The Greatest Thieves, the Most Honest People
By Carmen Plesa
Speaking Romanian in Rome isn’t as dangerous as it may seem. The Italians have learned to get away from the "bad" Romanians and to appreciate the honest ones.
The old train that goes through the "good" areas of Rome towards the outskirts doesn’t stop at Tor di Quinto anymore. It simply slows down when it goes by a forest before the area that was supposed to be the station platform.
THEY BURNT IT ALL. Most of the people in the wagon are women, all kinds of ladies. No one seems scared or disgusted by the Romanian language. "For a woman, this is a safe line. The safety disappears when one steps down in one of these stations", a classy Italian lady says. "This is where the Roma’s barracks were. In the entire forest. All the barracks are gone now. I believe they burnt them right after they destroyed them because one cannot tell there has been something in there", another Italian lady tells us after stopping her crosswords activity to show us the remains of the former Tor di Quinto. A young lady adds the station was to be closed because she used to see all kinds of construction materials, but the killing of that lady hurried things up a little bit.
We never heard a word to show the fear or the disgust towards the Romanians.
LESS SUCCESS WITH BEGGING . "Some people told us to go back home because we are all criminals", Ramona, one of the gipsy ladies that wash car windows in an intersection in Rome, told us.
They are four girls and they all came from Craiova. The oldest is at the age of 20 and has a little child. Their clothes look clean, they wear long dark skirts and they hair looks taken care of. Even though it is quite cold in Rome, they only wear socks and slippers. One of them only has the socks. "I lost my slippers when I was running away from a police officer!", she explains with a smile on her face. I look to the policeman standing a few feet away from us and he doesn’t seem disturbed by the presence of the girls. "it wasn’t him. It was another one who ran after me to take my window washer", the girl explains.
They cannot say the policemen treated them badly. They never beat or threatened them. After the killing of Giovanna Regianni, the police came to their illegal camp as well and told them they would tear the barracks down. It didn’t happen, because, according to the girls, the camp only has 10 families that didn’t behave badly. They try to explain that they didn’t have anything to do with the former camp of Mailat.
The Killing of Giovanna Reggiani meant less money for the gipsy girls washing the car windows. The Italian drivers are afraid of them and don’t let them wash their windows anymore. There are some who threaten them. This is why they earn half of what they used to.
“The Romanian policemen also came and told us to go back home, because things wouldn’t be the way they used to be in Italy”, Ramona says.
Carmen is decided to go home on Holidays after she buys clothes for her baby back here. She says her mother is very scared since the Mailat case and asks her to go back when they talk on the phone.
The daily happiness of the girls is connected to the appearance of a very classy Italian old man. He pays them 1 euro every day. "He used to be very important. Something like the chief of the police or I don’t know", one of the little gipsy girls explains while grabbing the 1 euro coin.
On the other diagonal of the intersection, there is a fifteen year old girl with a little baby in her arms. The baby is two months old and his name is Catalin. The mother and the child look ok. The girl wipes his face with wet tissues from time to time and says the Italians are quite large-handed with the little baby, who was born in a hospital in Italy.
THE TRAJAN’S COLUMN. "You are people with extreme behaviors. You have the greatest thieves, but you also have the most honest people I know", an Italian says. "I know a lot of Romanian thieves, but, in the same time, the most honest people I have ever met are also Romanians", the Italian says and continues with telling us about Octavian, a Romanian whom he knows for some time and to whom he would never hesitate to give his apartment keys. Because he lives downtown, the Italian meets the little gypsies every day. "No one fears from children and this is how they get to lose their wallets", the Italian continues. Fontana di Trevi is one of the favorite places of the little thieves, because, when they don’t "take care" of the tourists’ pockets they get to fish coins from the fountain.
“Do you know who betrayed Decebal at Sarmizegetusa?", the Italian suddenly asks and then he shows us the respective scene on Trajan’s Column. I once went towards the top of the column with an architect and I saw a scene in which three beautiful ladies of yours were beating a Roman soldier-, the Italian smiles. "I like it a lot on the 1st of December, your national day", he stuns us. He can hardly wait to see the Romanians dancing according to the traditions around the Trajan Column on the 1st of December.
COMMON WORKFORCE FOR EXTERNAL AFFAIRS. At the end of the meeting between Mihai Gheorghiu, state secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, and Franco Danielli, vice-PM in the Italian External Affairs Ministry, the two sides decided to create a common workforce group formed of representatives of the Italian community in our country and of the Romanian community in the Peninsula. The Italian vice-PM showed that there are 20,000 Italians in Romania that created 800,000 workplaces and that hundreds of thousands of Romanians have represented the greatest community in Italy for a long period of time.
The Italian vice-PM concluded that the meeting was one "between friends, just as it should have been" and reminded that Italy had been one of the first funding countries of the EU that ratified the adherence treaty of Romania.
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