therapists and activists stories and images

There was a woman who had lost her husband. It was at the time of the war with Iran. Nothing was clear about his fate. She just didn't know what had happened and she lived in
terrible grief. Her life could not move forward. Her son was 25 years old and he couldn't get married because everything in their lives was on hold. So as well as the grief and the stasis there was the pressure of new life. After the invasion a mass grave was opened up and many of the people from the neighbourhood believed that their loved ones were in this mass grave.
Everybody knew that for this woman it was somehow a source of hope but she never dared go along as others did to find out whether her husband had been found there. This hope just increased her pain. Then a miracle happened. One of her neighbours arrived one day at her front door with some mortal remains. They were her husband's. This is what the neighbours said. A lot of people who knew the woman agreed. Everybody, even the woman, agreed not

To cope in prison you must prevent yourself from being eaten up by anger and hatred, you have to find an internal balance with those feeling and cultivate restraint. When I was being badly treated I told myself that I would never hurt the children of those who beat me.

My captors used to use the morning roll call as a way of demonstrating that some of our fellow prisoners had disappeared. One day I was blindfolded and taken to place in the mountains. I was given a sense that death was imminent. At the height of these feelings I thought about my recently deceased brother. This sense of contact with my dead brother seemed to come to my rescue. At this moment it seemed as if a decision was taken not to kill me.

I fought for Algeria's independence, we all did. Even the children and the animals. I did not have a clear image of what Algeria would be like after the war. But I never expected the civil war of the terrorist period. I never expected to hear the sound of guns again. I have been more shocked by the terrorist period, with Algerians killing Algerians, than by the war of independence. I have forgotten the war, I remember the terrorists.

Comment by Mme Djamila Selahdja in Bordj Bou Arreridj, Algeria