Nemia Temporal’s Tears for Refugee Mothers

As readers of this blog know, my two weeks in Orvieto, Italy at the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma provided plenty of memorable moments.

One of the most vivid came during a second-week lecture on the subject of attachment.

The professor was an elderly Italian gentleman who showed us a clip of a mother breast-feeding a three-month-0ld baby in her home, then another clip of the baby at 1-year-old.  He explained that there had been violence in the home in the intervening nine months and pointed out that the older child demonstrated less attached behavior than he had at three months.

The video and the whole direction of the presentation elicited a lot of comment and frustration.  Some group members expressed dismay that fathers were not included in the study, but the work purported to make general statements about attachment and parenting.  Others did not seem to respond well to the professor’s answer that some people are made uncomfortable by the sight of mothers breast-feeding their children.

Then Nemia rose to speak.

Hunger for Family Knowledge and Moona Chaudhry

Today Dunreith and I tromped down to the South Boulevard El stop, where we caught the train and started to resume the daily rhythm of work.

My dad and her mother stayed at home.

I’ve actually seen a lot of Dad in the months since Diane’s death in August.  His arrival on Saturday marked the second time he’s been out to Chicago since her passing, and we connected in Massachusetts last month when I went in to check in on Mom and work on a freelance assignment.

Karen Tchennozian and her Armenian grandmother

Karen's grandmother made apricot jam by hand until the age of 102.

I’ve written before about the extraordinary diversity within the members of this year’s Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma.

This diversity extends far beyond some of the often more standard physical markers in the United States of age, race and disability into country of origin, stage of career, and sexual orientation, among others.

Karen Tchennozian embodies that diversity.

Born in Marseille, France to Armenian parents, she lives in Beirut, Lebanon and works with refugees from throughout the Middle East.

Like nearly all Armenian families, hers was affected by the genocide. The impact took many forms, one of which involved her maternal grandmother, Zaroui.

As a 12-year-old, she walked 600 miles to an orphanage, safety and freedom from the Turks who would kill her and the rest of her family.

After living out the war, she made it to the United States and set up a family. Like many survivors, she wanted dearly to preserve the culture from which she had come and of which so much had been destroyed.

One of the ways in which she did this was by making jam from fresh apricots and cherries by hand and cooked by the sun.  Karen said her grandmother would rotate the location of the jars of jam from one side of the house to another.

She never used preservatives or added sugar, and always said that commercially-made jam was poison.

As a child, much like Peter Balakian in Black Dog of Fate, Karen hungered to be American. When as classmate came over to her house, she tasted and did not like the jam Karen’s grandmother had made.

Ashamed and embarrassed, Karen stopped eating it for years.

Zaroui kept making the jam until the last of her 102 years.

In 2005, she died at the age of 102.

For the first time in her life, Karen had to buy jam.

She purchased a jar, opened it and took a bite.

Her grandmother had been right.

It tasted like poison.

Karen brings her background into her work with refugees from across the Middle East.  Many of them are Iraqi, see Karen’s dark hair and try to figure out whether she is Sunni or Shi’a, friend or foe.  She explains to them that she is Armenian. This self-disclosure and her residence in Lebanon help to build trust and to ward off conflict.

She also honors her grandmother and ancestors by not eating much jam.

Child Sexual Abuse and Judy Atkinson, aboriginal healer

Judy Atkinson is an aboriginal healer who deals often with child sexual abuse.

I recently finished a project about child sexual abuse that was one of the hardest I’ve ever done.

Each aspect of the project was difficult.  Getting the data.  Going back to the agency and getting more data.  Finding people willing to share their experience.

And, above all, hearing the stories of young women who had endured sexual abuse, often from relatives.  In one instance, I had to stop myself from crying during the interview because I knew the survivor and her mother would shift their attention to comforting me.

Judy Atkinson is an aboriginal woman from Australia who has worked to heal many children there who have been similarly abused.  We met in Orvieto, Italy, where we both participated in the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma.

In her work, which often takes her to remote areas, she draws on her ancestral traditions to combat what she sees as the toxic and even lethal consequences of colonialism.

