The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 154154 THE SCARS OF THE ERASUREis that some erased people tried to suppress their unpleasant experiences withvarying degrees of success, so re-living these can cause trauma. For example,one erased person had to take medicine for chest and stomach pain in order tobe able to continue with the interview. Some could not hold back tears or becametense or “nervous,” as Miloš’s reaction below illustrates:S: That you live somewhere.I: Calm down, Miloš, don’t be nervous [Miloš sighs deeply, it is obvious that he is upset].M: Then I had to, something else, I don’t know what. (Miloš, 50)Just like Miloš, other interviewees often had to interrupt their testimonieswhen an uncontrollable emotional response disrupted the flow of words, but thisenabled them to be diversely expressive on the non-verbal level. Although it isclear that the erasure (like every traumatic event) is only partly translatable intowords, our analysis of their descriptions of illnesses and healing processes relies(almost) exclusively on words. Their testimonies enable us to reveal aspects oftheir narrations that seem crucial, or very important.The first aspect that forms a thread running through all the narrations isthe interdependence of the erasure and illnesses. As already established elsewhere(Lipovec Čebron 2007a, 59-75), the Peace Institute’s research revealedthat the erasure was perceived by erased people as a meta-cause of their illnesses.Moreover, they frequently emphasized that the erasure and its consequencesaffected not only their health but also that of their close familymembers. The statement of the erased person with the pseudonym AB, who wasthe only member of his family to be erased, illustrates this:Yeah, my wife had it worst. She had horrible stomach problems [...] She wasunder stress and got stomach ulcer. So when she was walking home from herworkplace, she often had to sit down, and once she even collapsed and camehome escorted by an old woman. She then fell seriously ill and got cervical cancer.This was the strongest reason that made us aware that we had to lead ahealthy life, in harmony with ourselves. The erasure was a fact and it heavilyaffected us all. (AB, 52)The second aspect relates to the perception of illness, which often changesonce the person obtains legal status. Why is this so? Persons without legal statususually have no health insurance, so they have difficulty accessing official healthcare institutions. As a result, they cannot obtain official medical diagnosis fortheir health problems but must rely on their own interpretation. Medical anthropologists(Cassell 1976, 47–83, Kleinman 1980, Helman 1997, 126–153) describethis situation using the illness 2 concept. Illness stands for a manner inwhich an individual “reads” his/her body and the symptoms of disease. Illness2 In this text, the terms “illness” and “disease” are italicized when we want to emphasize the medico-anthropologicalperspective.