Cioburi

E aproape sfârșit de zi de mai. Plouă nu prea tare și din când în când fulgeră. E un verde întunecat în jur din cauza copacilor și, atunci când fulgeră, devine un verde violent.

Femeia cântă și se unduiește complicat pe ritmul muzicii. E hipnotic rău și îmi explodează în cap Noof și sunt din nou în noaptea aia schizoidă în deșertul de lângă Doha. E ceva care nu ar trebui să se întâmple și e o energie stranie tare și îmi e teamă să mă pierd din nou. Senzația aia de cădere liberă necontrolată și se amestecă sunetele – plouă tare, femeia asta cântă incredibil și simt iarăși respirația lui Noof mult, mult prea aproape de mine. Și îmi este frică. Frică de tot ceea ce nu am reușit să trăiesc, teamă că iar o să blochez orice simt pentru a nu mă sparge de tot. Frică de oboseala aia de a te reconstrui, din nou și din nou, după ce te-ai mai făcut o dată țăndări, țăndări.

Rupt. Creierul se supraaccelerează și se amestecă toate și îmi e foarte, foarte dor și sunt din nou în camera aia din Budapesta unde lucrurile au luat-o razna rău și o aud pe mama facându-mi praf toate ideile mele despre cum curge timpul și Geta, vrăjitoarea, cum îmi râde în cap și îmi repetă că sunt lucruri care nu trebuie înțelese, ci doar trebuie să treacă prin tine.

Și muzica ei trece prin mine într-un fel în care habar nu aveam că se mai poate și e o lumină roșie cu un soare care moare dincolo de ploaie și am chef să mă pierd în memoriile cu raze multe și miros de piele caldă.

Și totuși mă poartă altundeva. Sunt în cortul de beduini, undeva lângă Ramallah, și îmi place mult cum sună araba lor. Ceaiul e prea dulce și e cam frig. E plin de moloz în jur, casele lor le-au fost dărâmate și e un pic prea gol muntele și cerul și nu prea știu ce să fac cu mine. Mă trezesc luat în brațe de arabul care arată ca unchiul Gogu. Și nu e nimic sfânt în țara asta care ar trebui să fie sfântă în afară de durerea permanentă.

Și creierul îmi fuge iar și sunt în Nablus, tocmai am ieșit din moscheea care e jumătate sinagogă și urlă la mine un puștiulache cu o pușcă și mă impinge agresiv să trec printr-o poartă îngustă. Mă împiedic și mă zgârâi un pic pe frunte. Îmi curge sânge și mă oprește un vânzător de suc de rodii. Își cere scuze pentru puști întâi în arabă și apoi în engleză și îmi dă să beau un pahar de suc după ce mă oblojește. Simt gustul de rodii abia culese zdrobșite de storcătorul de lemn lustruit de mulți, mulți ani.

Femeia se mișcă în ritmul muzicii într-un fel în care am mai văzut de câteva ori, când Dumnezeu a uitat deschisă poarta cu lumea aia plină de minuni. Și le reaud în cap pe Dolores O’Riordan și Agnes Obel în sălile alea mici în care am nimerit total aiurea.

Și simt mirosul din marele Bazar din Istanbul și se învârte din nou lumea mea repede, repede și e cald și sunt cu nasul în nisip și sunt fericit cum nu am mai fost până atunci. Marea îmi răsună în urechi și mă întorc și mă pierd în cea de lângă mine, în ochii ăia verzi aurii și plini de soare și în fundal se amestecă multe și plaja de la Corbu, și cafeneaua mică din Năvodari și epava de la Costinești. Și simt anii distanță grei, grei și mă doare inima și am chef să fug.

Și iarăși femeia schimbă cum curge muzica și sunt pe pârtie și știu că sunt foarte aproape să cad, am prins viteză pe schiuri și e frumos tare și căderea e ca un zbor care se frânge exact cum ar trebui, pentru că nu e permis să zbori așa aiurea fără să te pedepsească gravitația.

