Simza was a seventh daughter and a powerful cohalyi, a witch-wife trained since birth in all things magic. The Rom believed all their people were gifted with supernatural powers, but a seventh daughter possessed the ability to become a great seer.
Every Rom woman was taught to read fortunes from an early age. Their ancestors came from the Far East in India, a motherland of ancient mysticism steeped in Vedic magic, and the Rom carried on this tradition through their travels.
To tell a fortune they would read a person’s palm or gaze into a crystal. The crystal gazers preferred to hold the crystal ball in their hands. They would stare into its depths, opening their minds to truths waiting to be told. Quartz crystals with little to no imperfections were always best. The balls were made of stone that had been washed on the full moon and charged with its light. Palm readers examined the lines of a person’s left palm to determine their innate gifts, and the right hand showed what he or she would make of them. Every etched line had meaning and created the map of that person’s life.
The Rom also practiced the art of reading tea leaves. Tea readings required a special ritual. The tea was steeped, never with any milk or sugar, and then poured into a white teacup. The cup always had to be white or light colored so each pattern could be discerned. The deeper one read into the cup, the deeper one read into the future.
A Rom seer could use anything to see the future—sticks, water, fire, dice, even playing cards. Every seer had a favorite medium, and Simza’s was seashells. She would throw her shells into the air, let them land, and read the pattern. Then she would pick up her favorite shell and hold it to her ear.
“What do you hear, Grandmother?” Aishe, her granddaughter, would always ask.
“The ocean, telling me its secrets. Here, its song sings forever.” She would pass the shell to Aishe so she could listen. No matter how long and hard she did, Aishe was sure her grandmother could hear more.
Simza was also skilled in the art of finding missing people: she would track them down using an object they had owned. People marveled at her ability. Sometimes a child would purposefully hide in the forest and others would run to get Simza. They’d place the missing child’s favorite toy in Simza’s hand, and off she would go to find them, the other children chasing after her skirt.
Simza said possessions were filled with the owner’s spirit, and if she listened closely enough they would whisper in her ear just like the shells. Each time Simza found the missing child without fail.
Aishe would beg her to explain how she did it, but Simza would only say, “The wind is the wild hunter. I follow it.”
Simza practiced all the old ways. She believed power resided in her hair and refused to cut it. She believed every day was special. On Tuesdays spinning fabric was forbidden. On Wednesdays no one was allowed to use a needle or scissors or bake bread. Thursdays were considered unlucky. On Fridays no one could bargain. And on Saturdays no one could wash a thing.
Simza also believed garlic was a powerful charm for protecting against evil spirits, storms, and bad weather. She hung ropes of garlic bulbs outside her family’s tent and wagon. She rarely spoke during the day, but when she did, she would usually go around yelling “Garlic! Garlic! Garlic!” Just saying the word, she believed, was enough to ward off evil.
Nightfall was the only time Simza talked at length; she would join the other elders, telling stories by the fire. The campfire was the center of their lives, where they passed down their history, and in this way, the flame never died.
She always told Aishe she was lucky, for Aishe had red hair. The Rom called it sun-hair and considered it a mark of good fortune. Aishe had gotten her red hair from one of her ancestors, who was not a Rom, but a wandering Sufi woman. She had joined their tribe when they crossed the desert hundreds of years ago. The woman had been near death from thirst, and Simza and Aishe’s ancestors had revived and welcomed her into their band. The story had become a legend in their family, and was one of Aishe’s favorites. She would beg Simza to tell it again and again.
Simza was full of stories, especially stories about their family’s past. She had a special treasure chest, colorfully painted, that had belonged to her own grandmother, Dinka, and had been passed down to her. It was filled with jewelry, silver spoons, delicate scarves, music boxes, and handmade dolls. Dinka had been the band’s best scavenger and had amassed a large collection of trinkets over her lifetime. Aishe loved to take out all the objects and ask Simza the story behind each one.
One day Aishe pulled out a wooden box filled with strange picture cards that had always fascinated her. “Where did Dinka find this one?” she asked her grandmother.
Simza looked up from the evening meal she was preparing over the fire, a rabbit stew in the big iron pot. “In Milan when she was just a girl,” Simza said. Then she dropped her voice dramatically, as she loved to do when telling a story. “A curse had spread over all of the city, killing almost everyone. The stench of rotting bodies traveled for hundreds of miles.”
Aishe put the wooden box back quickly, afraid to touch it now. Ghostly homes and decaying bodies could only have stemmed from evil spirits.
“Our band had been heading south when they heard the Black Death had taken thousands of lives. Empty houses meant treasure! So they came to Milan to search the cordoned-off areas.”