Many of these communities have been completely ignored by the Australian government, she said.  When they do respond, she feels that their statements indicate an acceptance of the actions against the children as if they are almost to be expected because it is such an ingrained part of aboriginal culture that it is almost normal.

Judy refuses to accept this attitude, which can lead quite easily to justifying inaction and neglect.  Instead she feels she must strike a balance between speaking honestly about what is happening and not giving further fodder to critics.

Judy also encourages the young people and communities with whom she works to design their own healing environments.   She strives to achieve healing on individual and communal bases.

It’s not easy, and the situation in some of the places where she works is so dire as to seem beyond repair.    Yet she has had successes in which victims have told their stories and perpetrators have acknowledged their misdeeds and pledged to stop.

In our project at the Reporter, each of the three survivors we interviewed used some form of artistic expression as part of their healing process and journey.

It’s given me comfort that halfway across the globe a brave woman is doing the same with young people who have suffered similar unspeakable actions.

Yavar Moghimi, psychiatrist and film editor

Yavar Moghimi (center) is a psychiatrist and film editor.

Growing up as a second generation Iranian-American in the Washington, DC area, fellow Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma participant Yavar Moghimi often received suggestions from his parents about his career options.

The gist: if he couldn’t find anything else, he should become a doctor like his cousin, a successful plastic surgeon in Las Vegas.

A top student in high school, Yavar received a full ride to Old Dominion University, and, for a year after college, taught English to fourth through twelfth graders at a Chinese boarding school.  After finding that neither teaching nor any other field of work truly called him, he enrolled in medical school at George Washington University the following fall.

There he found psychiatry.

Yavar explains that he derives substantial and visceral pleasuring and meaning from listening to and helping people make sense of their lives. Now in the final year of his psychiatric residency, he does this work three days per week at George Washington, and one day each at a local center for trauma and torture survivors and an area community health clinic.

While Yavar predicted that his training would have him working with people, he didn’t anticipate that he would also become a filmmaker.

Along with a team of close to a dozen people, Yavar has helped edit a 16-minute film about the challenges of re-entry for many formerly incarcerated prisoners returning to their homes and families in the DC area.

We’ve written before quite extensively at the Reporter about this issue, and the film demonstrates with some poignance that the struggles of the formerly incarcerated extend far beyond Chicago.  The film focuses most closely on the difficulties these people have finding work, and Yavar explained that the team gather material about the former prisoners’ families that they did not include.

The deletion of this material came through the editing process, a part of the work that Yavar enjoys for the concrete sense of accomplishment it provides. Whereas he can end a day of treating patients unsure about what he has accomplished, editing gives him tangible evidence at the end of a session of having whittled down 40 minutes or so film to just a few minutes of the final product.

Film and psychiatry feed each other in other ways.  Yavar’s clinical work has given him material and stories for the film, while the filming and editing process has helped him think about how to receive and relate a person’s story.

If all goes well, he will be able to continue to pursue his passion for clinical work and his emerging filmmaking craft.

He is seeking a Robert Wood Johnson fellowship that would include clinical and film work, and that would focus on the difficulties asylum seekers in the United States have while going through the administrative process.

During the two weeks we spent in Orvieto, Italy we heard that these challenges can add a third level of trauma to people already coping with the forces that propelled them from their homeland and the strain of migration.

Yavar said many of his patients in this situation talk more about the present bureaucratic difficulties than the other two aspects of their trauma history.

On the verge of turning 30 and recently married to Ann, a psychologist and New Hampshire native, Yavar is poised to this distinctive and evolving fusion of clinical and documentary work.

I look forward to hearing about his grant application, and, more basically, to continuing our relationship and following his work.

Cecile Marotte’s quest to bring a park to Haiti

Cecile Marotte wants to help build Haiti's first park in one of the country's roughest neighborhoods.

One of the many things Dunreith and I love about Evanston is the parks.

There are close to 100 of them in our small city, a number that includes one that is literally in our backyard and is a rectangular enclosed by a gravel road, the backs of houses and a parking garage.  The green spaces has swings and a field where Aidan and I for years threw the football around after school and on vacations and weekends.

The small park represents more than the total number of such spaces in the entire country of Haiti, but Cecile Marotte and a dedicated group of people are working to change that.