Îmi reamintesc că sunt obsesiv de competitiv și retrăiesc primul meu dunk peste un alt jucător, simt din nou durerea aterizării și mirosul mingii de piele un pic udă și habar nu am cum am ajuns aici. Din nou, fătuca asta slabă și hipnotică se ondulează în timp ce cântă și se schimbă iarăși totul și sunt luminile din Chicago care se reflectă în lac.

E o noapte caldă și umedă și știu că nu o să mai fiu niciodată acolo și că ar trebui să simt cât mai mult pentru a imprima memoria aia bine, mai ales că sunt iar fericit, atât de fericit încât e imposibil să nu mă sparg în bucăți mici, care o să doară rău de tot și o să îmi ia mult, mult să le pun la loc în ceva care o să arate ca mine, dar nu o să mai fie cel ce sunt acum.

Și mă mut iară și sunt în Laos, într-o luntre îngustă care se joacă pe Mekong și priveliștea e atât de extraordinară că uit să respir. Și vreau din nou să nu uit și mă trezesc într-o noapte plină de oameni și mașini în Bangkok și brusc lumea încetinește și se aude explozia aia înfundată și e o panică ciudată cu oameni care aleargă aiurea.

Revin abrupt. Melodia s-a terminat.

4.28 Get Back Valeria Stoica

PS. Foarte greu de priceput cum ultima ei melodie, o bijuterie muzicală și cinematică a fost văzută de atât de puțini oameni. Dacă v-a plăcut ce ați citit vă rog share video-ul ăsta.

Why you should keep quiet

I do understand that there are some of Roma activists (not restricted to ethnic Roma activists) with a particularly dangerous selective memory.

Let me be clear.

I have no interest whatsoever in what you do personally. I do not care at all how you justify the fires that magically burned your accounting records (four of the main five Roma NGOs in Romania were hit by this pandemic in a span of four years). I also do not care of the mind-blowing justifications you had or have for fraud. And yes it is fraud to ask me (and after being refused by me successfully ask somebody else) to sign for a sum of money and return to you a good part of it “because that is the way things work with EU funds”.

It is not my interest to understand why you lack a spine, which makes you ready to pay lip service to anybody who has power regardless if he is a racist, an idiot, a criminal or all of those together. I also do not care what you write or read and I have zero, but zero interest in helping you getting your brother, relative or “somebody you know” a good position, in helping your daughter to go to Canada, giving you money or talking to somebody I know to get you something. I do not give references either.

I also do not forget any of those requests.

Your sons, daughters, wives and relatives that receive grants, scholarships or fellowships are not disadvantaged. They do not suffer because of anti-Gypsyism. You “suffer” of nepotism and corruption.

No, we are not the same. We are not “brothers and sisters”. We are not friends. Those that I am a friend with know it and for sure you are not one of them. You do not know me because you heard of me, you read things I wrote or because I was polite to you.

You do not know me because I talked to you once or a few times. Greeting you when I see you is not talking. None of you worked with me. Working means going with me in the worst places and helping for years people that live in those hellish places and not exchanging pleasantries at conferences.

You cannot talk about human rights as long as you beat your wife. Or ex-wife. Or your children.

I avoid/ed you because I do/did not want to be associated with you. Talking about the problems, and yes there are huge problems within the Roma movement with corruption, nepotism, reverse racism and sycophancy is problematic. These talks will reflect badly on the few truly dedicated ones and overall increase what is already a pervading anti-Gypsyism. But it is also a point when silence becomes toxic.

Do not kid yourself you are not dedicated to anything besides being a sociopath regardless of how much you want to believe it otherwise.

I do not care about attacking the Council of Europe. As any intergovernmental institution it has many limitations and as long as we are lead by idiots with a great gift for populism such as Putin, Erdogan and Boris Johnson and they are responsible for the majority of the funding of the Council we can’t expect more. So please do not bother me with that.

