Deborah Ellis 

How war changes people

Author and peace activist Deborah Ellis has spent years in war-torn countries witnessing first hand the impact of war on young people's identity. Our Amnesty teen takeover team asked Deborah to tell us how the children she met have created an identity for themselves when all they have known gets stripped away
  
  

My Name is Parvana
The cover image of My Name is Parvana, one of the books Deborah Ellis has written after spending time with young people in the refugee camps of Afghanistan. Photograph: Deborah Ellis Photograph: Deborah Ellis

Over the last 15 years, I have been able to visit a number of places that have been deeply affected by war. I've listened to many people talk about their experiences and how that has changed, deeply, who they are and how they see themselves.

While the war in Iraq was raging, I spent some time in neighbouring Jordan, meeting with Iraqi refugees who fled their country to try to find some place of safety. I interviewed many families about what had happened to them and what they did as a result.

Michael was 12 years old when I met him. He fled Baghdad with his mother during the American bombing.

"There was nothing much left of our home. Bombs had hit it. We couldn't even find it at first because bombs had hit the whole neighbourhood. Everything was gone. Why did they do this? This was my house! This was my street! It wasn't hurting anyone! It was just being a house. The place where I once slept was not rocks and dust and chunks of roof and walls. My things were all broken… I think it would make the world better if people had to fix the things they broke. Like, if someone bombs your house, they couldn't go away and do things they wanted to do until they built you a new house and fixed what they broke."

Michael went on to talk about how his little brother no longer laughed, his mother was so sad she forgot how to take care of them, and he, himself, no longer felt like the ground beneath his feet was solid. He no longer even knew what to hope for.

The book with Michael's interview and other interviews in it is called Children of War. It was published in 2009.

War also changes people who fight it as soldiers. In Off to War, Voices of Soldier's Children, kids from Canada and the United States talk about what it is like when their mother or father goes off to war – and comes home again.

Chad, 17, is the son of a soldier in the Canadian army who served in Rwanda and in Afghanistan. Chad said his father came home unable to be the father he once knew: "I wish I knew what happened to Dad in Kandahar. He won't talk about it. I think he's afraid he'll end up scaring us because of what he went through. It makes me lonely, though."

I have thought a lot over the last years about how we recognize ourselves and how we communicate that to others. We recognize ourselves through our belongings ("This is my favourite shirt – I am the sort of person who likes this type of shirt."), through our relationships with others ("I am a daughter and a sister and a cousin.") and through the things we hope to do ("I hope to be able to one day spend a year in Blackpool – I am the sort of person who would like to do that.") In a time of war, all this can be lost. Our belongings can be destroyed, our family can all be killed, our dreams can be rendered completely impossible. So – then who are we?

How do we create an identity for ourselves, and communicate it to others, when all we have known gets stripped away? How do we find the core of who we are in times like this without completely losing our minds?

In refugee camps around the world, I met people who were gone. They were still walking around but had lost so much that they were unable to claim any sort of identity. Others I met found who they truly were, and they generally found it through service to others. They became teachers when there was no school, books or pencils. They became leaders when they were with others who were rootless and afraid. They made a decision that, with everything lost, they would look for something new, while they were still alive, while they still could.

In my books about children in Afghanistan (The Breadwinner, Parvana's Journey, Mud City and My Name is Parvana) I explored the situation for both types of reactions.

We never know who we are going to be until we are tested, but perhaps we can test ourselves without going to the extremes of war. Perhaps we can be kinder now, live with less now, reach out to others now – and build an inner reserve of a strong identity that will hold us up even when everything else falls away.

• This is the last article in our Amnesty teen takeover week investigating identity as a human right. Now you can catch up with everything we've covered and find out more about getting involved with Amnesty International.

 

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