A French native who was trained in the United States in philosophy and ethnopsychiatry, Cecile has lived in Haiti for close to a quarter century.  We met during the past two weeks at the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma.

Cecile and other members have received a four-year grant from the Open Society Institute to design, develop community support for, and oversee construction of, the nation’s first park.

It is an undeniably stiff task.

She is working in Martissant, a suburb of Port-au-Prince previously known as the ‘Area of no rights.”  Even in one of the world’s poorest countries, this community stands out as having no government services.   There are no schools or running water.  Trees grow on garbage.  And murder is common.

Cecile and the other workers, all of whom are Haitian nationals, have held a series of meeting with a wide range of groups in the community, including gang leaders, who said they would like to create the park. Each meeting is recorded and minutes are distributed to all who have attended.

The ultimate vision is to create a safe and beautiful space monitored by gunless guards where people can visit, chat and tell their stories.  In so doing, they have the potential to help the community heal from its many wounds, create the basis to push for greater levels of justice and possibly even contribute to reducing violence.

Sudhir Venkatesh wrote in Off The Books about the challenges and compromises that often accompany working with gang leaders, and Cecile is well aware of them.  As she pointed out, the country has had no shortage of other issues, between the earthquake that rocked the city in January, the cholera that is wreaking additional havoc and the upcoming elections.

Still, to me there is something compelling about this plan, which is like a shoot growing up the cracks of cement, vulnerable to being crushed and also containing with it the seed of transformative beauty.

I’ll let you know about what I learn as the project progresses.  In the meantime, I will walk around Evanston with Dunreith and an even greater appreciation of our green spaces.

 

Concluding Poem for Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma

Now we are going

And yet still we will be together

Taking with us warm shards of memory

That will give us fuel for the journey ahead

And joy at what we have shared

And are leaving behind.

Memories

Of language

Of the lilt in Navya’s voice

and Fiona’s Irish inflections

and Clemmentina’s English tones

and Maya’s easy laughter before she says “Punjabi”

and K-Leigh’s signing versatility

and Monica’s Spanish roots and Australian English

as she described taking turns

reading The Little Prince

to a damaged client who began to heal

and Maria’s standing to offer a birthday song to her fellow Brazilian

and the sparkle in Lorraine’s glitter-covered eyes

as she donned her multi-colored crown at Villa Etrusca

where we ate and sang to her in nine languages.

Memories

Of Love

Like Rachel’s holding a large golden goblet

to mark her movement

from Salmon’s dottoressa to amore

and the palpable tenderness

that emanates from and between Ariel and Jim

and Nicole’s blushing story

of her fiancee’s proposal

on the airplane

over the loudspeaker

after he pretended to be sick

while she cried

and before they landed

he asked her then

so that his relatives in Barbados

would meet the young doctor

for the first time

as his intended, not his girlfriend

and Angie and Patrick

nuzzling each other

on the bus

as if they had just met-

a friskiness that only added

to our speculation

about how they could possibly

have lived long  enough

to be great-grandparents

Memories

Of Family

Like Francine’s beautiful five-year-old twins

who she left

for the first time

in the Solomon Islands

and whose shining faces

on her computer screen

had to be admired

before I could send an email to my wife.

or Alexandra’s family

converging from their homes

in the Middle East, Spain, South Africa and Miami,

to Bagnoregio

to soak in two weeks of shared company

with those who knew you when

and love you anyway and because.

or Madelyn’s easy way

and uncanny resemblance of Aspasia

andAspasia’s toiling away at the Blue Bar

and uncanny resesmblance of Madelyn

or Diane’s long-haired daughter Sophie

with the newspaper raincoat

and love of home and books,

her mother Mary Elena, who always walks arm in arm

with Diane’s laughing sister Karen,

whose childhood cancer treatment

preserved her life but cost her her sight.

of Moona’s horse-training grandfather

accepting an offer to move from Afghanistan,

where he was respected, to Pakistan,

leaving the women behind,

a move that decades later

sparked in her a hunger

that continues until today

to know and understand her roots

and her family’s silence.

of Karen telling about Zaroui,

her mother’s mother,

who made apricot and cherry jam by hand

and cooked by the sun

until the last of her 102 years

after having

as a child

walked 600 miles

to an orphanage

safety and freedom

from the genocidal Turks.

