The only tourists who visited my village were the gypsies. In reality, there were salesmen who came from Hajij, an area in Hawraman district in the Eastern Kurdistan (Iranian Kurdistan). However, those salesmen were single, usually elderly, men who travelled from village to village with a donkey load of small items to sell. The gypsies were coming in big groups of people including many families; they were just like moving villages. They came every year as our only tourists and visitors and there was a sense of fear and attraction towards them.

People were afraid of the gypsies as a normal reaction towards a stranger. They have their attraction also, as they were different from our daily boring routine- strangers who honoured us by paying an annual visit to our distance village. They were craftsmen also; they made different tools for the farmers. Hundreds of rumours about the gypsies made them as scary as a mythical giant who comes in the shape of a ghost to kidnap children. ‘Gypsies’, they said, ‘kidnap small children, empty their bellies, and fill them with illegal stuff to cross the borders.’ The rumours said that gypsies kidnap children also to adopt them. We normally looked at the children they had as kidnapped children from other villages and areas. Although some people said that gypsies same as other people have enough children of their own and don’t need other children, however the rumours had better roots as they were older. ‘Gypsies have no shame or remorse, as they do not belong to a specific place’, they said. There were those and hundreds of other rumours about the poor gypsies!

If we look at the reasons behind all these rumours, we could not find any proof part from the reality that gypsies were strangers. People look at a stranger as a source of threat to their social being, their way of life and marked territory. There is no obvious reason why gypsies should commit more crime than the inhabited people. In reality, gypsies are special communities who have their own way of life, their own traditions, social structure and ethics.

A gypsy visit was a good source of entertainment for the children of my village. I was one of those who were most liked the gypsy’s annual visit. I liked their way of life, their colourful clothes, which was normally shabby and dirty. Their donkey loads of black tents made by their own hands from goat hair. Their dogs, which looked different from our dogs, or we thought so. I liked their way of speaking between themselves and with us, their strange accent and their broken Kurdish. I liked the way they entered the area, some men were starting to erect the tents, some women were busy with the small children and the other elder children were entering the village for door to door food collection; begging. They asked every house to give them some food, there is a proverb saying that ‘beggars have no right to choose’.

The men were strong, busy and active. They looked like if they had never shaved nor have their hair cut. I could still see, in my minds eyes, a very old woman who could not walk straight as she was bended head to toe. She had a child on her bended back fastened with a piece of cloth and she had a crook in her right hand. In a hot summer day, she dressed as somebody walking in the snow. We were mostly afraid of her, as elderly women were mostly mentioned as ugly characters in all sagas. We could not understand that those old gypsies were just other kinds of human beings who were different to us.

There were good myths also, as you had not to put a gypsy off from your house without food. ‘Refusing to give gypsies food’ they said, ‘will bring you a bad fortune’. For that reason, you had to give them something from your food whatever small or large. Gypsies were collecting all kinds of food from every home, they lived a life from day to day, nobody was rich and nobody was starving to death. It looks like they were sharing everything between them, a kind of primitive communism.

I can remember once my mother sent me to collect some items they made for us. I was more than happy to go and see the gypsy family from inside. My mother didn’t let me to go without a gift; I took some grapes for their children. The children were asking their mum to eat some of the grapes, but their mum was busy with my order or she didn’t want them to eat it in front of me. Anyway, I was mostly impressed by their ability to speak many languages. Despite they were able to speak many languages, but they had their own accent for each language. In fact, they were mixing different languages or using different words from different languages altogether, so called the gypsy language or way of speaking. The children were calling grapes ‘Angur’ which was strange to me and I was repeating it for many years.

I heard from my mum saying, ‘don’t let a gypsy to enter the house after you, while you bring food for them, they may strangle you inside’. When I was asking her about any incidents like that, she was saying that it happened to a woman. However, strangling and murder could happen to anybody by anybody. This reaction to strangers was a normal human self-defence in the background of our minds which could not be erased so soon. Even in this age of globalization and mass availability of information people still are worried about the stranger more than other. Although most crimes, especially crimes against children, are committed by relatives, close friends or at least people you know and acquaintances.