Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
Albanian people. Stories of forced exile usually tended to emphasize the
warm welcome given to refugees from Kosovo upon their arrival in both
Albania and Macedonia, by the Albanians living there.
This discourse on the solidarity of “compatriots” contributes to the depiction
of Albanians as friendly and generous, but also draws a cultural line,
identifying all Albanians as members of a same national community.
Nevertheless, the social and cultural differences between the Albanians of
Kosovo and those of other regions were most often, to a greater or lesser
extent, openly recognized, and in some cases blamed for an even more difficult
adaptation to the hard life of a refugee.
In conversations with Ardita, for instance, the memory of “Albanian solidarity”
was overshadowed by a memory of oppression, when this very
kindness turned into the forced acceptance of a host community’s very different
customs. In her account, Ardita described how an Albanian family
in Tetovo hosted her and her sister. At first, her description of the accommodations
pays due gratitude to the hospitality the two girls received:
“The family lived in a village, the place was nice. They tried to bring us
closer to them as much as they could and took good care of us”, she said.
Then, however, Ardita’s memory swung back to the limitations they had to
accept:
They were very old fashioned and very religious, therefore women were
very discriminated against. They had to stay in the house and not go outside
without a male adult; they acted with us in that way, as well. We had
no choice but to adapt to those circumstances, even though we tried
sometimes to fight against those old fashioned habits. But we had to put
up with being shut in the house since they didn’t allow us to move
freely... Just because we were women. Women there couldn’t go into
town freely. If they had something to fetch from town they had to be
escorted by the head of the family… so women couldn’t move without a
male escort. We weren’t used to things like that…
These limitations on movement worsened the suffering associated with her
condition as a refugee, and even more so, when being forced to remain
inside the house seemed a denial of Ardita’s right to seek news about the
family she had left in Kosovo. In her words:
During that period we were very sad and bored, we were in a very bad
psychological state… also, spiritually we felt very bad… We constantly
received bad news about our village being attacked from every side.
Someone told us that there were many victims, massacres were being
performed, and we had no news about the rest of our family there. We
wanted to get information somehow, but couldn’t since we were stuck
inside the house. I felt very bad.
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