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Delarbete IV: Writing Qualitative Sociology – Deciphering the Social in Experiences of Mental

6. The Narratives

between life and the story told and not exactly how the narrative is verbalized (Stanley & Temple, 2008, p. 278). The narrative comes from an individual, but the analysis cannot only be about the individual, it must be about the social and extended to the social relations and institutional order in which we participate (Smith, 2005, p. 43). There are two emergent aspects about this. First, I am not excluded from the construction of the knowledge, together with the interpreter and the interviewee; there is an emergent material that consists of stories about a social phenomenon and how we together construct it. So, It is I as interviewer who calls for these stories, the interviewee narrates them, and the interpreter makes them concrete for me in a language I understand, but which is not understood by the interviewee. The construction of an interpreted material is complex, situational, and hybridizing, but ideally it reveals concepts that avoid categorization, which implies exclusivity and immutability.

Second, translated narratives are always biased, are always distanced from the protagonist and always differentiate, but this hybridizing process of language mixing opens up new worldviews and new understandings that unfold alternative analyses unavailable when the interview is done in a single language. So, before going any further I want to declare that these stories are to be considered as a part of the social world and unfold an episode of the narrator’s life.

in a posttraumatic episode affect mental health. Their stories reveal an individual trauma but, however, their stories and experiences fit together with their identities as refugees with PTSD that have also been exposed to the practice of psychiatry as well as of SMB. The stories below have more to do with contemporary social issues than with the medical assessments of psychiatry, so the focus is upon

6.1 Story I: Being Stuck

The first story, about Mahmod, who is a man in his forties, starts when he came to Sweden in 2004 and asked for political asylum. He had been a member of a military organisation whose orders it was impossible for him to follow. This organization forced him to do things that he could not continue doing, and he had refused and been forced to emigrate and ended up in Sweden. It is now 2007 and he has not yet received a residence permit. At the time I did the interview, he and his family still waited for a decision, and they were becoming more and more frustrated. At the department of migration he had shown photos of officials from the organisation he was a part of, and he had told the department what he believed to be important for his case. But nothing happened. Mahmod said through the interpreter that a process of frustrating waiting and suspicion characterized the whole story he provided.

“I have shown photos of officials of my organisation, and the things I tell the department of migration are very important for my case. But it has been like this for at least one year and nine months and, of course, this waiting and the uncertainties are very frustrating. It affects me psychologically. I am very, I truly am, worried and it also affects my family. It is like the department doesn’t take my case seriously. I also know that people who came after me without any good reasons have already received permanent residence permits.”

“…I feel more at home here. In Lebanon I lost four [paternal] uncles, two [maternal] uncles, the mother and father of my mother. They killed my grandmother because they wanted to steal her jewellery. Back there, in Lebanon, we moved back and forth like cats and dogs; we were discriminated against and experienced racism. Even though my father and I, and my son, were born in Lebanon, we are regarded as refugees.

In Lebanon they cut off all our civil rights, too.”

“It is the department who chose a lawyer; I can’t afford one myself. But I have told them everything, and I have provided proof as well, ID-cards

and military ID-cards, photos of what has happened and photos of well known political persons of high rank, and photocopies of my papers.

This organisation I was a part of provides two options: either you take orders or you are executed. But, remember this, the orders force me to go against my own people. So, before we fled to Sweden, I hide from them, but they were after me. They attacked for our house in the first camp and searched for me. They harassed my wife and beat up my daughter;

they managed to leave the camp and to move in with her parents, but it is literally a tragedy.”

“But honestly, the lawyers, they are picked by the department, and it is the department who pays their salary, so the lawyers work for them and not for me!”

To make sense of his contemporary situation, as what Frank (1995) calls initiate a story, he looks back in time to know his place and consequently understand what will happen if he is forced to go back.

But Mahmods experiences from Lebanon make it impossible to return because then he must either go up against his own people, or hide.

The plot for this story is that he may not be allowed to stay in Sweden, but in his country of origin he is not welcome. He still sails on the sea of uncertainties and how his narrated return will look depends on how the department of migration acts. Either he returns to Lebanon, which means a wreckage of his autobiography as he has projected it, or else he remains in Sweden, leading to an initiation into his biography and autobiography as a consistent story.

“…It is all a long wait, suspense that has terrible implications for my family and me. It is like a volcano, and I do not know what is going to happen. And the volcano consists of two denials from the department.

This can mean that I must go back to Lebanon. But I know what awaits me down there. There are only two alternatives… and I will not fall into their [the military organisation] line. So, the only alternative left for me is to be killed. Because I would not go to war against my own people.”

“All I have left is what is going to happen to me when I return. As soon as I land with the aeroplane and arrive at the airport, then they will arrest me on the spot. That’s what is going to happen.”

