Fatima Džaferoska was born in Prilep, Macedonia in 1920. At that time Macedonia was part of the Kingdom of Serbia and from 1929 onwards Yugoslavia. She grew up in Prilep but moved to Belgrade around 1940. In 1966 she went to Vienna, Austria and worked in the catering industry. After her retirement, she returned to Belgrade where she died in September 1997.

Fatima Džaferoska was multilingual. She spoke both Romani versions of her parents – the dialect of the Džambazja and of the Arlije. Besides, Macedonian, she learned Serbo-Croatian in Belgrade; she also spoke Turkish (Balkan variant), as many Muslim Roma did until recently. In Austria she learned German.

She told her stories mainly in the dialect of her mother, the Arli dialect of Prilep. This South Balkan Romani dialect was strongly influenced by Turkish during the period of Ottoman rule as well as by Macedonian and, more recently, by Serbian. Instead of the old Indian expressions, doublets can be found for a number of terms as loan words from Turkish and Slavic languages, for instance the word ‘guilt’ or ‘debt’: the old Indian word doš has been replaced by the Turkish loanword bordži and the Serbian dugo.

(translation: Petra Cech)