The name is absent

126

researchers, especially Karathanasi (2000), Lydaki (1997; Lydaki 1998), and Williams
(2003). To non-Romani Athenians, the most striking characteristic of any Roma
compound is, simply, its physical appearance and the kneejerk emotions of fear and
loathing the space evokes (see Panourgia 1995). The Roma, in turn, regard the physical
difference of their neighborhood and the mainstream population’s aversion to it, first, as a
protective border between the Roma camp and its surrounding neighborhood: a zone
which functions simultaneously as a repellent of potentially harmful outsiders and
purifier∕localizer of potentially (symbolically) dangerous externally originating materials
and discourses. This is related to the noted Romani in∕out existentialism (Karathanasi
2000; Sutherland 1975). Secondly, and contrary to the positive significance noted above,
the Roma also regard their space as evidence of a national prejudice against them.
Despite appreciating the protection and freedom to live according to Romani socio-
cultural traditions and internal trajectories, the border nonetheless also signifies
segregation, disenfranchisement, and the ever-present threat of physical and symbolic
violence on the outside.

The duality of the border mirrors other conflicting dualities in the Roma
experience. Evi’s husband had once explained to me that he dreams of owning a home
and some land on the island of Crete where people “understand strong men that do what
they want” just as he does (see Herzfeld 1985), and where his kids could grow up safely.
In this we see the conflict between the Romani and Greek identity in his description of a
protected yet “typical” (Greek) home and conflation of the classic masculine Greek figure
and “free Gypsy” trope. On the one hand there is no question that the Greek and Gypsy
tropes are compatible, and, as we shall see below, have actually become deeply integrated

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