Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
nism, their account serves as a reminder that adolescents have a particular
perception of the war, in which tragedy and play can live side by side
(Prica and Povrzanovic, 1996; Vrecer, 1996).
Of course, during our conversations with them, Bekim, Florina and their
classmates pointed out that the war had been a bad experience, even for
them. According to Florina:
We are children, so we did everything to feel better, but it was terrible.
We knew that there was war and they could do everything they wanted
with us... we played for several hours... for two or three hours... to save
ourselves and forget, but we didn’t forget...
Their conversations progressed as if this memory of “leisure” produced in
them a sense of guilt and had been balanced by an equivalent memory of
suffering.
A similar process occurred when the narrative of suffering focused on the
present, as happened among Kosovar-Serbs. Like others, Tanja tended to
stress the difficulty of the situation she was experiencing in Pristina and
that of the other Kosovar-Serbs still living in the city. She explained how
she could not move freely, and constantly felt as if she was in danger. She
added that she had quit her job, feeling threatened by Albanians:
I worked in the hospital. I finished medical school and I was a nurse. But
after the war I had to leave, because there were only Albanians working
in the hospital. I was threatened and I felt in danger. Therefore I left.
Later on, however, Tanja found new work as a reporter for a multicultural
radio that was run by Albanians, Serbs and Turks. Since then, she has travelled
a lot and met a lot of new friends:
Tanja: I attended a course for journalists in Italy, in Rome. And I
have travelled also inside Kosovo, I visited many towns
where I hadn’t been before. Before I didn’t travel so much.
Question: It seems to me that you are very happy about your new
profession…
Tanja: Oh, yes, my life is much more exciting now than it was
before!
Paradoxically, the difficult living conditions created for the Kosovar-Serbs
after the war both strongly limited the freedom of Tanja’s daily life, and
opened for her new geographical and experimental horizons. In her
account, however, this positive effect remained almost entirely obscured
by her emphasis on hardship.
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