Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...
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Chapter 2 • Annie Lafontaine<br />
you have that fear inside from them but you have also the strength that<br />
Albanians have inside… that one day all that torture will come to an end;<br />
it is not only physical torture, but also mental torture… I knew that and<br />
I wanted to be like that [opposing the violence]… sometimes I am a<br />
radical… really… but I’m not an extremist…<br />
Looking back upon those past three years, Suzana was able to give a teleological<br />
meaning to the experience of war and its consequences: the forced<br />
displacement. She linked the collective, population-wide suffering of<br />
Albanians in the 1990s with the emerging strength of her people, and made<br />
them a pillar of her identity, and an explanation for inevitable conflict and<br />
displacement. In this section of the interview, Suzana spoke in a way that<br />
was representative of the group of Albanians in their twenties, most of<br />
them from villages (Suzana was born in a village of the Drenica region,<br />
where the ethnic majority is Albanian, and where the war began in March<br />
1998), whose memory does not extend much further than the time when<br />
ethnic identities radicalized, sparking cycles of violence, breeding hatred,<br />
causing suffering and forced displacement.<br />
Throughout her narrative, Suzana related her displacements (from the<br />
exile of her brothers to her move to Pristina and exodus to Albania), to the<br />
collective suffering of the Albanian people under political oppression.<br />
Every displacement Suzana endured became yet another instance of this<br />
suffering, and added to her determination to stop it. In her narrative, her<br />
experience was not isolated misfortune, but a communal affliction. This<br />
idea of suffering as sacrifice acted as a normative discourse, giving meaning<br />
to her individual experience and providing her strength that came with<br />
belonging to this Kosovar Albanian society.<br />
Unlike this younger age group, older Albanians tended to extend their recollection<br />
of suffering over a longer period of time. During an interview,<br />
Bexhet, a 65-year-old Albanian man from Prizren, said:<br />
While my father was alive [resistance took place] with guns and after<br />
that, with suffering because we couldn’t keep arms… This house that I<br />
have now in Prizren is the seventh one in my life. From my father’s<br />
house from which he was expelled, we continued changing…houses…<br />
Then we ran away because… We have suffered a lot… always running<br />
away from here to there, no job, no school, no money… Ah, this is worse<br />
than war.<br />
In the spring of 1999, Bexhet remained at home with his wife, who was<br />
too sick to walk. His children and grandchildren left for Albania on foot.<br />
When they came back that summer, they found that Bexhet’s wife had<br />
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