where the barriers lay. I was an anthropologist: Wasn’t I doing wrong by betraying the trust of people who had been my informants, even if I no longer worked with them? I was a feminist: Shouldn’t I help a fellow woman take control of her life? I was a mother: Mustn’t I think of Rubén first? Was my responsibility to Liria,

44  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ to her family and their moral code, which had been her own? Or to her child? Nothing seemed clear and so each time I followed the pull of our affection. My view of myself and of my role became imprecise and changeable—neutral observer today, active participant tomorrow; committed friend one moment, detached scholar the next. Teresa talked to me about the Gitano customary law, reminding me that Liria would not be allowed to see little Rubén unless she returned, because she had left with another man. It wasn’t enough that Liria give up Younes and move in with one of her sisters: Pedro would be entitled to keep Rubén from her even then. No matter his earlier faults, Liria alone was now guilty. ‘This is not how things are done, Palomi! She should have called the gitanos de leyes, the old law men! She should have split from him the proper way, stayed with her child and been respected by all!’ ‘What about all the awful things Pedro used to tell her? And when he hit her?’ ‘Just because he tells her she’s no good? That’s no reason! I say the same to my husband every day! He gives her a slap now and then? What’s the big deal? All our husbands do that! You know that’s how we do things: a man has to teach the wife to respect him. Anyway, now it doesn’t matter what he did, she’s lost all her rights with this madness. That’s our law!’ Teresa insisted that Liria knew the law, that she had acted out of desire and had put sex over the well-being of her child. Now she was extremely lucky that Pedro was willing to take her back. He was strange, always had been, a loner, and apayado, Payo-like. None of the brothers-in-law would want a wife who’d slept with another man, and for months. No Gitano man would. ‘But Pedro is not a proper man! He’s a weakling! Ha!’ Teresa snorted in disgust. ‘He’s a risión, a laughing-stock! Now my husband, and the husbands of my sisters… Those would already have another woman in the house!’ Pedro turned two women down, one after the other. ‘Two virgins! Because he wants her,’ Teresa said, and I asked myself why, since their life together had been so unhappy. ‘So, my sister, do come back! You’ve known love, you’ve given joy to your body! You’ve been mistress of your life! Now you need to be brave, and come back! It took a lot of courage, didn’t it, to leave? I’m telling you Paloma, she has to have the same courage and come back to her boy!’ Liria’s father disagreed. He knew it would disgrace him even more, and the rest of the family, if Liria were allowed home, as if they did

2  BREAKING AWAY 

45

not care that she had transgressed so badly. So the women made plans. Were Liria to return, she and Pedro would move out of the district, exchanging flats with Lucía and her husband. This way the father would not be confronted with the sight of the daughter, and his battered honour might begin to heal. Liria knew that shunning her was necessary for her family and her acquaintances, the unavoidable embodiment of their shame and disapproval: she had to stay away so as not to offend. But she was also terrified that they would force her back a second time and she remained hidden, keeping away from the places where there might be Gitanos. She walked around Madrid watchful and disguised herself with dark glasses and a headscarf. I could see how patterned the emotions and actions of Liria’s relatives appeared in the midst of the drama and similar orchestrations of avoidance and hurt came to mind. I remembered how the Gitano parents of Villaverde reacted when their teenage children married by elopement instead of with a public defloration: wailing, becoming ill, taking to their beds and proclaiming their shame loudly. Seeing their errant children distressed parents, so new couples always stayed away until some days passed, emotions settled, and they were forgiven. Ritual avoidance came into play even more forcefully when patrilineages became entangled in feuds. Then the old men of law would divide the city into distinct areas so that the parties would not be driven to anguished anger when seeing the other. Whole extended families would have to move home, find new places where to look for scrap, new schools for the children, new markets where to pitch their stalls. She got a job, cleaning the house of well-off Payos who didn’t know she was Gitana, her first ever solo employment, outside the fold of her family. We talked on the phone every morning after they left for work. ‘I know what I am, I’ve left my children for a man! But don’t I have the right to a happy life? With Younes I’ve felt treated as a real woman, a real person. They think one can live without love, without fondness from somebody! They think it’s just about sex, but it isn’t!’ By now it was high summer—the searing and relentless summer of Madrid—and she returned home every day on the crowded underground, sweaty and exhausted. ‘But Younes doesn’t even wait for me to wash! He takes my feet and kisses them all over! Can you imagine, Paloma, a man who loves me like that? They have no idea!’ Frightened of retaliation, Younes could no longer work at the markets loading and unloading for Gitano vendors. With the economic

46  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ crisis in full swing and without papers, he didn’t find a job so he helped at a nearby food bank in exchange for over-ripe fruit, milk, rice, pasta. He cleaned the small room they were renting in a shared flat and had lunch waiting when Liria arrived from work. ‘And he lets me choose what to watch at night,’ Liria told me over the phone. ‘With Pedro I’ve never seen a love film, a film with couples! Only science-fiction! But if Younes chooses one I choose two. My life has changed! Now I’ve seen what it is, el querer de una persona y el no querer de otra, the love of one person and the non-love of the other.’ I visited them every few weeks and saw that they had the same joie de vivre and that they enjoyed the same things: going out for cheap meals or shopping if they had a little money, promenading in the city centre if they had none. Younes took immense pride in Liria’s beauty. He encouraged her to dress up, bought her make-up and perfume when he could. ‘People ask him why he’s with me since I’m so old, but I see him so sure of his love! The truth is that my body is not like before, I’ve got stretch marks in the tummy, my tits all droopy… I take my clothes off, and I do know what state my body is in. I’m amazed at how much joy he gets from my body!’ Yet as she described her awe she talked also about her overwhelming anguish over her three children, and about returning. ‘Lucía told me that my son Josué misses me all the time and now his son is ill. I should be there with him! And that Rubén is much thinner now, and Pedro doesn’t bathe him every day like I used to! The swine! And that David has so much sadness, and he walks bent, and spends the night smoking.’ There seemed to be no solution. ‘It would be losing Younes and returning to that life, and swallowing much shit, and bending my head, because for them I am a great whore, because I’ve abandoned my children for a moro. And I no longer fit in there, I don’t think like them anymore. I can’t go back to being in a house washing and sweeping, and caring for grandchildren and putting up with everything. And all the time they want to make me see that I’m a grandmother.’ We talked over the options constantly, the same conversation repeating itself with the same intensity. Each day she decided to go back then changed her mind. She packed her bags then unpacked them, again and again. In November Rubén’s birthday came, the first he had spent without his mother, ‘and it was like a knife.’ Liria was desperate that the child

2  BREAKING AWAY 

47

would have a present from her. We made and discarded endless plans, and finally Younes dared to take the train to Villaverde to deliver a toy at the school. That he made it to the district and back made Liria daring and she rang me to ask what I thought about grabbing Rubén one afternoon, maybe coming over to stay with me in the UK. Or hiding at a women’s refuge then suing for custody. I spent the next few days gathering information from women’s support groups, NGOs and refuges. One of my sisters put me in touch with a lawyer and another with a social worker. The answers were all bleak. Liria had never reported any incident of domestic violence to the police, so there was no recorded history of abuse. She had been brought up to know that problems should be resolved by the old Gitanos. She had also abandoned the family home, which was an offence in Spanish law. If she took Rubén now it would be kidnapping. Unless she returned, her husband battered her, and she filed a complaint no refuge would take them. Even then her chances would be slim because waiting lists were so long. Getting custody seemed impossible: Liria had no fixed address, no proper job, and her only monthly income was her €350 disability pension. She lived precariously in a room in a shared flat, and her partner was a much younger man, a Moroccan citizen without papers. I flew to Madrid to accompany Liria to see a pro-bono lawyer at the offices of the local government. She said Liria would be granted contact with Rubén but would have to attend court and meet Pedro there. Liria was horrified. ‘I cannot see Pedro! He’s capable of killing me!’ She leaned forwards from her seat, grabbed the edge of the lawyer’s desk. ‘And my family! They will all come! It’s the Gitano law, you understand? And if they see me it can become a real mess! They kill me, and rightly so! This cannot be, it can’t be and that’s all!’ Liria was adamant and I realised how isolated she was by her offence. I knew well that it wasn’t truly fear for her life that she felt. What she was describing was bone-deep dread at how utterly transgressive a custody claim would be for her Gitano family, and at being confronted so tangibly with her own shame. The lawyer could not understand Liria’s reluctance and became impatient, shrugging her shoulders, checking her watch while repeating tersely that the rules of attendance were the same for all. Watching her indifference I understood how inaccessible the resources of the Spanish legal system were to Gitana women, how extremely difficult it is for a Gitana to receive meaningful support.

48  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ As the months went by and Liria’s determination to stay away appeared to remain, the hurt of her family deepened and so did their sense of the enormity of her fault. Their initial disbelief and fear—fear for Liria, for her well-being and her future—had become resentment. Teresa and I spoke on the phone every so often and I could hear her growing frustration. ‘This can’t go on, Palomi, she’s got to come back, period! Stop messing about! She’s a grown woman, she’s not a child! Leave the moro, face up to her responsibilities, leave this selfishness behind!’ I started to ask what would happen if Liria tried to use the Payo courts to see her child. Teresa cut in quickly. ‘Tell her not even to think about it! Not to bring the Payos into this! Something bad will happen! Warn her, Palomi!’ I knew that Teresa was exaggerating and read her threats as dread, that Liria would indeed take Rubén and that the child would grow away from his family and from the Gitano life. Couldn’t the women of the family allow Liria to see her child in secret then, I asked, behind the back of the men? Wouldn’t that help Rubén? Wasn’t the most important thing to reassure him of his mother’s love? ‘Are you mad Paloma! No way!!’ Teresa was very angry with me now, exasperated that I did not understand what was best for the child, to grow up with a clear sense of what was right and wrong, Gitano and not. ‘Those are Payo things. It’s incredible that you should ask things like that!’ Desperate that Liria should return, for her own sake and for the sake of her sons, her sisters and cousins rang her repeatedly to describe in precise detail the dire decay of her home, the filth and the increasing poverty now that Pedro had been left the breadwinner. He didn’t have Liria’s knack, was apathetic, just couldn’t make money. Things got so bad he sold his permit to set a stall at one of Madrid’s busiest markets, but quickly even that money ran out. Then they called to say that he had stopped paying the rent and the Council had written threatening eviction. At this Liria finally gave in, terrified that her children would end up homeless. One dull evening in early March, a dejected Younes accompanied her on the underground to her aunt’s house, carrying her suitcase. With Liria at home, it was necessary that her relatives reaffirm their disapproval and her guilt, both to themselves and to other Gitanos. The men refused to see her and many were adamant the women should not visit. As if to avoid contagion, aunts, cousins and nieces

2  BREAKING AWAY 

49

were forbidden from coming to the flat. And because her very presence would offend other Gitanos, she was not allowed to go to the Evangelical church or to walk around the neighbourhood. So she stayed at home, delighted with Rubén but also isolated, ashamed and heartbroken for Younes. Pedro now saw me as a bad influence so he limited our conversations, making her use only his phone and standing by her side while we talked. One night she rang me at 3 a.m. to tell me that her relatives had asked a pastor to rid her of her demons—her sadness, her rebelliousness and her desire for Younes. Whispering while Pedro and the children slept, Liria told me how hard it was to bear her sense of separation from the rest of the family and the stain of her sin. ‘Palomi, they haven’t asked my permission! I am forty-one, I don’t want to be exorcised! I can’t go out, I can’t do anything on my own, they are constantly watching me! I can’t go on like this! And they all lied! My little boy was not in such a bad shape as they said! It wasn’t true about the eviction! It wasn’t true they were going to forgive me! They just had to get me back! It was all a lie.’ Two days later Liria escaped again. Teresa and I had one last telephone talk. ‘Thank God we didn’t trust her.’ Teresa spoke even more forcefully than usual and as the volume grew I held the receiver away from my ear. ‘She’s a liar and a troublemaker. She’s dead, I’m telling you, she’s dead to us, and buried already! If some day you find out that she’s dead, or in hospital, don’t even ring us, we don’t want to know. It’s finished, Paloma! Enough talk of Liria! I don’t want her to know anything about her children, or about us! She left Rubén a little letter, as if she was a Paya! A letter! Not even dogs treat their children like that!’ Later Liria would recount putting Rubén to bed that last night, telling her son that she loved him. The child had understood her mother was saying goodbye. ‘And we don’t want to know anything about her, even if she’s in a whores’ house!’ Teresa’s voice rose again and I did not dare interrupting her anger. ‘We don’t want to know! I don’t want you to call me. I don’t want to know anything about Liria. If she’s ill, or dead, or in hospital, I’m asking you not to ring me and not to tell me. And if Pedro rings you to ask you about her, because he has no spine, we’ll throw him out of the barrio! I break up with her in the name of Jesus! I don’t want her to rot our family, because she’s something rotten that stains everything.’

50  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ I was cut off too. At long last my choice to side with Liria caught up with me, and this final betrayal put me beyond the pale with her. ‘And this is what I have decided,’ Teresa stated. ‘I’ve liked knowing you but she’s a liar, and she’s made us look terrible in the neighbourhood. Be happy with your children. Goodbye.’ I never returned to Villaverde, and only saw the family once more, a year later, when I accompanied Liria to the Payo family court to support her as she attempted to gain visiting rights to Rubén.

***** When at last I gathered the courage to recover my boy, Paloma didn’t hesitate to board a plane and come to court with me. It was a very difficult situation because my family were all furious with me for having left again, and Paloma knew that they would all be at the court, and that when they saw her with me they would think that she was influencing me so that I would leave the Gitano customs and betray everything and do things the Payo way. And we also had so much fear that there would be a confrontation, something ugly. Because in the Gitano life there have been feuds, ruinas, over far less than this. And although both of us decided to go ahead, no matter what happened at that trial, I acknowledge that fear invaded us, and uncertainty, even whether I might be hurt. All of that was present in our minds. The two of us had been hiding on the day of the trial in the top floor of the courthouse, according to a plan we had made previously with my lawyer, because we had not been given police protection even though we had asked for it. The plan involved staying hidden until we were called, and then my lawyer would alert us to come down to the second floor where the trial was taking place. Coming down to the second floor Paloma and I had a thousand thoughts about what might happen. Paloma walked rigidly, and she showed real security in her aspect. And, even though she might be dead with fear inside, her aspect of coldness and bravery was imposing as she walked through a narrow corridor where my whole family were waiting, more than fifteen or twenty people. I was trembling but trusting that God would help us to become victorious in that situation, with my Bible between my hands. We walked in a row behind my lawyer and the clerk, I did not remove my eyes from my lawyer who was walking right in front of me. But Paloma without any hesitation looked around at my whole family, my father, my sisters, my brothers-in-law and Pedro. Even more, she herself made my sister Lucía move aside because she was standing like a sentinel by the door where the trial was going to happen.

2  BREAKING AWAY 

51

Today when I think about Paloma’s role in this story I realise that many times I did not really know her feelings, not just as a friend but as an anthropologist. Because since I started writing this book until today, throughout all these years, what I have learnt above all is to question whether I tell what I see the way people really live it. Because from the time I first left my home, I was so submerged in my situation, on the one hand fears that I would be found, on the other anguish at being apart from my children, that I didn’t stop to think whether Paloma felt conflicted about the decisions that she was taking, and about the consequences that being on my side might have for her. And the truth is that the thing I least expected at the start of this story was that Paloma would become involved when I escaped with Younes, because she lived in Scotland and I in Madrid. But my family alerted Paloma when I escaped from my home. My relatives knew that Paloma and I had maintained our friendship over many years, and also she knew our laws and customs. It is true that she was caught between two waters. On the one side, there was my family, the Gitano law that she had worked on for years, and also the trust that they had placed in Paloma. And on the other side, there was me, who as well as being her informant had been her friend for many years. To start with, I didn’t dare telling her that I had escaped, because of shame, because guilt and doubts hounded me, and because deep down I feared that she would persuade me to return to my home, which is what my family wanted Paloma to do. I was ashamed of what she might think, because for me and also for my family Paloma was a sensible woman, a woman of respect. During the time she worked in the field and throughout the years she had demonstrated her value as a good example in our eyes. She earned the trust of men, old and young, like Tío Tomás who was a famous man of respect, and my father who also set the laws for the Gitanos. Nobody had ever seen her smoking or drunk. And to us women she seemed a clever and intelligent woman, who after she married was an exemplary wife, hard-working and clean, and honest, and nobody ever heard anything scandalous about her life. She had also demonstrated her concern, like a true friend of the soul, when my mother fell ill with cancer, and she stayed in touch on the phone, through letters and visits to the family. My father liked to know that she and I were good friends, and my father trusted her completely. However, I soon confided in her because throughout the years she had kept my secrets and we had told each other many things that

52  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

nobody else knew. I think that Paloma decided to help me because she considered that we were friends of many years, and also because she thought that, if she was by my side, I would not be alone. She could be sure that she would be able to help me if things went wrong, because my relationship with Younes might not work, because truly nothing was ever sure. I think that after quite a bit of time went by she did not get to see things clearly. Sincerely, not even Younes and I knew really what would happen to us later on. But the result was that Paloma became part of my conspiracy towards my family. They clearly wanted Paloma to collaborate with them so that I would come back, leaving Younes, and when she did not do it she broke the confidence that they had placed in her. I don’t know if at any point Paloma regretted her choices, because she thought that those decisions that I was taking were bad, as a mother of three children married to a Gitano and escaping with a Moroccan youth who on top of everything was younger than I was. Or whether she felt that her work as an anthropologist would suffer, and wondered what would happen to her career if she sacrificed the trust of a whole family for the sake of one person, and whether doing that was good or bad. But our friendship weighed more than the Gitano beliefs or customs. Paloma never tried to convince me to return, or to stay with Younes. She simply took the decision to help me.

CHAPTER 3

Two Girls

When at the start of my adolescence I began to grow, already from very little our parents inculcated in us the differences between women and men. They taught me that I had to take care to guard my virginity and that no boy should trick me, and to be able to marry as a virgin, giving the honour to my father and my family, which is the most important thing in our custom, in the Gitano world. At Gitano weddings, we test the virginity of the bride, and for a Gitana girl the most beautiful thing is to be able to dress yourself in white and surrender your honour, demonstrating that you have been an honest and prudent girl, and so that people when they look at you they will never be able to think anything bad about you. When I was little and a teenager, I awaited the arrival of my wedding with yearning, because for us it is the most important thing, it is the pride of your family, to show that we keep our Gitano customs and at the same time we give respect to our own selves. When I married and the day of my wedding I was deflowered in front of all the women, and my father had me in his arms, lifting me high and showing me to the whole family and friends, that I had demonstrated being an honest woman, and I was giving that honour to my father, and he was crying and with joy, it was an unforgettable and very moving moment. I had achieved the wishes of my father and my mother and I thought that my husband would fall in love with me and I with him. In that moment, the thing that I thought about the least was what my life was going to be like. © The Author(s) 2020 53 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7_3

54  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ My sister was ill. She’d managed to catch hepatitis; we all wondered how. The house had been in turmoil for days. Everything—bedding, cutlery—had to be boiled. The maids had been stressed, my mother in a temper, my little sisters unhappy at being sent away to be kept from infection. My father had left, for good, not that long ago, maybe just some days, maybe some weeks; this is one of the things I don’t remember. The family doctor, my mother’s friend, perhaps her lover, came every day. In a well-tailored suit and navy-blue coat, wearing expensive cologne, with manicured hands, at ease, tall, he looked into the eyes of every woman in the house with a knowing smile and a suggestive comment. He was the only man I’ve ever met who carried a gun and he’d shown it to me, dropping its weight on my cupped hands. He’d been knifed going to see a patient one night, he said, and needed the gun for protection. And that day I had not behaved so well, perhaps, or perhaps I was just sad. And I was lying down, on my sister’s bed, with the blue paisley spread, and he was next to me, and I felt his teeth between my lips, and I smelt him, and I smell him still. ‘You just need somebody to love you, that’s all that is wrong with you.’

***** In the frenzied months after Liria’s escape from Villaverde, whenever we tried to discern the path that she had walked away from her community and her family, we found ourselves dissecting the evolution of her marriage. And we searched for clues, for warning signs, in Liria’s teenage wedding two decades earlier. Liria’s trajectory was so very different from those of her sisters and cousins, and from my own. To understand its place within the pattern of Gitano life and custom, and also within the wider eddies of Spanish gender, we compared her first sexual experiences with those of other Gitanas we knew, and with mine as a middle-class Paya adolescent. We sought to make sense of our parallel stories and tease out what brought us together and what pulled us apart as Paya and Gitana, as Spanish girls and women. Liria and I were born in 1969, and we were teenagers during the 1980s when Spain opened to the outside world after the Francoist dictatorship, and people became excited at the prospect of a better life and a freer society. These were also the years of la movida, the great shake-up of popular culture which proclaimed the liberation of sexuality from the tyranny of state Catholicism. Our lives and personalities were shaped in crucial ways during this time, as we changed from girls to young women living not so far from each other but within very different surroundings.

3  TWO GIRLS 

55

Liria grew up in the UVA of Villaverde, the Unidad Vecinal de Absorción or Neighbourhood Absorption Unit, one of several housing estates built by the Francoist government throughout the south of Madrid, supposedly as a temporary solution to the appalling conditions in the post-war slums. One thousand people—Payo rural migrants and some Gitanos—lived in rows of small prefabricated units, packed close together and with only the most basic facilities. Liria’s parents, like the aunts and uncles in the streets nearby, earned their living through street peddling. Along with her siblings and cousins, and the Payo children of the estate, she went to the local school but left aged eleven to take care of her youngest sister while her mother worked. Meanwhile, I was growing up in the affluent north, in Parque de las Avenidas, a new neighbourhood built on land forcefully expropriated from orchard farmers and planned as high-quality housing for the middle classes. My father was a lawyer, the son of a dermatology professor and the grandson of a senator, and my mother a housewife, the daughter of an architect. I had three sisters and we went to private Catholic schools and then to university. Although in different ways, Liria and I grew up in strongly sexualised environments, and the worries and actions of the people around us mirrored broader preoccupations in Spanish society at large. For Liria’s relatives, preserving and displaying the virginity of young Gitanas was paramount. They felt strongly that female chastity was crucial to their survival as a people and their concerns went hand in hand with a deep-seated belief in the promiscuity of young Payas. Among the Gitanos of Villaverde, girls married and became mothers in their early or mid-teens and, as Liria says, for her those years were marked by the preoccupation with restraint and the expectation of marriage. She was taught to avoid all sexual activities and to take care of her genitals so that her virginity could be verified at her wedding by a ritual expert, ‘the woman who joins couples,’ the ajuntaora. By contrast, my parents—who were taking advantage of the new atmosphere of liberation, rejecting monogamy and experimenting alongside others of their class and generation—never talked to me about sex. At school too, my sexual education was non-existent and I socialised with other devout Catholic children, most of whom did not start pairing up until they were at university. Nonetheless, from age eleven I was molested by a friend of my mother’s, a highly respected doctor who was often in our home. My experiences were far from unique: Paya and Gitana friends have talked about being fondled in buses by men who openly displayed their genitals, touched by strangers in the streets and abused at school

56  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ or in their homes. As Madrid moved from Francoism to democracy, as divorce became legal, the abortion law was debated, and new gendered moralities emerged strongly into the open, it was common for teenage girls to be the object of unsolicited sexual advances. Both Liria’s sexuality and my own were deployed by the adults around us as each of them—Liria’s parents, my mother, the doctor— positioned themselves in a rapidly changing world. It is not surprising that, in 1980s Madrid, our maturing bodies should become avenues for the acquisition of value—honour, status, economic security, pleasure. The control of female sexuality, in particular that of adolescent girls, had been obsessively elaborated under the dictatorship and was still a major concern in Spain during our teenage years, among both Gitanos and Payos. With the transition to democracy, the female body became the ground on which alternative projects of society were fought by the conservative right and the progressive left. The newer emphasis on sexual liberation in popular culture brought the objectification of women’s bodies strongly into the open, and all along male privilege remained, only weakly contested. The ensuing tensions—between the enforcement of restraint and the celebration of desire, between compliance and transgression— have been much discussed in the scholarly and popular literature on Spain, and I have explored them in my own writings on Gitanos. They permeated our lives as girls and teenagers, soaking them through and through, giving them form in ways we ourselves intuited but could not completely understand. And so when Liria and I look back together to our teenage years, we do it through this comparative lens: looking for the similarities and the differences between the constraints that framed our lives as Gitana and Paya. We start from our doubts and uncertainties regarding our pasts, from what we think we know and what we wish we understood better. Although our stories are just ours, individual and intimate, the things we talk about—class and ethnic divisions, gender inequality and female subordination, and also the experience of love and hope, fear and uncertainty—also shaped the lives of our sisters, cousins and friends. Our stories are distinctively Gitana and Paya: taken together, they show how our worlds and our world views overlapped and intertwined but were also very different.

We have tried, Paloma and I, to capture our lives as teenagers, following our memories. One of us was born a Paya and the other a Gitana. One was born with a fairly good economic position and the other with more inferior economic means. Although within the Gitano world I have

3  TWO GIRLS 

57

never wanted for anything, Paloma was the one who had more. Paloma and I were born in 1969 and although we grew up with different lives, and our economic means were also different, deep down I think there are many things we had in common. As we grew up, both of us were taught our customs and our values. For us as Gitanos, the most important value was to remain virgin until marriage and, although I thought that Payos were very different, later I have seen that Paloma’s family was also very conservative. For my sisters and I, our belief in God was very much present from childhood, and in her youth, Paloma too used to go to the Catholic church. These things affected our lives as young girls and how we grew up. Just like myself as a Gitana, Paloma did not like discos, nor smoking or drinking, and as a teenager, she always had to return home early if she went out. The only difference is that Paloma suffered as a child and I a bit later on, because my problems started when I was fifteen and I married Pedro. Sexually both of us were dominated from when we were small— Paloma with the situation with the doctor and I with my marriage. As women, our lives were already directed by others since our adolescence. Because a man often takes it for granted, since you are a girl, that he has the authority to make decisions over your body. And in my case, it was my family who took the authority to decide over my body, since a Gitana woman must keep her virginity. So we felt directed by others since we were girls. And we have a path in life because of decisions that were taken on our behalf. In reality, even though Paloma belongs to a different social class than me, as women we were dominated the same. And at the same time, I want it to be clear that I believe that my mother wanted my well-being when she planned my marriage. Because in the Gitano world marrying well is very important in order to secure your future. My mother wanted that I would not lack what to eat, clothes to wear, that I would have a good way of earning my living, and that I would live in a flat and not in a shack. This is why she chose Pedro as my husband. And Paloma’s mother also wanted economic security for herself and for her daughters, because her husband left her and she didn’t know how to earn her living. She depended on her own father, who was the one who supported them. And Paloma’s mother obliged her daughters to study hard because she knew that they would need a career, to be independent and not need a husband. Because she knew that a man can betray you. So parents do things in order to try to prepare us for the future. I think this is what happened, as much with

58  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

Paloma’s mother as with mine. If they spoke their stories would be very different from ours. Attempting to make sense of our lives is something Liria and I often do together, by talking with each other, and so in this chapter we tell our stories through two conversations. In the first one, I ask Liria about her years as a Gitana moza, nubile virgin girl, focusing on her arranged marriage at fifteen to Pedro, an older cousin of her mother’s. In the second, Liria asks me about my own childhood and teenage life, and in particular about my experiences regarding sex. We have chosen these conversations because they deal with events that are crucial to our lives (as a stone thrown in the water they have kept on rippling through the years), events that also seem to us to encapsulate essential features of the world around us. Yet these episodes are also elusive and opaque: neither of us understands them fully, or their consequences, and we are often bothered by our lack of knowledge. To look back to them from the present, we talk to each other as friends do—often supportive, occasionally sceptical, sometimes saying exactly what we have in our minds, at other times keeping it quiet. But these are also ethnographic interviews and through them we try to take ownership of the other’s life and to interpret it for our audience: although the first is about Liria’s life, I am the one who tells the reader about it; although the second is about my life, it is Liria who explains it. In this way, we want to recreate a process that is part in some form of all anthropological fieldwork, but that so often becomes hidden during the writing process: the opening up of the anthropologist’s life to the people they study and not just the other way around. Openness, however, is not the same as agreement or even total transparency. We talk and we listen to each other from the heart, but we also confront and resist each other’s ideas and interpretations, and we display the doubts, hesitations and disagreements that are part of any encounter between self and other, but that tend to be pushed aside in the process of writing ethnography. And so our questions and interpretations, as much as our silences and our replies, are revealing of the ways we face each other and the world, as Gitana and Paya, friends and collaborators.

***** A year after Liria escaped from Villaverde, I returned to Madrid for a week to do life story work with her. I had brought my tape recorder, and my laptop, and had gone four mornings in a row to the house where Liria and Younes were renting a room, staying until bedtime.

3  TWO GIRLS 

59

We had achieved little: our time had been taken up talking about Pedro, Liria’s husband, and worrying. A cousin had contacted Liria to tell her that Pedro and the children were about to be evicted from their flat, the family home, because he had failed to pay the rent again. Liria offered to send money but Pedro rejected it unless she returned to him. Supported by Liria’s father and by the ley gitana, the Gitano customary law, he refused to let her see her children. That she had spent many months living with another man did not seem to matter: Pedro wanted her. Liria’s sisters rang too, one after the other, to tell that the flat was filthy and to remind her that Pedro was a hopeless moneymaker. Liria’s youngest was covered in lice, they said, and her second son kept having flare-ups of his illness because of his distress. The children would soon be going hungry and it was all her fault. Again and again, they demanded that she come back. Appalled, we pondered strategies to get Pedro to accept Liria’s money. Should I send it from abroad? Should we post it to one of the sisters? Would I dare sneaking into Villaverde and dropping it in Pedro’s mailbox? And we rehearsed endless scenarios together, attempting to determine what would happen if Liria returned (Would they lock her up again? Would she even have access to a mobile phone?) and if she didn’t (Would the family really be evicted?). Partly to attempt to switch off and calm our nerves, today we had finally decided to work. We sat down at a small round table, turned on the tape recorder and sipped sweet mint tea, Moroccan style, that Younes had prepared for us and brought on a tray with a flourish. The sun came pouring in through the large windows a raudales, like a torrent, and a canary in a small dirty cage kept up a steady song. It belonged to the landlady, an Ecuadorian who had not done too badly in Spain and who ran a tiny corner shop in the street below. But we could not get Pedro and the children to leave our minds, and we ended up discussing how Liria came to marry him. As so much in Liria’s life, it happened because of her eldest sister, Lucía. ‘And like my mother said, “I made a mistake allowing Lucía to marry Juanjo,”’ Liria reminisced, blowing on her tea to cool it. ‘But my sister fell in love with Juanjo, and we all knew that if my sister said, “I want this,” she’d have it. My mother knew she would jump over city walls to get her wish.’ I, Paloma, knew that too. Back in 1992, when no one in the Gitano ghetto wanted me around and women mocked me as I passed their doors, Lucía had insisted that I sit next to her at church, invited me to her house and gone with me for coffee. Tall and plump, fiercely intelligent, just pretty in a family of beauties, she was always ready to argue and she always won.

60  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ ‘Think about it,’ Liria continued. ‘Juanjo’s family had nothing stable. Juanjo’s father got his living selling four plants, some pine trees, I don’t know what, and his mother didn’t work! So no future at all, there was no kind of future, and that cannot be. No.’ But Lucía lived for Juanjo’s good looks and foxy smile and she had married him. I have often been surprised by the readiness of Gitano parents to accept that teenage crushes are a solid basis for life-long marriage. Most of the time it seems to work. ‘My mother knew that Lucía has always been very firm in her ideas, from childhood,’ Liria continued. ‘She’s been very firm, different. And my mother saw what she saw with her, and she said, “No. One and no more.” And for that reason with Pedro it was different. I was fifteen and my mother said to me, “Look, this one, he has a good house, a good flat….”’ ‘He had his parents’ market pitches,’ I interrupted Liria. Whereas many other Gitanos lived hand to mouth, often unsure if they would have enough money to feed their children the next day, Pedro’s mother and father had permits to sell in several street markets and so a steady income. Like Liria’s parents, they were among the better-offs, the elite of Gitano Villaverde. ‘I won’t lie to you, everybody said it to me, what good luck I had!’ ‘He was a good catch,’ I said, but wondered. He may have been prosperous, but by the time he caught the eye of Sara, Liria’s mother, Pedro was an oddity. In his mid-twenties, he’d stayed single while brothers, cousins and friends married in their teens. Perhaps this didn’t worry Sara, or perhaps she just chose to ignore the signs. ‘I did nothing to attract him. Well, yes, I accepted,’ Liria emphasised. ‘Because to my eyes, to us Gitanos, he was a really good catch. It’s as if now you have a daughter and she chooses a boy who has his own business, his own house, his own flat! You’re over the moon!’ ‘I’ve placed her!’ I imagined Sara feeling relieved. Two daughters down, two more to go. ‘But then with time many things happen… She used to say that the first time I left Pedro, do you remember? She used to say to me, “Child, who can tell the turns that life takes, the turns the world will take, my intention was simply that you’d live the best in this world!”’ Liria smiled a sad smile, remembering her mother, dead for years, and her regret. ‘I never… I never reproached her, because I saw that she did it for my wellbeing. The truth is it worked out bad for Pedro and me but I’ve always lived much better than my sister Lucía. I don’t lie to you! One hundred thousand times better!’

