Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 5 • Giuseppe De Sario, Laura Corradi, Patricia Ruiz, Enrica Capussotti
No, we don’t have many traditions, at least I was not interested in them
so much… I used to work all day in a field, go home, watch a bit of TV
and fall asleep… I don’t know what to say…
On the other hand, the exposure to mass culture could also open new
avenues of expression for the Romany. As J.P Liegois wrote: “[The
Romany] are exploring art forms little used by them up to now, such as
painting, small-scale distribution of recordings of original songs, collections
of stories, autobiographical accounts” (Liégeois, 1994: 104). This is
illustrated by the case of Tony Gatlif, well known as an exception, a Rom
who was able to create and release as important a film as Gadjo Dilo.
Another point concerning this “fragmented narration” would bring us back
to the traumatic impacts of the conflict. The young people interviewed
were those who were born and grew up in a society based on hatred and
violence. They went to schools already separated into institutions for
Albanians or for Serbs, they had increasingly fewer opportunities to meet
people from outside their own cultural group, and their experiences were
those of struggle and discrimination. This, perhaps, is what caused this
fragmentation in their remembering and forgetting.
Ylber, for instance, a 20-year-old Rom, only gave short answers to my
questions and needed frequent stimulation in order to speak. The quoted
declaration occurred at the end of the conversation, and the translator was
trying to help me understand why Ylber looked so tired, and why he was
having so much trouble relating his experience.
For [me] it has been a trauma to talk about these things because [I] feel
sick… just to think about the fear [I] felt, the things that happened [I]
feels sick… and to talk is even worse… the past is a trauma… My head
is tired…
Rozafa, a 15-year-old Romany said:
My memory has [to] be cancelled after what happened in my life… there
have been nice and bad things but they have been cancelled… I remember
most things related to my house… instead the memory of school has
been cancelled because of what happened…
Before this, Rozafa had explained that she had stopped going to her
school, (which was managed by Kosovar Albanians), because her classmates
were insulting her and suggesting she join the other Romany in a
Serbian school. She later said that going to an Albanian school made her
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