The heavy iron door separates the community that lives inside from the rest of the world, and is the first indication that there is some kind of fear, some kind of division that lurks beneath the surface of normality.

Two floors up, there is yet another iron grate that would make access into an apartment all the more difficult should someone try to force his way in; the second confirmation that the residents in that particular apartment – and all others we have seen on the way up – are not comfortable with their surroundings.

Rita Kiss, barefoot, greets us on the landing outside the doorway of her humble home on the second floor, shakes our hands with a smile and asks us to step inside. Not before, through our guide and interpreter, telling us to remove our shoes. The excuse is that it has been raining, but probably it is a custom that dates back years.

Rita Kiss, mother of two children aged nine and six, has been living in Budapest all her life. She speaks the language and considers Hungary her home, but she is not Hungarian in the real sense of the word. She is part of a growing gypsy community that, in spite of living in this part of the world for generations, still feels deprived, left out and unable to integrate with the rest of the Hungarian population.

I introduce the subject of integration well into our conversation, since I know it is a delicate issue that requires sensitivity in approach as well as some familiarity, which 30 minutes do not give a great deal of. But Rita speaks frankly and makes it less difficult for us to ask about the more difficult parts of her life.

Some of her feelings may have been lost in translation and perhaps she did not fully open her heart to a bunch of strangers from a faraway land, but her darting black eyes and perpetual smile give her an air of genuineness.

The fact that, over the years, the gypsies have adopted Hungarian names and surnames (‘kiss’ may sound quite exotic to us who know English, but it does not have the same meaning in Hungarian – it actually means ‘small’ – and is the seventh most common surname here) has helped to make small inroads towards being accepted, but it is certainly not enough.

She admits that the distance that still divides the gypsies from the Hungarians is not to be blamed on one side alone. The gypsies do not play their part as they should, and the Hungarians do not make them feel welcome as much as they ought to.

When, as happened late last year, a serious crime is committed and a gypsy is blamed for it, the level of trust that takes years to climb a notch falls several others in one fell swoop. The understanding is that it will take generations for the two groups to see eye to eye, if ever.

It reminds me of what is happening in Maltese society. The number of immigrants coming in from North Africa is growing rapidly, but we are far from saying that they are welcome. In Hungary, they do not have people coming in by boats from the sub-Sahara, but the geographical position of the country is, like that of Malta between south and north, also at a crossroads, this time between the east and the west, and the constant flow of people moving across countries in search of a better future is happening here as well.

Asked about numbers, Rita says that there are some 300,000 gypsies living in Hungary. But she hastily adds that this is just the official figure, and she believes that the number is closer to one million. Many of them roam the countryside and are harder to control, but others, like Rita’s family, have established themselves in a more permanent setting.

That gypsies do not allow members of their community to get married to outsiders, in this case Hungarians, is one main reason why this integration is taking longer to materialise. Members of Rita’s own family have been cast out of the “gypsy enclosure”, as our guide describes it, because of inter-marriage.

There are two ways in which gypsies form a family. It is either that the respective family of the bride and groom come to an agreement for the couple to get married – an arrangement that is entered into when the boy and girl sometimes are still very young, as used to happen not so long ago even in Malta – or else the two run away together, if their families do not give their approval.

It is common for gypsies to have large families, seven or eight children, sometimes more, although Rita says that the practise is changing with time and numbers are growing smaller. Her having just two children is the perfect example of this change.

Significantly, there are divisions within the gypsies themselves, she adds. The different factions are not in harmony with each other either; actually, they see other gypsy groups as a threat, and this complicates matters further.

Rita forms part of what are known as the gypsy musicians. At three years of age, the boys start receiving tuition in traditional gypsy music and instrument playing, the intention being that they grow up to earn a living through the trade and help their own family. It is unthinkable that a gypsy boy does not like music, she says, and when I insist that there must have been occasions when a young boy rebelled against the imposition of music as a career, she kept repeating that it is in the genes and cannot be helped.

She did, however, say that in more recent years gypsies have been forced to find alternative means of getting some form of income. This is not because they have lost their musical touch. It’s just that music is not as popular as it used to be, and where in the past it was relatively easy to be recruited by restaurants and bars, today a DJ playing electronic music is a more preferred, and cheaper, option. This meant that gypsies have had to learn other skills such as carpentry or have found jobs as security guards, but things are not easy in this area either.

If a Hungarian and a gypsy apply for the same job, the former has a better chance of getting it – even when he has poorer abilities, she says.

What about the girls, we ask. Girls are brought up to take care of the family and have children, she says. Still, even here, there could be openings because in more recent years some have worked as singers and dancers. But they have to be part of groups where gypsy men are involved; women gypsies do not work on their own.

The conversation comes to a close after Rita agrees, perhaps not wholeheartedly, to have her picture taken.

We put our shoes back on and thank Rita for her hospitality. As we’re walking back down the stairs we hear her locking herself back in behind the iron grate. And when we pull the heavy iron door downstairs shut the difference between the Hungary we experienced and Rita’s own Hungary becomes even more pronounced.

 

Managing editor Stephen Calleja was part of a group of Maltese journalists who travelled to Hungary courtesy of the Hungarian Tourism Office, Wizz Air, the Hilton Budapest Westend and Malta International Airport. This interview formed part of a socio-cultural walking tour in the hidden downtown area of Budapest, organised by Beyond Budapest Sightseeing.