3  TWO GIRLS 

61

‘Well, you had the flat, the one where I stayed during fieldwork, which had three bedrooms, it was a really good flat.’ ‘It was huge! Horses could run in that flat! And I had very good market pitches, and I earned all I wanted! I could shop in the best shops, buy the best clothes and the best face creams! I’ve bought a ring for myself, and another for my mother, so I had it all!’ ‘Whereas Lucía was always… struggling.’ ‘Lucía and Juanjo always depended on my father, depended on his pitches for the markets, always she has depended on him.’ Liria pushed her hands down, palms down, and used the expression estar debajo, to be below something. Then, proud, ‘Whereas I have never had to depend on anybody!’ ‘And of course, when you married Pedro, it all happened inside the family, didn’t it? And that also had to count for something.’ Marriage for girls meant moving in with the husband’s family, adapting to new ways and, above all, lifting the heavy burden of domestic work from the shoulders of the mother-in-law. New brides worked hard, they were the first ones to get up in the morning and the last ones to sit down at night. So parents like Sara did what they could to place girls in the households of near kin, hoping that affection would make the burden easier to bear. And, because most people married close relatives, a dense web of relations tied the Gitanos of Villaverde to each other. ‘Yes, my mother and her cousin Lola got along really well, she was Pedro’s mother.’ ‘Because you and Pedro are second cousins.’ ‘Of course. And back then, Pedro’s mother Lola was very close to my mother, they were very close. And my mother and Lola always wanted to marry my sister Lucía to Lola’s son, but since Lucía got married so quickly, they didn’t get their wish. And so, what happened? They saw me, I had become a moza, a teenager, I was rather pretty and all that. And one of the days that Pedro’s mother was in hospital, he saw me visiting, and he said to me out of the blue, “Ay, this one is my other half.” Just like that, that I was his other half. But I said nothing and didn’t look at him or anything.’ As Liria spoke I imagined Pedro’s cryptic courting. Stocky and slightly balding, with sombre regular features, when I first met him he had none of Juanjo’s graceful ease, and little joie de vivre. Easily irritated by what went on around him, he rarely talked to anybody at any length, preferred his own company, and was often morose. ‘My mother and Lola started to talk,’ Liria said. ‘And what did they do? Between themselves they organized a date, to see if they could

62  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ get Pedro somehow to talk to me. I went but knew nothing about it. And on the way, my mother was telling me how good he was, what a good house, that his mother was very good, that everything was going to be for me, that he had good pitches, that he was a man, not a child anymore because he was twenty-four… I don’t know what else, you know? She talked to me and advised me a lot, for my own good, of course, for my wellbeing. What my mother looked to was my wellbeing, and that Pedro was family, and that somehow my mother thought I’d be protected. And she took me to my aunt’s house and all of a sudden he turns up and says to my mother, “Can I talk with Liria here in the dining room?” Of course, they had fixed it all in advance.’ ‘And Pedro was in on it?’ ‘Of course! But I wasn’t! We chatted in the living room, and he said to me “I like you, my parents are always talking to me about you, well, amongst all the girls I’ve seen and so on I don’t like any, you are the only I like a bit….”’ ‘Just a bit!’ I was taken aback. ‘“… and when I saw you in the hospital I thought, this is my other half.”’ I don’t know if he’d fallen in love with me.’ Liria shrugged her shoulders and looked down, and I was moved by her hopeful hesitation, her wish to believe that Pedro might have loved her, even now a year after leaving him and the children. I saw her as she must have been at the time of her marriage, a fifteen-yearold wishing for romance. But I had to ask, ‘So he didn’t say, I don’t know, “You delight me, I am mad for you….”’ Liria shook her head. ‘Nothing, nothing.’ ‘Only, I must marry and amongst all the Gitanas I’ve seen you’ve seemed the best.’ ‘The best.’ Liria agreed. This did not seem promising to me, like going to a restaurant you don’t like and ordering the one dish you think you may stomach. ‘But what I didn’t know,’ Liria said, ‘was that his parents had pestered him a lot, because he really loved that Paya girl I’ve told you about.’ Everybody accepted that teenage Gitanos would have short flings with Payas before settling down: Gitano girls, who were expected to guard their virginity fiercely, were supposedly out of bounds. But Pedro had been different. According to Liria he had fallen, and stayed, passionately in love. ‘How long had Pedro been with that Paya?’ I asked Liria. ‘Many years!’

3  TWO GIRLS 

63

‘And how did you find out?’ What I meant was, how come you agreed to marry a man who loved another? And how come your mother made you do that? ‘Let’s see,’ Liria paused. ‘I knew that he’d maintained a relationship during many years with a Paya. I did know about it, I won’t lie to you. I knew about it, but he swore and swore again that it was finished. He said he wanted to marry me because he wanted to make a life with a Gitana. He knew that with a Paya he wouldn’t be able to have that kind of life.’ Nobody, neither the Gitanos nor the Payos, liked mixed marriages: there was too much distrust, too many cherished biases. They did exist, several in Liria’s large extended family, but they were often the centre of intense confrontations and fallouts. Pedro’s own sister had married a Payo and the kerfuffle had been tremendous. Remaining single was simply not an option: when not just status but the worth of life itself is tied up with marriage, the pressure to pair up is fierce. ‘They’d had that problem with his sister,’ Liria continued. ‘And in his family they completely refused to have another Paya, and he said to me, “Look, I cannot make a life with a Paya because my family wouldn’t accept it, and I want to make my life with a Gitana.” And I… well, I thought it was fine, because my mother had advised me so much…’ ‘That he was wonderful.’ ‘That it was a great future! Gosh! I was going to be the top, like a queen of… you know? So I said to Pedro, “All right.” And he said, “Well, when do I come to ask for you?”’ So perhaps Pedro truly believed that he would give up his love, or perhaps he’d decided to marry on the rebound, after a quarrel with her or with his mother. And maybe Sara too, and Lola, believed the same. So much hope, so much wishful thinking. Yet there was more because, through the 1980s and early 1990s, heroin addiction swept through the poorest areas of Madrid. Young men, Payos and Gitanos, succumbed in large numbers and, by the time I did my fieldwork in 1992, needle sharing had spread HIV and hepatitis. ‘I knew him so little,’ Liria said, ‘I didn’t even know he did drugs.’ ‘And neither did your parents? And his?’ I could not quite believe Pedro’s mother would not have realised. Maybe she had kept it from Sara hoping that, by marrying Liria, Pedro would find at last contentment, his place in the Gitano world. ‘Nobody knew. Because he wasn’t one of those drug-addicts who look bad, no? He did the minimum, only a very little amount.’ ‘But he injected himself? Heroin?’

64  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ ‘Yes, he injected, heroin, heroin.’ Liria nodded. ‘But him, according to what he said, he did it because his friends went there, because they did it. And so of course, if he didn’t do it, he was like, less. Practically, he used to do it because of the friends. But it was something that he never liked. It wasn’t like the one who does it because he wants to, because he is really hooked. He never was so very hooked, we have to admit that, no? He wasn’t like that, and then of course, I couldn’t know what he was doing! Because perhaps he did one in the morning…’ ‘…and then at home he looked fine.’ ‘He looked fine, wonderful, and of course I didn’t see it, especially when we were engaged, because when I was engaged I would only share a few hours with him, perhaps going to his house some weekend, but I wasn’t with him all the time from when I got up until I went to bed. If he took me home at ten in the evening, imagine until twelve or one when he went home, he had lots of time to do some more. And I had no idea!’ ‘And how long were you engaged?’ I asked Liria. ‘Three months.’ ‘Ah, very little! Whereas Lucía was engaged…’ ‘Two years,’ Liria confirmed. ‘That means that Lucía had plenty of time to get to know Juanjo much better!’ ‘Of course! More than plenty! More than plenty… Not me.’ ‘And why so much hurry to get married?’ ‘First, because he was getting on, and he didn’t want to continue like that. And second, because I’ve always been very shy, and one of the reasons he wanted to marry was for that reason, because I… I didn’t like to…’ Liria looked around, trying to find the words. ‘I stopped him, in every way, do you know? The minimum. A little kiss and so on but that’s it. And so he felt that getting married was the only way that I was going to tell myself, “Well, I have to allow him because I’m his wife and I’m obliged.” That’s my guess, I don’t know!’ I wondered again. Maybe Liria was right and Pedro wanted to get married quickly in order to have sex. Or maybe he just wanted to get it over with, once he’d made up his mind to leave his girlfriend. ‘Whilst Lucía and Juanjo…’ I stopped, puzzled. I assumed that Lucía had allowed Juanjo more liberties than Liria had Pedro. Yet I knew that, like Liria, Lucía had married with a wedding and not by elopement, displaying her righteousness for all to see. ‘But Lucía married in white.’

3  TWO GIRLS 

65

‘Lucía married in white, she married well, bien, also. But she and Juanjo had a different freedom, that’s why they lasted longer. Speaking clearly, no?’ Liria laughed and I laughed too. While researching Gitano ideas about virginity years earlier, I had often been told of the ingenuity of young couples who managed to have some intimacy and yet keep the bride’s vagina intact for the wedding. ‘Whilst we…’ Liria hesitated. ‘I did not… I didn’t allow Pedro to find relief in any way! And so he said, “I don’t want to be like this, I want to marry.” Because he’d also been in a relationship with a Paya many years, and in that relationship he’d go straight away and make love as many times as he wanted and so it wasn’t the same with me!’ ‘And you thought he’d already split up with her.’ ‘Yes. He said, “Well, I’m young and I’ve had my relationship with a young Paya and so on, but that’s it, not any more.” And that was a lie, because he was very much in love with her, and he continued to be during our marriage.’ ‘And he continued to see her after marrying you?’ ‘He never told me he’d seen her. But something has always told me that he had. Because our relations, even after we got married, our relations were not the normal relations of a married couple.’ So Liria was telling me that Pedro had wanted to marry in order to have sex, yet sex was not something he wanted once he married. This went on to become a major preoccupation for her, year after year, one that we would discuss often throughout our friendship. ‘But how could you tell it wasn’t normal?’ I asked. ‘Of course at sixteen I’d tell myself “Of course this is normal: today you are with me and then for two months nothing.” So I’d tell myself that this is marriage, that all marriages must be like this. And at that age, well, not just at that age, but much older, I’ve never dared to say anything about this. Nothing! To anybody…’ ‘And then, Josué was born,’ I prompted. ‘And when Josué was born, that first year I was separated from Pedro. Yes, when my Josué was about…’ Liria stopped to think. ‘He wasn’t even one month old. He wasn’t one month old when I split up with him.’ Over the years, I have seen many young Gitano couples spending time apart, sometimes weeks, sometimes much longer. A quasi-ritual process, it is often initiated by wives who use returning to their parents’ home as leverage, para darles una lección, to teach their husbands a lesson. Quitarse, to split, is part of that learning each other, and learning to live with each other, that accompanies the first years

66  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ of marriage. Yet permanent separations are uncommon: older relatives pressure and cajole to obtain compromises, and most of the couples I have known eventually reunited. After her return, Liria would not leave Pedro again for several years, when he hit her shortly after I finished my fieldwork and she hid with her children in my mother’s flat. ‘But why did you leave?’ ‘It was when I started to discover the issue of Pedro’s drugs. And besides, our relationship, I’ve already told you… Because we got married and just two months later there was no married relationship as God intends, as I say. And I, between one thing and the other, you know? It’s not because he was a drug-addict like those who’d steal everything from me, not one of those that make you feel disgusted. But, “If I’m living with you, at least be a man,” you know? But if on top of the rest I had no life of that kind…’ ‘And how did he give up?’ I asked Liria to repeat a story I’d heard before in bits and pieces. ‘He started to go to the Moratalaz church, and there at the start…’ Liria paused. ‘Let’s see, wait, I lie. We had been apart seven or eight months, or a year, I’m not sure exactly, because for that kind of thing I’m very forgetful. We’d been a long time apart. And what happened? That Pedro found out that a cousin of mine, who is also his cousin, from France, called Arnau, had learnt that I had been apart from Pedro for a long time, and he had called to see if I wanted to get together with him. And so, when Pedro found out, what did he do? Fast he came to my house, calling through the window, “Listen, look, look I’m going to go to a farm, if when I come back….”’ ‘A detox farm,’ I interrupted. ‘Detox. He said to me, “Look, if you really want me to and all that, I’ll make an effort. But I also want that when I come back you be back at home. To have that encouragement to give up, because I’m not going to give up for nothing. If I give up drugs it’s for you and my son.” He said that. Of course, it really was because he knew about the other man, you know? Thinking that I was going to marry him. That’s why, because he found out, because his niece told him. And so the niece went running and told him, and he came to say that. And so. And I, “You go, and when you go and I find out that you are there, and when you’ve been there one day, two, three, four, when I know you are there, then I’ll take my son and go back home. I’ll give you that opportunity.” And so I went home, and then, what happened? Then he came back early, because it’s true that it was a very bad place, they made them get up at seven in the morning to get stones out of a river and I don’t know what, and they made them quit without any help, without

3  TWO GIRLS 

67

any little pill to be able to sleep. They made them do exercise when they were half dead! You know, instead of giving them good massages and hot food, and so on, they finished them off! And he said, “I can’t quit because I’m going to die.” And so he came back, and my mother, who had a lot of influence in these things, she said, “Look, since the grandparents are going to the river,” because they used to go camping by the river in the summer during the whole of August, she then said, “I’ll send you money, go to the river with them….”’ ‘And he can quit there.’ I had been on trips to the River Alberche myself with Gitano friends, in the countryside not far from Madrid. ‘He can finish quitting there.’ Liria confirmed. ‘And you helped him quit.’ ‘Of course. We went to the doctor, we bought pills to do it slowly, so that he could sleep, because he wasn’t sleeping, he was totally cold turkey, it’s not easy. And my grandfather and my grandmother, of course, and their children, well, we’d walk with him during the night, we’d talk with him and so on. But, in truth, it was quite good, because he sometimes had bad days, he’d had pain in a tendon, and things like that, and my uncle would tell him, “Come, I’m going to give you a massage,” and he’d give him a massage, keep him busy, and my other uncle, “Come, let’s go fishing,” you know?’ So it wasn’t only Liria who helped Pedro. The whole family enfolded and supported him, knowing that getting him through would give the two of them and their marriage the best chance. ‘My grandfather would say: “I’ve been hunting. Come with me hunting, look what I’ve hunted.” We spent most of the month of August by the river, with a hut that we built and so on, and my mother sent us money, money to live on. When we came back, he’d given up.’ Liria finished her account just as the sun was setting. Then Younes joined us and the three of us went out for a meal at a cheap pizza place not far from their flat. That night, as I returned to my mother’s flat on the bus, I stared out of the window at the city and its lights and thought about Liria. I thought about her anguish at not being allowed to help her children avoid eviction, about the heartache and anger of her family, and about their pleading and their threats. I knew that the story Liria had told me, of how she came to marry Pedro and of the start of their time together, was in most ways a common one in Villaverde. Like many other Gitanas I had met throughout the years, Liria wed the man her parents had chosen and started life as a new bride surrounded by close kin, not far away from her first home. Just like her sisters and her cousins, she grew up knowing that being publicly

68  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ deflowered would be her greatest achievement. Around her, Gitanos expected all teenage girls, Payas and Gitanas, to have strong sexual desires. She was certain that being chaste made her different from the Payas who had been her friends at school, that the restraint of their women set Gitanos apart and made the Gitano life beautiful. Just the same, she knew many Gitanas who had married by elopement rather than exhibiting their impurity at a wedding, and several of her cousins would do that in the following years. But I thought there was more to the story that Liria had told me. She also accepted her mother’s plan because she trusted and loved her so much and wanted to be a good girl for her. Unlike Lucía, so fierce and determined, Liria was eager to please, milder, more compliant. So she married an unusual man, with a complex history, and she was in the dark. But she was also determined to make a good life for herself and find satisfaction in her relationship with Pedro. On the bus that evening, frustrated that I could not make things better for Liria, and worried about what would happen the next day, the story of her marriage seemed full of contradictions. In my mind I saw her as she looks in the photograph that is on the cover of my first book, held high in her father’s arms at her wedding: newly deflowered and displayed for all Gitanos to honour, mascara and tears running down her cheeks. Poised on the brink of a predictable future as wife and mother, a paragon of Gitano virtue and of daughterly duty, she was starting on the path that would lead her away from her family and her community.

***** Paloma, when we decided to talk about her life also in this book, used to say that her life was very boring, and that she had nothing important to tell. But there is nothing further from the truth because not only do I believe that her life is interesting, but that it is much more interesting than mine, because she has been suffering without knowing it since she was very little. This conversation, every time I read it I feel it is harder, tough and painful, because I believe that Paloma herself did not realise what a difficult childhood she happened to have. But for me, it was very exciting to interview Paloma, because it was the first time that I asked her things like these, not like a friend as we used to tell things to each other, whereas this was different. I was like an anthropologist even if I wasn’t one. I was passionate to find out what Paloma’s childhood had been like, to ask her things I had never asked her before, and I think that she showed herself to me just as she was.

3  TWO GIRLS 

69

When I started the interview, to start with I thought it was not going to go well at all, but little by little I started to discover things I had never known about Paloma, although I also felt shy to start asking about her private life because at no point did I want her to feel bad, and also to speak about intimate sentiments I know is not easy. Paloma is more reserved than me. By contrast, I don’t find it difficult to tell her everything. I think it is harder for her than for me. At some points, it seemed like she was not there, she removed herself looking to the sides and making gestures with her face that I had never seen before. My first question was about the schools she had gone to, whether they were private or state schools. I was not sure what to ask her, and I started there because it seemed the easiest. ‘Yes, to private schools,’ Paloma answered. ‘I have never gone to a state school. My parents, never! They wouldn’t even have imagined it! They couldn’t even conceive of it, going to a state school, to a state secondary or anything of the kind, never. And then the year before going to university I went to an Opus Dei school.’ I was not sure what Opus Dei was. Later I have known that it is a very right-wing Catholic organisation. ‘An Opus Dei school,’ Paloma repeated, ‘called La Fundación. A very… a very expensive school, all very posh kids.’ I thought Paloma was proud to have gone to a school where the teaching was good. I already thought she must have had good teaching. But I wanted to change the topic, because what really interested me was to know whether her life had been similar to mine with respect freedom, boys, going out places. The Payas who lived near my house started to have boyfriends quite young. So I said, ‘And this is a question that has nothing to do with school, but anyway, about what age do you Payas get boyfriends usually? Not just you, the others.’ ‘Let’s say, when I was young?’ Paloma asked. ‘Yes, I’m talking about from school onwards.’ ‘Let’s see, the first boyfriend I had was when I was thirteen. But it was a boyfriend that we just kissed once. There was nothing else. It wasn’t an important boyfriend. I don’t know about other people but my friends, Beatriz, Ainhoa, Lina… my closest friends and I, we never had a proper boyfriend until much later.’ ‘And your mother, did she use to know about your things?’ For me, it was important to know if Paloma was close to her mother, and to what

70  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

extent there was ease between the two of them to tell each other intimate things. ‘Did you use to tell her all those things?’ ‘To my mother?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Mmmm, my mother knew that I had that boyfriend, but it wasn’t a boyfriend who lasted long, there wasn’t a lot to tell. It just lasted three weeks. And then later I didn’t have another until I went to university. And Beatriz, for example, didn’t have a boyfriend, Ainhoa didn’t have a boyfriend. Later on, we started having boyfriends, some of us I mean, not I. Let’s say at about sixteen, seventeen, nineteen years old. Until then nobody had one. But keep in mind that I was in that Catholic group, and they were the people I did everything with, I’d go out with weekends, for example bowling, or to the movies, we’d go out camping in the summer… We had a great time, but it was a Christian group.’ ‘Discos and all that, you didn’t used to go there?’ ‘With that age I’d never gone to a disco, never,’ Paloma said. I never went to a disco either as a teenager, but some Paya friends had told me what they were like and I back then was fascinated by the idea. I found it very strange that, having had the chance to go there, Paloma hadn’t done it. I was surprised that Paloma had such simple adolescence. I have always thought that young Paya girls went to bed with boys from a very early age, even when they were eleven or twelve. That they went to bars and discos, drank and smoked. ‘And smoking or drinking something?’ I asked Paloma. ‘No! And alcohol never! You see, in my school the religious education teacher had organized a youth group, Catholic, Christian, that’s where I went. And so all I did in terms of going out, coming in, with friends, whatever, all I did it within the framework of that group.’ ‘But, really, because your mother forced you to do this?’ I found it strange that Paloma only had fun within the environment of the church, because I have never seen people like this among Payos. I think that Paloma, being Catholic and middle-class, she grew up quite differently from the Payas in my neighbourhood. ‘No! My mother didn’t force me to do that…’ Paloma answered. ‘Or because you wanted to… because it was what you liked to do?’ ‘Because it was what we all did, the option that was given to us in school. And the truth is that discos, and drinking and smoking, I’ve never liked that much. So the church thing started through the school,

3  TWO GIRLS 

71

my friend Beatriz and I used to go. We would go out in the weekends, do many things, but all within the group, Christian.’ ‘Because you didn’t have any other kind of friends.’ ‘Yes, because that is what I had grown up with, what I had close at hand, until I went to university, and then I realised I didn’t believe in God, and I left.’ ‘What you had close at hand,’ I repeated. But I went on asking her about the same subject, because truly I was amazed that a Paya girl would not have fun in another way. I was used to us Gitanas being kept on a tight rein, but I didn’t expect Payas to be the same. Later, on reflection I realise that it was not so abnormal, because she was still young. ‘And do you think that if you’d had other kinds of friends, you’d have liked going out, different, doing things like going out to discos…’ ‘No. Because I’ve just never enjoyed that,’ Paloma insisted again. ‘You didn’t enjoy it.’ ‘I’ve never enjoyed discos and the crowds, not at all. And besides, on the one hand all of this was going on, and on the other we had my mother was very ill, emotionally and all that. My father had left, after years of dramas and all that, of fights. My parents got along very badly since I was little.’ When Paloma started to talk about this rapidly her face changed. Paloma’s face always changes when there is something she doesn’t like to talk about. Paloma is reserved. ‘They’d had a very bad relationship,’ she went on. ‘And then when I was eleven my father left. And two years later I started with all that stuff of the church group. And all those years, for example, if we went out, to do things, I don’t know, to the movies, to the park, and all that, my mother always insisted that we had to return home very early. And my mother always, “Ay, I’m all alone, ay, I’m in a very bad shape.” We never felt that we had freedom to go out, even with the church, my sisters and I. And then my friends, many times they returned home late. But I always had to return home early, even aged sixteen or seventeen. And my sisters and I always felt we had to protect my mother, who was alone, because she was so depressed those years. She had a terrible depression.’ ‘So going out, you didn’t go out much. And I imagine, besides, the other stuff.’ I meant the experience with the doctor. Paloma had already told me about it, on some other occasion, just a little bit. ‘Yes, the other stuff.’ Paloma understood. ‘Because at the same time, that was when the doctor… well… when he used to molest me.’

72  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

‘But don’t you think this is why you didn’t want to go out, for fear of facing even more, even more dangers and…’ I thought that she did not go out to discos because of what had happened with the doctor, and that she rejected men, sexually. Paloma interrupted me. ‘No! It was rather because in my environment we had fun in another way, not just me, my friends also. And besides, it wasn’t a horrible, horrible abuse, like those you see on TV, much less traumatic. But yes, it did happen. With the doctor who knew us all our lives and was a very close friend of my mother!’ ‘And what did you feel? What did you think?’ ‘What do I know! I remember going camping, with the school, I was just eleven, and I was with Beatriz in the loo, with Beatriz having a pee, and telling Beatriz that I was going to get married, because obviously that man had fallen in love with me because he used to kiss me. And that we were going to get married!’ ‘With Beatriz. Imagine that!’ Listening to those words I realised how that man used Paloma’s feelings because her father was not there, misleading her and using her, because she was very vulnerable. I was very surprised that Paloma would tell it to her friend with such ease. ‘What do I know! I remember telling her that, but I don’t remember anything else.’ ‘But you didn’t tell it to Beatriz as something aggressive, as something nasty?’ ‘I don’t think so. I thought that we were going to get married. Can you imagine? He told me that because my father had left, I needed somebody to love me.’ Even though Paloma does not want to see herself as a victim, that is how I see her. ‘And when you told your mother, what did she say?’ I asked Paloma. ‘When I told my mother she said it was my fault because I had scratched my tummy in front of him. She told me off, that’s all I remember. He used to come to the flat very often, because he was a very close friend of my mother, and somebody was always ill, with so many kids. I knew nothing about sex. I didn’t even know how children were made!’ ‘Of course not.’ I did not think this was strange. ‘And how did you feel? What did you think?’ ‘Look, it wasn’t just me,’ Paloma said, instead of answering my question. ‘Because in my home there were two girls working there, who were young. They were seventeen or eighteen, maybe sixteen. Two sisters who

3  TWO GIRLS 

73

came from a village but lived and worked in my home and did the housework. And I have often wondered whether there wasn’t something with one of them, I sometimes think that I remember… But in that social class, at that time, I also think that… a lot…’ Paloma paused, then started again. ‘I think there was also quite a bit the feeling that men could do what they wanted. My mother always used to say, to tell me that when my father was single, with his cousin they used to go with the maids to the dances in the neighbourhoods and have affairs with the maids and have sex with them. And the sexual experiences of the men of that social class were a lot with the maids, with girls, teenagers who worked in their houses.’ ‘What did your mother think about all this?’ I asked. ‘She was much younger than we are now. She must have been about thirty-four or thirty-three when all this happened. She had split from her husband, she was really depressed… What do I know!’ ‘And what about other people?’ ‘I don’t know who knew about it and who didn’t, and whether they thought it was good or bad. I just have no idea, Liria.’ ‘But at that time you didn’t feel bad?’ I asked, again. I was surprised that the situation had continued, because among us something like that would have created a ruina, a feud, a fight among families with the possibility even of deaths. ‘I don’t think so, I don’t know. But the thing is that we felt bad quite a lot, in general, the sisters, because the situation at home was quite bad, all the situation with my mother, with my parents. It would take ages to explain. I really don’t remember much of how I felt about it. I don’t even know how much I thought about it, back then.’ ‘And to your father, you never said anything?’ I was thinking about my youngest son, and about the three years I had not seen him, and about the possibility that something like that could had happened to him without me there to protect him. ‘No, and I don’t know what would have happened. I lived in a house where my father didn’t live, and I only saw my father on Saturdays, and little.’ ‘And you don’t feel regret that you didn’t tell your father, that he would have done something?’ I kept thinking about how it could have been stopped. ‘What do I know? No. It just didn’t happen. It has never occurred to me, that I could have told him. But basically I lived with my mother,

74  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

my three sisters, the two maids, and so my father was a person who was very much in the periphery, he wasn’t a great part of my everyday life. The one who was important was my grandfather, who was the father of my mother, who had been an important architect and who was the one who supported us all. Back then he lived in Calle Ferraz. Did you ever come to my grandfather’s house? No? He lived in a huge flat, had tons of money. Because my father didn’t help either. Shortly after leaving he stopped giving us any money at all.’ ‘And your grandparents, they never knew?’ ‘I don’t think so. My grandfather no, he’d have made a huge fuss! I don’t know if my grandmother knew, I don’t know. But back then it was so. And I was my grandfather’s favourite, because I used to get really good marks. And so I felt under pressure.’ ‘Why?’ ‘To get the best marks possible in school! I lived in a kind of pressure cooker. To be the best student, to please my grandfather, to call him when the school reports came in and so on.’ ‘And so you felt a tremendous responsibility of, almost of being in charge of your house, because it depended on you.’ ‘Let’s see, my mother was the one in charge at home, the one who did everything, but I knew that I had to take care of my mother who was ill, she was really unwell. She used to wake me up in the middle of the night, crying. She was frightened she was going to die, because she had an ulcer and she was frightened it was stomach cancer. Sometimes she’d say she was going to kill herself. Shouting, and quarrels, my sisters and I trying to calm her down, giving her herbal tea… And I was eleven, twelve, ten years old, and later on the same. And earlier when my parents used to fight, also the same. My sisters and I, we had to take sides. And really, my mother was also a very good mother in many ways. It wasn’t all bad, not at all.’ ‘And on the other hand you were suffering the abuse of that man.’ I was thinking that I did not know if I was doing well asking Paloma such private things because every so often her gaze changed, or she remained thoughtful looking fixedly through the window. I was in pain to learn what Paloma had gone through. ‘And on the other hand all of that was happening.’ ‘And all of that is important.’ I really wanted to emphasise this. I was not sure Paloma really understood.

3  TWO GIRLS 

75

‘And I was completely lost, not understanding any of what was going on. And all that… that was just my life! And at the same time a life of tremendous economic privilege. Because at the same time my grandfather had a lot of money, and from that point of view we lived very well. We had everything and more. And we must have spent a lot of money! Four children in private schools, two maids, a large flat, trips abroad…’ ‘And what was your relationship with your sisters like?’ I know that sometimes Paloma does not get along so well with her sisters. So I wanted to know if, when they were little, they had supported each other. ‘Since you were little until…’ ‘All those years? Yes… well…,’ Paloma stopped to think. ‘How was it? My sisters suffered a lot, the three of them. Valeria, she’s just a year younger than me. And she rebelled against all that much more than me. I from the start got into the church group. Valeria didn’t want to get into that. She wanted much more to go out with friends, she liked much more all that. With her friends she used to sit at the entrance of the underground, just to see people go by and chat, and she liked going out much more. But my mother didn’t let us go out, we had to be always paying attention to her, coming back early, always with the feeling that my mother had a very sad life and we had to take care of her.’ ‘She kept you on a tight rein.’ ‘Very tight!’ ‘If we assume that that you, well, you the Payas, that you have the freedom that you have… Listening to you it seems that you girls were in much the same position as us Gitanas, or worse, so to speak.’ ‘We almost couldn’t make it to the corner! Poor Valeria tried her best, but my mother wouldn’t let her. Poor thing, she loved fashion, she used to buy Elle magazine all the time. And she had so much need to have a good time! And Carolina, she was three years younger than me, and she got involved the church too.’ ‘And you never had any sexual relationship with any of your friends, no?’ ‘No! I had a couple of kisses with that boyfriend I had when I was thirteen, and then until I went to university, nothing. But I did have male friends, some of them lasted a long time. I had José, he wanted to go out with me. I didn’t want to go out with him, I didn’t fancy him at all! He had tiny hands, and tiny teeth!’ When Paloma said this we both laughed. ‘We were very good friends, we got along really well, and he used to come to my house all the time. But never anything physical.

