Refugee trauma can be re-triggered by landscapes of resettlement that evoke remembered atrocity.

Evidence

But the cruelest reminder was the water and those waves of the past that haunt her present when she passes by Lake Michigan, the body of water that hugs Chicago and haunts Fatima. That lake and the city are one, and at night, Chicago’s majestic skyline is mirrored beautifully by the great lake’s waters. … Even when she tries to look away from the lake, the force of memory’s tide pulls her toward it. Within its deep and endless blue, she can see her village being destroyed by Myanmar armed forces, she can hear babies cry while being charred in the flames lit by Buddhist extremists, and she can smell that wretched odor of death on the boat teetering on an ocean with nowhere to dock. … Fatima’s old home exists only in her head, and her new home is that ocean that haunts her from within and surrounds her very being. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 648

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how water landscapes become living memory-scapes for refugee communities — the lake as a site of recurring retraumatization versus narratives of ‘fresh starts’ in resettlement cities.
• XREF: connects to: Shared memory of loss, not just material interests, binds refugee groups together. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 91