The telling of the Swan story began, oh who knows, years ago probably. It began for me, as a migration story, about those ‘other’ Romanians. The ones who aren’t us. Who aren’t ‘real’ Romanians. We always argued about that, if we had the energy. Anyway, let’s go back to January. I’m feeling desolate because some kind soul just kicked me in the teeth over a funding application. My new Romanian friend, Vali,’s feeling the same because he’s been abandoned by his housemate and is now homeless. So he turns up at 1.00am, direct from Budapest, with a 2 litre lemonade bottle of plum brandy, and some truly gross-looking sausages. I supplied the bread and the spring onion, and somehow, the depths of self-pity and despair were transformed into a pretty good-natured swapping of scurrilous tales. The next day and at least 150 pictures of his girl-friend later, still in the first week of January, the sun shone warmly, no sign yet of the late snows or frosts that would soon annihilate my jasmine buds, we went for a walk in Finsbury Park. Vali was captivated: ‘We just don’t have places like this in Romania, we don’t have “parks”.’ ‘These birds, just look at all these birds,’ he repeated, endlessly, genuinely amazed. ‘What do you call those ones, those white one?’ ‘Swans’ I said, ‘with a double-u, suuaans.’ I didn’t know if Romanian had a ‘w’ sound. ‘Swans,’ he repeated, faultlessly, as though he’d been discussing them with the queen all his life.
‘You know when Romanians first started going to other countries, Austria was the first we went to, in large numbers. Well, some Romanians went to Vienna, and they have these big parks there, full of birds like here. Well, those Romanians, they started hunting the birds. One day, they hunted, and caught and ATE a Swan.’
‘No’ I shrieked, peels of laughter,
‘Yes, well, you can imagine how famous we were after that. Oh my GOD.’
‘But they taste disgusting,’ I say, still laughing, ‘they taste fishy.’
Vali looks at me, quizzically, frowning, ‘You’re laughing, Claudia. You think it’s funny?’
‘Well, yes,’ I say, feeling slightly guilty now, ‘ok, so it’s hard luck on the Swan, but… yes…’
Pause. ‘The Austrians they did not find it so.’
With utmost confidence I assured him that English people would find this story uproariously funny and would be impressed with the enterprising Romanians bringing their rural skills to the city.
I hadn’t, of course, reckoned with the Haringey Independent, The London Evening Standard, or the Daily Mail, all of whom suddenly developed not only a sense of humour by-pass but also, in the case of the latter, an unusual lapse of memory concerning the ‘right’ of people to hunt. A week or so ago, I found a copy of a Romanian free newspaper, its front page graced with a picture of a swan, and inside, the full story reprinted not only from the Haringey independent, complete with RSPCA phone number, but also the Austrian story. Whether there has ever been any verification that Romanian migrant workers really did eat the Viennese Swan, I have no idea, but the idea has certainly caught on to the extent that most Romanians believe it, but with one important caveat.
We were contemplating the reasons why the Austrians didn’t find the swan-eating saga funny, and I was cheerfully explaining that the English secretly admired a good hunter, when a teenage boyfriend-girlfriend couple with a dog walked past. ‘She’s gorgeous,’ I muttered, ‘But what the hell is she doing with HIM?’
‘That’s EXACTLY what I was thinking’ gasps Vali, ‘EXACTLY.’ We’re looking at the beautiful young woman, with her scrawny, seriously unappealing boyfriend. ‘He looks like a gypssssy,’ hisses Vali, ‘Bloody swan-eaters.’
‘
Showing posts with label Romania. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romania. Show all posts
Friday, 2 May 2008
Sunday, 23 March 2008
The Servant Class and The Criminal Class
So we have the peasant, the slum dweller, the pitiful immigrant and the pitiless landlord. We are carefully reconstructing a labouring class from the people who have migrated here from the EU, and who work under restrictions. Romanians and Bulgarians can do only labouring work, no matter what their qualifications. ‘You keep the good jobs for the people from the rich countries,’ scowls Tavi, ‘You want people from the poor countries to do your shit work for you.’ We seem to have created a whole new ‘servant class’ from the Eastern European countries. These are the ‘respectable working class’ now. Those from outside the EU, with slightly darker skins and dodgy religious practices, like Jamal and Mehmet are the criminal classes. They’re the lucky ones though, relatively speaking. They have family here, and can avoid the worst excesses of Home Office Enforcement.
Consider Hasan, 20 years old, from Uzbekistan, here on his own, and without proper legal representation. Now electronically tagged, (a form of post modern leg-iron), he and his housemates are subject to relentless ‘visits’ from the Home Office at strange times of the night. Yet they wont deport him, or Samira, from Iran, who has so far managed to avoid the tagging, but only because she does have a good lawyer and a very politically aware brother to defend her. They both work the endless hours, and they’re both stuck forever in the Eternal Waiting Room while the HO also waits- to see who’ll blink first. Utterly guileless, Jamal is mystified by the refusal of his asylum claim: ‘I think the Home Office just don’t understand,’ he puzzles, trying to defend this institution of the democracy he loves. They understand alright, that’s why they make no active attempt to detain or deport him. They’re just trying to starve him out along with the others. I do sometimes wonder if ‘the workhouse’ is really the right word for this, in bleaker moments it seems more like a ghastly parody of the Gulag.
Consider Hasan, 20 years old, from Uzbekistan, here on his own, and without proper legal representation. Now electronically tagged, (a form of post modern leg-iron), he and his housemates are subject to relentless ‘visits’ from the Home Office at strange times of the night. Yet they wont deport him, or Samira, from Iran, who has so far managed to avoid the tagging, but only because she does have a good lawyer and a very politically aware brother to defend her. They both work the endless hours, and they’re both stuck forever in the Eternal Waiting Room while the HO also waits- to see who’ll blink first. Utterly guileless, Jamal is mystified by the refusal of his asylum claim: ‘I think the Home Office just don’t understand,’ he puzzles, trying to defend this institution of the democracy he loves. They understand alright, that’s why they make no active attempt to detain or deport him. They’re just trying to starve him out along with the others. I do sometimes wonder if ‘the workhouse’ is really the right word for this, in bleaker moments it seems more like a ghastly parody of the Gulag.
Labels:
asylum seekers,
Bulgaria,
Class,
Gulag,
Iran,
Migration,
Romania,
Uzbekistan
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