As it is now he has not returned yet, he does not know what will happen, though he knows that he has received two denials from the department of migration. This means that he must go back to

Lebanon. But what he actually does know is what awaits him if he goes back: either he falls into line in the military or he will be killed.

He has seen for himself what has happened to others who refused the military codex. He here situates his experiences amongst others, so following Stone-Mediatore (2003) his experiences are, then, not marginal.

To emphasize his position, he intermingles three modes of human experience; first is what happened in the past but, secondly, he also stresses what the future will bring if he, thirdly, in that future must return to his past. As with most autobiographical stories, Mahmod tells a story about someone who is part of a course of events and located in a position in the present that also stretches toward future happenings (Brockmeier, 2001, pp. 250-251). For Mahmod this future is not yet settled, because he is not in a position to control those events, although he controls the story about what will happen in the future. He stands against his past but cannot proceed in his biography, as he wants to. What he knows from past experiences, the only things he is certain of, are what he has already experienced and what he, accordingly, feels is going to happen if circumstances are once again like they were in the past. His current position still remains to be remembered and made sense of.

“…I don’t have a future there. Down there, there is only one big sad lot, there is only one sentence. And if I return to Lebanon, then this sentence will be executed (. . .)But here [in Sweden] I started to dream of a future; that’s what I dream of, I dream of having a future here.”

The autobiography he [wants] to tell is not the biography he receives from others. Current circumstances hinder him from actually finding a position. In his quest narrative, Mahmod is stuck and cannot proceed forward. He is struggling to infuse meaning into his journey from which he has not yet returned. In this sense, his narrative is disrupted and he has no control over it; he is excluded from his own story (Frank, 1995; Murphy). He waits, and the longer he waits the more stressful his life seems to be – he is stuck.

6.2 Story II: Initiating Displacement

Ina’s story is also about waiting, but, in contrast to Mahmod, she has already received a permanent residence permit, the very thing

Mahmod waits for. Ina remembered the process Mahmod could not initiate and make sense of. In retrospect, Ina could now narrate her time in transition and tell a story about this time. Her story starts in the year 2000 when she came to Sweden from Bosnia. She arrived together with her family: her husband and their two sons. After they arrived, they waited one year for their first decision, which turned out to be a denial. During this period of time, when they waited for the decision, they were very nervous “and still are,” she said.

“…While we waited for the [second] answer for our residence permit, then we had a difficult time because the whole family, all of us, were very nervous, especially my husband and older son. We still are… And also I had problems with headaches, stress, and stomach-aches; I am very stressed and I still have serious problems with my concentration. Because of this I have a very hard time learning Swedish. And then there are periods when I have problems with breathing and I ramble on about nothing. Sometimes I am very sensitive, and then I can’t bear those around me and want to withdraw and be alone, isolated. But sometimes I do have good periods and am able to socialise with my neighbours.

But, because I have been in the war alone with my children, I have nightmares where I dream about the war and about the bombs and how I try to hide. All of these horrible experiences from the war come creeping back to me and I have problems sleeping. But at the care centre they cannot identify anything, even though they have gone over everything. But they could not see anything, so they told me that it was stress related.”

Many of these feelings she explains by reference to her experience of having been alone in the war, hiding together with her children; she dreams of the bombs and the experiences come creeping back. When she went to the medical care center they could find no physiological illness, so they told her that her problems were stress-related. When the family came to Sweden, they first moved from city to city, They had nothing to do and she remembers the time spent in this town as a blur, both because of their living conditions and because of their insecure future. They had not yet established a life in a way they felt was meaningful. The only thing they had was their waiting, the wait for something that was yet to be decided. They appealed against the first decision, but to get the second answer they once again had to wait one and a half years. Their situation worsened:

“The first answer we got was negative. Then we waited one year for the answer and then we waited another one and a half years. During this period, when we waited to get an answer again, we had a really hard time and our children could not attend school. So we provided their education in alternative ways. We all felt absent from our bodies, it was as if you had hung a person somewhere and he hangs there and you don’t know where he is or why he hangs. It was desperation day and night with no difference in-between. After five months we could talk to them [the department of migration], but the whole time was characterised by uncertainty (. . .) I remember that I have waited for a decision here in Sweden. But I became completely insecure about life itself. And nowadays, I do have difficulty waiting for something, whatever it is. Everything comes back, and can you imagine, waiting on something vital and deadly important for one and a half years. Two and a half years as a matter of fact…”

This is a short account of what underpins Ina’s recollection of the transition. As with Mahmod, Ina (and her family) could not feel coherence when they were between decisions. Nonetheless, she now narrated the events they hade gone through, and she integrates herself into what has actually happened. However, at the time of the occurrence of the events positioned between past and future, they had felt that they were “absent from” their bodies and were displaced.

