Republican News · Thursday 15 August 2002

Women's stories of war

BY FERN LANE

A new book in which women in the Six Counties tell their experiences of conflict was launched on at the Sinn Féin art shop as part of the Festival on Wednesday 7 August.

Italian writer and journalist, Silvia Calamati, spent time during the 1990s interviewing women across the six counties and recording the stories that they had to tell. The result is 'The trouble we've seen' - Women's Stories from the North of Ireland. The experiences of these women include the deaths of husbands and other loved ones, the imprisonment of their children, and the mutilation caused by plastic bullets. As well as the pain of such loss, the interviews also convey the sheer practical difficulties of life during the height of the war when state oppression, economic deprivation, and death threats were a feature of everyday life.

Included in the 21 stories are some from women who have become well known because of what they have endured; women like Diane Hamill, Martina Anderson and Padraigín Drinan. Others are less well known, but have also have suffered grievously, like Emma Groves, blinded by a plastic bullet fired at her by a British soldier as she looked through her kitchen window.

Yet, as she explains in the introduction, for a number of years Calamiti resisted producing this collection; something, she says, always held her back.

"Then I realised what it was. Those voices, even after all that time, forced me to re-experience the emotions I had felt the day I met each of those women. Every single one of those encounters represented a powerful, even painful experience. Despite the fact that years had gone by, the tone of their voices as they talked and their pain-filled silences were too much for me."

Then, one event made her realise that she had to begin the process of transcribing the tapes; the murder of Rosemary Nelson by loyalists, very probably with the connivance of the forces of the British state.

"The day Rosemary Nelson was murdered something snapped inside of me. I thought back to Pádraigín Drinan and to all the women I had met over the years. I realised that the voices stored on my tapes could no longer be stifled, imprisoned within the confines of my mind and my heart. It was then that I began to transcribe them one by one."

Rosemary's own experience of harassment and threats against her life are also included in the book and her short essay is amongst the most poignant of the collection. Writing in September 1998 she explains, clearly and without self-pity, the nature of the threats being made against her. Six months later, on 15 March 1999, she was killed.

'The trouble we've seen' - Women's Stories from the North of Ireland, by Silvia Calamati, is published by Beyond the Pale, Belfast. Price £5.99