Trauma interviews differ sharply depending on whether the ordeal is past or ongoing

Evidence

It’s hard to say. Each person presented different kinds of challenges. Drawing out a story from someone’s past, as I did with Yasmin for example, was a different experience from sharing in a story that was still happening, as was the case with Rami or Omar. But if I had to pick one, it would be Rasha, whose story was clearly the most traumatic of the seven. Whenever we talked about her ordeal, I always made sure to have a friend of hers nearby to make her comfortable. She told me her story with steely determination, staring straight ahead the entire time and meeting my eyes only to emphasize a point, while each time her friend would be in tears. It was quite intense. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 1204

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to oral-history methodology — the ethics of interviewing trauma survivors and the ‘friend present’ protocol.