Refiguring Les Années Noires by Kathy Comfort

Author:Kathy Comfort
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing
Published: 2012-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mulo Post-Mortem

Voso’s interpretation of the supernatural events allows us to see the aftermath of the killing from the Roma perspective. Since in the Roma perception, Tantchi had already come back as a mulo, there were special considerations, as delineated by Voso: “Si un mort a pu devenir un mulo, il peut le redevenir. Mais selon la croyance, du fait que son cœur a été percé, sa mort ne peut être que définitive, et son âme même ne pourrait plus se réintégrer dans un autre corps”[100] (“If a dead person could become a mulo, he can become one again. But according to belief, the fact that his heart was pierced, his death can only be definitive, and his very soul could no longer return in another body”). The piercing of the heart to “re-kill” the mulo calls to mind vampire legends from southern Slavic countries, a region that has traditionally had a sizeable Roma population. According to Serbian legend, vampires must be killed with a wooden stake through the heart.[101] We learn that Tantchi, angered by the coroner’s visit to the camp, became a mulo to protest the gadjé intrusion in his death. Recounting incidents of mulé who were not properly killed, Voso specifies the rituals the family must observe. The first step is the purification ceremony in which the body and the coffin are cleansed and Stervo’s bloody clothes burned. Hancock asserts that the burning of the deceased’s possessions originates in the Hindu “sati,” the ritual practiced by some communities in which the widow throws herself (or is thrown by relatives) onto her husband’s funeral pyre.[102] In La Septième fille, it is the women who start a fire and “y jetaient comme combustibles toutes les vieilles chaussures qu’elles trouvaient, ainsi que des vieux chiffons. La croyance ou la superstition veut, chez les Roms, que les mauvaises odeurs chassent les fantômes.”[103] (“they threw in there as fuel all the old shoes that they found as well as old rags. According to Roma belief or superstition, foul odors chase away ghosts”). When Silenka exclaims ‘“Je brûle”[104] (“I’m burning”) as Tantchi’s belongings are burned, her pain calls to mind a Catholic exorcism in which the demon possessing an individual is cast out at great physical and psychological cost to the possessed. The demonic Dharani shows her hand in transforming a ritual of protection and purification into one that perpetuates her evil intent.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.