Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Psychosocial Notebook, Volume 2, October 2001
It might be argued that the notion of community that developed in the
Albanians of Kosovo, and mainly in the countryside, emerged in the
absence of important family members. Their return to Kosovo was both a
source of hope for those who had remained, and those who were suffering
from their absence, and a source of stress, because of the long period of
separation. One example of this might be found in Elena’s narrative of her
time spent outside of Kosovo. While she was in Albania, Elena was granted
the special and unexpected visit of her son, who had been a refugee in
Germany for seven years. He had not been able to return to Kosovo before
the war. Crying, Elena explained:
I can’t describe that moment... [...] [My son] avoided serving military
service; the police was looking after him. He is the only son I have... I
was expecting to see him in Kosovo, but I saw him in Albania... my
God...
At the time of the interview, Elena said she was expecting to see her son
in Kosovo, and knew that he would be back sooner rather than later: For
three months, he had not been paid his salary in Germany and was told that
he would soon be repatriated to Kosovo. After seven years spent away
from his home, he returned to his close family who were then refugees in
Albania, and did not recognize his younger sister. His return after his long
exile was therefore both a happy occasion and a difficult event, as
evidenced by his inability to recognize his own family.
This blend of happiness and suffering was being experienced throughout
Kosovo. The separation that every family experienced during the exile of
younger family members in the 1990s slashed into the continuum of the
lives of Kosovar Albanians. From this rift arose suffering that was experienced
by too many families, and thus became incorporated into the collective
memory of forced exile and expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians
from their homes, their working places, and their land, since 1989. The
individual pain of separation gradually took on new meaning, representing
the resistance and survival of those who stayed behind. It was this new
community that was then faced with the return of their long exiled kin, and
it was at this point that the political significance of the scattered family
structure began breaking down: Through the sufferings of war, family circles
had tightened in the absence of their exiled members.
A similar experience was narrated by Suzana, a 29-year-old Albanian
woman from a town near Mitrovica. Suzana had left Kosovo and lived as
a refugee in Albania in 1999. She described how one of her two brothers,
who had lived as a refugee in England for eight years (while her second
brother was in Sweden), was forced to return to Kosovo. He no longer
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