Hungary's 'last' Roma fortuneteller preserves traditions

(15 Oct 2021) LEAD IN:
Hungary's "last" Roma fortune-teller fears his culture and traditions could disappear before his eyes.
Most traditional Roma occupations are very much on the wane. Many in Hungary face racism, segregation, social exclusion and poverty.

STORY-LINE:
Zoltan Sztojka, by his own account, is Hungary's last Roma fortune-teller.
In his home in the village of Soltvadkert, 120 kilometers south of Budapest, he lays 36 weathered paper cards upon a table and peers at them from beneath the brim of his large felt hat.
As he turns the cards face up with his heavily ringed fingers, he reveals to his clients - whom he calls "patients" - details of their past, present and future.
It's a skill of divination he says he inherited from an "unbroken family lineage" of fortune-tellers dating back to 1601.
"They were fortune-tellers and seers," Sztojka says of generations of his ancestors, who were "chosen by God" to practice the gift of fortune-telling.
"You have to born into such a family," he says.
Forty-seven-year-old Sztojka, whose friends and locals simply call "Zoli with the hat," has been practicing his trade for 25 years, but says his skills at seeing the unseeable were apparent even as a child.
He's a member of Hungary's large Roma minority, which some estimates place at as many as one million people in the Central European country, roughly ten percent of its population. Many face racism, segregation, social exclusion and poverty.
First migrating to Hungary in the 15th century, Roma were known historically for their skills as craftspeople and musicians.
They long spoke their own language and maintained numerous dialects and customs related to their trades - metalworkers, horse groomers and traders, musicians and fortune-tellers.
But in the mid-18th century, Habsburg empress Maria Theresa ordered the forced assimilation of the Roma, outlawing their nomadic way of life and the use of their language, Romani.
Roma children were removed from their homes and placed with non-Roma families, use of the Hungarian word for Gypsy - "cigány" - was also forbidden. They were dubbed "New Hungarians."
This and other processes of marginalization mean most Roma in Hungary are no longer able to speak the Romani language, and many of their traditional trades — like fortune-telling — were lost.
For Sztojka, preserving Roma culture goes beyond keeping the centuries-old art of fortune-telling alive. He dresses each day in brilliantly colored vests and shirts, and grows a traditional long, dark moustache.
A devout Catholic, he only removes his wide-brimmed hat, a trademark of the Gábor Roma clan of Transylvania, when attending mass at church.
"It's terribly important to preserve our culture and traditions, because if we don't have a culture, then the Gypsy community will cease to exist," he says.
Most traditional Roma occupations are very much on the wane.
"It is important to preserve and maintain them for the next generations," says Szilvia Szenasi, director of the Uccu Roma Informal Educational Foundation.  
"Whether the oral legends or the traditional occupations are important for the new generations because it is through them that the Roma people can live their own identity."
Sztojka and his family belong to the Lovari subgroup of Roma, and still speak the Lovari dialect of the Romani language, something he says is "on the verge of extinction."
While in several cultures the word Gypsy is considered an offensive term, Sztojka prefers using it to Roma.
"My work is also a mission, and at the same time, it's how I can help my fellow human beings," he says.

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