My Ancestral Odyssey by Adam Rutter

My Dad opened the front door. The side of his hand was pressed against the door frame; palm facing outwards. Standing outside was a woman reading his lifeline. My Dad’s fortune was foretold at a cottage where we used to live. The woman’s prediction was we were going to move house. Mum and Dad had no plans to move into a different property at the time. Although we did move, as it turned out. How the woman did made her prediction? Why did she go to our former home? Who was she? And, most important of all, what was she?

This had taken place while I was at school. It was not until after I had reached my teens that I found out what the woman in question was, and the reason she called at the cottage. She was a member of a nomadic culture, Roma (or Romani). Or popularly known as Romani Gypsy because it is thought that their roots were in Egypt.

But I had learnt many years after she had made her prediction that this is not so. Their roots trace all the way back to Asia, long before they began on an epic journey midway through the Eurasian continent, ultimately reaching Europe.

And why did she made the random visit? The simplest, but less indirect answer I can provide, and that is there was a Romani living inside the cottage. The Romani inside the cottage turned out to be my mother. So I began to wonder how the Romani knew that there was another Romani in the cottage. Romanis seem to have the ability to visualise a sign on the front door of a house, which is not visible to anyone else, according to my mother. The ‘invisible’ sign is indicative of a Romani present inside the house. How true this is still remains intriguing. I have not being able to find evidence nor plausible theories to support Mum’s information. Nevertheless, the sign is a strong indicator that the resident in the house belongs to the same ethnic group as the Romani.

Being a Romani is our family heritage dating back several generations. The Romani people do not produce personal records of their existence. So who my Romani ancestors were I may never know. But what I can reveal is how long my ancestors lived in Europe, including their country of origin.

Before I embark on my ancestral journey, it is only right that I emphasise on what I am about to present during the course of this narrative is based on light research (mainly done on the internet) combined with conjecture, and with the aid of my expert knowledge on geography. By taking ‘snippets’ from various sources (through websites as well as my mum’s background knowledge on Romani values), I referenced my world atlas in order to literally map out my Romani ancestors migratory routes and settlements.

My nomadic lineage takes me back to my ancestral homeland, northwest India. Romani was not only the designated identity given to these intercontinental travellers, it was also an Indic dialect in this area of the Indian subcontinent, which was a form of Sanskrit, the oldest language in the country.

Why, and when the Romani people left India to head west is unclear, although it is understood that they might have fled the country during the Persian and Muslim invasion, following a mass migration of Roma people to the Middle East. The result of this mass migration may have been spurred on by the conquest of the Sassanian King Ardashir the First (r. 224-240 CE). However, other theories suggests that Mahmud of Ghazni’s conquest (r. 998-1030) or Muhammad Ghori’s (r. 1173-1206) rule might have given my Roma ancestors the incentive to leave India. Whether this is historically accurate or not remains uncertain. Though what is certain is that Kings Ardashir the First’s and Muhammad’s conquest would have caused instability in Northern India, thereby pushing my ancestors out of the country, forcing them to trek all the way to West Asia. From this point, the Roma people split up into separate groups, going on different migration routes that lead them to various regions in the world where some established settlements, while others continued their migration.

The groups that continued their migration throughout the rest of Asia travelled to Armenia, whereas the rest stayed in Persia (now present-day Iran). My Roma ancestors would not arrive in Europe until the fourteenth century. But they came in smaller numbers, 40 or 100, identifying themselves as pilgrims, to ensure their safe passage through the kingdoms of Western Europe.

Given that, the Roma people were a small minority on this part of the continent during this time-period raising the most puzzling question.

Am I the direct descendant of this small minority?

The mystery and obscurity surrounding my genetic origins deepens without pinpointing exactly which nomadic group I have genetic links with. The only least satisfactory conclusion that I can draw upon, and that is the small group that I have highlighted in this narrative must have somehow united with a similar nomadic group elsewhere on the continent, and then flourished and expanded across the entire European continent before finally reaching my country of birth, the United Kingdom.