76  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

And another one called Esteban, pretty much the same, but with normal teeth!’ We laughed again and then I got serious. ‘And you don’t think that it may have been because of the doctor? After all, among you Payos it’s normal, it doesn’t matter if you have a sexual relationship with a boyfriend!’ ‘It does matter! Back then my mother would have died if I’d had sex! And the mothers of my girlfriends the same! Gosh, what a mess it would have been!’ ‘Well, if she’d found out. But inside, inside you, wasn’t it because…’ ‘We had no clue about sex,’ Paloma interrupted me. ‘We were a bunch of innocents. Cristina, Beatriz, my friends that I used to spend time with, Ainhoa, Lina, none of us would have even thought about it. Some of them waited even longer than I to have sex, way longer!’ ‘But don’t you think that maybe, if what happened to you with that man when you were little hadn’t happened, don’t you think that maybe you…’ I insisted because I thought that the abuse had made Paloma shy when it came to be with any boy. But she did not see it that way. ‘No, it because it was very much because we were the good ones.’ She placed a lot of importance on the atmosphere and the environment where she lived, whereas I rather thought that it had been the doctor. ‘Not only to do with sex, but we were the ones who studied hardest, the ones who got the best marks.’ ‘But there are Payas who study very well and still, they have sex!’ ‘Well, for us back then it all went together.’ Paloma was getting annoyed. ‘We were the ones who behaved well in school, and so on, who didn’t smoke. And then there was another group in the class, of three, four, five, or six, whatever, who used to sit to smoke in hiding behind the school, and we thought they did more things with boys.’ ‘Yes, but…’ ‘My friends, they too finished their adolescence still virgins.’ Paloma was firm. ‘Because it was being… it was the idea that there were wellbrought-up girls, good girls… and then there were the bad ones!’ ‘Yes, the good girls were the ones who didn’t have sex with any boy.’ ‘We wouldn’t even have dreamt about it! We went to church group. We were the ones who worked hardest, who behaved best.’ When Paloma was telling me what her teenage years had been like, I thought that her responsibilities were much heavier than an adult’s, and she had no time to have a good time as a child. Because usually the

3  TWO GIRLS 

77

biggest worry of any girl aged eleven is to have the latest dolls and to play in the street with your friends. And to this, we must add the worst, which was the abuse by the family doctor, who took advantage of a little girl’s innocence. For me, this is the hardest and most painful, to write about the abuse that my beloved sister Paloma endured. Sometimes Paloma would avoid looking at me in the eye when she was telling me what happened. No matter how I try to describe what I see in her eyes, all I can say is that my hair stands on end when I think about her eyes. I think that as she grew up Paloma put all her feelings and her pain in a little box, all that happened in her life to pretend that all was well. I think people don’t realise that Paloma has suffered, but I have known her for many years and I know what she is like. And on the other hand, after our conversation, when I have been reading what we said, I think that Paloma’s life, her way of life wasn’t so different from my own. Although she was a Catholic and I an Evangelical, we had almost the same way of growing up with God by our side, in different ways and at different levels. But really she like me had no relations with boys, and we didn’t know the world of the night, with discos, alcohol or smoking. Deep down our upbringing wasn’t that different, myself as a Gitana and she as a Paya. And that makes me think that even within the Payo life, like within the Gitano life, there are many variations. I think Paloma was not at all like other Payas, because they have much greater freedom than us Gitanas. Because the Payas I knew as a child, Payas from my neighbourhood, most of them as teenagers they already had sex with boys, some when they were twelve or thirteen, even earlier. Independently of their social level or economic level, all the Paya girls I have met were the same. She was very different from them because she had so many obligations in her mind towards her family, she believed she had to be perfect and almost all she did was to keep her mother happy. And that is one of the things that I understand perfectly, because I was a Gitana teenager but I was a lot like her, always trying to keep my mother happy. And I have missed the chance to do many things in my life so that she would be proud of me. And I think Paloma did not go with boys, which being Paya would have been normal, because of the doctor, this is one of the clearest things to me, although she has never been able to see it this way, from her point of view. I know that inside her there is guilt, because of not having done anything to stop it when it happened. But she didn’t realise it was bad

78  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

because she was a little girl, and did not think whether it was good or bad. But as she grew it was inside her and this prevented her from having sexual relations with boys. Because that would have been the normal thing for her as a Paya girl, to have sex with boys and go out in the night. She could not tell anybody her feelings about it, and the only way of expressing all the pain was pushing the boys away until she was older. But she was not guilty of anything, absolutely. ***** In this chapter, Paloma and I have learnt together to open up very much one with the other, and to analyse the good and the bad experiences, and of course to get to know ourselves better. Because when we each tell the other what we think, according to our experiences, we come to see many qualities we have as individuals. The more years go by, the more time, as we write, the more we realise what really surrounded us. Because when each hears herself talking, or sees the other’s opinion, what we think about that period, we analyse the past and we come to see it from a different point of view. Our understanding keeps changing. Because years ago, when I was married to Pedro, I didn’t see it like now. Instead, that was my world, that was my custom, it’s what I had been taught. I thought that such was the only life I could have. I did not question whether what was happening was right or was wrong, simply I was dominated by the circumstances. Sometimes at night, after Liria and I had spent the day working together on this chapter, or after I had sat on my own in the library transcribing our conversations and attempting to find in them an argument, I had nightmares. I would open my eyes and in the dimness of my room, I would see birds, insects and horses, their shapes and movements clear-cut and tangible. Then I would turn on the light and find that they had disappeared. Liria said that I had these dreams because I was reliving the traumas of my childhood. But it wasn’t the past that I found most disturbing; it was what her gaze did to it. I was shaken by her interpretation of my life, which diverged very strongly from my own and which raised possibilities I had never considered. I was sure that Gitano stereotypes about precocious, sex-driven Payas limited her understanding. But I also realised that, in itself, this did not have make her wrong about me, or not totally. I feared that our readers—my colleagues, my students, people I knew—would find her account persuasive or, worse, saccharine and soppy. I was deeply embarrassed and

3  TWO GIRLS 

79

terrified that my story would be seen as irrelevant, boring and self-indulgent. I pressed her to tone down her portrayal and sometimes did it myself behind her back, editing and re-editing. I lost my confidence and doubted many things: the reciprocal framing of our project, my capacity and future as an anthropologist, and my knowledge of my past, of my family and my people.

When Paloma and I started to write this book, we did not realise that by opening our hearts and our ideas we would also open Pandora’s box without meaning to. That is, that we would have to talk about disagreeable things, and secrets that we had never told before, or about things that might compromise our families. For this reason, I think that on some occasions when we talk about something unpleasant, or something painful we are not completely sincere, or we try to make it rosier than it was. Because although we want our stories to be known, we are also ashamed that people will really know what has been our lot to suffer. It is not at all easy to talk about some of the things we tell here and sometimes we do not find the adequate phrases to explain what is too hard. Because when I talk with my friend Paloma I am ashamed of what she may think about my family and, if I am ashamed with Paloma, you can imagine what it is like with the whole world. I imagine the same must happen to Paloma. Because now when I read or listen to the recordings about our conversations that we had about all that has happened to us throughout our lives, I cannot help it but cry, and we have to stop working until I get over it, or until the next day. As I asked questions to Liria about her own life, and presented her with my interpretations, her doubts and discomfort grew too. For both of us, the experience of writing this chapter became one of confronting uncertainties. We found that we were unable to explain fully the motivations and world views of the grown-ups who surrounded us during our childhood. Did Liria’s parents really not know that Pedro was still attached to another woman, or that he was a drug addict? Why didn’t my mother challenge the doctor? Which compromises did they choose to make? What needs directed their decisions? What would their stories look like—Pedro’s, Sara’s, my mother’s, even the doctor’s? What about the broader dimensions, the cultural and social patterns that framed their actions? Did they act the way they did because they were Payos and Gitanos? And, as today Liria and I move between agreeing and disagreeing with each other and back again, who is

80  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ right and when? To what extent is each of us entangled in preconceptions and stereotypes? Feeling so uncertain, as we gave shape to this chapter, we came to focus on discerning not facts but their traces, and on conveying not conclusions but something of the quality of our encounter. As girls, Gitana and Paya, Liria and I were presented with gendered moralities that we seem to have taken at face value as total, unambiguous and right. Realising that we cannot fully know what happened and why, what strikes me is how persistently these norms have remained central to our sense of ourselves, and to how we meet, understand and depict each other. Liria still divides the world into chaste Gitanas and promiscuous Payas, and I still have the unshakeable gut feeling that that ‘girls like us’ were ‘good.’ So maybe this is what our conversations reveal: something of the persuasiveness of these totalising sexual moralities and the work they do dividing ‘us’ from ‘them’—whoever ‘us’ and ‘them’ might be—in the Spanish imaginary, moulding the very way of being in the world of Payos and Gitanos. Grasping the reach of this totalising drive seems essential also in order to understand what happened after Liria left her family, how Gitanos face Payos, and also how middle-class Payos like myself face the world. Maybe, when memories are blurry and we cannot ascertain for sure the contours of events, these categories give Liria and me some solidity to hold on to. And as we stand in front of each other, each attempting to convince the other and our audience, and each remaining unconvinced, what about anthropology? Here the lack of clarity that remains at the end of this chapter makes evident how tentative, preliminary and even fluid anthropological understanding often is. This opacity reveals the interviews and conversations that happen during fieldwork as shifting vantage points, as passing moments from which we—anthropologists and informants—attempt to take hold of the world. It illuminates the intertwining of knowing and not-knowing, closeness and distance, certainty and hesitation, that lies at the heart of the encounter between me and you, self and other.

CHAPTER 4

Writing Friendship

The reason I trusted Paloma and told her my secret when I escaped from Villaverde is that we had managed to keep our friendship for so many years since she arrived in the neighbourhood and needed a family to realise her fieldwork. Everything started when we were just twenty-three, and the truth is that neither of us could imagine all that would happen much later. During the time that Paloma was doing her fieldwork, Paloma gradually became one more in the neighbourhood. She stopped being ‘Paloma the Paya’ and became ‘Palomi,’ and when she returned to the UK she left an emptiness in many people, and especially in my home. My children used to ask me when Palomi would return, as if she were one of their aunties, and the people of the neighbourhood would look out to see if I could tell them any news from England, because they knew that we two remained in touch by letters, or by phone when we could. When Paloma finished her fieldwork and went to England, I was very sad and very often I found refuge in her letters. As soon as I received one, I would write back because I felt that the only way of not ending a precious friendship was not to lose touch, even by letter, since back then talking on the phone was very expensive. And the truth is that, although Paloma and I had become very good friends, a long distance separated us, and I was frightened that it would completely pull us apart. But, thank God, it never happened. For this reason, I am sorry that I couldn’t take Paloma’s letters with me when I escaped with Younes, because those letters hid many joys, sorrows, hopes and goals that Paloma used to tell me about. © The Author(s) 2020 81 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7_4

82  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ What happens when an anthropologist leaves the field? Anthropologists often tell stories about the unsettling process of reintegration into life at home, the feelings of distance and discomfort, about culture shock on re-entry and about the difficulties of writing, publishing, finding jobs. But what about those who stay behind? What about the people who, one day, wave goodbye, turn around and walk back to their familiar tasks, their well-worn worries and their joys, their usual relationships? How does the encounter with an anthropologist, and with anthropology, change the lives of those we call ‘key informants,’ those who make the work of anthropology possible? And how do we access these after-stories? In the spring of 1993, I finished my fieldwork in Villaverde Alto and returned to the UK to complete my Ph.D. A handful of days after leaving the Gitano ghetto, I wrote a letter to Liria. I sat at my desk in my tiny room, overlooking the grassy square of the quad, with the noises of the busy college around me, thinking about her, her sister Lucía and her cousin Teresa, acutely aware of the distances between us. The three of them soon replied, and over the next months I corresponded regularly with them, and also occasionally with some of the other women who had become friends in the ghetto. But it was always Liria who wrote most often, most intimately and at greatest length, and it was only Liria that I continued writing to year after year. I kept many of her letters—some were misplaced in house and office moves, and others got damaged or lost—and Liria too kept many of mine, tucked away in a box at the back of her wardrobe in her flat in Villaverde. But she could not take them when she eloped, and we never managed to recover them. Only two survived. Liria took with her the last one I sent, soon after she first escaped, because it included my phone numbers. The other, from 1997, was hidden by her son Rubén alongside a small number of her possessions. Written from 1993, when I left the ghetto, to 2007, just months before her elopement, Liria’s letters paint a vivid portrayal of being in the world as a Gitana woman, a friend and an anthropologist’s informant. They tell of her life and of mine: our great joys and big crises are there, as are the ups and downs of our friendship, the periods of closeness and distance, of intensity and calm. The letters are full of information about the preoccupations and desires of Liria and her family, and they convey eloquently the quality of everyday life among Gitanos in the south of Madrid. Year after year, Liria’s stories about her sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles reflect the strong intensity of Gitano kinship ties, and she also talks about distinctively Gitano practices, like the ritualised marriage by elopement of her teenage son or the elders’

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

83

mediation in her quarrels with her husband Pedro. But the letters show too how Gitano lives are given form by the state, as when she and Pedro were resettled in 1995, and by poverty and the struggle to make ends meet. And they tell about my own, very different trajectory as a transnational, middle-class Spaniard, as well as expressing clearly Liria’s ideas about what my life as a Paya was and could be like. And so the letters are a rich ethnographic document, revealing not just of Gitano life or Spanish womanhood, but of the human connections that enable anthropology.

These last few days I have been thinking a lot about the letters that Paloma had kept for so many years. Now when I read my letters, where I write to Paloma, sometimes they seem a bit childish, and I laugh a lot at myself and at the things I tell Paloma. But at the same time, they seem so sincere and so full of tenderness that reading some of them I cannot help but cry, in particular because I realise that the two of us, she as much as I, were ready to support each other through some of the hardest moments of our lives. My first letters of 1993 and 1994, soon after Paloma finished fieldwork, show very much that I felt her absence from my home, and that I even became jealous whenever she wrote to my sister or my cousin rather than to me. And you will see when you read my letters written to Paloma that they reflect evident symptoms of trust, love and transparency, telling Paloma all my things, familiar as much as intimate. And she used to do the same whenever she wrote to me. The two of us used to tell each other our problems and we used to advise each other, in particular because at that time, when we first met, I never dared talking about my personal or intimate things, and about my marriage, with anybody else. And with Paloma I felt free, because she was a Paya and didn’t have so many taboos when understanding any situation in a marriage. And I was very shy to tell my problems to any Gitana friend, or even to my sisters, because I was rather timid, and back then among Gitanos we didn’t talk about sex. Now I know that things have changed a lot in the Gitano world, that people have become more liberal, and that they do not feel so embarrassed when talking about these things. Moreover, telling Paloma all that happened around me was a way of escaping my anguishes and telling my joy in my daily life, because I knew that she would always understand me. Because with her I was free to tell

84  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

everything, and she read it without questioning or manipulating anything. And as you will realise through the letters I wrote to Paloma, my marriage destroyed itself day by day. Between Pedro and me, there was never love but during the first years there was sympathy, but over the years there wasn’t even that, especially after my son Josué got married. Those were the hardest years between us. Paloma became my own personal psychologist. To her I told my sorrows. In each letter that we wrote, I always tried to keep Paloma informed about the people that she had met in the ghetto, and also in the towers, which was the other neighbourhood of Villaverde where Gitanos lived in flats, and where my parents and part of my family lived. So I told her the good news and the bad ones, above all about Tío Tomás and Tía Aurea, because it was with them that she first shared her fieldwork, in their house. And in between writing letters, Paloma would make trips to Madrid, and we would go out for lunch and to visit some museums in Madrid, and we talked about everything that had happened during the months that we had spent separated by the distance between one country and the other. Gathering the letters—I am bad at filing, so they were dispersed among other papers at home and at work—and reading them all together was something we had never done before. In a way, we too were surprised by the story the letters tell, by our friendship and its changing rhythms, as it continued year after year and we moved from youth to middle age. We wrote to each other most frequently in the first years of our friendship, and I was more careful in keeping Liria’s letters safe earlier on. So we have many written between 1993 and 1995, none for 1996 and 1997 when I moved houses often, and some for the period between 1998 and 2007. The early letters, written while I was a student at Cambridge and Liria the mother of two young children, show how deeply intrigued and drawn we each were by each other’s lives and worlds. As a young Gitana wife, Liria was full of imaginings and yearnings about the Payos, who had always surrounded her from afar, and whose lives seemed so carefree and exciting. And as a novice anthropologist, I desperately wished to feel welcome and at ease in the ghetto, to be accepted by the Gitanos who lived there: even after the end of my field research, they seemed very much closed to me, distant and opaque. We both embodied the unreachable for the other.

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

85

Throughout these first years, Liria talked extensively about my problems and decisions. Again and again, she reflected on our different capacities, as Paya and Gitana women, expressing excitement and worry at the possibilities of my life, which she described as freer than hers, unrestricted by Gitano gendered rules and expectations. It is striking how preoccupied we seem to have been by men—Liria’s husband and my boyfriends—and what we could and couldn’t do about them given our different positions in the world. Being a married woman, experienced in matters of sex, Liria gave me advice about my own love life, but also shared her own difficulties with Pedro, and in particular her frustration and sadness at his emotional and physical detachment. Our friendship opened up new horizons for both of us, giving us new insights into ourselves but also enabling new kinds of relations. In June 1993, Liria describes movingly her feelings after visiting the university in Madrid with me and meeting my Payo childhood friends. And in November 1994, she mentions the days she spent in my mother’s flat with her children, hiding from Pedro and her family after he hit her, while I was in the UK. In this, our experiences mirrored each other: just as I facilitated Liria’s first tentative steps into el mundo Payo, the Payo world, Liria’s friendship was crucial in deepening my involvement with the Gitanos of Villaverde. She passes on news about her sisters and about other members of her family, describing their decisions and desires, their expectations and their concerns. And she writes also about the people of the ghetto, relaying the troubles and the joys of Gitanos I knew well. There is much suffering in these stories—domestic violence, illness and death. But there is also hope and happiness—a pregnancy, a new house, a marriage—and Liria’s tone throughout these early years is positive, determined and upbeat. There is a current of hope and anticipation running through these first letters, a sense that life is still full of promise for both of us, and that the world is good. Despite her struggles with Pedro, and the difficulties of everyday survival in Villaverde, reading the letters I feel that for Liria these were happy times. From 1998, however, the tenor of Liria’s letters changes. Her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer and the years that followed, until she died in 2003, were harrowing. Liria’s difficulties with Pedro also grew, particularly after the marriage of their eldest son, Josué, and the birth of their youngest, Rubén, both in 2001. So, whereas in the earlier letters it is Liria’s upbeat determination and enthusiasm that comes across most strongly, in this latter batch it is her resilience and endurance. Life no longer seems an exciting journey ahead of us, but an uphill struggle. The world, Liria tells me in 2003, is rotten and we live and suffer.

86  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ With both of us now in our thirties, the letters no longer deal with romance and anticipation, and instead tell about the nitty-gritty of every day caring for others. It is our identities and our work as daughters and as mothers that take centre stage in this period: in many ways, our lives mirrored each other. But the distance between our paths, as Gitana and Paya women, is also clearly evident. While my husband and I found tenured jobs in Belfast and then St Andrews, got a mortgage and bought a house, Liria’s and Pedro’s economic difficulties deepened. Street selling, already a precarious way of earning a living, became less and less profitable throughout the 2000s as immigration into Spain rose rapidly and Gitanos faced new competitors for their traditional niche. Meanwhile, Liria’s teenage son Josué married in spite of his parents’ reluctance and had children of his own, so that Liria and Pedro had to help feed even more mouths. And all along their relationship deteriorated, making Liria’s dissatisfaction with her life as Gitana wife grow.

***** June 1993 My dear friend Palomi! You cannot imagine the happiness I felt when I received your letter. It was my mother who brought it up from the mailbox when I was in the kitchen with my sisters. My mother gave me the letter and I started jumping with joy. You know how excited I get. Palomi, I hope you will forgive me for my handwriting because I don’t know well how to write. I hope you will understand my handwriting. Palomi, I am very happy about your relationship with Joaquín.1 I hope it will all work out well, and if God wants it one day you will be together. But be very careful don’t get all excited just in case things don’t come out the way you want, and truly I would not like it if you got hurt because I know how sensitive you are in matters of love. Although I know that you think about things over and over. If you knew how happy it makes me, your trust in me to tell me your things with Joaquín! I also have things to tell you about my things with Pedro because we went to the doctor and it did the two of us a lot of good, because each one of us spoke about our things. And since then we have improved a lot and he is much better and even his way of being has changed.

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

87

Palomi, forgive how badly I write. I would like it if when you come to Madrid one day you bring Joaquín to my house so that we four can be together and chat about the old times and this way get to meet Joaquín. Now I am fighting with David2 because he wants to take away my pen and I have been trying to finish this letter for two days but they never let me get on with it. Paloma, I miss you very much and I cannot avoid remembering you, especially in the mornings when I see the butter and the yoghurts and the toasted bread that we bought for you, and I no longer even feel like having breakfast. And some days ago Teresa showed me some pictures of you, herself and Lucía, and both of us started crying thinking how far away you are. Teresa tells me to send you many kisses and says whether or not you have written to her because she doesn’t know if you have written to her but that somebody has stolen the letters from her letterbox which is not the first time it happens. But she has told me that all the sisters at the church have asked her about you and then all send you regards and especially Teresa. Palomi, I want to tell you that I will never be able to forget the day we went to the university for lunch because for once I felt free and at ease with simple and kind people like your friends, and it is something that I will never regret doing. If I had some day another opportunity I would do it again, because your world is so simple that it makes you feel happy because it is a world where fear and gossip don’t exist. I hope you will tell your friends over there that here there are some Gitanas who love you very much and who do not forget you even if you are far. Palomi, I am happy that you are going to live in the house of your friend Martina, and I’d rather you live with your friend and not be in a house on your own. And by the way give my regards to your friend Martina. Palomi, take much care of yourself and do not study too much because it will spoil your brain. If Paco went over to England also give him my regards because it is very difficult that I will ever see him again, and also our friend Beatriz who is wonderful.3 My sisters send you many regards and my mother sends you a big kiss, and she has told me that she is sorry she didn’t spend more time with you to talk about that topic that you wanted to talk about with her, but that when you come to Spain she invites you for lunch to be able to talk with you. Palomi, I hope you will never forget me and thank you for writing early, I love you very much. Regards from Pedro and my whole house. Write soon. Forgive the smudges. Kisses. Kiss.

88  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

3 October 1993 My dear friend Palomi, How much happiness I received when my sister told me there was a letter for me from Palomi! I haven’t written to you before because my mother was in hospital. They have removed a cyst that she had next to the stomach, but the doctors didn’t know that she had a hernia underneath the cyst, and when they opened her they had to remove both things, and so things were a bit more complicated. But thank God that everything went well. She is already at home and she is better. I don’t get used to your leaving every time, it seems untrue that you are so far away. The truth is that I felt we only had a few days together, even though I understand that you have to be with your sisters and your mother, and now you know Joaquín, something that makes me very happy, and I know we are many wanting to be with you. But I am content to have seen you some days. Palomi, forgive my handwriting, I get nervous every time I have to write to you. Well, here all is well but for a flu that has been around the neighbourhoods. Pedro has been three days in bed with a temperature and the children too but he is better now. Palomi, Josué4 says to send him a picture of your room or your house, you know how nosy he is. He has already started school, and he is very happy because they have told him to buy books and he wants to learn to read. The truth is that he is very intelligent. He doesn’t take after me in that because I am very thick. David has also changed classes and his teacher is now Lorena, and he has adapted well although Lorena is not happy with him because she says that he is very naughty and hits. And it is truth that he’s become very naughty. I hope that with time he’ll change. Palomi, I talked with Pedro about us, that he had to change his attitude because I was fed up with putting up with his bad moods and that I was not prepared to accept that when he feels well we can be together, and then later we spend many days without even giving each other a kiss. But I told him that I was not going to leave him because I already have two children with him, but I would change rooms and go to bed with the boys, but that if I had to take that step it would not be just for a few days but forever, because I am not like other Gitanas who are slaves of their husbands, and who only open their legs when the husbands want to. Pedro knows that with me it’s different because I do not think like

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

89

them, although he told me he’s going through a bad period, and that I should realise that the death of his mother affected him very much because she was all he had, and I have my parents and my sisters and all my family around me, and that I should put myself in his place even just for one instant and see how I feel. And in reality I understand him but in any case he promised that he was going to change his attitude, and the truth is that in a couple of weeks he has changed a lot. It seems that he has taken my chat with him very seriously, I hope it lasts. Well, I hope you will not get bored with my stories. Palomi, when Joaquín goes to see you remember to take a picture of the two of you together, but make sure your faces are well visible, because I am dying with curiosity to see him well. Palomi, I know how hard it must be for you to be so far away from your family and your friends, and specially from Joaquín, because I have my whole family here and there isn’t a single day that I don’t remember you, either in the kitchen when I’m cooking, or in the boys’ room remembering when we used to talk for hours about our things, so since you are alone you must find it even harder. But you will see how the months will fly and before you notice Christmas Eve will be on top of us. Palomi, you don’t know how happy I am that you have fallen in love with Joaquín, and don’t you think about the future because God will fix everything for you, so that you can be together always if it is for your good. Because it is all up to God and He knows whether you will be happy if you marry, and if not He will put barriers because you deserve the best. You are too good for anybody to hurt you, although I know you are very intelligent and you will know how you choose your own life. Palomi, I am happy that you have made a group at the University, particularly about the magazine, I hope it will go well and will help your studies. When your name comes out in the magazine, telling one of your stories, bring it here and you read it to me in Spanish, because I imagine you will all write in English. I know everything will come out well because you are very clever and intelligent, and that is worth a lot. Palomi, my sisters send you many greetings, and also my father, and my mother sends you a big kiss. Rosa’s tummy is showing, and she has got fatter, but Almudena, Nene’s sister, had a girl at seven months and after spending fifteen days in the incubator, and it seemed she was going to push through, she has died, and poor Almudena and her husband are destroyed, one feels very sorry for them.

90  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

Well Palomi, love, I hope you will answer my letter soon. I miss you very much. Many kisses for you from a close friend, you are the only person I dare telling my most intimate problems. Thankfully I have you to share my troubles because you know how to understand me. I love you. Paloma and Liria. Kisses from Josué, because you were the only one to tell him stories. 30 April 1994 My most dear friend Palomi, How much joy receiving your letter gave me because I found the wait very long. Besides, I wrote to you much earlier than my cousin Teresa and you have replied to both of us at the same time. So get going with your letters. I hope what I’ve told you will not upset you. Well, first of all I will tell you that I am writing on these pages because David must have lost my notebook, or must have hidden it because I can’t find it anywhere, and today it’s Sunday and I cannot buy letter paper so as not to lose more days. I took these sheets which belong to Josué. Palomi, you will tell me how your friend is doing, the one who was in hospital, and whether you are calmer because for sure you had a big fright, in particular because you are not used to doing a nurse’s and a mother’s job, because his parents could not go to see him. I hope he is better. Well, here things are not going completely badly, except that I have David quite poorly with the same thing as last time, although this time I have not admitted him into hospital because the boy gets much worse in the hospital. So every two days I have to go to the doctor with him because he gets very high temperatures and doesn’t eat at all and so right now I have him in bed and he hardly wants to play. But I trust in the Lord. I hope that he will get better soon. And I am not very worried because I know that it is a thing of the devil so that we will stop going to church. Because you’ll see, I tell you a bit how it’s happened. More or less a month and half ago Pedro stopped going to the church in Morataláz because he said that he didn’t get filled by the Spirit and he was not at ease there. Well, I told him that he could do what he wanted but that I was going to church because without the word of God I don’t know how to live. And so every evening I took my children and went to church, you know how close it is by bus. I did it like this for a week, and

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

91

when he saw that I was going on my own, one day that it was very cold he said he would take me because of the children. And so I asked God when we were in the car that hopefully he would enter the church and God would touch his heart. And so when we arrived I told him please to attempt to go to that church and try it, to see how it went. He said yes, a thing that I did not expect, and since then he has not stopped going so that, now that he likes that church and he is better in God, the devil will attack us from all sides. I rebuke the devil and I am strong in the battle, of which I still have a lot to fight. Palomi, you told me that your mother has been there with you. I imagine that it must have been wonderful for you, because it’s me and if I am three days without seeing my mother I suffocate and I need to go to see her no matter how, or perhaps I am too attached to her, so that you can be proud to be so strong and I would like to be like you particularly in that sense. Palomi, I have seen the flat that they are going to give me.5 It’s on the second floor, and they gave me four hours to clean it, but until next month or the one after they don’t give it to us. Well, I’ll tell you what it is like. The living room is quite big, and the kitchen is almost as big as the living room, but the bedrooms are very small, there are three, and bathrooms there are two and they are very badly made, without windows, and it doesn’t have a balcony either. But, anyway, what is important is that I am going to be near my mother and my sister Lucía, and that’s what is important. At long last I am going to lose sight of my sisters-in-law and in particular that bore from upstairs who hassles me so much. Palomi, you told me about that boy you like, the one from your class, and from what you say it shows that you like him quite a bit so go for it, don’t think so much about it. What you eat now is what you’ll take with you, because the day you marry him or another one it will be too late. So enjoy yourself now that you are young and in your case being so far and lonely you also need a bit of human love, because not everything is knowing and studying, you also have to have a bit of fun. Darling, I think this time you are taking quite a bit to come here, or perhaps it seems like that to me, and I really want to see you. I hope that when you come I will be in the other flat, and you know you are invited to my house all the days you want, you will always have a bed to sleep and a plate of food, that is not important. You know I tell you this from my heart because I love you very much. Many kisses.

92  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

8 November 1994 My dear friend Palomi, Much happiness your letter has given me when I received it a bit late. But well, what is important is that you have not forgotten us. I know that you have been busy with your works and exams. Don’t worry about us. Well, firstly I will tell you that here we are all well thanks to God, the children too. And David since he was in hospital until now has not been sick again, I touch wood that he will not fall ill now, and about Josué I tell you a bit just superficially to see if you can help me. You see, my nephew Alejandro6 has always chatted back to my sister Lucía, in a very bad way, and Josué has seen this since he was small. Now Josué does the same and I’ve punished him not buying him things that he likes, or making him go to bed early, because I’m not like my sister that allows her son to do much, and later gives him a beating, she wants to teach him. I don’t like those methods although Lucía later gives him everything he wants. So, I know you don’t have children to understand much about this, but I know you are very good with my boys. Josué has always felt very secure with you and loves you very much. So I hope you will help me. Well, Palomi, first sit down, because of what I’m about to tell you. A week ago Lola died,7 and here everything has been stirred up, above all because her sister, Carlos’ wife, got a madness attack and there was no way she’d believe that her sister was dead, and she only knew how to say that Lola was asleep, and she didn’t allow her mother or the family to cry for her until they took her to hospital, and there she stayed taking sedatives until she recovers. So, this has been horrible and a sadness, but at least she’s now resting from so much suffering. And now let’s put sadness aside, and I want to tell you about Huon8 that I thought he was very handsome, so tall and blond and with those blue eyes that my sister and I were amazed, and specially he seems so innocent. He is a lot like Pedro in that both are quiet and reserved. Me and Lucía every time we talk about Huon in front of Juanjo9 we say he’s not too bad but we say he’s got some defects so that Juanjo won’t get jealous, and this way when he comes to Madrid again we can all go together to eat something or go for a walk somewhere. The truth is that I’m very happy that you have a companion so that you will not feel so sad in that country so distant from your own, and don’t worry if you don’t have much money with him, because money doesn’t give

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

93

happiness, because you see how many Gitanos live, there are some who get up in the morning and don’t have money even for lunch, but they are happy. And also God willing you’ll be a good anthropologist and you’ll see how you’ll earn enough for the two of you, because in such little time you have become a very good teacher. And although you think that you two are very different, you must always look more to the good points than to the bad points that he has, and you’ll see how you’ll convince yourself. Because Pedro and I are also very different, and what I like he doesn’t like, but then I look at the good things that he has and I get over everything. Palomi, Lina and Cristian10 eloped because the other day Lina’s aunt lost her little child, later they found him, but she blamed only Lina, and gave her a beating, and the next day she eloped, but Marta will bring them home soon as a married couple. Apart from that the neighbourhood is doing well, all things considered. We’ve also had problems with my cousin Magda because her husband used to hit her and nobody knew about it until she told, and then when my uncle Miguel found out he wanted to fight his son-in-law, but my father didn’t let him, and he went to talk with the parents of the boy and told them that next time he puts a hand on my cousin my father himself would take her away from him, and also their child, for a very long time, and he said he wouldn’t do it again, and until now he hasn’t but things were very hot between their family and ours. But thankfully things have been fixed and all is calm. Palomi, about this I’ve told you please don’t tell anybody because it’s a secret between the two families until my cousin leaves him if he hits her again. Palomi, give my regards to your sisters from me, and give many kisses to your mother and I don’t forget her because she behaved very well with me and my children,11 and you should see since we stayed with her how Josué pesters me because we don’t have servants in the house for them to do all the work. The truth is that I’d love it too but it can’t be. Well Palomi, love, if you can’t write to me because you have a lot of work don’t worry about me, because when you come in December we’ll see each other at leisure. I hope you will tell me what kind of illness you had, because you talk about being ill but not from what. I love you very much, write to me if you can. Greetings from Pedro for Huon and for you. Forgive my handwriting.

94  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

6 February 1995 My dear friend Palomi, How happy I was to receive your letter, long awaited. I am glad your health is good. We are all well except for a flu that we are all going through and specially the girl and I, we have had some days with a lot of fever and we have had to be in bed some days. But we are well thanks to God. Well, in your letter you tell me that you are very busy with your studies and your classes although I have noticed, it seems to me, you are a bit overwhelmed. But you are really too well given how hard it must be to do the work that you are doing, studying and teaching at the same time, but you know that God is at your side and He helps you in everything, and that is why you are succeeding, so don’t you worry about anything, you will achieve anything you put your mind to because you are very much a fighter. Thank you for telling me about the issue of going to live with Huon. I know it must have been a very difficult decision but you know better than anybody else what is good for you. As far as I am concerned you have my blessing as the priests say because I know that you Payos grow up with customs that are different from ours and you see things differently from ours. Although I understand very well what you are doing. I wish Gitanos had the same opportunities to get to know each other better, the couples, before getting married, and for sure more than half would not get married after seeing what Gitano men are really like. But for sure you are going to get along fine because you are very good and understanding, but don’t allow yourself to be taken for a ride too much, because all men are loving to start with and little by little you see what they are really like. For sure it will all go well, and the best thing is that you have your mother who supports you and your sisters, and his family and that should help a lot. Palomi, this thing I want to tell you, I hope you will not take it the wrong way, because I only want to help you to think a little bit more about what you are about to do. You see, once you have moved in with Huon I suppose you will have to go to bed together, if you haven’t done it already. Be very careful because when you are with a boy on your own many things can happen to you, you know what I mean, although for sure Huon is not of that kind, but you are very pretty and any boy would go mad for you. Palomi, I hope you will not think that I am bad to think this way, and nosey, but I don’t want somebody to hurt you and it is best to face reality. And besides, I don’t know how God will see this, in a Christian way. Oh well, if God allows it, there must be a reason for it

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

95

and if He doesn’t something will happen to prevent it. You ask God this way and He will know how to fix things so that your projects will move forward, for sure God will help you. Palomi, in the neighbourhood all is well except that Julia the wife of my uncle Miguel has lost a brother who was about twenty years old because of drugs, even though he’d given them up but he’d remained ill and you can imagine how Julia is feeling, although she is a very strong woman and she knows how to face problems well. Otherwise all goes on the same here. Also, my father has been quite ill and he is still recovering, but they’ve told him that he cannot work for a long time, because of the problem he has in the gut, which is some little bags that form there and he risks that one may burst and then he’ll have to have surgery. But the doctor has said that so long as he doesn’t lift heavy weights and he doesn’t eat heavy meals nothing bad will happen to him. I’ve had the floors changed and I am extremely happy because I no longer have to spend all day with the mop cleaning. The floor is black, combined with a wine colour, quite dark. And at least I am more rested, and this summer God willing I’ll have the walls done, and will paint the doors. For the moment I have painted everything white so that it will look clean until I start buying some furniture. Palomi, today in church I saw Tía Aurea,12 and she has asked me if you have written to me and I have said yes, and she has said to me that you have not written to them and that she is worried. I didn’t know what to say to excuse you and I have told her that perhaps her letter got lost or that since letters take so long to arrive not to worry about it. Well my friend I hope to see you soon and be able to spend with you some days. And if you can do stay at my house at least one day so that we can speak in peace about our things. Many kisses and hugs. I miss you a lot. Come soon. 29 October 199713 Dear Liria, It’s been a while since I wrote to you but I haven’t received anything back. I hope that you are well and that nothing bad has happened. I am writing from the library of the university: I am reading in order to write an article about the Spanish Civil War. Here the weather is already very cold because they have already changed the clocks and it gets dark at five in the afternoon. Although we have heating at home even in the living room it’s quite cold. Huon and I are well, working a lot and applying for jobs for next year. We hope to be given jobs

96  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ together although we know that it is quite difficult and that maybe it won’t happen.14 But we are trying and nothing was lost by trying. I wonder how Jaime and Chelo15 are, if they are still very sad or if they are starting to recover a little bit. My uncle, the brother of my father, died a couple of weeks ago from a heart attack. He was already elderly, he was over sixty, but it was still unexpected. It was at least eight years since my sisters and I had seen him, and we hadn’t seen my father either in all that time. But now my father is alone, without any family except for his daughters, and Carolina and Leticia went to see him and to the burial, with my mother who said that her ex-brother-in-law was not responsible for my father abandoning us, and that he had always been very good to her. I spoke with my father on the phone but I did not go to Madrid because my sisters said it wasn’t necessary because they were there. Valeria did not go, but Carolina and Leticia took her daughter so that my father could meet his grandchild, who is already seven months old. Besides this, all is well. Leticia and my mother came to visit in September and we had a really good time. I always find the first term at the university very long, and Christmas is still two months away. How are the boys? I hope you are not too tired with them. You won’t be thinking about having another one? We are praying that we will get jobs together, so that we can end this life of coming and going all over the place. I am already twenty-eight, and I don’t want to wait until I am thirty because I know it’s bad to have your first child when you are too old. Valeria wants to have another one soon, to have them quickly and get it out of the way in one go. My mother is still really unwell, and it seems there is nothing we can do to help her. She does not want to get better, and many days we despair together. I hope she will come back in November so that she can be seen by the doctors here again. She suffers much, and we do too, but it must be God’s will. Well, I leave you and return to my work. I send many greetings to your sisters and your parents, and especially to Teresa. Greetings also to Pedro and kisses for the boys. For you I send all my love and a thousand kisses from a friend who never forgets you, Paloma.

