The Nomadic Alternative – Page 170

writes, "is not simple wanderlust. They voyage to meet relatives

as yet unknown and to find suitable brides for their own sons,

marrying within the tribe but avoiding interbreeding."

When kinship relations are obscure, far-removed cousins in a

gipsy tribe recognize each other by their songs. "He knows the

words", they say, meaning, "He is one of us." No gaje from outside

can have the remotest idea what gipsy music is. Flamenco guitar or

sobbing zigeuner music are for outside consumption only. The real

songs are played in shuttered rooms or on lonely heaths far from

outside ears. For music plays an essential part of the bush telegraph

system linking these fluid wanderers together.

Gipsies may 'hunt' over Brooklyn or Transylvania. But since

their strategy is global and they retain no historical memory beyond

some three generations, the tracks of the ancestors are blurred.

However, the international telephone system works just as efficiently

as an overland bush-telegraph. Trunk dialling has welded the tribes-

men closer together than ever before. A gipsy boy is apparently

required to memorize lists of telephone numbers as he would the

tracks of the ancestors. And if one remembers that his relatives

may be scattered from Peru to Siberia - and be on the move at the

same time - the quantity of telephone numbers must be staggering.

VIII

For all his freedom of movement, the true hunter loves his

homeland with greater intensity than the nomad or planter. The nomad

has a 'religious' attachment to an Il-Rāh, but sees territory

through a filter of prejudice. His 'love' is the welfare of his

animals, and he values the landscape in terms of good or bad grazing.

The planter values the land for the fertility of its soil, and

hates the wilderness. But the hunter adores his lands, however

barren, for what they are. The landscape is always a generous