Memories

Of Mission

Like Judy’s refusal to let the Australian government

ignore the evil abuse

of her beloved aboriginal children.

or Tracy and her husband Tim’s

stunning efficiency in

raising funds for

designing

and building

a prosthetic clinic

in Haiti

or Laeth’s quiet determination

to build

a place in the UAE

where men and women

healers or trained

or Fengyi’s successful quest

to see the site

in the Ukraine

where thousands of Jews

were massacred during World War II,

a place where the victims’ bones still are visible

of Griff’s tenacious and audacious entrepreneurship

and Kelsey’s voice that rose

toward the end and finished strong

and of the passion

in Cecelia

as she urged us to normalize

the problems mothers

have in nourishing their children

of Nemia’s tears-stained face

as she struggled to speak

about those mothers

in the camps

who have wandered a month

without sleep or food

and have survived the ordeal

only to be unable to feed

those to whom they have given life

and Shari’s fierce strength

powered by righteous and directed anger

and a ceaseless effort

to document the truth

and let the bones speak.

Memories

Of Joy

Of Maggie fiery red hair as she unleashes

yet another gut-wrenching laugh

of the glow in the room after

Nisha’s dance therapy session concluded

or the bounce in Sasha’s step

on Corso Cavour

Sunday night

as she described

bargaining a Florentine vendor

down to half price

on a leather bag she coveted

of the lightness in Pierre’s face

during the cooking class

at Zeppelin

and after the dance performance

on Saturday night

Memories

of  Intelligence

Like Geana’s skillful syntheses and trenchant critiques

and Kathleen’s O’s direct and thoughtful comments

and Christie’s precise and patient queries

or Yavar’s probing questions

delivered with a clear and even tone

or Sunday’s smiling contributions to the conversation

about people who are grateful

for blood-stained urine and retracting penises

and of the range of topics

on which Ossama spoke

with insight and authority

or of Neil

who came to answer personal riddles

and left with a curricular vision

Memories

of Vision

Like Rhonda’s openness

to letting the unknown contours

of her next stage

come into clarity

or Kim

who dreams of forming

an organization

to help the young women

who resemble the girl

with sunglasses, a halter top

and jeans in her healing picture

or Cecile’s working toward

the first park in Haiti

In a neighborhood known as

the area of no rights

where trees grow on garbage

of Sopha and Mohamed,

who left but never forgot

their homes and the people who suffered there,

and who each dream of opening a clinic

to help heal their nation’s

still gaping wounds

Memories

of Humor

Like Craig’s ceaseless push for more red wine

all the while

proclaiming his innocence and sweetness

or of Anjuli enjoying

the party

ahe threw with Yavar

so much

that at moments

she seemed

to be banning

her guests from leaving

or Astrid’s lifting Griff’s reluctant left arm aloft

to announce her candidacy to overthrow Richard.

“I’m Haitian, I can’t help it,” Astrid said,

her lip curled into a revolutionary sneer.

“I have to lead a coup.”

or of the phrases in Anita’ guidebook

that moved seamlessly from

“You are being too pushy”

and “This is getting too heavy”

to “Yes, but only with  a condom?”

or Tedi, well, you have already heard about Tedi.

Memories

Of Character

Like Jessica’s bone-deep kindness or Deniz’s startling maturity

and Dr. Abudoam’s dignified bearing and Zahra’s calm depth

and the compassion in Miryam’s face

and Helen’s radiant serenity

and Suzie and Sue, who beyond having a name and state in common,

share a passion for their patients and communities

and of Megan handing me her phone

at midnight and telling me to call my wife

after learning I had not reached

her to talk about a friend’s death

that had just happened.

or Katherine’s humility and genuine concern for Kathleen

and of Kathleen’s responding

while I pushed her tailor-made wheelchair

over Orvieto’s cobblestone streets

and toward the arch

and commented on old Europe’s inaccessibility,

“Yes, Jeff, but you should have seen Tibet.”