Spring 1998 My dear friend Palomi, You letter has made me very happy, and I am very sorry that I have not been able to write to you earlier because of having so many family

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

97

problems that I will tell you about. But first I want to thank you for ­taking the trouble to write to me again and for worrying about me and my family, and specially for remembering me and giving me your trust in every way. Well first of all I am glad that you are getting used to your new job, even if it is in a crazy country, Belfast.16 But do not worry because nothing will happen to you, because whenever I remember you I pray for you and you are a daughter of God and He doesn’t forget that. I hope you don’t forget it either. Palomi, I am very sad about what you tell me about your mother, because sadly I am going through the same thing but with the difference that my mother wants to live and yours doesn’t.17 But I think that for you the pain is the same. I hope God will help her very much to overcome her illness. I think that if sometime when you come to Madrid you bring her to church, either here or a church for Payos, they also exist here, people would pray for her. I have faith that God would make a huge change in her life and who knows, maybe through your mother your sisters could convert to the Lord. Because the Catholic Church is not the same as the Evangelical one, because you already know that for us Evangelicals Christ is joy, happiness, calm and peace, and you can only find that in Jesus, in our Jesus, who lives for us. Because if I wasn’t sure about that right now I would not be able to write to you because what we have been going through cannot be endured by any human being, no one can endure seeing their mother the way we have seen her, and remain standing, which is no small thing. I hope that you are sitting down and, if you are not, sit down because this is too much. Two months ago in one of the appointments with my mother we went in with her, myself and my sister Lucía, Juanjo and Pedro, and my father that day couldn’t come because of a problem with the market stall. Well, when the doctor started talking about the side-effects of chemotherapy he let it slip that my mother had something in her ribs. Straight away we realized that although they had removed her breast something else had been damaged. You see, we still had hope since they were giving her the strongest kind of chemotherapy, and even though we saw how ill she was the first days with many fevers and a fungal infection in her mouth and her throat, hardly being able to swallow water. And many more things. Well, we thought that afterwards all this would be over, that after all that she had suffered she would get better. So there. But after getting seven chemotherapy sessions the doctor had

98  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

no option but to tell her what else there was. Because the chemotherapy was doing nothing for what she had. And so, they have changed her to a different kind of chemotherapy and we hope in God that this one will be the right one, because only God can save my mother because her cancer has spread to her vertebrae in her spine and the ribs and the pelvis. But we only found out two months ago because my father hid it from all of us sisters, because he knew how badly we would take it, and so it was. Because I have been in a very bad shape, not wanting to do anything, and I hardly stopped crying all day long, and I stopped a bit only for the sake of the children, because whenever I cried David would cry with me and then we couldn’t make him stop. And this stopped me a bit. But the truth is that it has been God who has helped me and my sisters endure this terrible test, because if it wasn’t for God I’d have gone mad. But He always, always has been by our side. And so I only go home to sleep, because I am always with her, and so I hope you will write to me soon and give me your advice. Many kisses for my friend of my soul. Regards to Huon from me. Forgive my handwriting. Summer 2001 My dear friend Palomi, How happy I was to receive your letter and to see the photos of your boy who is beautiful.18 And such big eyes. I am really glad to read what you tell me that he is well, and don’t you worry if he doesn’t sleep well because that is normal and it happens to them all. Take him into your bed and this way you will all sleep better, and I did it with Josué and David, although I know that you Payas don’t like it, but do it and you will see it’s better. And try to breastfeed him a bit, Payas often don’t, but don’t worry if you can’t because this is why powder milk was invented. I think it is very good what you tell me that Huon also gets up at night to give him a bottle. Palomi, I still don’t know if what I have is a girl or a boy, because in the scans it’s not visible although I will have my last scan at the end of this month. I hope they will tell me then, although I don’t mind very much because everything is going very well so far, except they have told me that I have to have another caesarean but I will also get my tubes tied and this way I forget about children, because otherwise it’s either crying or weeping, I hope you understand what I mean. I haven’t sent you

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

99

clothes for your baby because until now there was nothing for winter, and over there it’s always cold, and here it’s still hot. Well, I’m going to tell you why I haven’t written to you earlier. But first sit down if you are standing. I haven’t told you that Josué19 fancied a girl called Samara, who is the daughter of Concha, of Tío Francisco. So, my boy was going after her for a year, although I didn’t think things were so serious. And so, seeing that the boy wanted to get engaged we left Villaverde, and tried to convince him to give her up by taking him to the beach, and giving him all that he asked for, because they are too young. And we had no success at all, and finally we had to go to her family to ask for her. Here there has been a wave of engagements, even with younger children. But they didn’t wait to have a wedding, and they just eloped. And we were heartbroken, particularly Pedro. So now I have Samara my daughter-in-law at home and I am having to teach her everything because I think in her house she must have been very spoiled. And so I hope they will be happy ever after, as the saying goes. Well, something else: yesterday I was given a magazine where it talked about your book that you did about the Gitanos of Madrid, and it explains how your fieldwork went here. Everybody in church knew about it, you know what gossips they are. I didn’t mind seeing how you were talked about in the magazine, as a very important anthropologist who had written a very good book about the Gitano life, and so the news have reached even here. Well my friend, I hope to see you soon and meet your little one, and you mine, whatever it is. Write to me soon, don’t take so long as me. Give my regards to Huon. Kisses from Josué and David to you. Your friend who never forgets you. Liria and Palomi. Kiss. 19 October 2003 My dear friend Paloma, How happy I was to receive your letter. The truth is that I miss you very much, because for a while now all I have in this life are blows and sadness, and sometimes I need to talk with somebody I can trust like you. Because you know how to understand me and how to advise me. Well, I’ll tell you about it later. First of all, how are you, Huon and your beautiful baby? I hope you are all well. I haven’t written to you earlier because I have not been here, I have been with my mother in her house, because we have had to stay with her, myself and my sister Ruth, taking long shifts to care for my mother. Because Lucía has enough on

100  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

her plate with Juanjo, and my sister Rosa got pregnant in August and she is like a rag with vomiting and those pregnancy things. And so, until now I haven’t come for a few days to rest in my flat. And with Rubén I am also having a very bad time. I put him in a private nursery near here which, on top of charging me 30,000 pesetas, the boy found it really hard to adjust. He’s been going there for about a month, and still he cries, and to cap it all he’s been the whole of last week without being able to go because he’s caught bronchitis. And so when he returns it will be like he was starting again from scratch. And the truth is that silly ideas get into my head, because if you ask the boy things about the nursery, he gets tears in his eyes saying, ‘No, mami, no mami’, and you can’t get him out of that. And it’s not like the nursery in the neighbourhood where I knew the teachers, there they are very good with the children even if they have their little defects. But I don’t know if all of this is normal. Oh well, I hope you will give me some advice. Paloma, I want you to know that I have felt very bad because I did not call you to come to the wedding of my sister Ruth. But things started going so badly that it became impossible, because they said Juanjo had days to live,20 and my mother too. And since my sister had already bought everything for the wedding, her boyfriend said that he’d been waiting for two years, and he wanted to marry before one of the two passed away.21 And so my father with pain in his heart, for the sake of his daughter, he had no other choice but to do the wedding in a week. And you know that economically I am doing quite badly, and I thought it was ugly to invite you and not to pay your plane ticket, because I know that from so far away the expenses must be quite big, although here meals and lodging you’d have them for free, you know that very well. And so I am really deeply sorry. And so, this is why I told you at the start that I am tired of so many sufferings and sorrows. Lately at my mother’s house my whole day goes by and I’m in my pyjamas without going out into the street, and I almost never do myself up, and besides my relationship with Pedro is going badly lately. He grumbles about everything. In the past I didn’t find it important, and when he had a bad day I simply ignored it until the good humour returned to him. I don’t know if it is the difference in age between us, because all that I like he doesn’t like, and I do not like anything that he likes. So, we don’t see eye to eye at all and that makes us become quite distant from each other. And so this is the second advice I ask from you. You are going to think that you are my psychiatrist, but

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

101

only to you I can tell these intimate things, because I know you will never tell anybody. Well, you’ll say I am a big bore. Let’s talk a bit about you, and this thing you’ve told me about wanting to adopt a girl. I know you have this thought of going to get a girl, and I am really happy for her. I wish I too could adopt one. Because now I understand Huon when he said that why would you have any more children when there are so many abandoned children. I could not understand this to start with and I used to believe that your true children were more important. But each day that passes I realize better that the world is rotten and that there are enough of us to suffer and there is no need to bring anybody else. So go ahead and I wish you all lots of luck, and I hope that the little Palomita will be at home soon, all together. Well, friend. I hope you will write when you can, let it be soon, and I will send you photos of Ruth’s wedding in my next, because I haven’t been at home and I haven’t had time to make them. Kisses for all and regards. Till soon. I love you very much. Liria September 2005 My dear friend Palomi, I am sorry not to have written earlier but I have been very busy with my daughter-in-law Samara,22 with her surgery and the bad recovery she made, I will tell you about it later. Well, first of all I want to congratulate you for having such a beautiful girl.23 I am very happy that you have her in your arms at last, and that you are all so happy with her. I would like to meet her in person, I hope that for Christmas you will be able to return to Madrid with the children so that we’ll be able to be all together, because I really want to be able to talk with you. I would have liked to have sent you some little clothes earlier, but we have been struggling with money, and so it has all had some impact. But I do it with much joy. Well, about Samara, I’ve been the whole of August without being able to move from her side, because her surgery became quite complicated because of a stone that got into the conduit that joins all the digestive system, and she got pancreatitis. All went haywire, her pancreas, and ­specially her liver. Oh well. And after fifteen days she got an infection and they had to open her up again and so it’s been the never ending story. And taking care of the boy, my grandchild, and also that Rubén

102  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

was dying of envy.24 And the adults, those are the worst. Because Pedro and I have been doing very badly, I’ve almost wanted to separate from him, because of the many fights we’ve had, mostly about Josué and Samara. And I know that in part he is right, because my son lets his wife dominate him. But I know that he is young, and one day he will realize the kind of wife he’s got. But he only sees her and nothing else, and does only what he tells her. I suffered a lot, but as a mother I believe I have to be patient and wait for him to realize that his wife is important, but so are his parents, and that with one love you can love many people. And so I am between a stone and a hard place, because Pedro hates my daughter-in-law. I know this is true, but I cannot hate my child and my grandchild. I prefer to tell them all off and then make up. This way until they open their eyes. Or so I hope. And Pedro doesn’t realize that I am kind to her for my son’s sake, and because she is young and I remember what it was like for me. And so, we’ve gone through a very bad stretch, until two days ago in a quarrel he hit me at the table, on the face with a loaf of bread, and I went to my grandmother’s house, and then my father came to talk with him. Of course I only told my father that the quarrels were because he treated me badly in front of my sisters and I wasn’t about to endure humiliations, I am not a girl any more, and since this was also true, Pedro had no option but to recognise it. And my father said, ‘I know the kind of daughter I have, and she is the best of them all, and she is not a bad woman nor does she disrespect you. And if you Pedro don’t want people to disrespect you, you mustn’t be nasty to her.’ And so, my father told him off because he knows what I am like, and he also knows Pedro, who is very good. But Pedro is also very weird, and when he gets his wires crossed there is no way of being near him.25 And so I am sorry to bore you with my sadness, but I feel that with you I can open you my heart and tell you everything without fear. I loved the poem you sent me about Woman. It did me a lot of good to read all it said about women, it is very beautiful, although here men are such chauvinists they’ll say what Pedro said when he read it, ‘This must have been written by a repressed woman who is against men.’ But don’t worry, I understood it all well. Thank God that I had a very special mother who lived ahead of her time and of our time, and who taught us rather well, although I am the weakest of my sisters, even though I will not keep my mouth shut.

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

103

Well, my friend, I would like so much to have you living near me, to be able to be together and helping each other. I love you very much. Ah! And get the girl’s ears pierced, that you are very boring. Forgive my handwriting. March 2007 Dear Paloma, I send you this little book so that you will see how important people thought we were when we were presented at the Museum of Fine Arts.26 Well, first of all, how are you, I hope well, you and your family. I waited for you to call me, I hope that when you didn’t nothing bad happened. Well, darling, I tell you. I told you that I am the president of the school council, and that now I must go to all the meetings at the school and also others at the federation of all schools. But the Payos are so surprised, because never before had any Gitanas taken part in any event of such importance. And so, we are seeing a new and fabulous world, and the Payos too are very excited that at long last some Gitanas are getting involved in the education of their children. The truth is that everybody paid most attention to us. When I finished giving a small talk people clapped and as soon as we came down people all came over to us, crowding to ask us questions, even the president of the federation. On page 38 you will see a woman called Pilar, she is the one who has done all to ensure that I and other Gitanas will reach this position we are in now, and she has had to work hard because at the start we refused to come, because of our husbands, you know their views on Gitana women. And then on page 42 and 44 I appear with a friend. She is the treasurer and she is wonderful. I said some words which are written on page 42. That day I didn’t prepare anything to say, because I was shy, and I had fear of not knowing what to say so as not to look bad, but next time I have to go to something important I will ring you so that you can help me a bit. And so, I hope you’ll give me your opinion. With love says goodbye a friend who never forgets you. Kisses. Kiss. Friday 20th February 2009 Dear Liria,27 I have tried ringing your mobile lots of times, and I don’t manage to speak to you. Since Christmas I have been ringing your house, and the number doesn’t work anymore. These last weeks I have been thinking

104  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ about you a lot, without being able to reach you because I didn’t have your mobile number. Friday last week I found a photo of yours on the internet ( !!). You look very beautiful, I think it is part of the school campaign. I also found on the internet an interview you did on the radio. And this Tuesday (16th February), just like that, I am working and all of a sudden I get a call from the Gitana Women’s Association. It was your friend Pili Martínez, who had found my number on the web and who was calling me, dead with worry, in case I knew something about you. How much I have been thinking about you these last few days! Pili told me that she is extremely worried, in case they had kidnapped you or something worse. That very afternoon I rang Teresa (Pili gave me her mobile number, and yours, I didn’t have it), and she told me how very worried they were. Next day I talked with Teresa and with Noemí as well, who would not stop crying. And Pili and I have been communicating via email, asking each other for news. And today I have spoken with Teresa and she has told me that you have returned. I have called you but you don’t pick up the phone. All these days up until today I haven’t stopped thinking about you, and wanting to be with you to be able to help you in some way, no matter how. I have thought that for sure you must have a lot going on at home, so that instead of pestering you on the phone I decided to write to you to tell you that I am here for whatever you need, that I am with you in everything, and that I support you unconditionally. I know how difficult this period must have been for you, and I am very sorry I have not been able to help you in some way. I know that taking the step you have taken cannot have been easy, and I also believe you haven’t done it lightly, but because there was no other option. I can only tell you that I love you, that you are my friend of the soul, and I am here for you. I am going to Madrid between the 6th and the 15th of April with Max and Zizi. Huon is going to his mother who is having hip surgery. I would very much like to see you and give you a very big hug. Just in case you no longer have my phone number, here it is, 00-44-1334…. (home) 00-44-1334… (office) And these are the numbers of my mother in Madrid, 91-357… (home) 699…. (mobile) I will try to ring you next week, once I estimate the letter has arrived. I tell you again that I love you, that I support you in everything, and that I am here for whatever you need. Many kisses, Paloma

*****

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

105

Although we do not have Paloma’s letters safe because I left them behind in my house when I escaped, I still remember some of them. Paloma’s greatest worries through the years were her studies and her work and, in between, the illnesses of our mothers. That affected us both very much. In her letters, Paloma always used to tell me how she progressed in her work and about the enthusiasm with which she achieved her aims. And she would also tell me about her everyday life, which was similar to mine in many things, since our mothers became ill more or less at once. It was during those years that Paloma got pregnant with Max and I with Rubén. For me, he was the last of my three children, and for Paloma he was the first, and the two of us lived a very beautiful and moving time, because it was by chance that we got pregnant just short months apart. And then I supported Paloma very much when she decided to adopt Zizi. I remember that in one of the letters she told me that she was going to bring her to Spain so that we would be able to meet her, at my home. For me and for my children this was a very special event, because we knew how hard it had been for Paloma and Huon to adopt their little one. And in the letters before she adopted Zizi, I could feel her frustration at the delays until they had her with them. What is beautiful about this real story is that, Paloma and I, we have kept our friendship and trust from the first day, when Paloma came to live in my house. All the letters, Paloma’s and mine, are important because they are proof that, even though we were separated by a great distance, we sustained the same friendship and trust. As you can see from my letters, and from what Paloma says and from all my memories of those years, there was a great link between us so that neither time nor hardship managed to separate us. Above all, my letters also reveal our wish to see each other again and be together once more, because we have always identified with each other very much, even within our cultures, which are so different and at the same time so singular. And one of the things I always insisted on in my letters was that, no matter how far away we might be from each other, we should never lose our friendship. And she also wanted the same, right up until today. I cannot read my own letters to Liria, and cannot remember what I said in most of them, but I do recall something of what I felt when I wrote. In the early years, I was awed that I had made such a deep connection during my fieldwork, and delighted to see our friendship develop. After fieldwork, my confidence grew and my life

106  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ seemed to be opening up. I was happy, and I told Liria about falling in love, making new friends on my return to the UK and progressing in my work. But I also remember being overwhelmed by the impossibility of conveying to her fully what my environment and my life were really like, as a Spanish student at an elite British university, still struggling under the influence of very troubled childhood. I also did not know how to communicate to Liria, and to the other women of the ghetto, what was it that I wrote about in my work. Because I could not explain to them the debates and theories through which I interpreted their lives, my accounts were brief and superficial and to me they sometimes felt meaningless. And I was very much concerned with fitting into Liria’s Gitano world view, as I imagined it to be, a world view centred on female chastity and on the subordination of women to the honour of men. At times, the distance between the ways of life and the sexual moralities of Cambridge and the ghetto seemed insurmountable, and I worried intensely that she and the other Gitanos would disapprove and reject me. Later on, I described my mother’s illness, getting an academic job and moving to Northern Ireland in 1998 as the Peace Process advanced. I turned to Liria when I needed advice during my pregnancy in 2000 and later shared with her the hope and excitement of the adoption of my daughter. But through the years, I never told Liria about my darker times, the periods when I became mentally unwell and trauma, fear and anxiety seemed to get the better of me: in 1995 when I was finishing my Ph.D. thesis, and again in 2005 when the wait to adopt my daughter called back old patterns. Yet, as her letters show, Liria noticed that something was amiss. And like me, there were things that Liria did not write about: I only found out the extent of the physical and psychological abuse she had endured after she escaped from Villaverde, and she never wrote about meeting Younes and falling in love. Perhaps both of us felt unable to write to the other when life threatened us and we were overcome by dread, by inadequacy and guilt. Perhaps there were some things that were so difficult to live through, we had no energy left to put them down on paper. And yet we did continue to reach out to the other when we felt we could, back and forth, feeding our friendship so that when Liria decided to leave there was no question, in her mind or in mine, that I would help.

4  WRITING FRIENDSHIP 

107

Notes















1. I, Paloma, had just started going out with a young Payo man. 2. David is Liria’s middle son. He was two years old in 1993. 3. Paco and Beatriz were young Payos, friends of mine. Liria had met in a visit to Madrid University. 4. Josué is Liria’s eldest son. He was a little boy in 1993. 5. After living in a council flat that had been allocated to Pedro’s parents, Liria and Pedro were granted their own flat in Villaverde in 1994. 6. Alejandro is Lucía’s son, Liria’s nephew. He was a young boy in 1994. 7. Lola, a young mother from the ghetto who I knew well, died from AIDS after contracting HIV from her husband, a heroin addict. 8.  Huon was a British Ph.D. student in Cambridge and eventually became my husband. I met him and started going out with him after fieldwork, in 1993. We visited the ghetto together. 9. Juanjo is Lucía’s husband and Liria’s brother-in-law. 10. Lina and Cristian were a couple in their early teens. Liria hints at the ritualised process through which Gitano parents (here, Marta) forgive their children after eloping. 11. After Pedro hit Liria, she fled with her two children to the home of my mother and hid there for two nights. Neither her family nor Pedro knew where she was. The aim was to pressure Pedro to change his behaviour. 12. Tía Aurea and Tío Tomás were an elderly couple, leaders of the largest patrigroup in the ghetto and relatives of Liria. I, Paloma, had lived in their house while doing fieldwork. 13. This letter, only two of mine that survived, was kept hidden by Liria’s young son Rubén among some of his mother’s possessions when she escaped. 14. In 1997, I was a Junior Research Fellow at Cambridge University, and my husband Huon had a research position in St Andrews. 15. Jaime and Chelo were a young couple from the ghetto who had recently suffered a stillbirth. 16. After finishing a three-year post-doc in Cambridge, I obtained a tenured position in Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. I had recently married, and my husband Huon and I moved there. 17. While my mother suffered very severe mental health difficulties throughout this period, Liria’s mother was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.

108  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

18. My first child, Max, was born in Belfast in May 2001. Liria was pregnant at the same time, and her son Rubén was born later in the year. 19. Liria’s eldest son Josué was a young teenager at the time. 20. Juanjo, Lucía’s husband, had been ill for a while. 21. After a death, it is customary to have a period of mourning, often lasting several months, during which activities such as watching TV or listening to music are forbidden. A person in mourning should not be seen to have fun and would not be able to attend a wedding or indeed get married. 22. Samara, Liria’s daughter-in-law, Josué’s wife, had her first child in 2005. She became very unwell shortly afterwards. 23. My husband Huon and I adopted our daughter Zizi in April 2005. 24. Rubén, Liria’s youngest son, was four years old in 2005. 25. Between 2004 and 2007, Liria left Pedro several times. She was put under pressure to return by her father. 26. Liria had recently become president of the Parents Association at her son’s school. Schooling in Villaverde was ethnically segregated, and Rubén went to a school that catered for Gitano and immigrant children only. Liria describes speaking at a gathering for Parents Associations in Madrid. 27. I wrote to Liria the day after she was made to return to her family after spending six days in hiding with Younes. I wanted to ensure that Liria would have my telephone numbers, because I knew that she no longer had her phone. In the letter, I pretended that I had no knowledge of where she had been.

CHAPTER 5

Those Who Surround Us

Little by little, slowly, in these eight years since I started to live with non-Gitano people my whole world changed, without realising it both my life and my culture were moving away from me. Because on the one hand, I had separated myself from my Gitano family: I had to stop going to Gitano weddings, Christmases, birthdays or any other event related to my family. Everything in the Gitano world became forbidden for me. And on the other hand, I was getting to know the Payo world. Not only was I living with Younes, my Moroccan partner, but slowly I started to enter Paloma’s Spanish family, because Paloma asked them to help, both with the matter of finding work and with Younes’ papers, and I saw up close their way of living. And at the same time, I made many friends in a Payo Baptist church who came from Latin American countries. It was a radical change in my life, I was surrounded by many diverse kinds of people, different from my way of life when I was living only with Gitanos. It was like getting out of a bubble in which I had found myself, always protected by the Gitano nucleus and ruled by the father of my children and above all by my father. Over the years, I adapted myself to the Payo world, to their customs and their way of thinking, to how they see things, their behaviour. And I gradually changed my way of speaking and of dressing, more adequate to the Payo world, but it was without my realising. When I escaped with Younes, I did not expect that my life would change so much. © The Author(s) 2020 109 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7_5

110  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ How do you make a completely new life for yourself, from scratch? Following a radical upheaval—expulsion, loss, rupture—how do you find a new place in the world? Who reaches out to you, and how do you connect with them? Who do you become? Like other people experiencing abrupt crises, after escaping from Villaverde Liria found herself in a situation of great uncertainty. Overnight she was cast adrift, and Younes—who was himself displaced, fearful, full of hesitation—was her only anchor. She had no idea how to earn a living without her family, and so for the practical framework of her existence she relied on what little know-how he had. She was also unsure how to interpret her own actions and the actions of her family, how to judge her life as wife, mother and daughter, and now as a renegade. The moral certainties through which she had looked at herself for so long, and at the all-encompassing divide between Gitanos and Payos, had lost their solidity. And she was unique in her predicament: no one else was in her position, or had been. She had no community of sufferers to turn to in order to construct a shared narrative of loss, hope or anticipation. Except for Younes and our phone calls, she found herself in the midst of strangers and was a stranger to the people around her, unknown and anonymous. Yet I soon saw Liria make new relations in the city. By chance, while grieving for her lost Gitano Evangelical community, she came across a small Baptist church where Payos proud of their Protestant resistance to Franco mixed cautiously with Latin American Pentecostals. Renting rooms with Younes in one shared flat after another—living alongside Romanians, Moroccans, Colombians, Dominicans—she became intimate with the preoccupations and routines of people from all over the world. And when she began looking for work as a cleaner, my mother put her in touch with some of our relatives and acquaintances, and she entered the homes of affluent families long established in the districts to the west and north. As a Gitana matron catapulted into these novel environments, Liria saw from an utterly singular perspective the everyday lives of bankers, lawyers and businessmen, of the migrant women who work for them and of the working-class Payos who surround both. Meanwhile, I visited her and Younes often, got to know their neighbours and became friendly with the Latin American women from the Baptist church, who told me harrowing stories of violence and deprivation, and of cleaning for Spanish families very much like my own. I too established new relations and discovered new spaces inside my city: the basements, storage rooms and sub-divided flats where some migrants live, a scattered slum hidden behind the facades of ordinary

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

111

buildings in the leafy centre of Madrid. These were peak years of the economic crisis, between 2009 and 2015, when unemployment soared over thirty per cent, salaries and social support collapsed, and daily survival in the capital became so dangerously uncertain for so many. As Liria and I made these connections in the midst of the upheaval, we became nodes in a shifting constellation of people who occupied different positions in the urban landscape but whose trajectories, preoccupations and world views intersected and blended. There was Liria’s partner Younes, of course, still undocumented eight years after crossing the strait from Morocco, still clinging to hope, tentatively contemplating becoming a Christian. There was my sister Leticia, who had become friends with Liria after helping her find a job cleaning the office where she herself finally worked after three desperate years of unemployment. And there were the Baptist women who had welcomed first Liria and then me, most of them single mothers and cleaners for Payo families. Around them stood others: Leticia’s husband Julián, struggling to make a living wage on 12-hour shifts; Jacobo, the charismatic Pastor of Liria’s Baptist church, a middle-class Chilean educated in the USA, and his Spanish wife Ana; Younes’ close friend Ahmed, like him an undocumented young man from Morocco; my other sisters, Valeria and Carolina, both working for international banks, who occasionally called Liria when their migrant cleaners took holidays; and Elvira, an elderly friend of my mother who also employed Liria in her home. As Liria and I sought to understand the place of our friendship in the world, we began to reflect on our ties to these various friends and relatives, and to discern in their intertwined lives the imprint of larger social, economic and cultural flows. Whereas anthropologists studying European cities have carved out groups on the basis of shared ethnicity, nationality or class, it was the shifting mixture of difference and connectedness that seemed to illuminate the inequalities that mould our friendship. This connectedness also reflected clearly the character of everyday life for the people among whom Liria now found herself: not restricted to the boundaries of ethnic groups or classes, very different from the pattern of relations among the Gitanos of Villaverde. We decided to find out more about these people who surround us. Reaching beyond the borders of our friendship and our dialogue, we wanted to tease out the threads that knot our stories to those of others. We simply asked them, ‘Help us with the book, tell us about your life.’ The ones who spoke to us most frankly and at greatest length were those who were closest to Liria day to day and who, like

112  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ her, face situations of deep social and economic vulnerability. Liria’s Latin American friends talked about the transforming action of God in their lives, and about the discrimination they had encountered in Madrid and even in their church; my sister Leticia and her husband about the impossibility of making ends meet during the economic crisis, and their own resilience; Younes about his helplessness and determination throughout the unpredictable and frightening experience of migration. They told us stories of upheaval which resonated strongly with Liria’s own experiences. Although they are positioned so very differently within Madrid and within larger Spanish social hierarchies, and although they face such diverse constraints as migrants and locals, they all depicted their lives as a struggle, one that was still unresolved. These are people who, like Liria, have to start over again and again, and again. They recounted their attempts at making meaningful and affirming relations in the city, but also the disheartening awareness of disconnection that came with economic hardship, prejudice and marginalisation. Describing their suffering, they also produced moral commentaries on a society that resisted their deep human necessity to feel secure and to belong. All these friends described themselves as strangers navigating a hostile urban environment. So we cannot but wonder about the possibility that the lives of many people in the city, migrants and Spaniards alike, might be moulded by a deeply felt sense of alienation. For different reasons, each of these men and women saw in our invitation to talk to us an opportunity to reveal something that was essential about themselves, and also to shake us up, to change the way we, Liria and Paloma, thought about them. Our encounters with these friends we thought we knew so well became calls for attention, reclamos, and for Liria and for me moments of witnessing. So, extending our collaborative approach, we attempt to convey the urgency of these accounts, their existential force, and to give priority to the tellers’ motivations and meanings in our recounting of their stories.

***** When I first met Younes I didn’t understand the situation of illegal people, living in countries different from their own. I did know that if somebody had no papers, as we say here, well then they were an immigrant. But I used to think that this wasn’t very important, that it was sufficient that somebody wanted to live in a country to enable them to fix their documents. But I soon realised that everything was much more complicated,

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

113

and soon I understood many of Younes’ attitudes. When on some occasions a police car came near to us, he would come very close to me, or even hug me. He would stand more firmly but at the same time he would look as if he didn’t want to care. But I could see the fear in his eyes. Very soon I too caught that same fear. The first years we were together were full of anguish. We always felt like we were being stalked. On the one side, there was my family, who were looking for us in order to separate us from each other. And on the other side, there was the police, who could deport Younes back to his country if they caught him. So Younes had this double anguish and we always lived with the fear that one way or another we would be separated. And I think that all of this situation made our love stronger. We were fighting against all odds. And to all this, we have to add the fact that we had no stable jobs. On many occasions, both of us were without a job, because as soon as Younes looked for a job and said that he had no papers all the offers would collapse. He used to get out of the house in the morning with energy and looking for any job at all, in order to survive. But he would arrive home after hours of looking for work feeling a mixture of sadness, anger, despair and impotence. I do not find the right word to describe his pain. Although it seemed that all doors were closed for him and that the country rejected him, he never lost his hope. Younes was just twenty-four at the time, and he thought he could conquer the world. He was strong, tall, young and quite intelligent for his age. But all this is not enough when you are in a country that is not yours, and you are illegal. His self-esteem would crash down like a roller-coaster when he faced this uncertainty, not knowing how long we would be able to endure the situation. As a man, he wanted to take on the responsibility for our economy and for my safety, but neither of them was in his power. Sometimes we would hug each other and pray together. I always encouraged him, telling him to trust in God, that God was not going to allow that we would lack what to eat and a bed to rest. At that time, all we had to live on was my small disability pension of €340. And Paloma would sometimes send us money. But we just managed to pay for a room, we could hardly reach the end of the month. All of this created much uncertainty in Younes, thinking that if he could not control all this situation I would leave him. In fact, sometimes he would propose it to me himself, saying that I would be better off with my family after all. He lived on the hope that somebody would

114  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

hire him and would fix his papers for him, but all doors were closed to him. We even registered our relationship, as pareja de hecho, common-law husband and wife, hoping that it would enable him to get his residency papers. But that same year the law changed in Spain: if a woman’s income did not reach the level agreed by the government, she did not have the right to fix the papers for her immigrant partner. For me, it was very frustrating to see him suffer, and impotence flooded me seeing that his papers were refused again and again without being able to do anything about it. Paloma would look for information about immigration and send it all to us, doing all she could to help us achieve our aim. Even sometimes when she came to Madrid she accompanied us to see the solicitors. During those first years, she wasn’t just my refuge, she also did her best to help Younes, empathising with him and supporting him in all that she could. All Younes had was the two of us, Paloma and me. ‘I never even thought about it! It never crossed my mind!’ Younes smiled broadly, pleased to see that Liria and I were taken aback by his statement, made a dismissive gesture as if waving away a fly. I had just asked him how he had thought he would earn his living in Spain, before he made the crossing from Morocco. ‘Which trade I was going to have here in Spain? I never thought about that! I was so innocent! I arrive and I say, “Now what work am I going to do?” I arrive in Spain at night, and in the morning the first thing I say is, “I need a bath, I need soap.” I had no blankets, I came just with my clothes. I look at my nails and I say, “I need a nail clipper! Now I see the reality I’m going to face!”’ Younes comes from a middle-class background. His father is a police superintendent in Rabat, his mother a civil servant. Although he never finished his schooling, he has cousins who are lawyers and doctors, who have made successful lives for themselves in the USA. He was born in Madrid during a stint his father did at the Moroccan embassy and would have been entitled to a Spanish passport on turning eighteen. By the time his birthday came, however, the law had changed and citizenship requirements tightened. So when he made the crossing it was illegally. He’s never told me how and I’ve never felt that I could ask. ‘I had a wish, una ilusión,’ Younes explained. ‘I said to myself, “I have to realise my life in Spain because that’s where I was born and that’s where I have to be.” In Morocco when people found out about my birthplace they’d say, “But what are you doing here? But go to Spain!” My nickname was Spaniard!’

