Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Chapter 1 • Silvia Salvatici<br />
I cried for two months… You know, I was born there, 18 years spent in<br />
one town with a lot of friends. Then to come to a city which is smaller,<br />
no friends, only the family… It was really… how should I say, very hard.<br />
Especially at the beginning, I looked at my pictures… I have also the<br />
videotape with my friends, with Belgrade. I still listen to songs in<br />
Serbian, but many people tell me not to do this, because it’s not safe, and<br />
people here after the war are totally different, even those people who<br />
want to listen to Serbian music, they listen to it with walkmans, just so<br />
that the Serbian voice cannot be heard by the others. And because of that<br />
it was very hard at the beginning, but life goes on…<br />
If war and forced exile were the causes of shattered families and of separation<br />
from loved ones, these ills could also result in a new network of<br />
relationships forged in different contexts, most often by women. Thus,<br />
Valbona, another interviewee, not only maintained a good relationship<br />
with the women of the family that hosted her and her children in Tetovo,<br />
but she also became a good friend. This friendship sustained her during the<br />
time of her forced exile from Kosovo, and lived on, even upon her return.<br />
After the war, Valbona’s friends from Tetovo came several times to visit<br />
her and her family in Pristina.<br />
Shyrhrete had a similar experience. When she was staying in Albania with<br />
her two daughters, her husband and her mother-in-law, the families living<br />
in her neighbourhood came to visit them every day. A friendship “mainly<br />
between women” formed there. In Valbona’s words:<br />
Valbona: We used to prepare the food together They liked the way we<br />
prepared our specialities. So we did the work together. Even<br />
when we went downtown, we went there together. They<br />
were always with us, trying to take our grief away.<br />
Question: Did this work? Did this make you feel better?<br />
Valbona: Yes it worked. It helped me a lot. […] We are still in touch by<br />
phone and when the war was over they came here to visit us.<br />
The war and the exile, then, extended relationship networks beyond the<br />
lines of family and kinship. This enlarged network became a resource during<br />
the war, and often was or could be a resource in the present. In narratives<br />
of war, however, forced separation, hardship and exile were almost<br />
never seen in this light. The ability, displayed in other cases, to face and<br />
overcome hardship, was not emphasized in the accounts, which focused<br />
rather on suffering and a sense of loss. 7<br />
A suffering with deep roots<br />
All of the interviewees placed the origins of their suffering far back in the<br />
past and underlined its continuity into the present. The massacres that<br />
30