20 Oct 2010 / 08:45
War widows throughout Europe may have shared a common fate, but their subsequent life experiences - from socially conservative Kosovo to liberal England- are radically different.
Majlinda Aliu
Arbeta Kryeziu has grown up. Almost 13, her face is taking on the shape of her mother’s. Looking at a picture of Arbeta as a child, her mother, Flora Rexhepi, looks tearful.
Flora was widowed when she was just 24, after Serbian forces killed her husband, Ramadan Kryeziu, in his home village of Sllovia in April 1999, during the war in Kosovo.
Becoming a war widow was not Flora’s only catastrophe. After losing her husband, she had to give up her only child, who was then 18 months old, leaving Arbeta in the care of her late husband’s sister.
Flora was a victim of Kosovar society’s strict expectations of widows, and of war widows in particular.
Unlike their sisters in western Europe, they are not supposed to ‘move on’ but must remain in perpetual mourning for their late husband. Remarriage is strongly disapproved of - and children belong to the husband’s family, not to the widow’s.
War widows throughout Europe may have shared a common fate, but their subsequent life experiences - from socially conservative Kosovo to liberal England- are radically different.
Majlinda Aliu
Arbeta Kryeziu has grown up. Almost 13, her face is taking on the shape of her mother’s. Looking at a picture of Arbeta as a child, her mother, Flora Rexhepi, looks tearful.
Flora was widowed when she was just 24, after Serbian forces killed her husband, Ramadan Kryeziu, in his home village of Sllovia in April 1999, during the war in Kosovo.
Becoming a war widow was not Flora’s only catastrophe. After losing her husband, she had to give up her only child, who was then 18 months old, leaving Arbeta in the care of her late husband’s sister.
Flora was a victim of Kosovar society’s strict expectations of widows, and of war widows in particular.
Unlike their sisters in western Europe, they are not supposed to ‘move on’ but must remain in perpetual mourning for their late husband. Remarriage is strongly disapproved of - and children belong to the husband’s family, not to the widow’s.
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balkan insight
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