I do not care about attacking Open Society Institute either. I am neutral towards George Soros. After reading all his books I do not think he is anything close to an amazing thinker. He is a much better thinker than I or you are but on Roma issues or any issue for that matter he can be, like any of us, stupid. This opinion should not be offensive even if you are an idiot or dependent of his money. There were and are extremely smart people that work for OSI that I respect.

I do not care at all about any Roma International Organisations. Some I think are much worse than most of existing NGOs as they promote a type of ethnic radicalism that is disgusting to me. ERTF is a good example of such an organisation.

I do care a lot about the European Commission. The EU is for me the best thing that happened to Europe and I hope it will resist the idiocy of our political leaders.

I also do care about how inept, delusional or arrogant decisions affect the overall situation when it comes to education and poverty of the truly disadvantaged. That is the only reason why I waste my time to write about these. I do not care about revenge. I do not feel I need to seek any revenge. That is why I do not mention you by names.

One other fundamental difference between us is that you depend on Roma issues to make a living and I don’t. In fact this is the only way you made your living up to now. So do not be stupid, shut the f… up and hope that I will never be interested in writing when thinking of any of you ever again.

On why I want nothing to do with Roma movement and the dangers of identity politics

I used to be a Roma activist. In 2003, I decided to give up a decade long and rather promising career in management and IT and to do professionally what I had been doing voluntarily for many years: helping poor children and advocating for Roma rights. Despite a relative success (I fast became one of the most visible Roma activists) I never felt good making my living this way. As a result, I donated most, and sometimes all of my salaries for those ten years to helping poor Roma children. My life was still more than comfortable, due to good investments plus IT and communications consultancies.

In 2011, I decided to give it up. I didn’t like the caricature I had become: self-involved, egotistical, and a perpetual victim. I quit working on Roma issues and tried hard to prove to myself that I could be successful doing something else. I really enjoyed the next five years. I worked in some of the most difficult countries in the world and have been involved in the relief efforts targeting Syrian refugees. I kept volunteering in one of the worst Roma ghettoes in Bucharest, and unexpectedly, in 2013 I received, at the proposal of the Austrian leader of the European Socialists, a European Parliament prize for what I was doing. At the end of 2015 I gave up the job I liked the most in order to join Dacian Cioloș, the leader of Renew Europe, as a councilor and then as a secretary of state in the Romanian technocratic government.

Close to the end of my secretary of state mandate I was asked to run first on the list for the Romanian Senate on behalf of a new and promising party, the Save Romania Union. A few months before I had applied for and been offered a high-level job at the European level related to Roma issues. My previous job – the one I really enjoyed – was also still available for me to return to.

I thought that my professional experience could help, especially when it came to negotiations for EU funds for Roma. So I accepted the European-level job offer and became the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. All the money I made during that time was used to finance what is now ‘Casa Buna’ (the ‘Good House’), a place where we work with over 120 children and their families from the ghetto.

The choice I made to work for the Council of Europe proved to be a major mistake. I significantly underestimated the envy that it would generate. The position was a pompous joke, as was the interest in Roma of the then Secretary General. Some if not most of my superiors were weak and often vicious. The Roma movement was chaotic and egotistic (as I used to be), and plagued by eccentrics and a few madmen. Delusional and radical ethnic discourses sometimes significantly worst than similar speeches of idiots like Nigel Farage were not rare. Most of the smart and dedicated people in the movement lived in a bubble where they saw themselves as misunderstood heroes. Mediocrity and opportunism were rewarded as brilliance, and at times everything felt like a circus.

In my job, I was pushed into supporting an initiative that I thought was bombastic, stupid, and wasteful. The European Roma Institute for Art and Culture (ERIAC) in my view was, and still is, a great excuse for the member states of the EU to do little for Roma, while loudly broadcasting their support for whatever they think is ‘good Roma culture’. I thought it was both ironic and worrisome considering that most of its leaders are coming from integrated or mixed families that have or had very little if any connections to traditional Roma culture.

