Subtle Shift at the Gypsy Bride Market

A newly married Gypsy couple from the Gypsies tinker minority pose on the roof of a car during a traditional gypsy wedding ceremony at an open-air market for Gypsy brides in the village of Mogila, Bulgaria. Photo by EPA/BGNES

By Matthew Brunwasser

The New York Times

STARA ZAGORA, BULGARIA — In a field outside town, teenage girls in skimpy outfits worked the crowd at what is known locally as the "Gypsy bride market." Clad by contrast in long velvet skirts and brightly colored headscarves, their proud mothers watched. Gold flashed on necks, fingers, ears and teeth.

Meet the tinkers of Thrace, semi-nomadic Roma who in the early 21st century are among the few in Europe hewing to ancient ways. A woman may govern Germany and men in Sweden may care for infants. But in this corner of southeastern Europe, that thinking is quite foreign, with — so far — limited impact.

Technically, the young women at this traditional St. Todor's Day "market" were not for sale. But it is at this fair, held each year on the first Saturday of Orthodox Christian Lent, that the Kalaidzhi (as the estimated 18,000 Thracian tinkers are known) conduct the complex negotiations on a bride price that traditionally lead to marriage.

The identity of this semi-nomadic Roma group is based on the ancient craft of its menfolk: producing and repairing pots, pans and caldrons. For centuries, these smiths have scattered in ones or twos in Bulgarian villages to practice this craft, and they get together rarely for events like the St. Todor's fair.

This is therefore one of the few opportunities for teenagers to meet other Kalaidzhi — and potential spouses. Dating is not really an option when teenage boys and girls are forbidden to meet without an adult. Marriage outside the group is equally taboo.

Leaning against his car, surveying the scene, Hristos Georgiev, 18, was pleased to be wrapping up negotiations with the father of Donka Dimitrova, an 18-year-old he expected to marry weeks later. Bargaining had narrowed to between 10,000 and 15,000 levs, or ,500 to ,300, well more than a year's worth of the average Bulgarian's wages of 8,400 levs. He said he saved the money working construction in Cyprus.

According to Velcho Krustev, an ethnographer with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, "the man is not buying a wife, but her virginity." The payment ensures the bride will be treated well by her new family, he said.

Good looks nevertheless command a price. "If she's really beautiful, the price can go up" to 20,000 or 25,000 levs, Mr. Georgiev said, within easy earshot of his prospective bride. (Others said a great beauty might fetch 40,000 levs.)

"I don't approve," said Ms. Dimitrova, who unlike less educated Bulgarian Roma girls recently completed a landscaping course. "You shouldn't look at the money," she said, "but at the person, his way of speaking, thinking, feeling and all the rest."

Her cousin Todorka was blunt. The money, she said, "is no guarantee that the marriage will last forever. They can still find another better one 10 days later."

Kalaidzhi families usually marry off daughters between the ages of 16 and 20 and take them out of school by eighth grade, allegedly to prevent their being "stolen" by suitors. (How often true bride theft occurs is not clear. Young people said it is often a face-saving family story when a daughter elopes.)

Kalaidzhi women have long woven their daughters' dowries, and stoked the fires for their husbands' craft. They are wives, mothers and assistant tinsmiths.

Education has not been a priority: the Open Society found in 2004 that one in five Bulgarian Roma women are illiterate — almost double the share among men. Only 10 percent of Bulgarian Roma women have secondary education, according to the World Bank, compared with 16 percent for the men.

However, support for marriage traditions is waning. A 2007 study by Amalipe, a nongovernmental organization in Bulgaria, found that 52 percent of Roma opposed parents' choosing the spouse of their children, with 35 percent in favor. Only 18 percent of Roma supported the bride price; 69 percent rejected it.

Kalaidzhi are among the most tradition-bound of Roma. But even they are changing — to the distaste of elders like Ivan Kolev, 73.

While he insisted the bride price would stay — "our people always insist that a girl be a virgin" — he noted that Kalaidzhi women "were much shyer" when he married some 50 years ago. "Now they just elope. Now they go around like Bulgarians."

Indeed, Vlado Drinkov, a rare ethnic Bulgarian at the fair, selling grilled meat and beer, scoffed at the Roma traditions. Kalaidzhi women "are only taught to serve their husbands their entire lives," he said, predicting the demise of such customs.

It is modern economics, not ethics, that are bringing change. With cheap pots and pans from China widely available, smithing is a dying craft. The strongest remaining custom is for copper stills for brewing rakia, strong grape brandy that villagers make at home to avoid the E.U. excise taxes collected at public stills.

In the village of Prohorovo, the parents of Todorka Dimitrova, 18, divide the labor of life: her father, Vasil, 52, does the tinsmithing and cares for the animals. Her mother, Petrana, 50, cooks and tends the house and vegetable garden.

The mother said young Kalaidzhi women had become more "democratic" but still, only the boys could go out. "The daughters sleep at home. In Bulgarian houses, they can go wherever they want. Here they sleep at home. That's it."

"If you go to your husband and tell him you went to the bar last night, he'll beat you," she added, slapping her palm for emphasis.

Still, Ms. Dimitrova, an impish tomboy with an intelligence beyond her fifth-grade education, has already influenced her options. One man offered by her parents "was rich and truly handsome," she said. "But I didn't like his character. He was cold and childish."

Another boy left a message on a friend's mobile phone. He and Ms. Dimitrova spoke by phone for eight months before meeting last year at St. Todor's fair. Her parents turned him down — they didn't like his family, and he lived far away, 100 kilometers, or 60 miles, distant in the city of Plovdiv.

"I can choose my husband, if my parents approve," Ms. Dimitrova said. "If they don't, the chances are half and half we'll have to elope — if I can't cry enough to convince them."

Out of earshot of her parents, she confided a more radical option. She is so weary of Kalaidzhi narrow-mindedness, and insistence on tradition, that she'd consider marrying a Bulgarian.

"It's a big step to do something like that, it means you have to be ready for a big fight," she said. But "I don't want to be with someone who wouldn't make me happy."

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