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

115

As Younes embarked on his story, he was grinning and his tone was upbeat. He relished describing his naivety. ‘My mother always used to say it to me, “Son, finish your studies. If you are going to go to a country that isn’t yours, go with qualifications and you get a good job.” And the wife of my father’s friend would say, “If you want to go, at least learn hairdressing.” Because back then the money was good with hairdressing when there was no crisis.’ Younes sniggered pretending outrage. ‘What is she saying? That I’m going to leave here just to be a hairdresser?’ We all chuckled. The three of us—Younes, Liria and myself— had been spending an easy day together relaxing in the park near their flat, and were now sitting on the grass by a large fountain, tape recording running in case anything relevant came up. The droplets of spray that reached us every so often felt lovely in the hot afternoon. Younes’ comic mood suited Liria and me perfectly. He knew it and he upped the ante. ‘And when I arrived my father’s friend said, “I’ll find you a job.” And I, “Yes, yes, I really feel like working, very much. I want to earn money.” And the friend says, “I’m going to find you work… as a shepherd!”’ Liria and I burst out laughing. Younes adores the city, the shops, the restaurants and bars. He is extremely fastidious with his appearance, lavish with hair gel and deodorant, and always takes forever to get ready, a trait that annoys me no end. He tends towards the hiphop look and his clothes are always immaculately pressed, his white trainers impeccable. His greatest desire is to move upwards, to have an enviable job and an expensive car. Anything rural he equates with backwardness and dirt. ‘What the fuck!’ Younes exclaimed. ‘With sheep! And the guy says, “That’s all they allow here if you’ve no papers, and I can find that work for you.” Because he knew people who had land and he’d placed his own nephew to work as a shepherd. The boy told me he used to go off with the sheep for three days! Walking! In the rain! And I was praying and praying: “My God, let them not call me! Now I’m facing the fucking reality! If I say no, my parents will kill me! Let something prevent it! I know nothing about shepherds! The sheep will be the ones to shepherd me!”’ God must have listened, Younes said, because the call never came. And so earning a living became an urgent problem. He had to buy food, pay for a small room in a shared apartment. He had ‘responsibilities,’ he explains, and his meagre funds were shrinking fast.

116  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ ‘I started to go out to look for work. I would cross a railway line, then a waste ground to reach an industrial estate to find work, no matter what kind. I’d go from one business to the other and there I’d ask, “I’m looking for a job.” These were the good times before the crisis. I’d get to the first business, the second, and they’d say to me, “Do you feel like working? Do you want to work now?” That’s what work was like in Spain, back then. “Yes, yes, I can work straight away.” I’d be dressed to work, with work clothes on. “OK, give me your documents. Have you got papers?” “No, no, I’ve got no papers.” “Well, nothing then.” And they’d look at me like that, to make me go away. I go to another business. “Do you want to work, do you feel like working straight away?” “Yes.” “Give me your papers, we’ll engage you right away.” I say, “I don’t have any.” “We can’t, we can’t risk it. We need people with papers.”’ Younes was still smiling, but ruefully, and I could tell he hurt. Because, really, things hadn’t changed that much. On and off in the eight years since his arrival, he had sometimes found work, but without papers he was perpetually stuck at the other side of the fence. He had delivered leaflets, been a bouncer, helped Gitano sellers unload their merchandise (that is how he met Liria), worked in a cardboard factory. Mostly, he was a waiter in cafeterias and bars. None of his jobs lasted long, though. Throughout, he felt taken advantage of. He always earned less than his Spanish co-workers, regularly did overtime without payment, was consistently given the nastiest tasks. He saw opportunities come then go to others, and it became clear that his desire to work and his determination to better himself were of no relevance. Again and again his bosses promised to help him get his residency permit, and again and again they refused when the crunch came. Yet on that particular day, it was the funny side of his predicament that Younes wanted to convey. ‘And people always used to say to me, “When they ask you, you must say that you know how to do everything. Otherwise they won’t take you on.”’ Younes gave Liria and me a meaningful look, and we smiled. We could tell that trouble was coming. ‘That was the first day. The second day it was raining, huge drops as big as this. I’ve put on a waterproof jacket, and I say, “I don’t care about the rain.” I’m walking and walking, getting wet, looking for work. I get to a welding business. And they ask me, “Do you know how to work?” And because I’ve been told to say yes, I say, “Yes, yes, I know how to do everything.” But I meant sweeping the floor, things like that.’

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

117

Liria and I laughed, and she rolled her eyes. She’d heard the story before. Then Younes added, ‘Come back tomorrow, we are paying you €1400 to start with.’ He paused for effect and we gasped obligingly because €1400 is a huge amount. Many migrants in Madrid survive on less than half that sum. ‘“I don’t have papers.” “It doesn’t matter, I need a man here tomorrow. You know how to do everything, yes?”’ Liria and I were laughing again, waiting for the denouement. ‘I was so happy! I went home and I was so happy. And the next day I’m there at the door at seven thirty! Before the business opened I was there, standing by the door. A worker comes and I see him opening up and I say, “Hello, good morning, I’m coming to work today.” I used to speak a little bit of Spanish. “Ah, yes, you are the boy. The boss told me about you yesterday.” And I say, “Yes, that’s me.” “Ok, fine, fine.” He takes out new clothes for me, a uniform, new shoes and all. I take everything, even socks. And he says, “This is your uniform.” I put all the new clothes on, the new shoes. And I say, “Shall I start sweeping?” And he says, “No, no, you wait.” And the boss comes along. “Hello good morning. Are you ready?” “Yes, yes, yes.” And he takes out the blueprints and puts them on the table. “I want to try you out making this door!”’ Younes laughed hard, and Liria and I laughed too. ‘And I say to myself, “How am I going to make a door?” I say to the boss, “I don’t know how to.” “But haven’t you told me you know how to do everything?” “Yes, yes, sweeping, cleaning, loading, unloading…” And I beg him, “Please! Please teach me, just one week! In one week I’ll make you twenty doors if you want to!” The boss says, “I don’t need somebody to learn, I need one who knows already. I don’t have time to teach people, I have a lot of work to do.”’ I say, “No! Please!” The boss gave me a huge telling off: “Go away, leave the clothes over there!” So I leave, I change my clothes, and I keep the t-shirt, underneath. I say, “I’m going to keep this as a memento.”’ Younes’ tone was sober now. He looked down with a frown at the row of little holes that he had made in the grass with a twig. Then he lifted his arm and threw the twig far away. ‘I say, with much sadness, “What do I do, what do I do now?” I felt torn apart, because I started to face reality now. And people told me, “So work giving out leaflets at the entrance to the underground.” “How can I give leaflets! Me!” But then I ask how to go about it. It became my only refuge.’ Younes continued talking, and Liria and I listening, for another hour. He described in detail his various jobs, tallied up the amount of time he had spent unemployed, reviewed his relations with many of

118  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ his co-workers. Finally, we realised it was time to go, the sun was setting and the air had become a little cooler. Around us, the park was emptying. As we walked home, we talked still about the hairdressing, the sheep and the welding shop, about Younes’ delight in his new uniform and his disappointment. His poignant account reminded me of those Charlie Chaplin films where the protagonist is repeatedly thwarted by the oppressive rules of a nonsensical world. For it was Younes’ telling of the disjuncture between his expectations and ‘the reality’ that he had to confront again and again that moved me. The sense, so brilliantly conveyed through humour, that life without papers makes no sense, that it is absurd, seemed to me crucial to Younes’ experience as a Moroccan in Madrid. It is this absurdity that changed his years in the capital from the exciting adventure he envisioned as a teenager— the return to his birthplace, the joyous fulfilment of his destiny—into a permanent and unresolved struggle, upending his understanding of himself and of his place in the world. One year later, I interviewed Younes again and he talked even more forcefully about his lack of papers and about his diminished sense of himself. It was also summer, and we were in the park once more, but without Liria. The two of them had broken up some months earlier, when he refused her request to marry. He had hesitated because of Liria’s age—she’s seventeen years older than him—and because she no longer can have children. Now it was him who wanted a wedding but Liria found unexpected strength in her forced independence, and said that her feelings for him had cooled down. She didn’t like that he sometimes drank too much, or that he was jealous. Younes called her regularly and saw her as much as she would allow, and he was constantly worried that another man would conquer her. To make matters worse, he lost a job he loved, as a waiter in an elegant cafeteria that closed down because of the crisis. I could tell that he was restless, apprehensive, unsure of himself. Although it was me who wanted an interview, ‘for our book,’ I did not need to ask any questions. Younes spoke without my prompting, at length, willing me, and through me maybe Liria, to understand. ‘It’s not that I have jealousy. I have fears. Any moron can give her what I can’t. Because I know what life is like here: all is easy for you if you’ve got your situation sorted. How can it be? You are an engineer and you know that you can build a tower that no one else can even imagine, but you don’t have the tool you need. And when you tell people what you can do, they don’t believe you. Why? They see you have no tool!’

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

119

Younes talked about his lack of papers as a lack of freedom, libertad, a wall that separated him from the rest of men and that diminished his autonomy and his masculinity. ‘It’s not the money. What I want is to have more rights, to give Liria her wishes and because I… I’d love to go out, and take her to a hotel, and go on a proper holiday. Take her to my country, show it to her, enjoy it with her, go with her to Scotland, to your house… I’d like to go there, visit you, see you. Imagine that I have papers: I’d have that freedom. I can give more, I know that I can give more. But these things stop me.’ His growing frustration gave him a deep sense of sadness and led him to drink. ‘I would start to cry, on my own. And when anything happened to me, there you go, I’d start drinking and forget it for the night, but the next day I would wake up even worse. And then what I said was, “I drink again,” and that’s it.’ He was also irritable around Liria. ‘The issue of the papers has crushed me—my life, my soul and my love life. I kind of had that complex, of not having a good situation here in Spain, and it pissed me off. So, many times I’d be sitting in a mood and Liria would say, “What’s wrong? Has anybody bothered you?” And I’d say, “No, there’s nothing wrong.” Because I was afraid. I’d say to myself, “Maybe if I say it, she’ll start thinking it’s true, that I’m worthless. I’m going to give her ideas, putting those things in her head.” Sometimes I tried to open up to her, to tell her. She’d say to me, “I’m not with you for the money, I already knew what you were like, don’t worry about it, you have the hand of God over you and that’s enough.” Hearing that just broke me.’ In the end, Younes’ preoccupation with his papers led Liria away from him. ‘I always had that fight inside me. I always thought that I had Liria, and in a way I abandoned her without realising, because I was so locked inside that problem. I’d think only about it, and say, “Liria is fine, I have her, there she is.” Only she wasn’t any more.’

***** Soon after I escaped from my home, Younes and I had to leave for Alicante, another city in Spain, so that my husband, my father and my family would not find me. We were hiding there for three months, and when we came back from Alicante we felt lost, without knowing where to live and with hardly any money, without a way of earning our living.

120  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

That was the hardest period for us, because I had lost everything after leaving my family and Younes too had to leave his job. And so we were adrift. We only had each other, and Paloma who cared for us but was very far away in Scotland. So on that occasion, I told Paloma on the phone, and she asked her sister Leticia to offer us her home, to have a place to sleep until we could find a room to rent somewhere. Back then Leticia and her husband Julián didn’t know Younes at all, but Leticia and also Julián offered to allow us to sleep in their house. And that was the start of my friendship with Leticia, who is Paloma’s youngest sister. I already knew her but had hardly seen her. I met her when we were young and Paloma was doing fieldwork, back when Paloma was living in my house. Back then Leticia was a young student from a well-off family and her greatest worry must have been where to go on holiday each year. However, life is so uncertain, and it is so difficult to understand it, that we have to hold onto it with our teeth and our nails in order to survive, we have no other option. And I say this because some years later Leticia got married, and with a boy from a humble family, Julián. The impact of that decision did not cross Leticia’s mind, what it was going to mean not just economically but also for her place within the family. Because to go from a bad economic situation to a good one is easy, but from a good one to a bad one it is much harder, and I say this because I have experienced it myself. Both Leticia and I believed that love conquers everything. And it does, but the consequences can be catastrophic, and your survival day by day becomes your greatest priority. Leticia and Julián never demonstrated any prejudice against Younes, and in this they were different from other people we have known. I don’t know whether this is because Julián comes from a humble family, and I think he could put himself in our place. Or maybe the circumstances that Leticia and Julián lived through were similar to ours, although their situation was not as nearly as harsh because thank God they had their little rented flat, which was small but quite cosy. And they didn’t have to keep fleeing from anybody, and they had the support of Paloma and her sisters. Either way, Leticia was the first one from Paloma’s family to reach out to us. Later on, Carolina too helped us, Paloma’s other sister. But it was later. What happened with Leticia was that she empathised with us because of the common situation we had with regard to work, because they too

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

121

struggled to find jobs and Leticia has been unemployed on and off for some years now. So as soon as Leticia started working, soon after she rang me to see if I wanted to work some hours a week cleaning that same office. It was just five hours one day a week, but during the two years that I worked there she would wait for me at the entrance of the underground, and we used to go together to work and come back. We used to ask each other how our week had gone, and whether Leticia’s daughter was well, or if I knew anything about my children, or about the jobs of Julián and Younes. And after some months Leticia also found Younes a small job, which involved going to a neighbour’s house while she was on holiday and walking her two little dogs and attending to them. For Younes and for me, the search for work was an odyssey, and for Leticia and Julián making it to the end of the month with a daughter and the expenses of the home was a constant struggle. But the truth is that, until we started to write our book, I didn’t really realise how difficult things were for them even though I used to see Leticia every week. And when I listened to what Leticia and Julián told us about their life I felt heartbroken and I identified with them. Because you can imagine the chaos Younes and I lived through, trying to find work when he had no papers and I was a Gitana who had barely finished fifth grade. So who better than me could understand the hardships of Leticia and Julián? And I also understood Leticia’s experience within her family, feeling separate and even despised. And I thought that Younes and Julián were two men who had never given in, facing the rejection of a society where only the rich have a space. If you are poor and you have not studied, it doesn’t matter if you are Spanish or you come from another country, society deals with you in the same way. So we know that we have no alternative but to go on fighting day after day. Leticia is the youngest of my sisters. Twelve years ago, when she announced that she was going to marry Julián, the son of a kiosk seller and a seamstress, there was tremendous consternation in our family. Our relatives endlessly mocked his dress, his working-class accent and his manners, and made it clear to Leticia that we, our family, were too good for him. Meanwhile, Julián’s parents and brothers also despaired: Leticia was too posh, too uppity. Julián and Leticia persevered, had a wedding in which the two families sat at separate tables, and settled down to married life in a tiny rented apartment in central Madrid.

122  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ When Liria escaped from Villaverde and she and Younes needed a place to stay two or three nights, I knew that Leticia would help. She and Liria slowly began to know each other, and eventually they too became friends. Although she had trained as a special-needs teacher, Leticia worked as a clerk in a small business. Julián, on the other hand, had few qualifications and moved through a succession of short-term, low-paying jobs. He was an office boy, a driver and a janitor. By 2011, when their daughter was born, the economic crisis was in full swing, Leticia had lost her position, and he too began to have long periods of unemployment. In 2014, when I interviewed him for our book, the economic situation had improved in Spain but still one in four people had no work. In the manicured garden of my aunt’s villa, sitting by the glinting swimming pool, Julián depicted an existence very distant from the nonchalant affluence that surrounded us. ‘It’s when you are going around Madrid by bus that you notice it most,’ he responded when I asked him about his experience of the crisis. Compact, with curly black hair just beginning to thin out, his fingers tapered by unforgiving nail-biting, he spoke while struggling to pull his daughter’s hand through the armband. ‘You used to see women collecting kids from school, or grandparents, because often the two parents worked. Now there is somebody unemployed in every family, and you see many men at the gates of the schools.’ While the girl gingerly got into the water, squealing when the coldness touched her warm skin, Julián elaborated this vision of a transformed social landscape, one where the reassuring rhythms and patterns of everyday city life had disappeared. Here both the embodied experience of wealth and deprivation, and their conceptual meaning, had shifted. ‘We used to say, “How miserable I am, I only earn one thousand!”’ Before the crisis, there had been much talk on the media and by the government about how to improve the lot of the poor, those struggling to make ends meet on just €1000 a month, the mileuristas. ‘Now you don’t even make it to seven hundred! And if you reach one thousand you throw a party, “I’m mileurista!”’ Julián was speaking from personal experience. After many months of searching, in the spring he had found work with a temping agency, subcontracted as a guard in an expensive gated community, earning a meagre €640 per month. In the process of looking for and finding work, he became certain that the sense of right and wrong that should govern relations between people had been discarded.

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

123

‘Nowadays when you look for work they ask you about your personal situation, like the interviewers want to be your friends, like they want to help you. But they are looking for the worker who is on the breadline, the one who is going to put up with everything because he’s in despair, because he’s got nothing. “He’ll shut up even if we lower his salary, he’ll shut up even if we set his shifts so he can only sleep three hours per night.” They look for people with dependants, for people with mortgages and with debts. When I went to the interview I hadn’t been able to find work in a very long time, even though I was ready to take no matter what. So I didn’t even ask what the pay was.’ He barked out a short, hard laugh. ‘I already knew they were going to pay me next to nothing!’ The relief at finally getting a job did not last long. Fearful of being fired and desperate to take any extra hours in order to approach the much desired €1000, he accepted lengthy double-shifts, no breaks and no weekend rest. That Sunday by the pool was his first off after working twenty-nine days in a row. ‘So now they crush me. They give me the worst shifts, they load me with shit, with rubbish, because they know I have to put up with it. “If you don’t like it, there are six million others waiting at the door.”’ He paused, smiled a tight smile, then said, ‘I work in fear.’ Julián described a world that had become aggressive, where people were at the mercy of those with more power. ‘There is no basic human decency,’ he stated, and told me about the proliferation of petty tyrants that dread and poverty had engendered—the manager who used the allocation of shifts to punish or reward at will, the relative of the boss who always left work early and claimed the easiest tasks. This breakdown of morality and trust had direct consequences for Julián’s daily life—how much he slept, how long he could spend with his daughter. It was also replicated at higher and wider levels: behind much-publicised attempts by the national and European governments to reduce unemployment lurked sinister motivations. ‘It’s a hidden dictatorship,’ he said. ‘That’s all you hear in the news, that what the government wants is for people to have work. But, really, the government and Brussels want to lower the minimum wage so as to bring down the unemployment figures and make it look like they are doing something.’ He paused, lifted a finger to tap his temple. ‘But think, what’s their real purpose? Most people believe that it’s to get everybody working. But, truly, what they want is for everybody to be powerless, to have no

124  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ recourse, to depend on whatever they tell you to do, the bosses. That’s what so many governments want. They want people to earn very little money, so that we won’t have any expectations, any hopes, and so that the bosses will do and undo at will.’ Julián’s brief account replicated the elaborate analyses of scholars and journalists: that the Spanish government had attempted to push its way out of its debt crisis by lowering labour costs, undermining union influence and strengthening the power of employers over the workforce. Yet I knew that he was talking about his deeply felt sense of hopelessness, his certainty that he was utterly unable to change things and people for the better, to exert control over his life and the environment around him. I asked him, ‘And you, how do you manage to keep going?’ ‘When the girl was born I was on the dole, and my old boss told me he was going to ring me, to get me a job. And it took him five months… How do you keep going, all that time? It’s really complicated, to keep going.’ I considered that word, ‘complicated,’ and wondered what it really encompassed. ‘You have a new baby,’ Julián continued, ‘and you see the news, and there is so much unemployment, and on the papers they talk of more businesses folding… Every time you see the news you feel your stomach sink, you feel crushed, you say, “My God!” Then you see that all the shops in the neighbourhood are closing down, that everything fails, and that it’s like there is no hope.’ For the third time that morning, Julián had described this economic and moral crisis as a felt sense that penetrated from the outside into the tissue of his very body. It was not possible to separate the threatening decay of social life from the self in crisis. ‘Specially my stomach, it was a mess,’ he said. ‘“What’s my future? My wife doesn’t work, I’ve got a little girl.” I considered many things. But you have to fight, in my case for a girl, for my daughter, so I didn’t think about it. I’d buy my travel pass, and I’d go places to drop my CV. Many times they wouldn’t even take it. I’d hand in maybe fifty CVs every day. Online you’d see that there were 300 people applying for one job, and I was number 100.’ ‘And did you think, maybe one day…’ ‘I’d think, “Tomorrow something good is going to happen, the day after something good is going to happen.” Then Friday would arrive, and you could do nothing until Monday, so you’d say, “On Monday it will already be next week and I’m going to get several calls and somebody will give me a job.”’

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

125

‘And when it didn’t happen?’ ‘I despaired. With time, you despair. It’s better not to think about it. If you think about it you go under.’ Julián started gathering the towels and the plastic toys, and I attempted to convince my niece to get out of the water, not to eat any more crisps because we were going to have lunch soon. As I changed her into dry clothes to go home, just before I turned off the tape recorder, Julián added, ‘People commit suicide, do you know? The ones who are going to lose their homes, they throw themselves off bridges. They don’t say it in the news, they hide it. But you hear it in the streets, on the bus.’ Julián had sketched for me the feeling of a life suffused with threat and fear. That same evening, he left home early to start a long fortnight on the night shift, and Liria and I had dinner with Leticia in their flat. ‘I’m panicking,’ my sister said. ‘I’m really worried that Julián is going to sleep even less. Everything is difficult for us. Everything is a struggle.’ While Julián had emphasised the public spaces where the opposition between the vulnerable self and the hostile world played out—the city streets, the buses, the workplace, the news—Leticia talked about the intimate sphere of our family. ‘I know that my life is completely different from theirs.’ Leticia meant my other sisters, our very wealthy aunt, our rich cousins. ‘I can’t go away for the weekend, like they do, I can’t take my daughter to Disneyland. My girl spends her summer in Madrid, going to day camp, and even paying that is a huge effort for us. Because for us everything takes effort.’ In her everyday life—on the phone with our sisters, during routine visits and special occasions—Leticia often has to confront the relaxed prosperity of our relatives. ‘We all went out for lunch the other day, and they were chatting, all together,’ she says. ‘I felt awful, because I could tell that nobody was interested in anything I had to say, that my life doesn’t count, it’s completely discarded, because we have no money, because I don’t dress like them, I don’t do the things they do. And I have to pretend that their problems are interesting. But their problems seem to me stupid, ridiculous, that’s the fact. Because one of their kids falls ill, and the next day they have an appointment with the best private doctor. Meanwhile I’m going mental with Sofía’s problem, with her stomach, four years already and we can’t sort it.’

126  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ Leticia spoke fast, with urgency. ‘And so, parallel worlds? They’re opposite worlds!’ Liria asked, ‘What do you think of your life, then?’ ‘It depends on the day. Sometimes I think I have a pair of balls, and sometimes I think that… what a lot of shit! Most days I think my life is shit.’ I pressed her, ‘But what, what is shit about it?’ ‘The day to day! Not to be able to… to be unable… What do I know! One thousand things!’ She turned to Liria, ‘You know what I’m talking about. You’ve lived it. I have lived it. To do your shopping and buy potatoes. And the next day, potatoes. And eat more potatoes. It’s happened to me. I’ve lived it.’ Liria nodded, ‘And sticking your hand at night into the rubbish bins, to pull a jumper out, because you were cold and you had nothing to wrap up with.’ ‘And from your old life, before your marriage, what do you miss?’ I asked. ‘Honestly, Paloma, the comforts. A warm house in winter. Sleeping without worries. That feeling that nothing is up, nothing special is happening. You’ve lost your job, you’ll find another one. Nothing is happening, that’s what I miss. Having space to breathe. To know that if Julián loses his job, we can live on my salary. Or the other way around.’ Later, after we said goodbye to Liria and finished washing the dishes, Leticia turned to me. Pithily, in a few words, she described a strong sense of alienation—alienation from normalcy, from things as they should be. ‘I feel completely disconnected,’ she said. ‘Disconnected from what?’ I asked. ‘Disconnected from my life, from my own life.’

***** For many months after Younes and I came back to Madrid after hiding in Alicante, I felt very lonely, because Younes and I only had each other and Paloma who came to visit us every so often. But in reality, we didn’t know anybody so we were alone and we relied on each other for everything. And then we decided to rent a room in a flat where the landlady was María, an Ecuadorian woman. When I met her, she told me that she attended an Evangelical church, Baptist. In me opened up a door of hope for my anguish, because I was going through so much at that time. Because from my adolescence until I escaped with Younes, in my

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

127

church in my neighbourhood of Villaverde my life was dedicated to God. So that when I met María it was like a fresh wind in my life after spending a year without going to any church or knowing any Christians. And when I went to the church I met Esther, Consuelo, Andy, Pilar and other women who would become great friends, sisters in Christ. Very soon they did all they could to help me, when they learnt that I had my great conflict with my family, and specially about the forceful separation from my children. When I first met them, I never thought that our friendship would reach so far, because none of us had the same ethnicity. They are Latin American and I am Gitana, all of us so different but with so many things in common. We all suffered with our children, and specially with our previous partners. They are outside their countries and families and even though I am in my country I was repudiated by my whole family and friends. They had also felt marginalised inside their own church because of being immigrants and single mothers, and they understood the rejection that my family was showing towards me. I was not so different from them. To start with, they did all they could to help me because they saw in me that agony and guilt for having abandoned my children. They made me feel one of them. I never felt that I was Gitana or they were Payas, they took me to their homes with trust and freedom and without prejudice. On other occasions in Payo houses I have felt observed—‘If I take this Gitana into my home she can rob me.’ But not with them. They even left their children in my care and gave me the key to their homes when they hardly knew me. They are always attentive to me, particularly during Christmas or birthdays. And they constantly tell me, ‘Liria, don’t feel lonely, we are your family, you can count on us to face the good and the bad.’ On some occasions, when I have gone through difficult moments with Younes, I have lived with them. And I have always felt supported, economically and emotionally. I have always felt I could count on them. They offer me their home whenever I need it. At one time, I broke up with Younes for a while, and I thought it would be forever or at least for a very long time, and I stayed with Andy for several months until I could rent my own room. And another time that we broke up I had nowhere to go, and I didn’t have money to pay for a place because I wasn’t working. Paola, Consuelo’s daughter, directly told me, ‘Come, we are going to talk with my mother.’ And when we arrived at her house

128  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

I was surprised to see Paola say to her mother, ‘Mamá, Liria is going to come to live with us at home.’ Six people lived in a small flat with just two bedrooms: Paola with her two children and Consuelo with her two grown sons. But Consuelo did not hesitate to give me a hug and say, ‘Of course, this is your home and God will provide and we won’t lack anything.’ She told me that I could sleep in a room with her, and her sons, and one of her grandsons. So there were five of us in that bedroom and Paola with the younger boy in another bedroom. But what struck me most was how happy they all lived, in such a tiny flat, all jumbled together with hardly any space, without a place to be alone and have privacy. The love Consuelo and her family gave me was surprising. They never looked at my condition of divorced Gitana woman, or at what had happened around me throughout the years. They always made me feel one of them, in no moment have I felt less than the others. When I stayed at their home and night arrived, I would be the first one to receive a goodnight kiss from Consuelo, before her own children. And on many occasions, she showed her interest in my life, day to day, both my work and my personal and emotional life. So from the beginning until today, my friends have supported me unconditionally, without asking for anything in return: Consuelo, Esther, Andy, Pilar, Paola, María and others. Our friendship as sisters in Christ has remained intact. I have seen their love for God, their love for their children and their friends, their fight every day for equality in a country that is not their own, their strength providing for their children without leaving aside their responsibilities in the church. They are women who dedicate themselves to good causes. When we went on a mission trip to Africa together, I saw their generosity. I have also seen how they get together on Thursday evenings to cook, and they take warm food to people who are homeless in the streets, and clothes and blankets. Although they themselves don’t have much, they share what they have. We were in Esther’s basement flat, and it was so hot that at times I felt faint. There were no windows. Instead, a narrow trap gave onto one of the building’s ventilation shafts, and a just tiny amount of light came through. An electric fan moved the air around only half-heartedly. Gasping, looking around, I realised that the landlord had joined two box rooms—one was the bedroom, the other the living space— and added a sink, a tiny bathroom and a two-ring cooker. The children, fighting over the one Nintendo, and the puppy, nervous with the

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

129

commotion, did not seem to care about the heat or about the woman crying at the table. ‘I got up one morning and his face was all scratched. I’d hit my son, and I didn’t remember anything because I was so drunk.’ Tears were rolling down Andy’s cheeks, but she was talking steadily. She has large dark eyes, long auburn hair, and open, welcoming features. She is taller than the other women and wears simple but very chic clothes that give her an air of distinction. She spoke gently, without hesitation, in a soft Colombian accent. ‘That was the last straw. I’d been to a party with my son, and we finished very late. I can hold a lot of drink but if I go over my limit it’s like they turn off a switch: I erase everything. My son said that I had hit him because he disobeyed me, but I didn’t know what I was doing. And he had to stay off school for three days. And at that moment I said, “Enough, it’s finished, I don’t want this for my son.” I said, “Lord, I promise I am going to be at your feet, I do whatever you want.” And that Sunday I went to church. And all I remember is the sermon that was about how God can erase all the evil you have done, and that He forgives. And at that moment, there, He broke me. “Lord, I’m here, what you want will be done, I’m here and I can’t go on any more.”’ Over the previous week, Andy, Esther and other women from the Baptist church had been telling Liria and me their life stories: how each of them came from Latin America to Spain, fleeing poverty and abusive relationships with men; how they all work long hard hours for little pay and no security, for employers who often mistreat them; and how they all attempt to bring up their children on their own, without husbands or partners. Today, the friends wanted me to try the food of their countries: empanadas, yucca bread, plantains and fried beans from Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. They had cooked an enormous meal for me down in the basement. They had been busy all morning, in that terrible heat. ‘I always say to Him, “Lord, you know me, you know what I’m truly like,”’ Andy continued. ‘I don’t want the world to transform me, I don’t! I don’t want the world to transform me and become hardhearted, become cold. I know that the best thing in my life was to return to Him. Because God gives me peace, He gives me tranquillity. And so even though I am alone, I don’t have a partner, I have such good sisters, and I can ask them to pray for me even when my problems are small.’ Andy’s last sentences moved me. Her desire for an open, vulnerable heart seemed to me very brave, deeply human. And that she finished her account by mentioning the other women was no accident. They understood well what she was describing: they too experienced

130  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ searing feelings of inadequacy surrounding motherhood, Esther because she had to leave her children behind when she migrated, and Liria of course because she escaped with Younes and lost Rubén. Then there was María, who had left us early to go to work: she had haltingly described her beatings at the hands of her parents and how she too sometimes mistreated her own daughters. The youngest of her girls—a gentle ten-year-old, tall for her age—was now in care. The friends worried about her constantly yet were always welcoming and kind to the mother too. ‘Her lack of love for her child is so very painful for María. And it’s not just the child who needs our help! María too needs to be valued, she needs to be embraced, she is important!’ Esther stressed. Vivacious, assertive and very articulate, she used determined gestures to emphasise her statements. She has strong, capable hands, the hands of somebody who has worked hard. ‘And the only way of helping both of them is to give her our love, and our support, to tell María, “Come on, don’t give up!” This is our task!’ Now Esther pointed at Andy first, then at Liria. ‘And I think that what she feels, and what she feels, and what I feel, it’s all the same feeling, un mismo sentir.’ As I listened to Esther talking, I realised that she was right, that this awareness of a shared suffering, of a common need, is essential to the women’s friendship. As they attempt to survive in Madrid, to find some stability and security in the city for themselves and for their children, they see their difficulties in each other’s. They become witnesses to their friends’ attempts at making something good of their pain and their regret. This witnessing becomes the force that pushes them to be so active together in the activities of their church—the prayer circle, the dance group, the food bank—but also to accompany each other so closely in their everyday lives. It is what enables them to transcend the boundaries of national origin and ethnicity that could just as easily have separated them. The women do so much for each other. Here the fact that they are not just grieving mothers but migrants is crucial. Their displacement moulds how they experience their place within the church, their friendship and their spirituality. As outsiders surviving so very precariously in the city, they identify with the uncertainty and pain of Liria’s banishment, her grief at the loss of her quotidian environment and her despair at the unforgiving judgement of her relatives. While Andy poured the coffee and Liria opened the box of chocolates that I had brought, Esther spoke of her closeness to the other women, but also of her sense of alienation in Madrid and in their church.

