Waiting in Vein / Aspettiamo invano
Photos: Meta Krese
Text: Meta Krese
Poems: Maruša Krese
Translation into Italian: Darja Betocchi
Slovene Cultural Association, Trieste, Italy, 2021
Halida Dudić would return home immediately. She has been living in the Višče refugee settlement since 1994. While her neighbours, also female refugees from Srebrenica, claim adamantly that they will never, but never again, set their foot in their home towns and villages, Halida Dudić stays quiet. What is she to tell them as they are explaining that they do not want to return to the places of horrors where they lost their husbands, fathers, sons… So what, if these were their home … What words of hers could convince them they would be able to carry out on their own the farm work that used to be done by every member in the family, from the oldest and the youngest, morning to evening, from spring to winter? And how is she to reassure them that there, alone, surrounded by their neighbours, all Serbian, no longer Muslim, they can beat their awful memories and get rid of the fear, the enigmatic fear that pervades their soul and body?
Halida Dudić would return home immediately. She lost her sons-in-law, brothers-in-law, all her uncles on her mother’s and father’s side, her brother, her sister … Her sister Ajka.