If I were a Dom....

Today I want to put down some speculations regarding the economical strategies of the Dom with the information I got at my research in mind. I guess it will help me after returning home to remember what I thought about the Dom before I met them and make it easier to analyze if I pushed the results in a direction where I wanted them to be.
I really hope thats not how it's gonna turn out, but since I am very unexperienced in fieldwork all I can do to prevent "looking too hard for results where I expected them in advance" (hmmm, don't remember whom I am quoting here, but it felt familiar...) is reflecting, rethinking and remembering.

Well, if I were a Dom... I suppose I would come from a big, widely spread family. Some of my further relatives might live in Syria or Gaza, at least one or two aunts and uncles with their family in Assam, Jordan and me, my relatives and my nine siblings (four older, four younger, one twin) live in Jerusalem. I am 27 years old, so I am married for 10 years already. My husband is from the Dom Community in Israel as well, we grew up together and I really like knowing him that long because some of my sisters and a lot of the girls that were my closest friends had to move to other communitys when they got married. And my family is around, too. My father always told me, that family is the most important thing and he took care of our wellbeing for as long as I can remember.

It wasn't easy. He cannot read or write and in his youth he was a traveling smith like my grandfather. After the six day war it wasn't so easy to access the palestine villages anymore. And in Jerusalem Oldtown noone needed a smith. Luckyly my mother has always been very good at handicrafts and sold those pieces of art on the markets from a very young age on. So she was able to speak a little bit english. She was used to answer questiones about the most famous sights to tourists and to describe the way. Thats what she told my father. Like other children remember bedtime stories my oldest sister says she remembers english lessons, held as quiet as possible in the corner of our one room appartment.

Thats how my father became a tourist guide. The Dome of the Rock is quite close to our flat and every morning my father would go there and explain the history, the mystery and the architecture to tourists like he heard it from other guides and his wife, like everyone tells it in the Oldtown. He makes a good living out of this but we are a big family. Even though my older brothers work, too (one of them even has a contract with guaranteed earnings at the scavengery) and would contribute their income if anyone got sick or there was a marriage to hold we never were anything near rich.

And since the chinese market produces souvegnirs so much cheaper than my mother ever could with her own hands, handicraft isn't really an option for the younger generation anymore. I guess it's also because the dreams changed. When my mother was my age her family just setteled within the Old towns walls and gave up the live in tents. She just wanted a warm place to live, always enough healthy food on the table and a peaceful envoirement for her children.
But me... I see those kids just finishing the army going abroad for a year to travel in Australia and South America. Even the palestine youth has more freedom than I have with my four children up to now. But I don't complain. What all those independent people don't have, is the family to depend on! If my husband had an accident (g'd forbid!) or if the hospital I work in as a nurse had to let me leave or if we would suddenly need a large amount of money - I am sure that everyone in the family would give as much as they can afford. Even some far great-grand-relatives I might not even have heard of.

Because we stay to ourselfs, because we marry within the community we can be sure that everyone we get close to has the same value system and the same problems. There is no jeleousy within the community, and there is no reason not to trust anyone. And, just hypothetically, if someone really took advantage of the Dom Community - this person wouldn't have anyone in the whole world left, to rely on.
We made the experience that noone helps us and that noone is interested in our wellbeing - exept our own kind. Thats why we must preserve our culture and our identity. It's kind of a resource... While working for tourists or doing those jobs that noone else wants, we can stay away from their influences and their attepmts to change us. They sure are tempting, sometimes. And me being a nurse was unbelievable for my mother at the time of my birth... of course, things are changing and time works on us, too. It just yould be nice, if it would change the Dom of Jerusalem a little bit slower so we can be sure that we still are the Dom and not anyone in Jerusalem."