The Scars of the Erasure_web

Erasure_4a 10.1.11 20:29 Page 4848 THE SCARS OF THE ERASUREOf course I didn’t know what it meant, what the consequences were. She instructedme to go to the office for foreigners and ask there what to do. I went there andasked them what I had to do to be able to stay in Slovenia. There were two young womensitting there; they looked at me and asked on whose behalf I was asking. “On my own,”I said. They simply couldn’t believe it; they too thought it was strange. They explainedto me what I had to do – that I first had to go to the Bosnian embassy and get a Bosnianpassport. At that time there was no Bosnian embassy in Ljubljana; the nearest one wasin Italy. So I got down to obtaining Bosnian documents, foreign documents. I phonedthe embassy because I couldn’t go to Italy without valid documents. They asked me if Ihad a permanent address in Ljubljana, and I said I didn’t because they invalidated it.“If that is the case, then you cannot get Bosnian documents from the embassy,” waswhat they said. So I was at zero point – nowhere. I didn’t have Slovenian citizenship orany valid document. One of my brothers was erased too, but other siblings – we wereeight children in my family – didn’t have problems; they all became Slovenian citizens.The loss of legal status caused many complications. I split from my partner duringthat time, when my life disintegrated, because I couldn’t get citizen status. The apartmentwas owned by the company for which she worked at the time. When we split, Imoved out of the apartment, and she later purchased it from the company. We werenot married, but we had the same address – that address was my registered permanentaddress. One reason why we quarreled was the complications regarding citizenship. Ipreferred to move out of the apartment, so that she could stay there with our son (bornin 1991). I was left literally without anything, like a hobo, left to my own devices, withoutdocuments, without a job, without a family and without an apartment. I slept inbasements, old cars and parks.I was seriously ill but I didn’t have health insurance. I also didn’t have money topay for examinations, so I could not see a doctor. There had been no free medical helpuntil 2002 when doctor Doplihar opened the outpatient clinic in Mislejeva Street forpeople without health insurance. Then for some time I went there until I got citizenshipand arranged health insurance. In the meantime I went without health care for 10 years.Since I know how it is when you’re ill and you don’t have access to doctors, I thinkthat the right to medical help is one of the essential rights. Without health, you’re destroyed.You cannot even work illegally if you are ill. I wonder what happened to theHippocratic oath. Has it been replaced by the insurance policy? My health conditionchronically deteriorated during the period of erasure, when I couldn’t access health careanywhere. Now I have the certificate that I have level three disability, but I think itshould be at least level two disability. My legs have been swelling and the wounds ope -ning up, so I have to wear bandages all the time. I cannot see in my right eye – this isalso one of the consequences of not having treatment. It went to my lungs; I should stopsmoking. Well, I try, slowly. The erasure really affected my health.From that time on, after I became a foreigner without documents and withoutstatus, no one wanted to give me a job. They were afraid of the police. I lived on whatI could earn working illegally and on what I could cadge from others. I was like a homelessperson: without a home, without a family, which didn’t want me because I didn’t