Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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Chapter 2 • Annie Lafontaine<br />
60<br />
returned home, but afterwards we were to flee again. So this was repeated<br />
several times. The last time in [...] we joined the column that was fleeing<br />
and we were deported to Albania. It was the first column that entered<br />
Albania.<br />
They crossed the province of Kosovo more than once and, most of the<br />
time, on foot. They walked from Mitrovica to some villages of the Drenica<br />
region, from these villages to Peja, from Peja to Gjakova, from Gjakova to<br />
Istog, then from Istog to Kukes in Albania. Elena’s young daughters were<br />
on the verge of fainting from starvation, and though she managed to find<br />
little pieces of bread in her bag, Elena and her family were left without<br />
anything, like other victims of war. One night, they slept on the ground,<br />
with nothing but pieces of nylon to protect them from the rain. There, with<br />
neither shelter, food, nor people to help them, Elena and her husband were<br />
powerless to care for their family. The next day, Albanian soldiers drove<br />
them to Lezha. They had no choice in the matter. After nine difficult hours<br />
of travel on the bad roads of Albania, a cousin of Elena’s husband took<br />
them in. Later, Elena’s family went to Shkodra, to stay with her husband’s<br />
brother, who had just arrived there from Kosovo.<br />
As Elena narrated this long and difficult path of exile, the tone of her voice<br />
never changed. She just added words one after the other, listing the places<br />
through which her family had passed as if she had not been there, as if<br />
others had travelled her path. The pain, in other words, was unspeakable.<br />
She seemed tired, as if she had just returned from being a refugee. The<br />
experience of displacement could be read on her face, between the dark<br />
lines that deepened her eyes.<br />
Though the pain was unspeakable, Elena did try to explain it by describing<br />
two of its manifestations: a dream she had had about her daughter, and<br />
the sickness that sent Elena to the hospital. The first of these occurred<br />
while Elena lived as a refugee in Albania. Though she felt that she was in<br />
a safer place, she could not feel “better” because all of her children were<br />
not with her: “When I entered Albania I felt safe. But I was worried for my<br />
older daughter who had remained in Kosovo”. Elena started to work in a<br />
hotel owned by the family of the cousin who was housing her. In her<br />
words:<br />
She [the wife of the cousin] was always with us, trying to take the grief<br />
away from us. [...] It helped me a lot [...] My daughters were there to help<br />
out, also my husband, all of them. I couldn’t eat; I was crying all the time.<br />
[...] Before I came back from Albania I saw my daughter in a dream... I<br />
was scraping the foam from her lips; she was not able to speak... I stayed<br />
lying in the bed for one week. I was afraid she was killed or starved to<br />
death.