I am looking at the photos I’ve made inside the small shacks in Skopelos where the Roma girls spent hot summer afternoons, lolling about on a big mattress laughing and talking. Photos inside the basement rooms where Mitsos and Konstandina’s family have made a home for the summer.
I’m discovering home has a different meaning amongst the Roma. When I visit, they never seem to mind if I walk into the compound uninvited and ask to take pictures. Sit down. Have a coffee, they always say. Their concept of privacy and mine seem to differ.
One day, I arrive to find Konstandina on strike from house duties. It’s mid-morning and she lies
asleep or resting on a mattress with a sheet pulled up to her chin in the large open space of their subterranean home, kids playing around her. Mitsos says she is tired but photographing is okay. Sit down! The young girls delight in inviting me in to where the older brothers and cousins are sleeping, surprising them with a photograph when they are barely awake. The boys groan and growl but really do not mind. Take a photo of Christos doing his outdoor shampooing, the daughters-in law scrubbing clothes or applying bleach to their faces. The boundary of “I’m doing something private so leave me alone,” does not seem to exist. My bed, my space—no, all is common property.
Checking in with Mitsos by phone before a visit, I often ask, “Where are you?” And most often he answers, “To spiti mou”, my house. I do a mental double-take trying to imagine the basement of the car repair shop as “my house.” Home for the Roma— a place to sleep, to eat, to laugh, to gather with family. For a time.