ardor

The Gypsy man’s birthday is on Saturday. For a birthday gift, our friend presented him with a rad vintage book she picked up at a consignment shop while shopping for furniture. It’s a study on Gypsies with beautiful pictures, published in 1970 by National Geographic. We argued about who would get to read it first. We’re sharing. Isn’t that nice of me to share his birthday gift with him?

The genesis of the book was a Gypsy man from the UK who wanted to take a trip to India, the probable ancient homeland of the Roma, tracing their migration routes across Europe and the Middle East. A gadjo, or non-Rom (sort of like a muggle), working for National Geographic wrote the book after making the journey with him. This Roma man, Clifford Lee, married “the pretty blue-eyed daughter of an Irish butcher.” I could relate to the description of their courtship: “With Gypsy ardor he had wooed and wed her…” Yes, that was certainly how my husband did it too.

He wrote me an email about 15 minutes after our first real conversation, which I quote directly: “Tu sai che gli italiani dicono le cose come sono e così faccio anch'io :-) Hai dei bellissimi occhi e sei molto bella.”

Alright, I’ll translate, if you insist: “You know that Italians say things like they are, and I do the same. (smiley face—cute, my dear, very cute) You have gorgeous eyes and you are really beautiful.” It sounds better in Italian, doesn’t it?

So at the time I didn’t know it was Gypsy ardor—I thought it was Italian fearlessness. Mind you, when he first arrived in the States, he would rally his guy friends by saying, “Let’s go conquer some girls!” Well, that would not sound quite so medieval in Italian. What he really meant of course was woo. And he was and is fairly good at it.