Khawla
Intergenerational differences impact family relations within refugee camps, as Khawla starkly outlines:
"My older son remembers. He was in sixth grade. Also my other son. You should see what he did (during the) first days (we were) here, he almost killed himself. He wanted to walk back, saying ‘I don’t want to stay here, I want to go back.’ He would start walking back (to Syria) until someone brought him back (to me). Now he tells me that once he turns eighteen he will surprise me with a phone call from Syria."
Processes of memory, and the trauma experienced by children and adults during protracted displacement as refugees, intersect in complex ways to inform allegiances and attitudes to the 'home-land', as illustrated by Khawla's concerns over her son's longing to return to a still-disrupted Syria. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh writes about these processes in the context of Sahrawi refugee youth, exploring the concept of 'the Sahrawi politics of ‘travelling memories’'.