Aishe gasped. “They searched the houses?” Simza nodded solemnly, but Aishe caught the twinkle in her eye. She knew how much her grandmother loved a rapt audience.
“Every day they were in Milan, the phuri dai, the elder women, would whisper prayers for protection to the four winds and drape the children with charmed amulets to shield them from the bad spirits. Then the children would go off to scavenge what they could. Thousands of gadjos in Milan had fallen dead! It was their bad luck, their prikaza, that a little grandmother had come and killed them all,” she whispered.
The fire under the iron pot crackled and danced in agreement.
Aishe shivered, chilled by the wind, and wrapped herself up in her blanket. Little grandmother was the Rom’s name for a bad spirit. Gadjos were city-dwellers, and the Rom thought them impure and polluted.
“For three days Dinka searched the houses in the abandoned neighborhoods, no easy task with dead people rotting around you!” Simza bulged her eyes for effect and waved the rabbit’s legs, making Aishe squeal. “Dinka was now convinced all the ghost-eyes were watching her. She searched the last house in a panic and rooted out all the treasure. She had turned to leave when the wooden box caught her eye.”
“Then what happened?” Aishe whispered, her eyes flitting to the box again.
“She stuffed it into her bag and hurried out. On her way back to camp, she stopped at the river and offered prayers to the water.” Simza stood and reenacted the story to Aishe’s giggles. “She stomped on the ground and spun in a circle three times, commanding any fever that may have entered her body to flow out and into the earth. And she shook a tree—” She paused and pointed to Aishe.
“Four times,” Aishe answered like a dutiful student.
Simza nodded, pleased at Aishe’s memory. “Just like her grandmother had taught her. When she arrived back at camp, she opened her sack for her parents. They allowed Dinka to choose one treasure to keep. Instead of picking one of the fine dolls, she surprised them by choosing the wooden box.”
Aishe listened, wanting to remember every word of her grandmother’s story so she could store it deep inside. One day she would be the old woman by the fire with stories to tell and memories that should not be forgotten.
Simza smiled a toothless smile, her eyes sparkling again. “Maybe one day the box will belong to you.”
Aishe doubted anything in the chest would belong to her. Her parents, aunts, and uncles would inherit Dinka’s treasures first. And she had countless cousins.
Aishe didn’t agree with her grandmother’s opinion of the gadjos, that the people who lived in cities were always ill. She found cities exciting and dreamed of one day living in such a place, instead of always on the outskirts, by a river with their livestock.
Usually they would enter a town for just a day, their long caravan a chain of colorful moving houses on wheels. Their wagons’ exteriors were intricately painted, with artful trim and decorative embellishments. Their wooden cabins had shuttered windows, and the interiors had built-in seats, cabinets, wardrobes, and beds. The band would only stay in a town to trade and entertain. Then they would head to the forest to camp in a clearing, their wagons ringed together in a circle. By morning they would be on the road again, never to return to the same town.
Whenever Aishe asked why they had to leave, her parents explained that they needed to protect their spiritual energy, their dji, which they believed became drained when they spent too much time in jado, the non-Romani world. Aishe’s ancestors had left their homeland hundreds of years ago to become nomads, traveling the lungo drom, “the endless road with no destination.” Because of this, outsiders called them gypsies, though they despised the name.
Aishe closed up Dinka’s chest and put it back in the wagon in its special spot. She kissed her grandmother’s forehead and went off to meet her two cousins for their special outing. Every Eve of Saint George, the elder girls would let Aishe join in their secret ritual.
The ritual was quite simple. They carried fried fish and brandy to a place where two roads crossed. They would lay their offerings out and sit in the middle of the crossroad and wait for the apparitions of their future husbands to appear. Legend said that if a male figure appeared and ate the fish, it was a sign for a good marriage. If he drank the brandy, that was a very bad sign. And if he touched neither, then the bride and groom would both die within the year. The cousins never saw any apparitions, but every year they continued to try.
Sometimes they would strip naked at midnight by the nearest body of water—a lake or a river—and stare into its pool to see the reflection of their future husbands. When that didn’t work, they stood naked on top of a dunghill at midnight with a piece of cake in their mouths and waited for a dog to bark. The direction the sound came from was supposedly the direction where their future husband lived.
While her cousins were busy, Aishe would lie back in the grass with her eyes closed and dream about what her husband would look like. She never imagined him as a Rom, but she kept that secret to herself.
* * *
Only in winter did Simza and Aishe’s band quit their travels. Every year they settled in Styria, a small town in Austria, where they made their living in a variety of trades: metalworking, carpentry, basket weaving, and blacksmithing. Many of the men were also musicians—masters of the violin, flute, and zimbles—and often played for money. Aishe was a gifted harp player. She was also quite clever, which is how all the trouble began.
