Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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Chapter 1 • Silvia Salvatici<br />
a family’s members, while other causes (that might have been exacerbated<br />
by the war, but that originated elsewhere), were left unrecognized. This<br />
appeared in the narrative of Sofije, a 21-year-old mother, whose husband<br />
was killed by Serbian paramilitaries. At the time of the interview, Sofije’s<br />
baby was 11 months old, and she still lived with her parents-in-law, in a<br />
village near Vushttri. During the interview, Sofije and her husband’s family<br />
focused their conversation with the students 5 on the loss of her husband,<br />
which they identified as the cause of suffering for each individual<br />
family member as well as the family itself, as a small community left without<br />
domestic harmony. As the elderly father said: “We lost our son, she lost<br />
her husband. It’s too bad, it’s too bad. The family is destroyed. Nothing<br />
will ever be as it was before”. Later in the conversation, however, other<br />
reasons for their familial disruption emerged: Sofije wished to return home<br />
to live with her parents, but according to Kosovar-Albanian custom, she<br />
could not do this without leaving her child with the family of her husband.<br />
Sofije’s suffering thus also originated in part from this difficult decision<br />
that faced her at the time: She could move into a more protective family<br />
context, more appropriate to overcome the loss of her husband, but the loss<br />
of her daughter would only add to her mourning. In her words: “I don’t<br />
want to separate from her, she is all I have. But I would like to go back to<br />
my parents, to my family… you know, it’s my family…” Sofije complained<br />
of psychological disturbances (she could not sleep, had no<br />
appetite, fainted often), but their origin, despite the way in which her family<br />
represented their suffering, could not exclusively be attributed to the<br />
“trauma provoked by the war”. 6<br />
Divided families, expanding networks<br />
Memories of the suffering created by war and forced exile quite often<br />
raised the theme of separation, and discourse on separation focused mainly<br />
on the family context. To Kosovar-Albanians, any division of the family<br />
group which later prevented it from performing its essential protective<br />
function, was described as a particularly painful experience in which gender<br />
and generational differences played a fundamental role. This was<br />
exemplified by the account of Drita, a mother of two children, who, like<br />
many other women, was forced to leave her husband:<br />
28<br />
I don’t know how to express myself. I was somehow lost when I left him.<br />
It was such a deep sorrow… because at that moment they were expelling<br />
us from Vushtrri to Macedonia, but I didn’t want to go. My husband<br />
couldn’t come with us.<br />
This “I felt lost” and “we were lost” were frequently recurring expressions<br />
amongst women who separated from their husbands. The feeling of