Oh, Dom where art though?

I should have known!

I read a lot about the Dom and summed up most of the information in this blog so it's kind of strange that todays events suprised me at all.
I went for a walk in the muslim quater with the plan to see a little bit of daily Dom culture and to try to speak to some of the Dom, perhaps even find an informant who will allow me to follow him or her for one whole day. I asked the baker of my breakfast-pita if he knew the Dom, I asked the one who pressed my orange juice. I asked at the store where the sell plkastic rifles and pink dolls and I asked everyone on the street who asked me what I was looking for. Everyone pointed in the same direction, where I had met Amouns Sister and niece some days earlier. Another woman had invited me into her house back then so I got a bit of an understanding where to look already. But suddenly, as soon as I reached the area noone seemed to have ever heard about the Dom at all.
Even when I showed the two sentences of introduction, written in arabic by Amoun for me to make myself understandable more easy all I got were confused looks and headshaking. "No. Never heard abeout the Dom. Don't know what you want. Dome of the rock, perhaps?"
Well, what did I expect? When you are discriminated because of your heritage, when your ancestors adopted the religion and the language of the people arond them to be accepted and not to stand out anymore, when you live from state support, don't have an education and can't get a long term job because of your families culture and the prejustices of other people - then you probably don't want some unknown woman to ask you questions about your income, your lack of work and all the other things that cause all your problems.

So, this approach failed.

Still, my aim for today was to find out where the Dom live exactly. There is more than one area, as it seems. At least that's what one of the shopkeepers in the muslim quater told me. From my first observations, the pictures I say in the book and in the center I feel like getting a bit of a feeling for "Dom faces". This sounds racist, of course, but since there is a strong tendency to endogamy, even nowadays and the Dom I may have met on the streets don't want to present themselfs by this name, I had no other chance than to walk through the streets with this idea of similarity.
Well, one of my impressions was: As soon as there are more than two fat kids in a street it's not a Dom area anymore. How scientific!

I remembered the study I read and wrote about yesterday. It said, that some of the Dom had TV, nearly the half had solar powered hot water and a few also have airconditioning. The conclusion for me was to take a look from above. I felt I had to see the roofs to get a feeling for the rich and the poor. It indeed was impressive: At the christian quater every house has more than one Sattelite dish and Hot water system. In the muslim quater it's a lot less. Here you see chicken on the roof more often. And more laundry which seemed to get more functional at less "trendy" the further I went. In some demolished buildings ruins there was the attempt of farming/gardening to be seen and also the quality and quantity of childrens toys decreased on my walk on the Old Citys wall from Jaffa Gate to Al-Aqusa-Mosque while the piles of thrown away goods and garbage increased. At the area close to the northern end of the walk finally some of the houses even had corrugated iron roofs which must be very uncomfortable in the hot J-lem summers.

I will try to contact an real estate agent in Jerusalem to find out more about the welth and the living-quality of this area.

The picture above describes my day best: even though I had no real contact with the Dom and I felt like they were closing their doors in front of me (How selfcentered can I be? Until now I didn't give anyone a good reason to open up, except for metaphorically knocking impatiently...) I still got a better feeling for the live conditions. Those 8 pair of shoes in front of one small flat paint the same picture as the survey from 2004 does.

Tomorrow I'll try another thing I already started today. I will look for jobs in the muslim quater of the old city. I want know what needs to be done and doesn't afford a lot of investment like an grocery store or a bakery does. Hopefully I will get a feeling for the possibilities that a Dom person searching for work has and what aspects might ban them rom jobs.