Ilfan ‘Mace’ Buzeski was born in Prilep, Macedonia, in 1944 and also grew up there. In 1968 he moved to Vienna, Austria. In the mid-1970s he emigrated with his wife and daughter to New York and settled in the Bronx, where he died in 2000.

Ilfan Buzeski told his stories in the dialect of the Arlije from Prilep, Macedonia, a South Balkan variant of the Romani čhib. Since the Arljie from Prilep spoke Turkish as a second language under Ottoman rule (after Macedonian), Arli-Romani from Prilep was influenced by Balkan Turkish dialects and Macedonian. In this language variant, there are often several synonyms for one term that stem from the various contact languages and have equal status with one another.

(translation: P. Cech)