When I go back to my hometown, I can no longer see them. It’s as if they had disappeared into thin air. I don’t even remember the details of their lives, nor do I really know their stories, but in my memory they were always there. Maybe it was because of the way the village was—very open, with everyone’s doors unlocked. People would spend time outside their homes, chatting, visiting each other freely. It was so natural to step into a neighbor’s house. In the evenings, after dinner, people would carry their bowls and go from one house to another, tasting dishes from different families. That is the memory of my childhood. Later, when I went away to study in the city, then to bigger cities, and eventually moved abroad to Germany, I never experienced that kind of life again. Those times feel almost ancient now, as if that way of living and that closeness between people has been sealed away. Even when I return to my hometown, I can still sense a trace of it, but the easy openness—the visiting, the doors always open—is no longer there. I realize that as certain people pass away, a whole way of life, a whole feeling, passes away with them. I miss those neighbor women deeply. They left this world quietly, without much notice. I once asked my mom, “When Sister Qiuhua passed away, did the village hold a big funeral for her? Was it solemn?” My mom said she couldn’t remember. When I think about it, there are also other women who gave me the same feeling—my grandma, my great-aunt, my maternal grandmother… Ghassan Assaf, ALDeP -Association Libanaise Pour le Développement de la Psychanalyse On April first, an old woman moved to the apartment next-door. It’s 11 pm, Mrs. Landel is trying, once again, to distract herself from the vivid images and scenarios of her in the new narrow apartment. After spending more than forty years in her house, where she took care of her garden every day, battling snow and heat to safeguard her dear plants and flowers, she’s now moving to a small studio with no balcony. Mary spent the last six months telling herself that she was lucky having lived those forty plus year the way she did, even if she now has to quit it all….. Gloriana Bartoli, American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) Member and Director of Training of the New Zealand Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (NZIPP) On April 1st, a short, elderly woman moved into the apartment next door. She just woke up from a sleepless night; she was walking poorly; it seems she was looking for something ... but what was it?
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