War’s Gains and Losses

This personal essay is about an encounter I had with my then nine-year-old son. It explores issues of forced exile, trauma, and displacement resulting from war and mass atrocities committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It offers insight into intergenerational trauma and the struggle to cope with a profound loss of one’s identity, birthplace, and language. Personal narratives of displacement and trauma can illuminate loss as both a lasting legacy of conflict and a lens through which to understand the formation of memory and identity. The loss extends beyond the immediate experience of displacement, violence, or bereavement and becomes a lasting condition that shapes how individuals remember the past, construct their identities, and relate to their communities. Through my story, I demonstrate that loss is not only personal but also social and collective, shaping intergenerational memory, a sense of belonging, and the ways people make sense of conflict and its aftermath. The memories of loss and belonging travel across the borders of states, languages and memory regimes and are reconstituted in new spatial and social settings. This essay also explores how individuals engage in everyday life and the cross-generational challenges they face in making sense of the past, present, and future.