Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
damage to her body seemed “extended”, including the damage suffered by<br />
her children’s bodies. The father, however, made a clear distinction<br />
between what happened to his children and his own experience.<br />
Level or intensity of damage: In this family, the level of damage is high,<br />
especially in the case of the children. Their daughter’s face and hands are<br />
horribly devastated by fire. Even though she has already undergone reconstructive<br />
surgery, more work on her scars is needed in order to make the<br />
markings fade. The stigma she endures socially is unbearable: this adolescent<br />
girl and her little brothers cover their hands with gloves and hide<br />
their faces with a skin-coloured mask whenever they go outdoors. I was<br />
allowed into what Irving Goffman would have called the “backstage” of<br />
the family from the very beginning, a “privilege” which I explain by the<br />
way we met: I had been introduced to the group as a trustworthy person,<br />
and they never wore masks in my presence.<br />
Quality: In the refugees’ discourse, there is a distinction made between<br />
physical and psychological damage. The husband suffered little physical<br />
damage, his “fire” was internal, as the humiliation, the fear, his powerlessness<br />
burned him from the inside. The damage he suffered is irreversible:<br />
there is no cosmetic surgery that would restore his wounded male<br />
identity.<br />
War, death and fear<br />
<strong>Psychosocial</strong> <strong>Notebook</strong>, Volume 2, October 2001<br />
In his accounts, a middle-aged graduate of philosophy [Eduard B.] reminded<br />
us that the history of a place (Kosovo) is also the history of its deaths,<br />
from the Turkish occupation to the Muslim persecution before the First<br />
World War, through the partition and Bulgarian occupation during the<br />
Second World War, until the rule of Marshall Tito, whose death brought an<br />
end to a peaceful, though difficult, ethnic coexistence.<br />
It is significant that, in the refugees’ representations, the conflict in<br />
Kosovo became a “war” only when an entire family (the Jashari) was<br />
killed:<br />
We all knew the war broke out when in the region of Drenica, central<br />
Kosovo, in a small village two families had been completely killed…<br />
They killed them all, and from there the war started. [Dritan]<br />
In my opinion [the war] started in March 1997, when an entire family in<br />
the centre of Kosovo was killed: 52 people, all with the same family<br />
name: they were brothers, from then on the war was started. [Ilir]<br />
179