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

131

‘If I had been on my own, if I hadn’t had my sisters around me, I would have stayed with my pain. I think I would be a resentful woman now. And I do have sorrow, but I don’t have resentment. Because we’ve been together, we’ve told each other our problems, our situations. We have cried together. Just like we are doing with you now, telling you what is deep inside us, our interiorities, nuestras interioridades. But I cannot do this with some other people from the church, who haven’t allowed me to come close to them, to smile with them or embrace them.’ I realised that Esther was talking about some of the Spanish members of the congregation. ‘One can have problems, and these brothers and sisters from the church should be able to help, because they’ve had an education, they are well prepared people, like you Paloma. But it is among ourselves that we receive help. Because we don’t have that kind of union with some of the Spaniards.’ Of all Liria’s friends, Esther has been attending their Baptist church the longest. She migrated from Venezuela in the late 1990s, and when she began attending services, the congregation was almost uniformly Spanish. Yet already the ethnic make-up of Madrid was beginning to change rapidly through immigration. ‘When I started going to the church there were very few of us who came from abroad,’ Esther said. ‘Many Spaniards greeted us, but there were some who stopped at that and didn’t really welcome us. And so I didn’t take part in any activities, I just went to the services. And then what happened? That I met the father of my daughter, and he was the stone on which I stumbled. Because he was a man determined to conquer me, and he made me fall in love. And I had relations with him, and then I had my daughter without being married to him. So I started to separate myself from the church. And you know what? None of those brothers or sisters approached me to see what was wrong! Not one! Instead they did an assembly and voted me out, even though they knew that I was having many problems. There was a group who behaved as if they were the owners of the church, they happened to be Spanish. And when I broke up with the father of my daughter and I returned, I felt many accusing glances from them, very removed from me. They gave me the impression that “On this terrain you cannot step.” I gave an opinion during a Sunday school and one of them said to me, “You shut up because you are a sinner”! In front of everybody! And I really didn’t want to return to the church, but I heard a voice, in prayer, “That is where you have to be.”’

132  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ For Esther, like for Andy and the other women, the compelling necessity to redeem herself, to soothe her guilt and be forgiven, became intertwined with her position as outsider—as transgressor but also as migrant. In her telling, some Spanish members of the church found it a challenge to open up to the new ways brought by the growing numbers of Latin American worshippers, which were less restrained, more overly Pentecostal. ‘During prayers I would speak aloud, because I felt the Spirit. And they would command me to be quiet, because they weren’t used to it. They found it very hard when the church filled up with migrants, and many left to go to other churches. They said, “You are coming here to impose your norms, you have invaded our place.” They wanted us migrants to submit, didn’t want us there.’ But unavoidably the composition and outlook of the congregation did change. And when the time came to vote in a new pastor, they chose a young Chilean, and he soon encouraged both Andy and Esther to take visible positions of authority. Andy now leads the youth events. Esther directs the women’s prayer groups and also speaks at larger assemblies. Both help manage key outreach activities like the food bank and the distribution of second-hand clothes. Walking with the two women around the neighbourhood, seeing that many approach them for help and advice, it is clear that they have become central figures in the church. Yet a sense of discomfort and unease, an inability to feel at home, still permeated how Esther and Andy described their position within their church and the city at large. ‘Even today you find some brothers and sisters who find it hard to accept that the idea that somebody from the Third World can understand the truth of the Bible,’ said Esther. ‘When I have the opportunity to share the Word, they come to listen. But they don’t do it because they want to hear the Word, it’s because they want to see how well I preach, how I speak. Sometimes I don’t know whether to call them brothers, because they’ve made me feel so out of place, like a fly that fell into the milk.’ ‘That’s why we look for people who have the same feeling as us, who have really understood what Christianity is,’ Andy added. ‘And we have become a little family, we support each other in every way, and this is how the church is transformed. We love each other. But you will see that there are others that see coming to church just as an empty ritual, an obligation. They come on Sunday, they listen, and they leave straight away.’

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

133

‘Because they are lazy!’ Esther concluded. ‘And this is because most haven’t had anything bad happen to them! Because it’s us, the ones who are going through difficult times, the ones who come closer to God. Because we are the ones who really look for that peace, for that help.’ Listening to Esther and Andy describe their suffering and their friendship, I could not believe that the Spaniards who disliked the Pentecostal style of worship did not suffer too. It occurred to me that, by separating their pain so definitely from the experiences of these non-migrants, the women were also talking about a radical discontinuity with the Spanish society that surrounds them. And I remembered that a similar discontinuity—a profound awareness of being apart, rooted in the overwhelming certainty of one’s own hardship—characterised also Younes’ and Julián’s and Leticia’s accounts. They had described their environment, the world they lived in, as a place where they endured violence not just to the inner self but, as with Julián’s stomach pains and Younes’ drinking, to the body. In spite of how different these stories are from each other, the parallels with Liria’s are striking. Like Liria, my sister and my brother-inlaw, Younes, and Liria’s Baptist friends, all sketched for us dislocated lives. They explained how they continually have to rework their understanding of themselves and of their world in the midst of ongoing disruption. For the Baptist women, this is partly resolved by creating a community of sufferers and a relationship with a benign God. By contrast for Leticia and Julián, and for Younes, there seemed to be little respite from their isolation. I believe that this persistent sense of crisis, and even menace, is what the experience of inequality and marginalisation consists of for these friends, what divides the women of the church from the local Baptists, Leticia and Julián from me and the rest of our middle-class family, Younes from his Spanish work colleagues. Throughout the years we have worked together, I have felt that this separated me from Liria too: the knowledge that, in spite of any difficulties that I may encounter, unlike hers my needs are met, and that the world does not approach me with threat.

***** On some occasions, I ask myself why it isn’t until we live outside our familiar environment that we realise what is happening around us. And it isn’t that we want to close our eyes in front of human suffering but that, until people open their hearts to tell the truth of what happens in their

134  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

lives, we do not realise what they are going through. This is what happened to me with Leticia and Julián. Since she had good studies, I didn’t imagine that with the crisis economic problems could stalk their home. And in the other cases, such as those of my friends and of Younes, before escaping I had never thought that immigrant people would find so many troubles in a country that is not their own. I had not stopped to think until I left with Younes about the importance that immigration has, or the crisis that we were going through at that time. If I hadn’t escaped with Younes, who is a Moroccan, or if I hadn’t met Leticia, I would not have realised that all doors close to the immigrants and also on occasion to the Spanish Payos. Because I grew up inside a nucleus, where to us Gitanos what is important is the principles and the customs that rule us. And myself, growing up surrounded and always quite sheltered, I did not understand what is an illegal, un ilegal, or that Payos too can have difficulties. We Gitanos do not place so much importance on having a secure job, we only want not to lack enough to eat for that day, and we give importance to our customs, such as respecting the men, the wedding, the virginity of girls and the elders. We place more importance on sustaining all of this, and we value it much more than a regular job. And the truth is that most Gitanos earn their living from peddling, and there are months when you have money and many more when you don’t. For this reason, to start with I did not see the situation of Leticia and Julián as a problem, just because only one of them had a job. To me that was sufficient. But little by little, I understood, and on occasions too my heart broke when Younes’ papers were rejected, or when Julián had to do three shifts one after another, without resting for fear that his job would be taken away, or when my friends told me about the rejection they suffered when they arrived in Spain. Now I am becoming aware ever more of all the people who surround me, including Payos, Gitanos or immigrants, and of the solidarity that we have with each other, reaching out our hand so as not to let the other one fall, occasionally economically but particularly with our emotional problems. Because the support we have given each other has made the living flame of our love and friendship to remain in our lives all these years. My greatest prayer has been to recover my children and to give thanks to God for the people who during these years have been around me. For Paloma and for me, it was beautiful to see that Leticia and Julián, and also my friends, as well as Younes, placed on us the hope of being

5  THOSE WHO SURROUND US 

135

completely understood when telling us what their lives had been like. Even though they had to put up a front of happiness when facing the world, inside their hearts they had harrowing stories that left Paloma and me dismayed. Their stories were not very different deep down, and each in its own way had its dark and painful side, and this side united us all somehow—Gitanos, Payos, Latin Americans or immigrants, each one with their customs or ethnicities. Each of these people is tied to the others, and Paloma and I are in the middle of them all. We are all intertwined and we are very attentive to the others, helping each other in what we can. Even though we come from very different worlds, we have known how to establish relations of closeness, friendship, even intimacy. These people make a chain with links and they help me, but they also tie me to an uncertain world, a world very different from the life that seemed so sure inside the Gitano world. When we listen to their stories, we realise that they have suffered many difficulties in their lives. We are not the only ones who have suffered, and I feel sorry for them and I identify with their suffering. In some ways, what they tell is not that different from my own life. Each one of us in their own way, we have all known how to persevere, we have looked for something to hold onto, one thing or another—God, the love of friends, the warmth of the family. We have not given up. Each one, including myself, fights for the most important things that touch our hearts: to recover our children, to have a stable job where to feel secure without anguish or uncertainty, to live without fear of being deported. Every day we renew our fight, because these are not battles which we have already won. We don’t know what the future holds for us, because our situation changes constantly and is always uncertain and outside our control. It’s a constant struggle to overcome. It is an internal struggle against your fears and external against the world. I always thought that it was us Gitanos the ones who suffered marginalisation and scarcity. And even though my family and I haven’t experienced need, in many Gitano families they do have a lot of need. But when I opened my eyes to a parallel, non-Gitano world, my heart was hurt by so much injustice. I would like to support all these people, whichever way, but I do not have the necessary tools, because I live in a country which is shaped by incomprehension when facing this situation so full of marginality.

CHAPTER 6

About God and About Anthropology

As we wrote the whole of this book, we came upon different ways to express the theme of each chapter—some told about joy, others about sadness or intrigues, also friendship, love, but also treason and disappointments. That is to say, that our book is not just about Paloma and me, but about all that surrounds us, presenting our points of view and also those of others, conveying what is deepest about each situation, trying to ensure that what is most essential and relevant about our stories would not slip our grasp. And this is precisely why this chapter is the most important one for me, because it talks about God and about His presence in everything we have told you so far, and also in our friendship. And I know that this is not a book about religion, and I don’t want it to appear that way. No, I am speaking to you about those moments when it seemed that everything was collapsing in front of my eyes, and about the connexion that exists between Paloma’s life and mine, and the plans that God had from the day we met until this very day. To write this chapter is the great privilege that God has granted me. Because to write about Paloma, or about myself, or about our families, about the world that surrounds us with so many cultures, all different and intertwined, is something that I love, and I would not tire of doing it because it has given me so many satisfactions. But to write about God is even better. Because, if I do not talk about God, it is to say that I live but without breathing. If I do not talk about God, you will not understand how I fought to see my son, and how come Paloma and © The Author(s) 2020 137 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7_6

138  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

I remained in our friendship for so many years, and how I felt when I wrote this book. And maybe some people will judge us, because I am speaking about God, about my life with Him, in an anthropological book. But this is precisely what is interesting: that He used me to achieve this. Here I am, a Gitana woman, and with little education, and I am writing a book with a teacher of anthropology in Scotland, Paloma Gay y Blasco. This would not be possible if it was not God’s purpose. Because nothing is impossible for God. He has been granting me unimaginable opportunities, such as being able to present our chapters, written by Paloma and by me, in cities like Budapest, Paris and quite a few times in Scotland. And whenever we have presented even a small article about what we are doing people are enthused. And of course, I stop to think: How can it be that a simple Gitana with such small qualities of study as I have, to get so far? Only one explanation exists, no matter how much I turn it in my head: I know that it was God who gave me what little I can offer today. I never could have imagined that God would treat me in such a special way, and at the same time that He would have such a perfect plan for my friendship with Paloma, my Paya best friend. And when I say Paya it is not to distinguish her from me but to stress that, although God made us belong to different ethnicities, this never prevented our friendship from becoming so firm. Because He has placed a feeling in my heart, a different way of looking upon human beings, so that I do not think that because they belong to different ethnicities they are separate from each other. This feeling was precisely the key to opening my life and my house, as much to Paloma as to Younes. And, besides, God gave me the enthusiasm and the fascination with anthropology, to want to learn more and more, and study everything, an unexplored world that I have discovered so that I have a constant thirst for more. I would give myself in body and soul to work as an anthropologist. So, with my lips I cannot complain about whether my life was unfair because of all that I have lived. Because I understand the plan, and if I had not endured so much pain, today I would not be writing this book in which I speak about God. Periodically as we have worked together, telling the stories of the elopement, and of our childhoods, and of the people who surround us both, Liria has reminded me that we have to speak up about the

6  ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY 

139

work of God, about the fact that our friendship and this book are part of His plan. I have agreed, because I know that we cannot convey who Liria is, or the texture of our story and our world, without discussing her faith. But the thought troubles me, and not just because I am an atheist. What will our readers say—my colleagues, my students, other anthropologists—if we finish our book by preaching? Is an anthropological text, even one like ours, a suitable venue for one of its authors to proclaim her faith? The fact is that Liria and I make sense of our collaboration through contrasting lenses. As a Christian, Liria looks on our anthropological venture as a manifestation of God’s plan for her life and mine: it is His will that the plight of ostracised women should be known and He also wants people like Liria, without a university education, to have access to anthropology. As an anthropologist, I look on Liria’s Evangelism as one set of beliefs among so many, one more element of her experience to be questioned and interpreted. Liria sees this book as a testimony and hopes that some of our readers will come closer to God when they learn about the work that she believes He has done in our lives. This aspiration moulds her understanding of anthropology, and of our collaboration, and has been a major concern for her as we have worked together. Like Liria, I too hope that our project will encourage anthropologists to ask whether our discipline can open up to those we study. But, while she is certain that God has directed our work and has fretted about how best to fulfil His plans, my worry has been whether we would achieve our aims at all and write the reciprocal book that we had envisioned. I have feared that the anthropological relevance of our work will not be visible to our intended readers because our book is too unusual, too different from standard ethnographies. And I have asked myself what makes a text, and a collaboration, anthropological, and how far is it possible to depart from the expectations of the discipline and still be heard by it. To begin with, I assumed that, because Liria and I were writing reciprocally—rather than I on my own, as anthropologists usually do— we would automatically achieve a more egalitarian, less hierarchical and, therefore, necessarily better way of doing anthropology than I had in the past. The result, I thought, would be a more nuanced, more innovative and courageous anthropological book than if I was the author and Liria the subject. As we progressed and struggled to meet these reciprocal ideals, I realised that I did not know how to write a book like ours, one that would not fit the patterns that I had learnt as a student and teacher of anthropology. Looking back to my own past too became increasingly painful. I began to doubt our collaboration

140  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ and my vocation and future as an anthropologist, and I was sometimes certain that our project would fail. Meantime, Liria’s trust that God would forgive her elopement, and that He had a plan for her life that included our friendship and our book, was challenged again and again, as the years went on and she remained separated from her children, her relationship with Younes finally collapsed, and her health became gradually poorer. At times, it seemed that she might not survive outside the Gitano community and would have to return. Thus although God and anthropology have accompanied us daily, our engagements with them have been far from straightforward. And it is not just the escape and its consequences that have shaken us: our collaboration itself has dislocated many of our initial certainties and expectations. Addressing each other in such depth and for so long, and also dealing with the practicalities of co-authorship have made us look hard at what we thought we knew about the world and life, and about faith, friendship and our project. And so, as we come to the end of our story, we look upon our anthropological and Evangelical imaginings side by side. Once again, we place our two kinds of knowledge, our two ways of being in the world, not just in dialogue but on a par, without attempting to resolve the many gaps and tensions between them. We try to bring to the surface beliefs, desires and fears that have made up the undercurrent to our work together, opening up to scrutiny some of the practical, emotional and spiritual dynamics that lie behind our reciprocal writing.

***** Throughout all the years since I escaped, when we started writing, and from the first pieces until now, my faith in this project has been growing. And when Paloma doubted whether anybody would want to publish our book, I always encouraged her to be strong and continue ahead. And my intention with this book is to demonstrate that God made us women much stronger than people might believe. Because it is precisely in this way that the world sometimes sees us: weak, helpless, ignorant. And this is also how we often see ourselves. And here is where God comes in. He is the one who gives us strength, in the midst of the storms, when it seems that everything is already lost. There is where we find ourselves. Even if it seems that we have been broken by the circumstances, God picks up each piece and starts putting them together, and He gives us the strength necessary so that, even if

6  ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY 

141

our house is collapsing at our feet, He gives us another terrain where to place our foundations and start building again. Because on many occasions, as in my case, you may have a home, children, work, family… then everything, and I mean everything, collapses overnight. And it is not at all easy to open your eyes one morning and all of a sudden to have lost literally everything. And this is something that amazes me, how God opened a path for me little by little, traversing all barriers, even giving me the strength and wisdom to face a court case in order to see my son again, knowing that this decision would separate me even more from my own family. And He also gave me wisdom and knowledge to write this book, an achievement which I could never have imagined. But this is what God does: to make us brave even when we are very coward and wise without having studied, drawing strength even while we believe we are doing it with our last sigh. I would love to be able to tell the world that I have been a faithful and valiant warrior, who feared nothing, but it would be a lie. I have indeed fought with teeth and nails to recover my son, facing a circumstance where the authoritarian power of custom is mixed with the Gospel. But I also felt much fear and regret. Because from the day I escaped from my home, my family condemned me, and I too condemned myself. For among the Gitano people divorce does not exist, nor the shared custody of the children, and much less the possibility to marry another man without the permission of your family. For this reason, they think and state that I did badly abandoning my children, and that my sin against God was terrible. And no matter how much I tried to make them see that I had no other option, nothing made them change their opinion. At the beginning when I escaped with Younes, I never thought that God would forgive me. In fact, on some occasions I thought about killing myself, because I had abandoned my children. For a long time the wound in my heart, in particular my pain for my children, that wound would not stop bleeding. And whenever I recovered from the accusations, they renewed their strength, and like this successively over the years. And I have been confused, stumbling from here to there, wondering whether God would forgive me one day or not. Very often when Paloma and I worked together, this is how I was feeling. These were the fears that I had to confront when I was writing about my life, and Paloma’s, and all that surrounds us. And yet in me always existed the love for God, and the hope that He would forgive me.

142  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

Little by little, I have been strengthened, slowly, because in my Baptist church forgiveness is very much emphasised, and we learn about the blame we put on ourselves. Because for us human beings it is easy to accuse and to judge. And my friends from the church, and Paloma who is not a Christian, they have helped me to free myself from that great guilt, and to study what sin is for the human being, and how to obtain forgiveness from our own conscience. Because at the church, and thanks to my friends, they have taught me that God is not like some people say, a God that does not forgive. And I too had that concept, and it hurt me very much. This is an erroneous concept of what forgiveness is, because God does not judge, even less does He accuse us, and above all He is very faithful when we fail Him. Little by little, I learnt that it is not man who forgives, but Jesus. And also Paloma, during the long conversations that we had when we were working, as much in Scotland as in Madrid, where I used to tell her that I was desperate, and she used to tell me that in my case, because of my circumstances, I had not had other options or ways of doing things. This does not mean that I am perfect, pure and without stain. Not at all. I am telling you that in those moments, when everything was coming apart in front of my eyes, my gaze was still placed on Jesus. And fear invaded me, as on that occasion when in a courtroom I fought to be able to see my son again and embrace him, and the internal fight was not easy. But I felt that I was accompanied by God. In fact, I did not carry any weapon in my hand but I did carry a Bible. That was my sword, my lethal weapon, the one that strengthened me and that gave me hopes to be able to fight and continue living so as to embrace my son once more. But I also knew that my strength was not my own. The desire to see my son again, and the courage that God put in my heart, they gave me the force to face the whole world. And I have also written the book for that reason, so that someday my children will read it, and will understand how I lived my separation from them, and why I know that God has forgiven me even though that my pain for them will never cease. Until Liria and I started working on this book, my methods had been common ones in anthropology. I had gone to the field, had observed the lives of the people of the ghetto, had gained insights from our conversations and had returned to the UK to write a thesis, a book

6  ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY 

143

and articles in a language that they could not read, addressing debates that they could not access. When Liria escaped and she started writing her life story as a way to earn money as we explain in Chapter 1, I also began telling her, in much more depth than ever before, about the workings of academic anthropology. I explained what I had written about her, and about her family and friends. Liria agreed with some of my interpretations but challenged others. For the first time in our friendship, we debated what was right and wrong with this way of doing anthropology. By then I was aware of anthropologists who worked with locals on projects that interested both, producing outputs like films and photo exhibitions, as well as of politically committed anthropologists who participated in the struggles of their collaborators. These anthropologists described devising different kinds of academic and popular co-authorship, and also how their local partners contributed to their scholarly texts by commenting on drafts, suggesting avenues for analysis, questioning the outlook and conclusions.1 Collaboration forced scholars to look very critically at how they represented the lives of others, and they argued that it added a depth to their academic writing that was missing in their solo work. Crucially, collaborative writing was described as having the potential to undermine the hierarchies between scholars and informants that are woven into the very fabric of anthropology.2 Liria and I decided to take a somewhat different path, one that seemed to us even more radical and daring. Liria, the former informant, would return the gaze fully. She would observe, describe and define me and my daily life, and not just revise, correct or challenge what I said about her or her people. Maybe, more importantly, a Gitana would scrutinise, analyse and define a Paya. Just because I was opening my life to Liria, to begin with I naively believed that our work would be ground-breaking, and I had a huge amount of enthusiasm and confidence in our project. My certainties dissipated when we started writing and I realised that the process of constructing a reciprocal book would be much more complex and uncertain than I had imagined. And although the problems that Liria and I faced were mostly practical, they cut to the core of our reciprocal ideals. Take our aspiration to share full control of the text, which I had taken for granted as essential to our collaborative enterprise. I had assumed that Liria and I would share the planning of each chapter, and the writing and editing, yet I was paid to work on the book—in the sense that my job included some time for research and that I choose to dedicate it to our project—but Liria was not. Needing to earn a living, Liria could not commit to our project in the way I could. Each year we used up the small fund

144  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ my university gave me to attend conferences to compensate Liria for her time, but we did not manage to get a large grant and never had enough to enable her to put in the same hours that I did. Moreover, Liria had left school aged eleven and found writing and reading laborious, particularly at the beginning: she expected me to take the lead and that was very much my impulse too. She soon became the purveyor of handwritten texts and recordings, and I became the project manager, transcriber, translator, editor and organiser, choosing which of her and my own materials to include and what to argue. We seemed to be retaking the very roles that we had wanted to avoid, as anthropologist and informant, scholar and subject. Once I became aware that we had fallen into this pattern, I realised also how difficult it would be to change it, and not just because of our personal circumstances or dispositions. Our problem had institutional dimensions, as I understood when an academic editor kindly gave us some feedback on early drafts of three chapters. ‘It is clear that the structure of the ethnographic experience is tightly in your grip,’ he said, ‘and you are displaying a mastery of the elements of your story: what events are key, the nature of your collaboration, etc. But mastery of the elements, even mastery of the chronology, is not the same thing as mastery of the narrative.’ It appeared that, in spite of our collaborative methods and aims, our academic audience still expected a polished, even masterful text. They would not necessarily appreciate the rougher piece that I had in mind to start with, one which would be true to the uneven consistency of our dialogue and where my editorial intervention on Liria’s work would be kept to the absolute minimum. How could Liria and I produce the narrative proficiency that this editor was suggesting we needed, and do it in a reciprocal, egalitarian, non-hierarchical way? Was this possible? Because I was the one with book-writing expertise, I came to believe that it was up to me to fabricate a textual reciprocity for our readers, and this felt fake and contrived in spite of the very real dialogue and complicity that existed between us. The fact that I had never read a book like ours, that I had no model to build on, added to my insecurity and meant that I often felt groundless and disoriented. I was constantly frustrated that we did not live up to our egalitarian, reciprocal expectations. Whenever Liria and I managed to spend a good stretch of time writing side by side, sitting at the same table, my attitude to our project shifted for a while. We examined together our chapters in progress and debated the challenges that we were facing. I felt supported by Liria’s insights and deep understanding of the issues, and it was a relief to give up control. I

6  ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY 

145

realised that I could be a facilitator that provided her with information about anthropology and its standards and norms, so that we could figure out together how to tell our story. However, because Liria lives in Spain and I in Scotland, and because of our limited access to research money to pay her for her time, we have only worked like this a small portion of the time—maybe four or five weeks each year. Otherwise, we have tended to drift back to the division of labour that caused me such unease. So, for example, I constructed Liria’s narrative in Chapter 2, where she describes her elopement, by choosing and editing sections of texts that she had written and weaving them with statements that she had made during a series of recorded conversations which I had transcribed. I did my best to remain faithful to Liria’s writing style and her verbal pace and mannerisms, but I built the structure and tempo of her section myself. For Chapter 3, on our childhoods, I transcribed and edited the recording where Liria interviews me, then we sat side by side at the computer to write together the statements where she comments on the interview and on my life, with Liria dictating, both of us reading over the resulting text, and me editing it and re-editing it after she left Scotland. By contrast, I only added punctuation to her letters in Chapter 4. For both Chapter 5, on the people who surround us, and this chapter on God and anthropology, I have cut down and re-ordered texts that Liria wrote, once again adding sentences from recordings of our transcribed conversations. I send her sections to Liria to double-check—she often asks that I read them aloud to her—and she asks for additional corrections or modifies back what I have done. We have discussions which help us clarify our understanding of the events we describe, or our vision for each of the chapters. I write my own sections, plan the overall chapter structure and translate all texts back and forth across English and Spanish. Liria comments on everything that I write too. The point here is not to quantify how much time each of us has spent working on the book, but to ask whether this way of working amplifies, stifles or even falsifies Liria’s voice. Does this working pattern enable or undermine our reciprocity? Does it do both at once? Is it simply my job as a scholar to direct, edit and re-write, as a reviewer of our manuscript tersely suggested? Or, on the contrary, does this division of labour reinforce the inequalities between us? Why and how would it matter? Is it the process or the product that is important? Could we have worked differently and written a publishable book? Or is the fact that we wanted to address academia itself the problem?

146  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

In my life, I have had many doubts, because I am not perfect, but after we started this book it never crossed my imagination that we might not continue with our project. And this is not because I am telling my life or Paloma’s, both of which are important, or because we have so many things to tell about the people who surround us. It is because I believe that the book has another purpose: to realise God’s intentions, and that I should have the opportunity to present to our readers a God that never turned His back on me, even though I failed Him so many times. I wanted to write this chapter because I had to thank God for all that He has done in our lives, in Paloma’s life and in mine. Neither of us could have imagined all that would take place since the day we met, back when I lived with my children and I had a good economic position and was happy with my parents and my sisters and my children, even though with Pedro one could not say that we had a happy marriage. When Paloma finished her fieldwork, she and I could easily have become separated from each other, because she stayed to live in England. But that was not the plan, because God planted in us an unbreakable friendship that endured. And His designs went on ahead, so that in the future, after my escape, Paloma and I would start writing together. First I wrote about the situation that I was involved in during a large protest as president of the parents’ association in my children’s school, because I had to defend the rights of the people of Gitano ethnicity, in particular of Gitano children in state education. And maybe, when Paloma learnt of all that had happened with the school, she thought that my writing it down would help so that all this would not be forgotten, and also at the same time that I would earn some money. God used Paloma so that it would be me the one who told that story of the school, and in this way things took their course. Why? Because as a consequence Paloma suggested to me this book, that I would write telling my own conclusions, not as an informant but as an anthropologist. And Paloma did not imagine that God would use her in this way. She has been a great tool in his hands, so that with her help I would be able to speak up and witness. So it was Paloma who God chose. He put her in my path, to be my tool, and He did it so that together we would talk about the oppression that we women suffer and explain that what he wants is that we will not be oppressed but that we should have the same freedom as any man, and that there should be equality for all.

6  ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY 

147

Paloma does not believe in God, but He placed her where I would find her. God has used her because she has access to that world of anthropology, and in this way we can do the book together, and other people will see that God is in my life and in hers. Even though she never has managed to understand it, from the beginning He chose her because she can reach many places that are beyond my reach as a Gitana woman. She is like the platform that God has given me so that I can speak to a bigger audience. Even after having had difficulties and obstacles, today I can speak about what God has done in my life, about the unexplainable opportunities that His hand has given me, helping Paloma and me in this project. And I can tell that, although Paloma has had some doubts about our project, I have been totally convinced of one thing: that the book will be a great success. Since we started working together, Liria has had a wide audience in mind and has believed that our book will achieve many different things. She thinks that, by disclosing her ostracism, the book will benefit other women who have gone through similar situations, who have been excluded and forcibly separated from their children and families. She is certain that this dissemination is part of God’s plan, His strategy to effect change. She also very much wants anthropologists to value our project: she has wanted to write a good anthropology book, of interest to students, teachers and researchers. As she explains in the opening chapter, it has been important and rewarding to address academic anthropology herself, to tell anthropologists about her life in her own words. She also would like her friends and acquaintances at her Baptist church and in Gitano NGOs to be able to read it, or at least sections of it. She is adamant that our work and our friendship are a model of cooperation between Gitanos and Payos and wants the world to know. My own aims for our work may seem more modest. I have wanted the whole of our book to be relevant and clear to Liria. I have hoped that this experiment will encourage other anthropologists to ask whether it might be worthwhile to include in our scholarly conversations the people who include us in their lives—to imagine how we would achieve that, what would be won and what lost. I have wanted this text to help anthropology students envision some of the many variables involved in carrying out reciprocal work. I have also wanted to devise a way of approaching Spanish womanhood that does not isolate Gitanas and that asks about the continuities and discontinuities

148  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ between the constraints that shape their lives and those of Payas and of migrant women. All along, I have known that some of our expectations may be ­unrealistic, and that others may be incompatible. But each of them was important because, together, they added to the reciprocal thrust of our enterprise. To try to catch as many as possible in our net, from the start it was obvious to Liria and to me that our book had to be written as accessibly as possible. As co-author, she had to be able to engage fully with every word in the book, so we decided to make it free from jargon, not to use complex concepts, not to engage in theoretical debates and not to quote any authors whose work Liria could not read. Our book would not include references or quotations, and in this we would depart from the standard in academic anthropology. I hoped that any anthropologists who read our book would look past the lack of these common props, and that they would be able to work out for themselves how it fits into the trajectory of the discipline. After all, I reasoned, reading is always a creative activity and readers always bring to it their previous knowledge. It turned out that my hopes were misplaced. Regularly, when I asked colleagues to comment on our drafts or presented them at seminars, I was chastised for not making our theoretical contribution explicit. Our story is moving and exciting, I was told, but what theoretical advances are Liria and I trying to make? And why not spell them out in conventional ways? By not referring to the work of scholars who have already dealt with similar themes, were we not negating their importance? Most recently, a reviewer who was asked to assess the manuscript objected strongly to our strategy, questioning whether this book ‘should be read and assessed as an academic work’ at all, and coming to the conclusion that it should not, precisely because of the lack of an explicit and comprehensive overview of anthropological literature. While writing and re-writing, we were given many suggestions that would help us correct these flaws and also allow the core of our text to remain accessible to Liria. I should summarise the debates for her, and we should place my theoretical arguments in an introduction, a preface or an epilogue, or else in appendices, or in extensive footnotes or endnotes—all of which I should write, without Liria, in the customary scholarly manner. Alternatively, we could divide the book throughout, with our dialogue on one side of the page and my separate analysis on the other. We resisted taking up any of these tactics because we believed that they would exclude Liria from large parts of our text, turning our dialogue and her insights into data for me to interpret on my own:

6  ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY 

149

once more, we would be retaking the separate roles of observer and observed. Yet I was also very concerned that, without the traditional scaffolding, the fact that Liria and I are indeed trying to talk to anthropology, that this is central to our purpose, would be missed. Apprehensive and frustrated, wondering whether we should not write for a popular audience instead, at one point I gave drafts of three chapters to read to non-anthropologist friends. Their responses were enthusiastic: they had been carried away by our story, had enjoyed themselves and could not wait to read the rest. Yet when I then sent them our introduction, the response changed: there was too much anthropology in the text and it was a boring distraction; this was no longer a book that they could have picked up at our local bookstore, the tale of two women fighting against the world. I felt that Liria and I were caught between a stone and a hard place. As we constructed each chapter, I struggled to strike a balance between narrative and analysis, between conveying the intensity of our experiences in an accessible manner and pointing to their social and cultural implications and to the relevance of our collaboration for the discipline. I regularly worried that we were drifting too much in one direction: either that my writing style was reverting to type and becoming too impenetrable, or else that the book as a whole was too simplistic and we were saying nothing of any anthropological value. As I write this, I worry still. We had several starts and stops, and we had to discard an almost complete draft and start again. As the time and energy that it took to work our way through these problems became longer and longer, I agonised that this short book would put my job at risk. Finally, to fulfil the requirements of my university, which demands that all academics publish scholarly work on an ongoing basis, I took a break from the book for well over a year to research and write two papers for publication in academic journals and so fulfil my quota. One dealt with the segregation of Gitanos by the state through housing and educational policies, taking Liria’s activist experiences as a starting point, and the other with the clash between the ideals of collaboration and the norms of academic writing, using this book as my case study. This time another reviewer objected to the fact that I was writing without Liria and doing so in a venue that was beyond her reach. And indeed, I was writing about Liria, her family and neighbours, single-authored articles in English, in the standard scholarly style, to be read by anthropologists. I felt that I was undermining whatever value and purpose our reciprocal work might have.