Aishe befriended a sweet Austrian girl named Kitti, whose family owned a small farm. Aishe wanted nothing more than to learn how to read like Kitti, who always had storybooks with her. Aishe had never seen books up close, for no Rom knew how to read or write. Her people carried their history through songs and the stories the elders told every night around the fire. When Aishe offered Kitti a necklace to teach her to read and speak German, Kitti agreed.
Aishe snuck into her family’s wagon to retrieve it; the necklace she found in Dinka’s chest was one of countless others. She assured herself no one would notice if it went missing. Her grandmother could barely see anymore and there were plenty left.
The girls met almost every day for several winters, and by the end of the past winter, Aishe had mastered the language. She and Kitti had also become friends.
Kitti began to lend her books, which Aishe took special care to hide. If she was ever caught with a book she would be beaten. The Rom were not allowed to pollute their mind with the gadjes’ words.
One day Aishe came home from Kitti’s and found the camp in an uproar. Her father had found the books.
“What are these?” He threw Kitti’s books at her feet and stomped on them. Then he grabbed Aishe by the hair and dragged her to the campfire.
“Papa, no! I’m sorry!”
Enraged, he took a leather cord and whipped her back repeatedly. “You! Are! Not! My! Daughter!” he yelled. With each word he cracked the strap harder.
Deaf to her screams, he reached for the branding iron in the fire.
Her mother grabbed his arm, “Stop! Stop it!”
She barely managed to keep him from maiming their daughter’s face. He took the rod to Aishe’s hand instead and held it until it seared off her skin.
Aishe shrieked and fell back, clutching her hand.
“So you’ll never forget.” He raised the rod, ready to burn her again.
Hysterical, her mother screamed to Aishe’s eldest cousin. “Take her! Niko! Take her!”
By now Simza and all the elders in the camp were yelling the same. Niko picked Aishe up and ran off with her into the forest. They found a faraway place to hide, and Niko brought Aishe water from a nearby stream to soak her hand.
“What were you thinking?” he scoffed. “Reading words. Bringing books here. Everyone knows they’re tainted.”
“They’re not. They’re beautiful.” Aishe wept, cradling her maimed hand. “One day we will have our own books.”
“That’s absurd,” Niko said, turning his back on her.
That evening Simza came to find them. She appeared beside Aishe in the dark and lifted her chin. Aishe stared back at her with tears glistening in her eyes.
“It is done” was all Simza said. Then she led her back to camp.
Her father had gone off to drink away his anger. Aishe lay down in her family’s wagon and let Simza tend her wound with one of her special salves. All the while Simza sang a song Aishe had never heard before, a sad melody about a daughter leaving her family and never seeing them again.
“What is that song, Grandmother?” Aishe whispered.
“One you know well,” Simza said.
Before Aishe could ask Simza to explain, her mother came inside.
Her mother hesitated, something she never did. Aishe had never her seen her look so solemn.
“You must marry,” she finally said.
Aishe could not believe it. “Who?”
“Milosh Badi.”
Tears sprang to Aishe’s eyes. “But Milosh Badi is Grandmother’s age.”
“You will marry him,” her mother said. “You’re sixteen.”
“He’s as old and weathered as a tree!”
“He is a musician,” her mother reminded her. “A good one.”
“He’s ancient!” Aishe began to sob. She could not believe her parents would marry her off to him.
“Milosh Badi will die soon and you will be a widow,” her mother said in her pragmatic way. “Your father has willed it so.”
“He is punishing me for the books.”
“You are never to speak of them or I will disown you myself!” her mother hissed. Then she left.
Aishe curled up on her blanket and felt her grandmother’s frail hand stroke her hair. Simza began to sing the same song again. Aishe closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, but her mind was full of wild thoughts. She must leave. She had to. Like the girl in the song, she would run away and start anew.
Simza was right. Aishe did know the song. She had known it all her life.
* * *
While everyone slept, Aishe gathered her things with the stealth of a thief. She moved to the edge of the tent and saw that her grandmother was watching her.
Simza sat up with the eeriness of a phantom. Aishe froze, not knowing what to do. Simza had the power to decide her fate. If her grandmother woke her father, no one would be able to spare Aishe from his retribution.
The two women locked eyes. Simza’s held the full weight of the cohalyi that she was. She picked up an object in the darkness and offered it to Aishe.
Through the faint streams of moonlight, Aishe saw that her grandmother was holding out Dinka’s chest.
Aishe took the gift. Then Simza draped two amulets around her neck and placed her favorite seashell in Aishe’s hand as a blessing. She motioned Aishe toward the wagon’s open door with a look that said, Go and live. I will always be with you.