Writ­ten by Ermi­ra Kola, trans­lat­ed from the Ital­ian to French by Syl­vain Bianchi. The Eng­lish ver­sion is based on the French trans­la­tion by Renée Lucie Bourges.

See the orig­i­nal arti­cle here: Lala e la circolar 


Flight from war, indifference of the rules

In May 2015, I attend­ed a train­ing course titled “Asy­lum request and trau­ma”. For minds more open and informed than mine, this would have amount­ed to dis­cov­er­ing that water makes you wet, but this is when I learned about re-traumatization.

And that it can re-occur any num­ber of times. In Octo­ber of that same year, I met Lala. Lala is six years old, with a lumi­nous and pen­e­trat­ing gaze, a tuft of black hair and small feet in con­stant movement.

Lala has two broth­ers. Lala had four broth­ers and sis­ters, only two years ago.

Lala was born in Kirkuk. Do you know where that is?

In Kirkuk, two years ear­li­er, Lala had lost his only sis­ter. Maybe he does­n’t even remem­ber her. I imag­ine a grown Lala, search­ing his mem­o­ry for frag­ments of this sis­ter he lost in the war.

Then Lala lost his house. His par­ents took him far away from the war.

I don’t know on which roads they trav­elled, but I know they made it to Swe­den where Lala lived for approx­i­mate­ly two years. Dur­ing those two years, he learned a lot of words in Swedish, he loves remind­ing me that his name resem­bles the word for “ant” in Swedish.

One day, his par­ents took Lala and his three broth­ers away. He does­n’t know why. I don’t know how, but I know they arrived in Bolzano.

It was cold in Bolzano, “but not as cold as in Swe­den”, Lala tells me with shin­ing eyes.

In Bolzano, we are so par­tic­u­lar that we have our own laws, square and upright, laws that cir­cle round and round, infi­nite rules for games of Snakes and Lad­ders in which every­one loses.

Because of one of those cir­cu­lars, Lala first slept in the street, then on the floor in a cen­ter for minors, then in the hall of an emer­gency ser­vice, then in a hotel.

After which he lost his sec­ond broth­er. Dur­ing this sec­ond of his wars, our silent war of Occi­den­tals, filled with sense­less round­about rules. Lala is six years old, he has already lost one broth­er and one sis­ter. He has already been forced to aban­don two countries.

Ermi­ra Kola


Français : Lala et la cir­cu­lar­ité • Guerre, fuite et règle­ments indif­férents Cliquez pour lire

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