150  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

Maybe when I started writing I did not realise how much it would help me, and throughout the trajectory of the book it was like walking into a cave, where in the beginning it is quite dark and cold, but as you venture inside little by little you can find great treasures. Because to me, writing throughout all these years, since we began until now, has been very enriching and has revealed many things that I did not know were inside my mind. It has also developed my qualities, things that I had not realised I had the capacity to achieve, such as to give a class in the midst of a lot of anthropology students, as I did in Scotland, Budapest or Paris. The first thing that writing this book has done for me is to remove many fears from me. Because I have always thought that I was quite a useless child and later woman, without much intelligence. First, this was because when I was a child my eldest sister was the one who passed all her grades and with very good marks. And, as a grown-up, the father of my children used to tell me that I should not speak too much when I was in public with people, because I was very thick and I always stuck my foot in it. And so as not to fight I used not to say much. He erased me as a person. And the fact is that, when I started realising that people liked very much what I wrote—they would even praise my intelligence—my opinion of myself changed. And I think that this too is part of the love that God has for me, that He wanted me to love myself and to appreciate the qualities that He has given me. Because writing has enriched my life, as a person and human being. I remember on one of the occasions, in Budapest, when I finished giving a class all the teachers and students applauded, and then all the students would not stop asking me questions. And the director of the course in Budapest encouraged me to apply for a grant so that I could study there. All that was hidden in my mind came up to the surface because God gave me the opportunity to write this book, revealing a talent that was concealed, a talent that not even I knew that I had. And Paloma, and all the other people who have seen my work, think that it is good. And in this way inside me was created a confidence in myself, to be able to speak and write without fear of being rejected. I used to be frightened of everything, thinking that I did not know how to do anything. I never imagined that people would like so much what I wrote. The security I developed every time those people applauded us and congratulated us strengthened even more my faith in God. Because I cannot explain this: How can a person who has not had the opportunity to

6  ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY 

151

have anthropological studies until now reach as far as I have? Because it is part of God’s plan. He put gifts inside me that I had no chance to put in practice in my life, because the people around me made me feel that I had nothing to contribute. I know that it is thanks to Paloma’s determination and to my own effort that my voice is being heard like that of an anthropologist. But I want to insist: it was God’s plan to use Paloma in this way, so that today I can write this book. And the thing is that writing creates an addiction in me, so that when I start writing I do not want to stop. It is difficult to explain because when I was little I did not like studying, let alone writing, but now it transmits peace to me, because it is a way of expressing all that is in my heart. Now I want to tell it to the whole world, without thinking whether people will like it. There are only two places where I feel this conformity, and this peace, and the first is praying and the second is writing, because in both I express all that I have in my heart without hiding it. And at the same time my eyes slowly opened, to become kinder with myself, because writing has gradually taught me that things do not have to be just black or white: there are also blue, red and brown. And by getting to know my new world, and writing about all of us, I have come to realise that we humans often structure things strictly so that forgiveness is difficult to achieve. Writing and reflecting, I have realised that God is not like that. This book has made me even more compassionate, because I understand better both men and women, and the pain that we all go through, even though often when you talk with people you do not realise how much they suffer. And if I say that I understand better both men and women, it is because after getting to know the Payo life better, after writing and getting to know their lives close at hand, I started to open my eyes gradually. I realised that we all make mistakes in our lives, and that making errors is unavoidable, and that I used to confuse what my culture says is an evil with what God says is a sin. What I mean to say is that one thing is my culture, with its customs, and another different thing is God, who now I can understand is not tied to any culture, who does not judge us on the basis of our ethnicity or our colour. He taught me that He treats each person differently, and that on many occasions it is us who will not forgive ourselves, because we are so used to human beings judging and condemning so rapidly that we think God is the same. And when we

152  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

understand that He has no rancour, and that His love is above any kind of culture, ethnicity or religion, that is when we realise that He loves us just as we are. I have seen that the love of God is not only placed on Gitano persons, as I used to think before escaping, but it is on people of many different conditions. For me, this was amazing. So maybe because we have written this book other people will realise that, if they have God and they learn about other cultures, they will open to a version of life that is different from the one they have been used to. This makes us see the world from two different sides. On the one hand is the love of God, which is the most important. And on the other side is learning to love other cultures and not just our own. Liria and I decided early on to write about my role in her life, and about my own life, my beliefs and my ideas alongside hers. This reciprocity was the axis around which our project revolved, and I hoped that it would give us a unique vantage point from which to look at anthropology, at Gitanos and Payos, and at Spanish womanhood. Whereas for Liria our project has been invigorating because it has enabled her to speak herself, to address our readers directly instead of through my voice, for me the experience has gone in a rather different direction. I have gained some insight into what it may be like to be an informant, to be observed and defined by somebody else, and to see that definition reach an audience. It has been one of the most revealing and unsettling parts of our collaboration and has shifted my understanding of myself and of my past. Because Liria and I had no model to follow, because we did not know of any reciprocal book resembling ours, every decision we took about its shape and content felt like a risk. To me, making my experiences so prominent in our account was the most disquieting element of a very unreliable endeavour. This was partly because there is a strong worry among anthropologists around navel-gazing and self-indulgence. I had read prominent anthropologists whose work I respected warning others about the humiliation that a poorly written, ineffective self-revelation would entail. If an anthropologist were to write about their life, expose their pain or hardship, the warning went, they’d better not make it boring, or irrelevant to the argument, or both.3 I had also read wonderful, very moving, personal accounts of difficulties encountered by anthropologists, either during fieldwork or back at home. But, as Liria and I struggled to find our own voice and method, and as I stressed about our ability to produce a compelling read or make our contribution to anthropology clear, it was the

6  ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY 

153

mentions of texts flopping and of public embarrassment that obsessed me. Here I pondered whether Liria and I were not confronting a double standard in anthropology. Writing about her suffering was nothing new. There was no need to justify discussing her many hardships because, after all, that is what we anthropologists do: we often write about the pain of others, sometimes in dry, tedious, over- or under-theorised, or simply not-very-skilful ways. Sometimes too we judge our success as fieldworkers by the depth of our informants’ disclosures, and we are definitely not surprised to read about them in ethnographies. So why should it be so different from our own? Maybe it is not just a cliché to suggest that we may have inherited this reserve from the NorthEuro-American, stiff-upper-lipped ancestors of our discipline. Maybe we find our own middle-class lives grey, unremarkable and boring. Whatever the reason, I was ready to write and have Liria write about my participation in her life—how we met, the beginning of our friendship, my role in her elopement. But when, one day, out of the blue, I found myself talking to Liria about being sexually molested as a child, tape recorder running, the tables really began to turn. For Liria, the decision to write a chapter about our difficult first sexual experiences was essential to our reciprocal aims. It showed me as a human being who suffered just like her and was evidence that our project, indeed our very friendship, was not one-sided. I agreed but did not realise how gruelling the process would be. Playing our recordings and hearing myself telling Liria about my abuse, listening to her interpretations, transcribing and editing my own voice and hers, choosing what to leave in and what to cut out of the chapter, deciding how to present myself as well as the other people who participated in these events, trying to make the chapter readable and relevant, wondering what our readers would think about me and my family…it all added to a harrowing experience that lasted several months. I had never before given so much thought to what happened when I was a child. Talking and writing about it with Liria triggered the awareness that there was much about my childhood, and its effects, that I do not and cannot know. This lack has carved for itself a hollow in my sense of who I am. We finished the first draft of this chapter years before the #MeToo movement took off, before tens of thousands of women used social media to denounce their abuses. I had never heard of a scholar talking about a similar personal experience within an

154  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ academic context, though I am sure there must have been some. Early in 2015, I presented for the first time the chapter at a seminar. I was full of shame and uncertainty about my past and terrified that my audience would think that writing and talking about it was disagreeable, pointless or narcissistic. I feared that the fact that I was willing to speak about and include this in our book were themselves symptoms of my abuse, of a tendency towards exhibitionism that my experiences maybe had seeded. I also worried that the argument that Liria and I had tried to build around our teenage lives was not strong or persuasive enough to justify writing about them. Indeed, I struggled to formulate an argument at all. It seemed insufficient to point towards the patriarchy that characterises Spanish society, towards the parallels and differences between Liria’s life and mine, and towards the disjuncture between the account each gave of herself and how she was seen by the other. The fact that Liria’s interpretation of my life differed so fundamentally from my own added to my worries. I disliked the language she used, which seemed to me sensationalist and over the top. Her certainty that I felt guilt about not having resisted my abuser felt very distant from my belief that I had been groomed, and shocked me deeply. I did not recognise my experience in her descriptions, and very much wanted to push her to change her argument and to lower her emotional tone. And of course I wondered, often, whether she was not right, and I wrong. Ultimately, I knew that it was essential to allow Liria the space to interpret me, precisely because I have interpreted her so often with regard to experiences and events that have been so extremely difficult for her. Now that the book is almost finished and the inner whirlwind has lost its strength, I see that writing with Liria about my past has affected me in another way. I appreciate differently the trust that she placed in me, not so much during our collaboration when she had the chance to challenge what I wrote, but in the long earlier years when she showed me her life knowing that I would do with her story what I wanted. And I remember that it was not just Liria who talked to me or took me into her home, but so many others—her sisters and parents, her friends and her neighbours. So many people, giving me the gift of their lives and their knowledge, so many Gitanos supporting and protecting a Paya. And lately too, all those who have helped us write this book, including people in my own family. I understand better now Liria’s awe at fieldwork and at anthropology. As she says, it is not the anthropologist’s adventure that is

6  ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY 

155

remarkable, to enter a new world, but the generosity of her informants to expect the best when taking a stranger in, to say ‘Here is my life, here are my worries and my hopes, my insights. Make them your own.’ I think I grasp how very brave Liria has been, examining her life in such depth for this book. And I have a new love for my discipline, not just because of the knowledge it gives us about the human condition—the intricate, rigorous filigree of questioning and interpretation that it has produced—but because it seeds so many of these moments of encounter.

***** I had thought that, as we came to the end of our book, I would be able to reach a sense of completion to our work and our stories. I believed that I would present a list of conclusions (‘This I have learnt…’), and that I would describe how we had overcome our hurdles on the way to success. In fact, it is impossible for me to pretend that our story is finished, and that I have definite answers to the questions that came up as Liria and I worked on our project. And I write this not with regret but with relief and ease. I do not have a recipe for writing reciprocally to share with other anthropologists. This book has turned out to be an experiment that cannot be repeated, instead of a blueprint or a programme. I hope it will be a provocation, good to think with, as the anthropological saying goes, and good to teach with. Because that is how it has worked for me. The questions that I have struggled with have obliged me to look for what I value about anthropology and about our project, what I would like to continue exploring and developing. Liria and I have tried, many times and very hard, to find order in our experiences, to say, ‘This was so, it happened for this and that reason, it could not have happened any other way.’ I think we looked for certainty and reassurance, maybe for forgiveness too, for ourselves and for others. As an Evangelical Christian, Liria believes that this order exists and manifests the will of God and that it simply needs to be uncovered. And as an anthropologist, I am trained to look for definite interpretations. Too often in my work, I have pushed doubts aside, hiding or downplaying them in my search for authority and theoretical finesse, thinking that I had to conform to the expectations of academia. I hardly noticed that I was doing this and when I did, I chose to ignore my misgivings. And in my life, uncertainty has often frightened me deeply, and I have many times thought of the future with apprehension.

156  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ But talking with Liria, writing together and apart, feeling all the overwhelming feelings that came up when working, I have confronted how much more evanescent, fluid and ungraspable experience is than narrative and analysis, even while it feels so certain and overwhelming. I hope that Liria and I have managed to communicate something of this mixed awareness. I know that, even now that our account is finally all written down, it is in many ways still tentative and precarious, it is as momentary as definite and true. I think that this fragility gives our text strength, and I wish that it will be visible to our readers. Accompanying and being accompanied by Liria, I have started to appreciate that the questions that we cannot easily answer, the knots that we struggle to untie, bring me closer to the complexity of human life and to the thrill and beauty of my discipline. These knots gather the threads of central problems. And, as a friend looking upon my life and hers, I think that learning to live with our doubts and our uncertainties is bringing Liria and me closer to peace, acceptance and forgiveness.

Now that I am trying to finish writing the book, I think about many other people, mainly women, who have gone through difficult situations, just like me, people who have found walls all around them, and who have seen that there is no way out. I think also that there must be anthropologists who have found themselves in situations like these. The great effort that Paloma and I have made with this book has been to fight for a world where there will be more understanding towards women. I do not mean to say that Gitana women must break with their culture, or with who they are. I do not wish to be a revolutionary who incites Gitana women, or women from any ethnicity, to abandon their families to get on with their lives. Don’t misunderstand me: I am proud of being Gitana. But I do encourage women not to allow themselves to be controlled by anybody. And I want people in Spain to become aware of these issues so that we women will not feel so neglected by society and by justice. Over the years, I have realised that society does not change overnight, but that people do change as in my case, and slowly the world does change, and our way of thinking, even if this may lead us far from where we started off. I have changed my way of being Gitana, and Paloma has changed her way of being an anthropologist. We have not stopped being what we are, but we do not see things the way we used to. I know that without God and without Paloma’s friendship and without the people of my church, I would not have arrived at where I am

6  ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT ANTHROPOLOGY 

157

today. The people of my church made me recover peace in my heart and forgiveness in my life, and alongside them was Paloma’s love. She did not tire to tell me every day that it was not my fault, that the circumstances had led me to abandon my children. It was God who put them all in my path, and who made me a warrior who shouts out of the deepest silence saying no more being quiet, no more looking away when people suffer, saying that union with others gives us strength, and that although at times we may feel that nobody listens to us God does see us and He acts in His own moment. I do not want to give in. For this reason, when I believe that I am losing a fight I simply wait in the Lord and I trust that He will give the necessary strength to regain trust and achieve new victories. I want God to continue to open paths so that people like Paloma and other anthropologists will believe in doing collaborative work with people who do not have the flexibility or the help that is needed to do this kind of work on their own. So that voices like mine will not remain in silence. If this kind of work is not done, in this way, through collaboration between the anthropologist and the informant, it is not possible to reveal what happens in the two lives. It seems very important to me also to be able to see the life of the anthropologist. If you do not open up to your informant, you cannot truly know your informant. If I tell you all about myself, and I only see you with your armour on, your happy life with a husband, and work, and children, your life too will remain silent. There will not be authentic communication because of the fear that anthropologists have to reveal their suffering to their informants and to the world. For all of these reasons, it is so important that a woman, an informant like me, should dare to fight, to speak up about her problems and allow others to read about them, because I have nothing to lose, and I want that what I have endured will not happen again, and I want to demonstrate that there are different paths to the ones people always take. Not only it is possible for a Gitana woman to achieve what I have achieved, confronting her family, but also it is possible for an anthropologist and an informant to unite their voices. So our book is not just about us. It teaches how unity comes about so that an anthropology and a friendship that are directed by the heart can exist. And I believe that it is God who has made this possible. Because collaboration is the way that God has created so that all those who open their hearts and tell their lives will not feel excluded, even if they are not anthropologists. And in this way, we will be able to help each other and

158  P. GAY Y BLASCO AND L. HERNÁNDEZ

make anthropology more interesting. Unity is what gives us strength, and two things like God and anthropology, together, can cross borders without ever being stopped. But to achieve this you must take risks, knowing that the path is not easy.

Notes 1. See, for example, Lassiter (1998, 11; 2001, 142), Lawless (1993, 2000). 2. See, for example, Rappaport (2007, 2008). 3. Behar (1996, 13–14).

References Behar, Ruth. 1996. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Boston: Beacon Press. Lassiter, Luke Eric. 1998. The Power of Kiowa Song: A Collaborative Ethnography. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 2001. “‘Reading Over the Shoulders of Natives’ to ‘Reading Alongside Natives,’ Literally: Toward a Collaborative and Reciprocal Ethnography.” Journal of Anthropological Research 57: 137–149. Lawless, Elaine. 1993. Holy Women, Wholly Women: Sharing Ministries Through Life Histories and Reciprocal Ethnography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. 2000. “‘Reciprocal’ Ethnography: No One Said It Was Easy.” Journal of Folklore Research 37: 197–205. Rappaport, Joanne. 2007. “Anthropological Collaborations in Colombia.” In Anthropology Put to Work, Les Field and Richard G. Fox, editors. Oxford: Berg. ———. 2008. “Beyond Participant Observation: Collaborative Ethnography as Theoretical Innovation.” Collaborative Anthropologies 1: 1–31.

Epilogue

Afterwards I have just talked with Liria. It’s December 2018, just a few days short of Christmas. We are hurrying to finish the book before my sabbatical runs out and are on the phone every day. Halfway through a conversation about ‘God’s chapter,’ I have asked Liria about her plans for Nochebuena, Christmas Eve, the biggest Spanish holiday and the most joyful and riotous of the Gitano feast days. ‘I’m not celebrating this year, I don’t have the stomach for it,’ she says. ‘What’s the point? It’s the first Christmas ever that I will be alone. Truly alone. On the 7th of January the divorce comes through.’ I press her, suggesting the homes of a handful of friends from her Baptist church, but she is resolute and I can tell that she is truly dejected. I am heartbroken for Liria. She and Younes finally married in November 2015, but they separated for good a little over two years later, just days before her father’s death. In 2018, she has had to contend with the definite end of the relationship that led her away from her family and her people, and with the knowledge that her father died without her. When Liria’s sisters begged their elderly uncles to allow her to go to the hospital to say goodbye, they refused, adamantly. Liria was in Scotland when he finally passed away, already reeling under the collapse of her marriage, and I saw her fall apart in my home, screaming her anger and her grief. She had believed to the very last minute that she would be there. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7

159

160  Epilogue I was surprised that the uncles would stand so firm because, over the last three years, Liria’s younger relatives had very slowly started to thaw. Liria remains a dishonoured woman, the subject of distrust, whose shame still stains her family. But by the time of the death, the women in her family were already allowed to see her, even if only in shopping centres or in cafeterias. I believe a turning point came when one of Liria’s younger relatives herself committed an offence and was thrown out of her home. The mother, desperate to know that the teenager was sleeping rough, asked Liria to take her in. Eventually, the father found out. Once he allowed his wife to be in contact with Liria, the other men gradually followed suit. Over the time it has taken us to write this book Liria has fought so very hard to reclaim a place in her children’s lives. David, her middle son, needed to undergo dangerous surgery two years ago. The extended family and many other acquaintances spent their days at the hospital, keeping David and each other company, but his young wife let Liria in through a back door late every night. Liria sat by her son’s side and mothered him in secret until dawn. Liria fought the hardest battle over Rubén, who was just seven when she left. After Liria gathered her courage and confronted Pedro and the rest of the family in court, a Payo judge dictated that the child should live with his father but that Liria should meet him once a week. The family had no option but to take Rubén to a mediation centre. So it was under the gaze of a Payo social worker and a child psychologist that Liria embraced her child again. The arrangement did not last long because the centre lost its funding and closed, but Liria had a foot in the door. These days, Liria is also in regular contact with her eldest son, Josué, even visiting him and his children in their home. For the first time since Liria escaped, this Christmas she will spend with them the night of the 5th of January, la noche de Reyes, when the three Wise Men from the New Testament bring Spanish children their gifts. Rubén will also be there. Liria sees Rubén when he visits Josué or one of his aunts, maybe a couple of times per month. They call her and she drops everything to rush to Villaverde, hoping not to run into any Gitano acquaintances on the way. Liria still relies on the goodwill of her close kin to have time with her child even though Rubén is grown now, already seventeen. Some days it seems to me that not much has changed since Liria escaped, that her life is still an uphill struggle, and that her position as outsider defines the shape of her days and her sense of herself. Then I remember all the times that I sat with Liria as she cried, thinking that her family would never forgive her and she would never again see her

Epilogue

  161

sons. That she is now able to help organise a grandchild’s birthday or make sure that Rubén has new clothes for an upcoming wedding seem such astonishing achievements. Every little moment that Liria can spend with her children is an event to be celebrated. And I remember the rest of Liria’s accomplishments, which have been remarkable. Determined to move with ease in the Payo world, to become financially secure, Liria has been on several adult education courses, learning basic computer skills, improving her literacy, studying to get her primary education certificate almost forty years after she left school. Against all odds, in spite of the huge rates of unemployment in Spain, she found her first full-time job cleaning for a large supermarket chain and then just recently she moved into her first white-collar position, as a receptionist in an office building. Liria has many health problems and had prayed for a long time for an opportunity like this, to have a job which would not involve physical labour. To manage all this, she has had to fight against so much prejudice outside and within her community, and against practical difficulties which at times seem insurmountable. Liria and I have travelled together, giving talks about our work at universities in different European countries. She has taught undergraduate and postgraduate students, discussing with them our project, her long experience as an anthropologist’s informant and her views on the continued segregation of Gitano children in schools and on the position of Gitanos within Spanish society. And only recently, we received two small grants to study the trajectories of other ostracised women, focusing on the extent to which the institutions of the state are prepared to provide them with the support they need. Liria is doing all these interviews on her own, travelling up and down Spain to meet Gitana women whose stories in many ways parallel hers. We often joke that Liria has become what she calls una antropóloga de verdad, a real anthropologist. In fact, I believe that Liria has been a real anthropologist all along. More than any other life I know, hers has been driven by a deep thirst to understand and embrace the diversity of human experience.

On some occasions, I ask myself what Paloma would do if she could go back in time, to when she saw herself involved in everything that happened with my escape, when she placed herself by my side, what would she do? Sometimes I have the feeling that she fears that she will never manage to restore her relationship with my family, and regain their trust, and I think that this may create in her a conflict, doubts about her

162  Epilogue

choices all these years. And it is true that until today Paloma has not seen anybody in my family, with the exception of my son David one time. She has also talked on the phone with my son Josué, another time with my cousin Teresa who thanked her for taking care of me. But I believe that, deep down, they are happy that Paloma continued being my friend after so many years. Of course, at the time of the escape they expected Paloma to make me change my ideas, and she didn’t do it. And although at the time they were angry because she didn’t change my decision, they are grateful that Paloma did not leave me on my own. Later they have realised that, if Paloma had turned her back on me, they would have been disappointed in her, they would have thought that she was not the friend that they thought she was. What struck me most was the insistence of my cousin Teresa that I should go to Scotland with Paloma when my father was about to die. She said, ‘Stay with Paloma until everything is over, it is better that you stay with her at this time, she is the most adequate person so that you will not feel alone, and in her company it is as if you were with me.’ Because Teresa knows Paloma well, and she knew that when the news of my father’s death arrived, Paloma would understand my pain better than anybody else. And my father too, before dying he used to say that he didn’t want to talk with me, but that he needed to know that I was well and that he was glad that I was close to Paloma because she was the nearest I had to my own sisters. And since I have started to be in contact again with them, my children, my sisters and my cousins also ask me about Paloma, and Paloma has spoken on the phone with my son Josué and on some occasions has sent presents to my granddaughter, dolls with their dresses because my granddaughter likes sewing. And my grandchildren have a lot of curiosity about Paloma, and I show them photos of Paloma and her children. The fact is that Paloma loves my sons and my sons still love Paloma. For these reasons, I think that soon Paloma will be able to recover her friendship with my family. And so gradually, thanks to God and to our insistence, slowly the bonds that were undone are being repaired. And for this reason, I worry about what we may lose with this book. Because imagine how my family will feel if they learn that I have talked about all the moments when they searched for me and forced me to return, and everything that happened later. Even though we have used pseudonyms and disguised their personalities completely, they will think

Epilogue

  163

it is wrong on my part to tell my story, as if I was proud of my sins. Since normally a Gitana woman does not display her dishonour or her family to the world nor does she speak of this type of events or circumstances. Yet I do not hesitate to continue ahead and get the book published. Because maybe by writing a book about our intertwined lives we will push people to become aware of the needs of so many women who have gone through or are going through critical moments, and who have not had support from society as it was my case and so many others. If I decided to tell my story, it is in order to convince other families, in cases like mine, to do what they can to be more flexible, especially if there are children involved. Because it was really hard for me and my boy to manage to be together again. And it is always them, the children, the ones who suffer because of the actions of the grown-ups. And thanks to my effort and my fight over the years, I managed to recover my boy and later my older sons. Paloma and I have decided that our next project will be working with Gitana women in situations of social and family exclusion, in cases as complicated as mine. We want to open up our study, supporting other Gitana women who see themselves ostracised and kept away from their families and children, and who have lived long years of banishment as happened to me. And we have shared our project with NGOs, so that whatever we find out will not become stuck in oblivion. Instead, we will stir people’s consciences and support with energy these women who feel helpless, exiled from their families and from society. And we hope that all these other voices that are silent will come to light. Paloma and I believe that, if we unite and inform society about what happens, this will not just help a handful of Gitana women. We will be defending the human rights of all women and their equality.

Appendix: Devising

a

Reciprocal Genre

The book that Liria and I have written is more than an experiment in ethnographic writing, more than an attempt to stretch the boundaries of the ethnographic genre. It is an experiment in ethnographic being and knowing. We have taken the kinds of exchanges that most often remain in the field and have extended them, creating for them new forms and contexts. In the process, we have confronted uncertainty, ambiguity and doubt—our difficulties in discerning paths and asserting truths, our disagreements with each other—and turned them into unstable foundations for our stories. In all of this, Liria and I have been driven by our friendship, by our need and our habit to listen and speak to each other. But our venture has been fuelled also by our commitment to anthropology. The dissatisfactions that permeated our previous practice as informant and ethnographer made us want to find a new method and to devise our own genre. Yet these concerns were not just ours, nor did they emerge only out of our particular history: as teacher and researcher, I found them reflected in the writings of other anthropologists. So as Liria and I attempted to find our own way of working and our voice, I looked beyond our dialogue to discussions in the discipline. A small number of books and articles pushed themselves to the front of my mind as our project developed: I kept copies by my desk, and leafing through them helped me find a way forward many times. They provide scholarly roots and context to our undertaking. Yet they are very difficult for Liria to engage with fully: most are available only in English, and even

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7

165

166  Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre in translation they demand a familiarity with the history and language of academic anthropology that can only be achieved through lengthy training. We have decided that I will acknowledge their relevance to our project here—briefly and in an appendix as opposed to in more standard places such a theoretical introduction or conclusion—so as to protect the integrity of our dialogue. What follows is not a thorough overview of every scholarly debate that is or could be related to our work. Nor is it an attempt at summing up the theoretical state of play or at demonstrating how our collaboration advances or challenges the work of others. It is simply an honest and grateful looking back at the handful of texts that have guided me, and through me Liria too, in the crafting of our book, a brief genealogical exercise that we hope will be useful in particular to teachers and students. ***** In Chapter 1, I have described Liria’s first texts, written in 2009 when she first eloped and I was looking for ways to justify handing over to her what was left of my yearly university travel allocation, as the origin point of our project. But I could just as easily have treated these texts as ethnographic data. If I read a collaborative potential into Liria’s writing, it was because by then I was already worried about the irrelevance of my scholarly work to the people of the ghetto. In the mid-2000s, I had been working with my husband, Huon Wardle, on the first edition of How to Read Ethnography.1 Analysing the conventions of the genre for our textbook, I was struck by the hierarchies of knowledge that separate and rank anthropologists and their subjects—for example, in acknowledgements where informants are often thanked anonymously and as a group, whereas academics are thanked individually and by name.2 A brief sentence by Stephen Gudeman and Alberto Rivera touched me deeply, leading me to see fieldwork dialogues as part of a much larger conversation that transcends anthropology, but one in which not everyone is able to participate to the same extent: ‘Good conversations have no ending, and often no beginning. They have participants and listeners, but belong to no one, nor to history. Inscriptions of them broaden the community of conversationalists but close the discussion to those without access to the written word.’3 Huon and I examined how the act of academic writing works to exclude and how, as a distinctive ‘mode of knowledge,’ ethnography depends on the creation of a singular authorial persona for the

Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre

  167

anthropologist.4 This ‘fieldworker-cum-theorist,’ as James Clifford puts it, is in charge of the ‘virtuoso orchestration of the text’5 and expected to deliver for readers a unique and innovative perspective on the world and on anthropology. Framing this expectation are not just intellectual and aesthetic imperatives, but institutional dynamics of academic hierarchy and inequality: the struggle for individual advancement and prestige. So writing ethnography most often involves a transformation of the role of informants, from active co-creators of anthropological knowledge in the field to ethnographic data to be deployed by the anthropologist as academic authority.6 Joanne Rappaport conveys this strikingly when she says that anthropologists become anthropophagous, cannibals who consume the knowledge and experiences of their research participants for their own purposes.7 When Liria and I started working together in 2009, I tried to find ways of doing and writing ethnography which might depart from or subvert this pattern and allow her the space to develop her contribution. To start with, I focused on feminist life histories: they purported to convey their protagonists’ distinctive voices and often described complex encounters between women anthropologists and women informants in ways that spoke directly to our friendship. Ruth Behar’s8 and Karen McCarthy Brown’s9 depictions of the interplays of friendship, patronage and instrumentality in their partnerships with Esperanza Hernández and Alourdes Lovinski were particularly illuminating and I kept returning to them through the years. Both authors tackle the multiple inequalities that mould these relationships without producing unidimensional or reductionist narratives of exploitation. Theirs are accounts of changing entanglements—halls of mirrors10— where the colonising role of the ethnographer and her writing is unflinchingly opened up to scrutiny, but where informants are savvy strategists and ironic commentators on the anthropologists and on anthropology, instead of passive subjects of enquiry. These two texts echoed what I was slowly realising as I worked with Liria: that our dialogues would necessarily be multi-layered, slippery and often opaque, and that reducing our twenty-year-long conversation to a cohesive account would be impossible. And they were helpful in other ways: McCarthy Brown because, weaving ethnography with fiction, she exposes the edges of the anthropological approach, the places where it fails to do justice to lived experience; and Behar because of her resolve to explore her own life and her own vulnerability and investigate their ethnographic relevance. Yet both Behar and McCarthy Brown stay in full control of their texts and the voices

168  Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre of Hernández and Lovinski, strong and distinctive as they are, work to showcase the anthropologists’ intellectual flair and their authority within the discipline. Reading them, I feared that Liria and I would not manage to push beyond our predetermined roles. I felt the same apprehension when turning to another book that had moved me intensely, João Biehl’s Vita. I was awed by the anthropologist’s skill in conveying to readers how his friend Catarina retained her agency in the ‘context of annihilation’11 in which she lived and died, and by his tenderness when presenting for analysis the deepest human suffering. But I wondered why Catarina’s devastating poems had been included at the end instead of the start of the monograph, and whether and how the ethnographic genre might also have silenced her. Likewise, I welcomed but was not comforted by Bruce Albert’s frank recognition that, because of his extensive work on the words of Yanomamö leader Davi Kopenawa, the latter’s narrative ‘incorporates a double “I”’ so that Kopenawa’s eloquent first-person voice belongs also to Albert, ‘his editorial alter ego.’12 Behar’s account of the process of transforming Hernández’s words into a life story encapsulated many of my worries: ‘It was up to me, as the researcher with access to the resources of bookmaking, to translate her spoken words into a commodity. In my multiple roles as priest, interviewer, collector, transcribe, translator, analyst, academic, connoisseur, editor and peddler of Esperanza’s words this side of the border, I have had to cut, cut, and cut away at our talk to make it fit between the covers of a book, and even more importantly, to make it recognizable as a story, and a particular kind of story, a life history. Although Esperanza in her own life is an extremely talented storyteller, the text of her life certainly did not come readymade.’13 It seemed to me that the problem was not with Hernández’s words, or with Liria’s for that matter, but with the perceived obligation to pour them into a particular mould. Pacing the stacks of the library, I came across a volume by literary theorists Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. They discussed autobiographies co-produced by illiterate indigenous women and scholars, and asked the question that obsessed me: ‘Can a colonized subject speak in or through cultural formations other than those of the colonial masters? Is she always already spoken for?’14 Their answer was not only that we need to pay attention to power, trust and narrative authority, but that we must ‘acknowledge the importance of oral cultural forms and attend to the speakerly text, rather than remain preoccupied with the writerly effects of narrative.’15 I was stunned by the ramifications and promise of this

Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre

  169

statement, by the fact that it demanded changes in the attitudes and expectations of readers and not just in authorial practices. Could Liria and I fashion our own ethnographic genre, our own speakerly text? What would it look like? How would we do it? And who would then want to publish or read our writing? To find ways to work with Liria’s distinctive communication style and with her critical stance—with her determination to make sense of anthropology in her own terms and to demand that the discipline listens to her—I looked also to the very broad field of collaborative anthropology. I found many examples of ethnographers and locals devising together ways of doing and sharing research that bridged their contrasting needs, aims and aesthetics. In collaborative ethnographic writing, in particular, there was a confirmation that Liria could indeed take an active role as co-constructor and co-author of our anthropological book. This is how Eric Lassiter describes it: ‘Collaborative ethnography invites commentary from our consultants and seeks to make that commentary overtly part of the ethnographic text as it develops. In turn, this negotiation is reintegrated back into the fieldwork process itself. Importantly, the process yields texts that are co-conceived or co-written with local communities of collaborators and consider multiple audiences outside the confines of academic discourse, including local constituencies.’16 Lassiter’s multiple and wide-ranging projects,17 but also the work of Joanne Rappaport,18 Les Field and his collaborators,19 and others, provided detailed descriptions of the ingenious processes through which scholars and local interlocutors worked together, and of the practical and intellectual displacements, compromises, losses and rewards that this involved. These authors also suggested possibilities for innovating on the life story format and on the ethnographic genre in ways that addressed many of the challenges that faced our project. So, for example, in an early classic of collaborative ethnography, Birds of My Kalam Country, Ian Saem Majnep and Ralph Bulmer20 used two different fonts to flag to the reader their distinct knowledges: Liria and I borrowed their strategy directly. In Holy Women, Wholly Women, Elaine Lawless21 alternated lengthy first-person accounts by each of her subjects with more standard ethnographic chapters where, nonetheless, her conclusions were subjected to their analysis. Les Field and his collaborators22 co-authored a polyphonic ethnography, woven out of contrasting narratives and viewpoints from which to examine the importance of abalone for native peoples in California. Encouraged by this diversity, my confidence to experiment grew. Liria and I decided that each of our chapters would deploy format and voice

170  Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre differently so as to convey our two outlooks and the multiple ways we have approached each other over the years—through dialogues, letters, interviews and so on. These collaborative works were useful to us because they undermined the notion that a single, authoritative, scholarly account is needed to deliver ethnographic knowledge. At the core of the approach is the recognition that local categories, understandings and practices may destabilise methods, concepts and aesthetics that we scholars take for granted. For Rappaport, this way of working demands ‘a conscious and active commitment on the part of academics to situate indigenous interpretations on an equal footing with academic analysis, to accept both hold significant—but different—truths.’23 Just recently I have returned to this insight when reflecting on Liria’s reluctance to take the comments of our manuscript’s anonymous reviewer at face value, as would be my inclination, and in particular the suggestion that our draft failed to acknowledge the power differentials between us. Liria insists that what is important is the capacity of our friendship to undermine hierarchies as well as our shifting dependence on each other at different points in our lives. She refuses to see inequality as unidirectional, monolithic or static, and she places more emphasis on the capacity to provide emotional support than on economic or social capital. I am reminded of my obligation to take her knowledge seriously precisely in order to confront these power differentials. Yet, as Elaine Lawless stresses, there is more at stake here than a readiness to present side by side ‘parallel versions of the same “reality.”’24 Instead, Lassiter, Lawless, Field, Rappaport and others talk about their ethnographic collaborations as ‘reciprocal’ in the sense that they developed their aims, analytical frameworks and conclusions through the scrutiny of their partners, whether or not these become co-authors. For Lawless, this is an ‘inherently feminist and humanistic’ approach that moves beyond reflexivity and towards ‘dialogue as the key to understanding and illumination.’25 Similarly, Rappaport’s deployment of the concept of ‘being-looked-at-ness’26—‘a fundamental element of collaboration, forcing the external ethnographer to look at herself, just as indigenous participants do’—suggested an openness, an acknowledgement of the transformative impact of the other’s gaze that captured something essential about our own encounter. Nonetheless, there were important differences between how Liria and I were beginning to practise reciprocity—and its twin reflexivity— and the methods of these researchers. I have often been told that Liria is unusual among anthropologists’ informants because of her interest

Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre

  171

in me and in the discipline, and our choice to open up my life and not just my analysis to her was indeed unique. This was a decision with political and not just scholarly implications, an attempt to put in practice what others have only dared to ‘playfully propose’: to try to devise our own ‘Gadžology,’ as Heather Tidrick calls it, ‘the study of nonRoma, or gadže, from a Romani point of view.’27 Since the nineteenth century, non-Roma scholars have produced authoritative texts that present the Roma to the world, often as ‘exotic Others in the heart of Europe,’28 while Roma, in particular those without a formal education, have very rarely had the opportunity to challenge these depictions or indeed return the enquiry. In the collaborative texts I was reading, reciprocity was restricted to ‘co-theorising’:29 the ethnographic focus stayed firmly on the collaborator’s life or world, and by contrast, it was only the anthropologist’s analysis that was open to the questioning of locals. Our decision to build on Liria’s sense of her anthropological orientation to the world, and on my willingness to become her informant, did not fit easily into these parameters. Here Lassiter’s choice of the term ‘consultants’ to refer to his interlocutors30 seemed to embody a business-like quality to the relationship that was very different from the intimate character of the reciprocal writing that Liria and I were beginning to produce. Liria was adamant that our project demanded that I acknowledge my pain and make it available to her investigation: ‘If I tell you all about myself, and I only see you with your armour on, your happy life with a husband, and work, and children, your life too will remain silent. There will not be authentic communication because of the fear that anthropologists have to reveal their suffering to their informants and to the world.’ I was sceptical about this perspective and worried about how it would be interpreted by my peers. I read and re-read Behar’s The Vulnerable Observer, where she argues that personal disclosures must always advance a text’s argument, and warns anthropologists that a ‘boring self-revelation, one that fails to move the reader, is more than embarrassing; it is humiliating.’31 I worked hard at making the methodological and ethnographic necessity of our reciprocal approach visible in our texts and at constructing a narrative that would do justice to the nuances of our relationship. And I fretted that Liria’s emphasis on our common human hardship and on the similarities between our womanly lives might mask the very tangible inequalities between us and offend the intersectional sensibilities of feminist anthropology. In fact, as Liria and I interviewed and observed each other, and as we commented on each other’s lives and personalities for our readers,

172  Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre it became increasingly obvious that our interpretations and outlook sometimes converged and sometimes diverged drastically. Our understandings of the purposes of the book itself, and of how and why we should write it, also overlapped only partially and frequently stood in tension. I was reminded of Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston’s candid account of the struggles that undermined her ethnographic and theatrical collaboration with Polish Roma women, and in particular of the clashes between their very distinct perceptions of the aims of their play.32 I realised how deeply our differences ran when reading Kathleen Sands’ account of her failed attempt at writing the life story of Theodore Rios, as a young anthropologist in the 1970s.33 Sands’ finegrained telling of the very different ways the two of them envisioned what it was to live and tell a life, and of the misunderstandings and silences that constrained their dialogues, brought home how much I had overlooked in my work with Liria. I saw Sands’s book as a warning of what could happen to our project, and it horrified me. Each interaction between anthropologist and collaborator, Sands cautioned, each written word, can be ethically and intellectually treacherous, and risks leading to errors and dead-ends. But she also gave me a method, a way forward. Like Sands, we could attempt an experiment that did not sidestep the problems that faced us but brought them instead into full view. We could jump right into the unresolvable, fruitful complexities involved in reciprocal writing, in friendship, in mutual knowing.34 Changing my disposition, my way of being a scholar and a friend, so as to acknowledge and foreground the intractability of collaboration and of experience was not straightforward or fast: it involved an emotional and not just intellectual maturation that developed at its own pace and was not always conscious. Once the process began, however, I started to identify similar themes in many of the texts that I had already read. In Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s analysis of international development, for example, I learnt about collaborations that ‘bring misunderstandings into the core of the alliance,’ about collaboration ‘with friction at its heart.’35 Tsing reminded me of the need to be attentive to the productivity and fruitfulness of our own friction, but also to the erasures it might enact, its concrete enabling and disabling effects, its embeddedness in inequalities that our work itself might reproduce. My disagreements with Liria, like our differential abilities to persuade and resist each other at various points, gradually became not obstacles but welcome elements of our dialogue, grist to the mill, and we began to work with what Lassiter calls ‘the force of difference,’36

Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre

  173

rather than against it. Meanwhile, in our conversations and our texts, we became more willing to approach knottier subjects, unhappier periods of our lives, and do it knowing that our understanding of them might not reach satisfactory or comforting conclusions. I was encouraged by Paul Stoller’s insistence that memorable ethnographies necessarily ‘grapple with the things most fundamentally human—love and loss, fear and courage, fate and compassion.’37 As well as demanding that we devise new ways of thinking about and writing ethnography—indeed new ways of being anthropologists—the evolution of our project also required us to work out how we wanted to think and write about Gitanos and Payos. Until Liria eloped from Villaverde and I was drawn so dramatically into the conflict with her family, my writing had adhered to the then-dominant way of approaching Roma in anthropology: I was preoccupied primarily with how, as a collective, Gitanos resist assimilation into an aggressive dominant society and reproduce their shared identity.38 In this task, the focus of my earlier work was placed on the community and its world view, and I saw individuals primarily as parts of it. Like most other anthropologists working with Roma, I treated singular lives, including that of Liria and her family members, as exemplars or case studies, as evidence of these broader processes. Then I witnessed Liria’s complex separation from her family and her people, how her sense of herself evolved unevenly over the years, and her difficulties as she attempted to survive among Payos. Liria’s apparent capacity to engage the world so differently from her close relatives pushed me to pay much more attention to individuality, creativity and agency than I had before. Was she really that different from the people who had surrounded her for so many years? In what ways? What propelled each one of them at different times? How should we disentangle autonomy from constraint, compliance from resistance? It was in the work of Aspasia Theodosiou that I found a fruitful proposal: to recognise the experience of being Roma, not as a given, but as ambiguous and contradictory, a permanent ‘condition of beingin-between’ that continually demanded to be resolved.39 And it wasn’t only anthropologists and their texts that pushed me to acknowledge the ‘provisional nature of meaning in a life,’ as Sands so pithily puts it.40 The writings of two Buddhist authors, Pema Chödrön41 and Thich Nhat Hanh,42 were also crucial: both emphasise the necessity to embrace rather than resist uncertainty and impermanence as key elements of human experience. Listening to the recordings of my conversations with Liria with their work in mind, I became aware of the many ways each of us attempted to construct

174  Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre definite interpretations of our lives and our environments, and also of the unstable and precarious character of our accounts and experiences. Chödrön’s question, ‘What does it feel like to be human in this ambiguous, groundless state?’43 seemed to me to encompass something essential about the nature of Liria’s trajectory, and my own, that I wanted to make visible through our writing. Here Thich Nhat Hanh’s separation between intellectual concept and experiential insight44 helped me accept the limitations of written language and of academic discourse, and pushed me to attempt to express what Liria and I cannot fully grasp as much as we think we understand well. It was after we had submitted our final draft to our publisher that I was asked to review a collection of essays that shared our purpose to write about what unsettles and escapes, what struggles to be defined, and not just about what feels or is made to appear certain. Like Liria and me, the members of the Paper Boat Collective45 aim to push the ambiguity and uncertainty of experience, its unyielding and ungraspable qualities, to the front of anthropological enquiry. They too recognise that, to achieve these aims, we must challenge the generic constraints of ethnography and so take risks with our texts and with our relationships in the academy and in the field, with our very sense of self. But it is their commitment to writing in ways that are openended, suggestive and questioning rather than assertive that I appreciate the most. I absorb this book into our genealogy, even though I read it so very late in our journey, because it indicates that the method and orientation that I struggled to develop with Liria is not just ours, that it embodies or reflects an emerging sensibility in twenty-first-century anthropology.

Notes

1. Gay y Blasco and Wardle (2007). 2. Gay y Blasco and Wardle (2019, 170ff.). 3. Gudeman and Rivera (1990). 4. Gay y Blasco and Wardle (2007, 141). 5. Clifford (1983, 139). 6. Gay y Blasco and Wardle (2019, 169). 7. Rappaport (2005, 84). 8. Behar (1993). 9. McCarthy Brown (1991). 10. Behar (1993, 273). 11. Biehl (2013 [2005], 11). 12. Kopenawa and Albert (2013, 445–446).



Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre

  175

13. Behar (1993, 13). 14. Smith and Watson (1998, 28). 15. Smith and Watson (1998, 28). 16. Lassiter (2005, 16). 17. Lassiter (1998), Lassiter, Ellis and Kotay (2002), Lassiter, Goodall, Campbell and Johnston (2004). 18. Rappaport (2005, 2007, 2008). 19. Field et al. (2008). 20. Majnep and Bulmer (1977). 21. Lawless (1993). 22. Field et al. (2008). 23. Rappaport (2005, 85). 24. Lawless (2000, 200). 25. Lawless (1993, 5). 26.  This was developed by cultural critic Rey Chow (1995, 180), in Rappaport (2007, 37). 27. Tidrick (2010). 28. Harper (2012). 29. Rappaport (2008). 30. Lassiter (2005, 13–14). 31. Behar (1996, 13–14). 32. Kazubowski-Houston (2010, 191). 33. Rios and Sands (2000). 34. Rios and Sands (2000, xi). 35. Tsing (2005, 246–247). 36. Lassiter (2008). 37. Stoller (2007, 180–181). 38. Examples of this approach that focuses on identity and that treats Roma individuals primarily as exemplars can be found in my own early work (Gay y Blasco 1999) and in the writings of Michael Stewart (1997) and Patrick Williams (2003) among others. I challenged this approach and began to develop alternative theoretical frameworks in an article that I wrote just before Liria and I decided to start working together (Gay y Blasco 2011). My thinking on this topic has been helped by Theodosiou (2008) and also by Stewart’s chapter on ‘Breaking Out’ in his monograph The Time of the Gypsies (1997), where he charts the failed attempt of two of his informants to move out of their Roma settlement. Additionally, the work of two of my students has been also extremely useful: Jan Grill’s on the agency of Slovakian Roma migrants (2012), and Raluca Roman’s on people living on the margins of the Finnish Roma community (2018). 39. Theodosiou (2008, 156).



176  Appendix: Devising a Reciprocal Genre

40. Rios and Sands (2000, Xii). 41. Chödrön (2001). 42. Nhat Hanh (2012). 43. Chödrön (2010). 44. Nhat Hanh (2012, 285). 45. Pandian and McClean (2017).

Acknowledgements

I have to start by thanking Younes. He generously allowed me to ­witness his life, he agreed to be interviewed many times and he helped us again and again with practicalities. He made our work so much easier, and I am immensely grateful for his continued friendship, his affection and his knowledge. I am also extremely grateful to all the people who so kindly and honestly talked to us, sharing their lives and their insights so that we could include them in the book, especially my sister Leticia, my brother-in-law Julián, my mother María Jesús and also Marta, Andrea, Laura, Rosa and Andrés. Before them, and from 1992 onwards, so many friends in Villaverde Alto made my work as an anthropologist possible. Their generosity led me here. I hope so much that they will see some value in what Liria and I have attempted. Huon Wardle read each chapter very carefully several times. He gave us much useful, encouraging, detailed feedback, often setting aside his own work at very short notice indeed. He was always loving, reassuring and steady, and especially patient when I was moody because things with the book were not going the way I wanted. Keith Hart encouraged us from the very beginning, as did Nigel Rapport who convinced us that a reciprocal approach was indeed the way to go forward. Mhairi McColl read the whole manuscript, and her careful comments and enthusiasm rekindled my joy in the project. I do not think we would have finished it without her. Peter Agree suggested that we confront the difficult areas of our friendship and our experiences, and I know the book is richer for his advice. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7

177

178  Acknowledgements The feedback on drafts provided by undergraduate students of my Reading Ethnography and Sex and Gender courses at St Andrews helped us re-think several chapters, starting with the 2013–2014 cohort. Since 2010, many other friends, colleagues and students have read drafts and sections, and supported our project and us, and I need to thank especially Mark Harris, Emilia Ferraro, Isabel Seguí, Joanna Overing, Raluca Román, Adam Reed, Stan Frankland, Manuela Cantón Delgado, Jeanne Feaux de la Croix, Eric Lassiter, Christina Toren and Paul Stoller. Helena Wulff’s invitation to submit a proposal to the Studies in Literary Anthropology series gave me the confidence I needed to give the book a final push. And at Palgrave, Mary Al-Sayed and Madison Allums did their best to meet our multiple and changing needs with much patience, kindness and good humour. Lastly, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland funded several of my trips to Spain to work with Liria, and the University of St Andrews funded many of Liria’s flights to Scotland. Zinaida Lewczuk, Daniel Rutherford and Alice Curteis helped my mental health improve slowly but steadily throughout the years it took us to write this book, and so made it possible. At my Poppy Seed Sangha, I found the space needed to assimilate what I was learning through the process of writing, not just about Gitanos or Payos but about myself and about life: I am grateful in particular to Orla Beaton, Alison Linyard, Karen Grunwell and Maggie Green. My dog Penny accompanied me in the last stretch. Her snores under my desk and our walks made finishing the book an enjoyable and relaxing experience. My children Max and Zizi gave me love and joy every day of every year that it took us to write this book. They make me so happy. And about Liria, what can I say? I hope that I have managed to convey something of my love for her and my wonder at our friendship in the book. I look forward to new projects and many more years of soul sisterhood.

My acknowledgements for this book are directed at all those people who made it possible, each contributing a small amount, and above all providing unconditional support in many moments of happiness and of pain. Most of the people who I name are not people who helped me with the book, but I do want to thank them in the only way I can all for the human support that I received in very difficult times in my life, when I lost my house and my whole family. This is why I want to give thanks in the only way I know.

Acknowledgements

  179

In first place, of course, I give thanks to Paloma for the trust and the love she has placed in me all these years, because Paloma knew how to find the anthropologist that I carry inside, and even knowing how little I have studied she knew how to see in me other values that made of this project a real success. To Younes. He helped Paloma and me so very much with the book, telling us his experiences and helping us with computers and emails, supporting the project with much anticipation and all his love. Even though we have now divorced, after all that has happened, all these last years he protected me and gave me love in spite of both our families. To my sister Ruth, because she was the first one in my family who started talking with me two years after I left and came to support me in spite of my whole family. And to my sister Rosa for taking responsibility for my son and caring for him until his adolescence, and with her my brother-in-law Nene. To my aunt Rosa for contributing her story. To my uncle Antonio and my aunt Rosana, and to my grandmother: out of all my family, they were the only ones who never stopped speaking with me or giving me affection. To my cousins Ramón and Jesús, and in particular Soraya, who has been the one cousin who throughout these last years has been by my side in everything. Within the whole church, I would like to highlight a family who received me in their home as one of them: Consuelo and Paola. Both have been my refuge, support, affection, as would a true family, over almost eight years. These two women have been by my side in all the good moments, but especially in all the bad ones giving me all their love and unconditional support. They are sisters of the church who supported me so much in their prayers. Because they shared their lives and granted so much love to my life, I want to give thanks to Andrea and Marta, not just because of their help with the book but because of the long years of friendship and their constant support since my arrival in our Baptist church. To Laura and Andrés, pastor of the church, for their cooperation with the book, affection and support. To the members of my Baptist church, for their infinite love. To Leticia for her support and affection, and to her husband Julián. To Carolina and Valeria for their personal support, and especially to

180  Acknowledgements

María Jesús, Paloma’s mother, for her affection and friendship during so many years that we shared. To Huon Wardle, for his wise opinions and for the afternoons we used to share in their home, Paloma Huon, and me, commenting and improving chapters and stories in the book. To Nigel Rapport, for his support. To Mhairi McColl, for reading our chapters and encouraging us to continue ahead. To Michael Stewart, director of the course in which I taught in Budapest, for his invitation to the university and for the great enthusiasm with which he encouraged us to continue with our project. To all the students who have attended our classes and have listened to our talks about our work, whether they were British, Latin Americans or Spanish, for making me feel important even though I was not, and thank you from my heart for showing so much interest in our stories. Mis agradecimientos por este libro están dirigidos a todas esas personas que hicieron posible su realización, aportando cada uno un granito de arena, y sobre todo por el apoyo incondicional que me dieron en muchísimos momentos de alegría y dolor. La mayoría de las personas a las que nombro no son personas que me ayudaron con el libro, pero si quiero agradecerles de la única forma que puedo todo el respaldo humano que recibí en momentos muy duros de mi vida cuando perdí toda mi casa y mi familia. Por eso quiero dar las gracias de la única forma que se. En primer lugar, cómo no, Paloma por la confianza y el cariño que ha depositado en mi en todos estos años, porque Paloma supo sacar de mí la antropóloga que llevo dentro, y aun sabiendo de mis pocos estudios supo ver en mí otros valores que hicieron de este proyecto todo un logro. A Younes. Nos ayudó muchísimo con el libro a Paloma y a mí, contándonos sus experiencias y ayudándome a menudo con emails y ordenadores, apoyando el proyecto con gran ilusión y todo su cariño. Durante todos estos años me protegió y me dio su amor por encima de nuestras dos familias. A mi hermana Ruth porque fue la primera que empezó hablarme y apoyarme después de dos años, por encima de toda mi familia. A mi hermana Rosa por hacerse cargo de mi niño y cuidarle hasta la adolescencia y con ella a mi cuñado Nene. A mi tía Rosa por aportar su historia. A mi tío Antonio, mi tía Rosana, hermanos de mi madre, y mi abuela que nunca me negaron el habla ni el cariño. A mis primos Ramón y Jesús, y a Soraya, que ha sido la prima que en estos últimos años ha estado a mi lado.

Acknowledgements

  181

De toda la iglesia quiero destacar a una familia que me recogió como una más en su hogar: Consuelo y Paola. Las dos han sido el refugio, apoyo, cariño como el de una verdadera familia durante casi ocho años. Estas dos mujeres han estado a mi lado en todos los momentos buenos pero sobre todo en los momentos malos, dándome todo su cariño y su apoyo incondicional. Ellas son hermanas de la iglesia que me apoyaron mucho en oración. Por compartir sus vidas y aportar su gran cariño a mi vida quiero darle las gracias a Andrea y Marta, no sólo por la aportación al libro sino por los largos años de amistad y su apoyo en todo momento desde mi llegada a mi iglesia bautista. A Laura y Andrés, pastor de la iglesia, su colaboración con el libro, y su cariño y apoyo. A los miembros de mi iglesia bautista amor infinito. A Leticia por su apoyo y cariño y a su marido Julián. A Carolina y Valeria por su apoyo personal, y en especial a María Jesús, la madre de Paloma, por el cariño y amistad durante tantos años que compartimos. A Huon Wardle, por sus opiniones acertadas y las tardes en su casa que solíamos compartir Paloma, Huon y yo comentando y arreglando capítulos e historias del libro. A Nigel Rapport, por su apoyo. A Mhairi McColl, por leer nuestros capítulos y apoyarnos a seguir adelante. A Michael Stewart, director del curso en el que enseñé en Budapest, por su invitación a la universidad y por el entusiasmo con el que nos apoyó a que siguiéramos con nuestro proyecto. A todos los estudiantes que han asistido a nuestras clases y han escuchado nuestras charlas sobre nuestro trabajo, tanto ingleses como latinoamericanos o españoles, por hacerme sentir importante cuando no lo era, pero de corazón gracias por mostrarse tan interesados en nuestras historias.

Bibliography

Behar, Ruth. 1993. Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story. Boston: Beacon Press. ———. 1996. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Boston: Beacon Press. Biehl, João. 2013 (2005). Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brown, Karen. 1991. Mama Lola: A Voudou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chödrön, Pema. 2001. The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness. London: Element. ———. 2010. “The Fundamental Ambiguity of Being Human.” Tricycle Magazine. Viewed online on 1 May 2019. https://tricycle.org/magazine/ fundamental-ambiguity-being-human/. Chow, Rey. 1995. Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press. Clifford, James. 1983. “On Ethnographic Authority.” Representations 2: 118–146. Field, Les, with Cheryl Sneider, Julian Lang, Rosemary Cambra, Florence Silva, Vivien Hailstone, Darlene Marshall, Bradley Marshall, Callie Lara, and Merv George. 2008. Abalone Tales: Collaborative Explorations of Sovereignty and Identity in Native California. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. FRA European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. 2016. Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey: Roma, Selected Findings. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7

183

184  Bibliography Fundación Secretariado Gitano. 2009. Health and the Roma Community, Analysis of the Situation in Europe: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Spain. Madrid: Fundación Secretariado Gitano. ———. 2013. Roma Studies in Secondary Education in Spain: A Comparative Study. Madrid: Fundación Secretariado Gitano. ———. 2017. Discrimination and the Roma Community. Madrid: Fundación Secretariado Gitano. ———. 2018a. Educación, Situación. Madrid: Fundación Secretariado Gitano. Viewed online on 17 August 2018. https://www.gitanos.org/que-hacemos/ areas/educacion/en_cifras.html. ———. 2018b. Empleo, en Cifras. Madrid: Fundación Secretariado Gitano. Viewed online on 16 August 2018. https://www.gitanos.org/que-hacemos/ areas/empleo_y_formacion_profesional/en_cifras.html. Gay y Blasco, Paloma. 1999. Gypsies in Madrid: Sex, Gender and the Performance of Identity. Oxford: Berg. ———. 2011. “Agata’s Story: Singular Lives and the Reach of the ‘Gitano Law’.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17: 445–461. Gay y Blasco, Paloma, and Huon Wardle. 2007. How to Read Ethnography. London: Routledge. ———. 2019. How to Read Ethnography, Second Edition. London and New York: Routledge. Grill, Jan. 2012. “‘Going Up to England’: Exploring Mobilities Amongst Roma from Eastern Slovakia.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38: 1269–1287. Gudeman, Stephen, and Alberto Rivera. 1990. Conversations in Colombia: The Domestic Economy in Life and Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harper, Krista. 2012. “Visual Interventions and the ‘Crises in Representation’ in Environmental Anthropology: Researching Environmental Justice in a Hungarian Romani Neighbourhood.” Human Organization 71: 292–305. Kazubowski-Houston, Magdalena. 2010. Staging Strife: Lessons from Performing Ethnography with Polish Roma Women. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Kopenawa, Davi, and Bruce Albert. 2013. The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Lassiter, Luke Eric. 1998. The Power of Kiowa Song: A Collaborative Ethnography. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ———. 2001. “‘Reading Over the Shoulders of Natives’ to ‘Reading Alongside Natives,’ Literally: Toward a Collaborative and Reciprocal Ethnography.” Journal of Anthropological Research 57: 137–149. ———. 2005. The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Bibliography

  185

———. 2008. When We Disagree: On Engaging the Force of Difference in Collaborative, Reciprocal, and Participatory Researches. Paper presented at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, CA. Lassiter, Luke Eric, Clyde Ellis, and Ralph Kotay. 2002. The Jesus Road: Kiowas, Christianity and Indian Hymns. Lincoln: Nebraska University Press. Lassiter, Luke Eric, Hurley Goodall, Elizabeth Campbell, and Michelle Natasya Johnston (eds.). 2004. The Other Side of Middletown: Exploring Muncie’s African American Community. Lanham: Altamira. Lawless, Elaine. 1993. Holy Women, Wholly Women: Sharing Ministries Through Life Histories and Reciprocal Ethnography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. 2000. “‘Reciprocal’ Ethnography: No One Said It Was Easy.” Journal of Folklore Research 37: 197–205. Majnep, Ian Sanjep, and Ralph Bulmer. 1977. Birds of My Kalam Country. Auckland and Oxford: Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press. Nhat Hanh, Thich. 2012. Awakening the Heart: Essential Buddhist Sutras and Commentaries. Berkeley: Parallax Press. Pandian, Anand, and Stuart McClean (eds.). 2017. Crumpled Paper Boat: Experiments in Ethnographic Writing. Durham: Duke University Press. Rappaport, Joanne. 2005. Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ———. 2007. “Anthropological Collaborations in Colombia.” In Anthropology Put to Work, Les Field and Richard G. Fox, editors. Oxford: Berg. ———. 2008. “Beyond Participant Observation: Collaborative Ethnography as Theoretical Innovation.” Collaborative Anthropologies 1: 1–31. Rios, Theodore, and Kathleen Mullen Sands. 2000. Telling a Good One: The Process of a Native American Collaborative Biography. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Roman, Raluca. 2018. “‘Neither Here, Nor There’: Belonging, Ambiguity, and the Struggle for Recognition Among ‘In-Between’ Finnish Kaale.” Romani Studies 28: 239–262. San Román, Teresa. 1976. Vecinos Gitanos. Akal: Barcelona. Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. 1998. “Introduction: Situating Subjectivity in Women’s Autobiographical Practices.” In Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, editors. Madison: Wisconsin University Press. Stewart, Michael. 1997. The Time of the Gypsies. Boulder, CO: Westview. Stoller, Paul. 2007. Ethnography/Memoir/Imagination/Story. Anthropology and Humanism 32 (2): 178–191.

186  Bibliography Theodosiou, Aspasia. 2008. “Disorienting Rhythms: Gypsiness, ‘Authenticity’ and Place on the Greek–Albanian Border.” History and Anthropology 18: 153–175. Tidrick, Heather. 2010. “‘Gadžology’ as Activism: What I Would Have Ethnography Do for East European Roma.” Collaborative Anthropologies 3: 121–131. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Williams, Patrick. 2003. Gypsy World: The Silence of the Living and the Voices of the Dead. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Index

A Accessible ethnographic writing, 18–20, 138, 139, 142–144, 147–150 Albert, Bruce, 168, 175 Alienation, 122, 126, 130 Ambiguity, 19, 80, 155, 156, 172–174 Arranged marriage, 8, 60, 63 Audience, 9, 19, 20, 21, 58 B Baptist church, 21, 23, 109–111, 126, 129, 131–133, 142, 147, 159, 179 Behar, Ruth, 158, 167, 168, 171, 174, 175 Biehl, João, 168, 174 Bulmer, Ralph, 169, 175 C Campbell, Elizabeth, 175 Catholicism, 54, 55, 57, 69, 70, 77, 97

Child abuse, 54, 72–74, 76–79, 153–154 Chödrön, Pema, 173, 174, 176 Chow, Rey, 175 Clifford, James, 167, 174 Collaborative ethnography, 20, 21, 58, 138, 139, 142–145, 148, 149, 152–156, 165–174 D Domestic violence, 29, 30, 44, 66, 85, 93, 101, 107, 129, 130 E Economic crisis, 111–118, 122–124, 133 Elders, tíos, men of respect, 4, 30–32, 51, 82–84, 135 Ellis, Clyde, 175 Ethnographic authority, 20, 166–168 Ethnographic genre, 20, 166–170 Evangelism, 4, 5, 8, 22, 40, 49, 77, 98, 110, 126, 139, 140, 156

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2020 P. Gay y Blasco and L. Hernández, Writing Friendship, Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26542-7

187

188  Index F Feminist life histories, 167, 168 Field, Les, 169, 170, 175 Fieldwork, 3, 5, 8, 9, 17, 58, 61, 63, 66, 80–84, 99, 105, 120, 146, 153, 155, 166, 169 Francoism, 4, 54, 56, 110 G Ghettos, 2, 4, 7–10, 59, 82–85, 106, 107, 142, 166 Gitano customary law, 1, 2, 4, 25, 44, 59 Gitanos in anthropological writing, 172, 173 within Spanish society, ix, 3 God’s plan, Liria’s view of, 138–140, 145, 147, 151 Goodall, Hurley, 175 Grill, Jan, 175 Gudeman, Stephen, 166, 174 H Harper, Krista, 175 Housing. See Segregated housing

K Kazubowski-Houston, Magdalena, 172, 175 Kopenawa, Davi, 168, 175 Kotay, Ralph, 175 L Lassiter, Luke Eric, 169–172 Law. See Gitano customary law and Spanish law Lawless, Elaine, 158, 169, 170, 175 M Majnep, Ian Sanjep, 169, 175 Marriage by elopement, 45, 64, 68, 82, 93, 99, 107 Memoir, 17, 28 Methodology, 15–23, 165–174 Migration, migrants, 16, 43, 55, 86, 108, 110–119, 127–135, 148, 175 Moro, pejorative use of, 1, 2, 23–24, 40, 46, 48 N Nhat Hanh, Thich, 173, 174

I Illiteracy, 3, 23, 168 Interview, 16, 17, 19, 59–67, 68–76, 80, 104, 114–119, 122–125, 129–133, 145, 161, 168, 170–171

P Pandian, Anand, 176 Pentecostalism. See Evangelism Post-Francoism, 54–56

J Johnston, Michelle Natasya, 175

R Rappaport, Joanne, 158, 169, 170, 174, 175 Readership. See Audience

Index

Reciprocity, reciprocal ethnography, 16–18, 20, 21, 58, 139, 140, 143–145, 148, 149, 152–156, 162–174 Resettlements of Gitano families, 4, 83 Rios, Theodore, 172, 175, 176 Rivera, Alberto, 166, 174 Roman, Raluca, 175 Rural exodus, 4, 55 S Sands, Kathleen Mullen, 172, 173, 175, 176 San Román, Teresa, 9, 24 Schooling. See Segregated schooling Segregated housing, 3, 149 Segregated schooling, 3, 108, 147 Smith, Sidonie, 168 Spanish Civil War, 4, 95 Spanish law, 1, 25, 47 Stewart, Michael, 175 Stoller, Paul, 173, 175, 178 T Theodosiou, Aspasia, 173, 175, 176 Tidrick, Heather, 171, 175 Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, 172, 175

  189

U Uncertainty, 16–22, 28, 41, 50, 56, 79, 80, 110, 113, 130, 135, 154, 156, 167, 171 Unemployment, 16, 111–118, 120–125, 161 V Virginity, 4, 8, 25, 44, 53, 55, 57, 58, 62, 64, 65, 76, 134 Vulnerability in ethnographic writing, 151–155 W Wardle, Huon, 166, 174 Watson, Julia, 168, 175 Wedding ceremony, 8, 53–55, 64, 65, 68, 99–101, 108 Williams, Patrick, 175