one night as Bekim and I visited a nearby supermarket for food, his incessant struggle for survival was vividly illustrated. Walking out of the settlement, we entered a busy street lined with bright lights and tall buildings. As Bekim contemplated the proliferation of stores along our route, he asked if I had visited the nearby mall. He had never been inside and was curious what it was like. Even though it was not far from his home, the mall was a place Bekim would probably never go. People like him, he said, could get into trouble if they went to malls. Bekim knew the areas he should avoid. Suddenly, his stomach started to rumble. There had not been much food for dinner and Bekim only ate a fraction of it, wanting to ensure that his children had enough. Thinking about his last meal, Bekim casually commented that another one of his molars had fallen out. This was the second in as many weeks and a little more than half of his teeth remained. Stoically, Bekim added that at least it had been painless. He expected to begin losing his incisors soon, which were already black with decay.
Before long, we crossed an empty parking lot and arrived at the front of a large supermarket. Its windows were dark and the building appeared deserted. As I expected, it had closed an hour earlier. We had not come to shop. Wanting to avoid harassment, Polje’s residents assiduously avoided purchasing food at supermarkets. Nevertheless, these large stores were an important source of sustenance for Bekim’s family. Skirting around the side of the building, we made our way to a row of dumpsters in the rear. With Bekim starting at one end and me at the other, we meticulously combed through their contents. This is where we hoped to obtain our next meal. We were searching for any rotten fruits and vegetables that the supermarket had discarded at closing. While Serbs expressed disgust at eating food found in dumpsters, it was an accepted part of everyday life in the Other world. Molding tomatoes were not trash; they were nourishment. But despite our efforts the dumpsters yielded nothing. Fortunately, two other supermarkets were not far away. Perhaps, Bekim mused, we would have better luck there.
As we began walking, Bekim suggested that we buy a soda from a nearby convenience store. Although the door was locked, a clerk was conducting transactions through an open window. She fetched candy and snacks from inside the premises but allowed customers to choose their own beverages from an exterior refrigerator. For security, it could only be opened once the clerk disengaged a magnetic seal. However, when Bekim asked her to unlock the refrigerator, as she had done for the Serbs in line before us, the clerk refused. Instead, she summoned a coworker to fetch the bottle. Bekim paid in silence but as soon as we were out of earshot, he vented his anger. She treated us like thieving cigani, he said. Although cigan is routinely translated as Gypsy, these words have different origins.3 Furthermore, the former is far more pejorative and pervades Serbian speech. While Lady Gaga sings about loving the “Gypsy life,” Serbs discuss the dirty, lazy, and dishonest cigani who pervade their city. Given these stereotypes, Bekim was accustomed to regularly enduring interactions like the one at the convenience store.
Strolling two blocks more, we found ourselves in front of another supermarket. This time, Bekim paused. A group of young Serbian men was loitering not far away. Bekim knew that like the clerk, they regarded him as a cigan. Cigan was not only an insult; it inspired violence. Especially at night, cigani were chased and assaulted. Bekim had been forced to run for his life on several occasions and he did not want to repeat the experience now. A few scraps of food, he whispered, were not worth broken bones. Turning around, he guided me to yet another set of dumpsters. Once again, several men were standing nearby. Urging me to walk faster as we made our retreat, Bekim repeatedly glanced over his shoulder to ensure we were not followed. At this point he decided to return home, remarking that it was simply too dangerous to stay out any longer.
As we entered Polje, I was reminded just how separate the settlement was. Leaving the main thoroughfare, we turned down an inconspicuous lane. In the distance lay only darkness. Walking further, we left the city behind. The streetlights grew fainter, the din of traffic disappeared, and the air became colder. Soon we were enveloped by the night and unable to see anything but the narrow road we were traversing. Then, through the blackness, a scattering of faint lights began appearing in the distance. Suddenly, we entered the settlement, surrounded by shacks, trash, and silence. Bekim and I were home.
Sitting down outside his shack, I thought about our experiences that night. Bekim, a refugee, had spent an hour trying to feed his family by rummaging through dumpsters for rotten vegetables. During this brief time his alienness seemed to be omnipresent: he was fearful to enter a mall, treated as a thief, and risked being beaten. He returned to his home, a shack in a trash-strewn, segregated settlement, with nothing more than a bottle of soda. And this settlement, Bekim’s shelter from the dangerous streets, was continually threatened with demolition. He could lose what little he had in a matter of days. Seeing my expression, Bekim asked what I was thinking. I replied that I was contemplating our evening. Bekim nodded. Yes, he said, it had been an incredibly boring night.
Boring was a word commonly used to describe people’s lives in Polje. For Bekim, there was nothing exceptional about scavenging for food, avoiding assault, or facing eviction. Hunger, segregation, racism, and marginalization were so entrenched that they were not just the norm, they were tedious. This response was born out of the world of the settlements and the trash that sustained them. Polje and the people who called it home were so fundamentally estranged from Serbian society and from the Serbian state that the Other world became their only world. There was simply no alternative way to be. But if life in the settlements was boring, it was not without hope. The potential for a better existence lay in the dumpsters. Banned from the world beyond Polje, Ashkali and Roma looked to its detritus for their survival and prosperity. To understand these precarious spaces of displacement where trash is ubiquitous and transformative—these wastelands—this book follows Bekim and his neighbors as they scavenge life.
VISIBLE INVISIBILITY
Four years before that night with Bekim, I arrived in Belgrade to explore the feasibility of conducting anthropological research in informal Romani settlements. During that initial trip I quickly became aware of how Roma were both exceptionally visible and relentlessly hidden. Every day I saw Roma. When I walked to the grocery store or to the tram stop, I observed Roma sorting through dumpsters, begging at traffic lights, and pedaling three-wheeled bicycles called trokolice. As I sat in my apartment, I regularly heard the clop, clop, clop of horses’ hooves on the asphalt before catching a glimpse of a Rom driving a cart laden with scrap metal. Scavenging, coupled with their noticeably dark skin and black hair, marked Roma as Other. Their difference was obvious but also unremarkable. My Serbian neighbors were accustomed to passing Roma on the street and standing next to them at convenience stores. Yet despite the ubiquity and visibility of Roma, they were in many ways just as much of a mystery to my neighbors as they were to me. When I asked where the Romani horsemen were from or how many settlements were in the vicinity, Serbs could not answer. They passed the same Romani individuals every day but knew nothing about their everyday lives. Echoing Deon, one woman replied, “cigani live in their own world.” This book explores the alternating contexts of visibility and invisibility to understand the complex relationships that occur between Roma and Serbs, between Roma and the state, and between Roma and a global economy of trash.
Serbs saw little reason to know the particulars of Romani lives because cigani were assumed to be a homogeneous and eternal underclass. Cigani would always be poor and dirty, I was told. They lived in shacks and remained unemployed because that was their preferred lifestyle. One man was adamant that although cigani blamed the Serbian government for their poverty, it was their own fault. In their hearts, he said, cigani were different. Overhearing this conversation, a young woman volunteered that when she was a child, her parents told her cigani would kidnap her. To this day she was still terrified. Cigani were deceitful, she added, predicting they would only talk to me for money and would never be my friends. Others were concerned that I would be robbed or assaulted while visiting Romani settlements. One man believed that my informants would encourage me to steal manhole covers or electrical wires. Once the police discovered these crimes, he continued, they would send me to prison while the instigators remained free. Although most comments focused on the inherent laziness and criminality of Roma, a few stressed their carefree attitude. One woman remarked that cigani always smiled and laughed even though they could not feed themselves. These Serbian narratives