A Gypsy guy, roughly my age, built a house just across the street from ours. Got a wife, five daughters, two sons. Most of the children were born here. The oldest two or three were born while they lived in Prizren (Kosovo and Metohija), then fled to Kumanovo or Prilep (Macedonia), then fled here. The Albanians may have been suppressed, but they themselves are suppressing just about anyone else, including non-muslim Albanians. So, as Gypsies, they became refugees.
Unlike Gypsies elsewhere, many of them here build houses and settle. He got screwed with the house in several ways. First, the guy behind him, who owned the land, didn't sell him half the lot (i.e. 40m deep), but only a third, so his backyard is just 5m instead of 15. He did sell a wider lot, but then when the city planners came, they cut that and the adjacent lot into thirds, thus creating one in the middle, and he had to move the house (foundation only, at the time, some unfinished walls) half width to the right. Then his mason, whom lived just two houses from us (and whose house was shambles... his yard wall to the next neighbor finally fell and he didn't want to fix it) put all the windows awry, not one could be closed properly. Even the terrace board hung out at an angle - and a different angle on the right than on the left.
He used to work in the night shift in the foundry, but that kind of work was killing him - never got enough sleep nor money. Some time in the nineties he switched to cleaning the streets, which he says is a song in comparison.
Our best neighbor, in a way.
20-XI-2019