Tibet,

where she traveled there after having a vision of a mountain,

saw some, but not all, of what she had come to see.

and had another vision of returning two more times.

“You have time,” I said.

These and so many more

I will carry inside me

and bring out like warm charcoal

or a tasty meal

on a cold night

or when I am low

to heat me up, nourish me

and give me the strength to continue

or in a private moment

when I will sit back and

think

and remember

and smile.

We have time, yes.

And memories, too.

Now we are going

And yet still we will be together

Taking with us warm shards of memory

That will give us fuel for the journey ahead

And joy at what we have shared

And are leaving behind.

Mohamed Ibrahim seeks to bring a community mental health clinic to his hometown of Wajir, Kenya.

Mohamed Ibrahim wants to bring the first community mental health center to his home in northern Kenya.

Although Mohamed Ibrahim left his hometown of Wajir, Kenya in 2007 on a scholarship to earn his Master’s Degree in Social Work at Washington University at Saint Louis, he always planned to return.

Born in Northern Kenya to Somali parents, Mohamed and his family were affected directly by the splitting of the Horn of Africa into different countries that European nations controlled.

His family home fell on the English side of the border, while the farm that had about 100 cattle and that produced corns and red beans was on the Italian side of Ethiopia.

The crossing of national lines to get to property they owned was only one of the hardships Mohamed’s family has endured.

As members of the Somali community in Kenya, they faced disappearances of loved ones-an aunt of his was abducted in 1969 at age 4 after her parents were killed and only resurfaced more than two decades later-massacres and official second-class citizenship in the African nation that produced one of the continent’s most famous leaders.

The burdens have only mounted in recent years, as a disputed election in late 2007 led to ethnic tensions and violence and as global warming’s toll has seen the water supply dry up and thirsty animals attack the residents.

Experiences like these have contributed to Wajir being known as a place with many mentally ill people.

Despite having about 4 million people, there are only four psychiatric nurses, including Mohamed, to meet the area’s mental health needs.

There are no psychiatrists.

Mohamed, who is one of many remarkable people I have met during the past 10 days at the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, intends to do something about this.

His vision: to create a sustainable community mental health center.

Mohamed understands the vicissitudes of funding and knows both that overseas support can both dry up and tie the community’s fate to external forces.

As a result, he seeks to make his center a government-supported one that will be a site of mental health treatment and healing.  In addition, through people’s recounting their stories, the center will be a force for justice.

He has taken initial steps toward realizing his dream, talking with other participants about pledging their support, speaking with leaders in the Somali diaspora in Minneapolis and health workers in his home district.

Mohamed understands that the task ahead of him is a steep one, and he remains cheerfully undaunted.  “It is something that is long overdue,” he said.  “The challenge is huge, but I am confident that, if we get the support we need, it is something we can do.”

Poem about Tedi, a fellow participant in the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma

Tedi was quiet for the first two days and has been much less so since.

Tedi,

when I ask about his religion,

tells me

that he is Muslim

on his mother’s and father’s sides

of his family.

And then,

when I wonder

what other sides exist,

says that he is Protestant

because of his neighbor.

He lets the shorter sister know

he does not drink

because he is Muslim,

informs Sunday a minute later

while heading down the stairs

that he is going out drinking,

tells a third participant

a moment after that

he drinks

because he is Muslim,

and then shakes his head

with knowing disapproval

when Sister Giovanna,

who calls me ruffiano,

and who told us

she could communicate

with her Spanish

but prefers to sing with her Italian

chastises me

for being an American

who consumes wine like beer.

Tedi, who identified the prisoner

and the social worker

in the healing environment picture

for Maria,

who skipped the computer training

to go to Rome

and watch the Champions League’s Cup.

“Jeff, it’s the most beautiful stadium in the world,”

he said,

his eyes glowing

with joyful anticipation.

Tedi, who head butts me in the stomach

as he enters the bus,

and punches me

a little harder

than is comfortable

on the shoulder

as we stand at the monastery’s back door.

Tedi, who assigned his roommates

to look for the passport he thought he lost:

Mohamed the first floor;

Neil the Yankee

scouring the cobble-stoned street;

while he focused on the room they share.

