examples – 5 – Exile – Structures of a Refugee’s Fate

Exile – Structures of a Refugee’s Fate –

“We always set ourselves a goal and tried to achieve it together with others. Stability was not a category we considered.”

At nearly 98 years old, N. has a crystal-clear perception. Inner realities sometimes push themselves in front of outer realities. “You’re in Canada,” she told me recently, “but I’m all over the world.” Being uprooted has turned her into someone who can live anywhere. But one can see from her meticulous collection and, above all, from the redundancy of things—the constant preservation of the moment through a camera always at the ready or a sharpened pencil used to jot down impressions and events—that N. and V. never let up throughout their lives in their attempt to hold things together, to capture and put in order what had once been thrown into great disorder. Things are supposed to turn out well and then stay that way. But N. knows that life is fragile and that nothing stays the same.