Culture is an important social aspect but I believed we needed a lot more than an excuse of an institution for changing the existing catastrophic situation of a large number of Roma. Roma communities need investment in reducing the horrendous poverty and educational gaps they face, rather than fancy meetings with dances and empty delusional speeches about brotherhood and sisterhood, coming from people that more often than not, actually hate each other. A Roma-focused European Agency with a serious budget or something similar would have been possible and a much better solution than ERIAC, an institution with close to zero political or financial leverage dependent on Soros money.

The Romanian diplomats at the Council of Europe were not at all supportive of new ideas, and opposed any changes meant to disturb the status quo. Ineptitude and racism were also serious issues. They were not the exception: most of the diplomats there suffered of similar problems. I returned home to Bucharest every weekend to volunteer in the ghetto. I also joined the huge anti-government protests. Probably, I did it to feel useful.

The situation in my country was getting worse, and I decided that I should do more to help. I published a series of sarcastic editorials attacking the government. In one of them, I was caustic about one of the ‘excuses’ the government repeatedly used during the protests: according to the corrupt party in power, George Soros was behind the protests in Romania. In one article, I wrote that I had just met George Soros and he looked like a frail old man that badly struggles dealing with the important role he was supposed to play. I argued sarcastically that he could barely take care of himself, let alone spearhead a plot to send assassins to kill the corrupt but popular de-facto leader of Romania, Liviu Dragnea, as the government claimed.

Some of the most powerful Romanian Roma activists at the time were strong supporters of Liviu Dragnea and hoped to become members of the government or maintain their influential positions. An out-of-context translation of my article was sent around to some other Roma activists. Some of them signed a protest letter against me and sent to the Secretary General, ridiculously accusing me of anti-Semitism. It included the signature of the second most visible European Roma activist, one of the people in the Roma movement that I had helped the most. He never asked me the context of the article and why I had written it. He doesn’t speak Romanian, so only saw the translated version. He was the main advocate for George Soros’ idea of ERIAC.

The editor-in-chief of the newspaper that published my article was the president of the Romanian Open Society Institute (an institution initiated and supported by Soros). It was all too stupid. I had had enough, and I decided to resign.

I now continue to remain completely outside of the Roma movement. I avoid any contact with its leadership, despite numerous requests especially from the adversaries of those who signed the out-of-context translation. I still work voluntarily in the ghetto on a daily basis, directly with kids and families. Nowadays, Liviu Dragnea is in prison.

Recently I saw a video about the future of Roma movement produced by the Open Society Institute (OSI). It presents what I believe is not only a seriously warped view of reality, but also a dangerous one. Nicolae Gheorghe, an extraordinary and sophisticated intellectual who had very few convictions and many, many doubts, inspired the movement that I joined and that I believed in. He was often very critical of Soros ideas and I am quite sure he would have been very vocal against this video. He argued for a Romani human rights movement, not an ethnic, identity-based movement.

Nowadays, the OSI-backed Roma leadership seems to be all about identity politics with a significant emphasis on political power. Together with the usual sycophancy, mediocrity, and a disappointing interpretation of George Soros’ ideas, this is a recipe for disaster.

In the recent years the EU has, at best, taken the back seat with Roma issues, leaving priority-setting and leadership to a tiny elite dependent on George Soros funding. This position is a risky one. OSI leadership and rhetoric dominates the limited pool of ideas when it comes to Roma, and that is not at all healthy. Roma are citizens of their own countries and the largest European minority. They can be a great asset or a great threat and playing with identity politics is not only risky but borders irresponsibility. Overwhelmingly the budgets targeting the social inclusion of Roma communities come from the budget of European Union an institution that is/should be strongly against identity politics.

The EU should step back into a leadership role and ensure that employment, education, anti-discrimination, and the sharing of citizenship-based rights and responsibilities become the priority for the social inclusion of Roma in Europe. The OSI could continue to play an important but marginal role in promoting Roma culture.