Tedi,

who told Barbara in the front office in Italian,

“I am going to ask you a question

and I want the answer to be Yes.”

And nearly danced a jig

when it was

because the nuns had had it all along.

Tedi makes sure

that Kathleen gets on the bus

and up the villa’s stairs

and yells down the second-floor hallway

to make sure that anyone

who wants to come to dinner joins us

so that no one is excluded.

Tedi, who works with police torture victims

and helps them heal.

Round faced, stubbly Tedi,

who resembles the school boy

he once was

when his sturdy doughy body

convulses with high-pitched laughter.

Mysterious, fantastical Albanian Tedi,

who encourages me to see the meaning

that exists in every Italian joke,

who argues with loud

gesture-filled conviction

with a man giving us directions

to the Golden Ass,

a restaurant that no longer exists.

Tedi, who I would consider trusting with my life,

but would be more than a little nervous

and would probably close my eyes

and gulp a lot

as we set off on our adventures together.

Tedi.

RIP, Bill Buchanan

I didn’t know Bill Buchanan for too many years, but I’m sure going to miss him.

 He died Thursday night after a six-year battle against cancer.

Dunreith and Maureen, Bill’s wife and life companion of many years, are  close friends. they have an intimacy that has its genesis in large part in their shared intelligence, homespun strength, and love of walking.

Bill was always generous and kind to us. In fact, a relatively high percentage of our indoor furniture has come from Buchanan/Ruder hand-me-downs, always delivered with a smile by Bill and at least one of the boys in the family’s large and unquestionably misnamed mini-van.

He wasn’t just generous; he had a sense of occasion, too.

I always loved being a guest at their summer parties—took particular pride in his juicy hamburgers covered with exotic sauces-and in the double dates we took with Bill and Maureen for sushi on New Year’s Eve and for Thai food on Ridge.

Handsome with brown hair,  a thick mustache and a firm handshake, Bill had a deliciously dry and quick sense of humor and exuded a steady confidence and easy comfort in his own skin.  I always relished the times we spent together in the stand  at Aidan and Aaron’s lacrosse game.

It was during one of these games, and after, I believe, he had stuck up for his hometown by wagering a six-pack that his beloved and often beleaguered Cavs would take down my Celtics-he was gallant about paying up when they lost-that Bill reminded me of an important lesson.

I was talking about an opposing team that, in my opinion, ETHS should have beaten.

“Never say should in sports,” Bill said in essence.  “What matters is what you do.”

He was right, and not just in sports.

One of the many admirable things about Bill is that he lived the way he talked.

The cancer got him in the end, but not after he had fought it  with guts and without complaint.  Bill battled it long and hard for years and even licked it for a while.

He wasn’t a martyr, either.  He accepted our offers of help, bagels, Mrs. May’s and the soup we got for him at different times, joined us for short visits we shared after delivering the goods, and asked me to go with Dunreith and pick up their car from the hospital.

In so doing, he gave us a profound gift.

Bill also lived out of a love that started with his family.  He and Maureen struggled at moments, as all honest couples I know do, and they never stopped working at their relationship, and, from what I saw, they did awfully well.  Bill loved and liked his boys, too-something which is not always the case between fathers and sons-and took  great pride in their growth, development and accomplishments.

He also loved the work he did, the people he did it with, the friends and family he grew up with, who formed him and who gathered to spend what we all knew was some of the last minutes they would share with their soon to be fallen friend.

He loved  the bike rides he took, the men’s group to which he belonged and the neighborhood in which he lived.

In short, Bill didn’t dwell on shoulds, he did.

He lived close to his heart, and with integrity and courage. I am a better person, husband and father for knowing, spending time with and learning from him.

The final weeks were extremely  tough, and I feel some relief amidst all the sadness that his suffering mercifully has ended.

I’ll miss Bill when Dunreith and I walk by the house on our way to Whole Foods, when we sit in the stands at Aidan’s lacrosse games in the spring and when we bump into Maureen gardening in the yard.

I’ll feel the lump in my throat and my eyes water.

And then I’ll remember how he lived and I’ll straighten my back and keep going, as he did.

Thank you, Bill.  Thank you, friend.  I’m glad you are at peace.