
About Life stories
“It would be nice if everyone could hear these stories. Regardless of whether they are Macedonians or Albanians, and it would be nice if they are objectively presented, without adding and without subtracting. Because here, even seven years later, everything is veiled in mystery, everything is foggy.“ – Statement from a narrator.
In every man there is a story. Nobody’s story is unimportant and everyone’s story deserves attention. The stories are a part of our past, our present and our future and have always been used as a tool for communicating the events from one generation to another. Historical research is important in the process of attaining the facts for some event. However, it is the stories of the people that make the picture of what happened complete. Working on the collecting of life stories, we tried not to pursue “sensationalistic” events. On the contrary, we are far more interested in the stories of people from all kinds of profiles who had the misfortune to go through a series of unpleasant experiences. In this context, the division between “us” and “them” is something that remained even after the war.
Thus, the need to face the fact that there are different aspects of the truth, maybe even different truths on different levels is real. The key difference that we can make here is to acknowledge the relevance of the “other’s” truth and pain and to be able to be compassionate with it, without neglecting our own truth and our own pain. For us it was important to hear the narrator’s conception not only of himself, but also of the other. We were aware that one’s conception of the other very often includes antagonism, represented by stereotypes, prejudices and intolerance. Yet, we did not withdraw from opening space for that position, because the only way to change the perception for one another between two opposing sides is to start by hearing out what the other has to say, understanding him profoundly.
Some narrators openly express their animosity, others are more reserved. Some have good language skills, so they express themselves in a “politically correct” manner. For us it was important to capture the personal moment in the narration. That is why we were being more tolerant towards the hostile statements directed to the “others”, which sometimes popped up in the interviews. Pessimism and resentment towards the “other side” dominate among the narrators, but that is also crucial for us if we want to determine the real situation in Macedonia. We don’t want to run away from that, because that’s the reality.
With the collecting and publishing of life stories, we are trying to make a contribution towards the process of dealing with the past.