Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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Chapter 1 • Silvia Salvatici<br />
Once in the cities, however, it became more difficult for the newest<br />
migrants to recover from suffering and distress, given a social and cultural<br />
context that was so deeply different from their previous experiences.<br />
This difficulty emerged in the narrative of Korab. When he was 12 years<br />
old, Korab lost both of his legs on a land mine. He was originally from<br />
Rezalla, a village near Skenderaj, but at the time of the interview, lived<br />
with his family in Pristina. Ever since his accident, Korab has been unhappy,<br />
refusing to talk and not wanting to go to school. When the students<br />
asked him why he would not attend school regularly, he replied: “Because<br />
these guys of Pristina would tease me. They would tell me ‘you are a village<br />
boy’. In Skenderaj nobody would tell me ‘you are a village boy’”.<br />
Korab’s fear, exacerbated by his physical disability, seems rooted in a very<br />
real complex relationship between the “citizens” and the “villagers” that<br />
had newly arrived in town.<br />
Further, those who came from the countryside arrived in Pristina with their<br />
own tragic experiences, tied to them by painful memories. These memories<br />
soon became the basis of a collective identity, built in order for them<br />
to differentiate themselves from the people of the town, and which they<br />
legitimized as the authentic national identity. 11<br />
Azem, a citizen of Pristina who had spent the previous two years abroad,<br />
had been shocked by a conflict he had with a “villager” that he had met by<br />
chance in a coffee shop, and remembered the harsh conversation they had.<br />
In his words:<br />
I was with a friend of mine, I was telling him that I had just come back<br />
from Italy. And this guy, one of the people from the villages, was listening<br />
to us. Then he interrupted our conversation and addressed his words<br />
to me, talking loudly. “Where were you? Where were you while we were<br />
fighting against the enemy? We fought against the Serbs, we liberated<br />
Kosova! We gave freedom to Kosova!.” This is what they think, they<br />
think that we don’t have any rights in Kosova because we didn’t suffer<br />
as much as they did. We have always had different mentalities, but now<br />
there is much more tension.<br />
Towards the villagers newly living in Pristina, on the other hand, the native<br />
inhabitants of the capital seemed to harbour different, and in some ways,<br />
contradictory feelings. They recognized first that the village-dwellers had<br />
suffered the most from the war, and the knowledge was integrated into the<br />
collective memory of abuse enacted upon the Kosovar Albanians. This<br />
sentiment was echoed by Gentiana, who had always lived in Pristina:<br />
38<br />
…In the villages, people had terrible experiences. Nothing so terrible<br />
happened in town, but in the countryside the Serbs killed hundreds of