When the interview took place, she was looking back at these events from her contemporary position, and so she assembled the pieces based upon her present purposes. An initiation provided her story with consistency when she explained how she became the person she is today and how she had lived through hard times while waiting (Fischer-Rosenthal, 2000, pp. 115-116; Frank, 1995, p. 117). She continued…

“I cannot give you a direct answer concerning what it is that I am afraid of. But we lead a life that didn’t turn out to be a real life. For two and a half years my children waited to begin school and we didn’t have any jobs, any employment. Without all this it turned out as something like a contra life (. . .) it is like a life without anything meaningful to do, nothing you have to do, or are supposed to do. The whole family… and we waited for one year. Yes or No. We needed to know…”

A life story promotes an understanding of a historical phenomenon by creating fusions between the strange and the familiar (Stone-Mediatore, 2003, p. 43). But the life Ina lived was not familiar,

because they did not have access to familiar institutions, such as education, employment or health care. “Without all this, it turned out to be something like a contra life.” This was a life that did not turn out to be a real life - a life not yet acknowledged.

6.3 Story III: Wreckage

Nadia, a woman in her fifties, had been in Sweden for two and a half years at the time I met her, but it seemed as though she could not give me a straight answer about this. When I asked her, she had a dialogue with the interpreter in an attempt to establish a timeline. I do not know what they said, but when the discussion between them ended, the interpreter said “She came to Sweden from Uzbekistan two and a half years ago. She got a permanent residence permit one month ago”. Then Nadia began to cry; she wiped the tears from her eyes with a handkerchief and said that Nadia’s time in transition was not referred to as something insecure. Even though she felt safe during her time without a residence permit, she feels even safer now. The plot of her story seems to be most connected to the fact that she has left a high position in society, so events do not lead forward to an eagerly awaited ending. Her future did not lead up to what it was supposed to, and she has therefore never returned from her journey on the Homeric sea of uncertainties.

“…I feel safer now. I am protected. You know, I am like all the others here. Just like all the others. And besides that, there is no dictatorship here, it is a democracy. So when I did not have a residence permit, I did also feel safe. I could feel safe that no one would come and arrest me, hurt me or do me harm. And when I go to the hospital… Without saying anything they see that I feel bad and help me. Everyone is so kind to me and I am very grateful for that.”

“The major problem right now is that we do not have an apartment.

The one we stay in right now… now the woman who has the apartment demands that we must leave it. We have nothing more than a mattress.

But even though we live under these circumstances, I am very grateful, but I have always had lots of nice and fine furniture and a good home, a nice house. My parents were court judges, I have never lived under circumstances such as I do now. But now that we have a residence permit, now it is maybe easier to get some money and at least buy a decent bed.”

Nadia had been a high ranking official, and comes from a family where both her parents had been so as well. When she fled, not only did she leave a conflict, she also had to leave everything behind and start all over again. Her old job and social network became nothing more than memories of a past to which she cannot return. Her biography took a turn that she did not want, resulting in problems for her. When Ina could initiate her story with consistency, Nadia cannot. There is still more that needs to be settled. In a sense, this is similar to Mahmod. Nadia continues:

“All these problems that I brought with me, they are still the same. My son is still on the run. He is not here. But my daughter and son-in-law and grandchildren, we live here. But all these problems… put a lot of pressure on me… It burdens my heart and I have an operation for this /…/ [crying] I can’t separate the problems I have here and the problems I brought with me, the old ones. I do not feel good, I am very nervous and don’t want to go home… I just want to throw myself on the ground and simply disappear from this life.”

She has left a good life and ended up with a life from which she simply wants to disappear. After she received her permanent residence permit she felt relief, but she brought with her lots of political problems. Back in Uzbekistan she and her children would certainly be arrested, “if we were sent back, it would mean death for us.” Here at the medical centre she receives medical and psychological support, but she is still nervous and she forgets things easily; she says that she is totally changed. She said that she had been a “...very high ranking official and with my job came a lot of lectures and seminars. I did a lot. But now it is like I am totally gone. I forget things… I am ashamed.” She had worked for thirty-two years as one of her country’s leaders, she read a lot and enjoyed her profession, but now all of these things have disappeared completely. “I am useless and not able to learn a language.” Her autobiography and her life story are not in phase with her situation at the present moment.

“I felt a big relief inside and I felt better. And, as you can understand, I did bring lots of political problems with me, and back there I should certainly be arrested, and my children as well. This was an enormous burden for us, because if we were sent back, it would mean death for us.

But all of the personnel at the hospital and the other authorities have supported us and provided psychological support.”