Temporal Conflicts and the Victimhood Communities (Un)Bound by Memory

Abstract

Does time really heal everything? Time, of course, is not a healer, yet it is believed that a painful and difficult situation will seem less bad as time passes. How can we capture and explore the role of time in the experiences of the victims? How do relationships between the past, present, and future, inform, manifest in, and shape the lives of those affected by terrorism? Is the memory of trauma suffered frozen in time and minds like a photograph and immune to the passing of time? This chapter will engage with questions of the temporality of victimhood within communities bound by memory as a shared experience. It will analyse time as a fluid, rather than static, multifocal rather than narrowly perceived category reflected in victims’ experiences.

Introduction

Does time really heal everything? Time, of course, is not a healer, yet it is believed that a painful and difficult situation will seem less bad as time passes. How can we capture and explore the role of time in the experiences of the victims? How do relationships between the past, present, and future, inform, manifest in, and shape the lives of those affected by terrorism? Is the memory of trauma suffered frozen in time and minds like a photograph, immune to the passing of time? This chapter will engage with questions of the temporality of victimhood within communities bound by memory as a shared experience. It will analyse time as a fluid, rather than static, and multifocal, rather than narrowly perceived category reflected in victims’ experiences.

A terrorist attack is an unexpected act of violence, a watershed moment that shatters the continuity of one’s existence. The ‘trauma’ is thought to emerge from the shattering events themselves, creating a reaction of ‘being traumatized’—experienced as an immediate and unreflexively given response (Alexander, 2012: 7–8). Such a rupture caused by terrorism manifests in both dimensions of memory: that of the lived experience (private) and the acquired knowledge about the past (public). Over the course of this chapter, I will look at how private and public memories forge, dissolve, or inhibit the formation of victim communities as groups of individuals aggregated around a shared trauma. How does the passing of time affect memory on personal and public levels? How do the victims perceive time in their experiences and their public manifestations? With time, what kind of meanings and values do these victim communities assign to trauma?

Exploring time and temporality is critical to move beyond the supposed linearity of post-terrorism processes and override the assumption that time leads directly to dealing with the past, healing, resilience, gaining truth, justice, or ‘closure’. This study will point out the alternative temporal frameworks that shape victims’ everyday experiences and contestations around memory and trauma. Drawing on a study of 36 cases of terrorist attacks in Europe over the last 50 years, I trace temporal dimensions of victimhood and temporal conflicts between the needs and demands of society as a whole and those of the victims themselves: needs to restore a sense of peace and security, and needs to find paths towards dealing with the trauma. Those temporal conflicts, as this chapter will show, are multiple; both internal and external. They are visible not only in different perceptions of time between the victims and society, but also in the work of victims’ organisations. Similarly, each victim in his or her way faces the internal temporal conflict in grasping the meanings and extent of trauma and placing it on his/her temporal plane of life.

Temporal conflicts are ‘differences in experiences, constructions and uses of time amongst people, groups, societies or institutions that can give rise to or legitimate power relations’ (Mueller-Hirth, 2017: 6). More specifically, I engage with temporal conflicts as a source of divergent timelines, expressing the length of time the victims have or need to have in order to focus on or address the causes and consequences of their victimhood. Moreover, the complex and intersecting timelines that come with the experience of victimisation over time affect their future. By examining victims’ perceptions of the future, influenced by the meaning and sense-making of their trauma, I will point out the fragility of memory itself.

In applying a temporal analysis specifically to the issue of victimhood after terrorism, I will analyse how (in)direct victims of terrorism perceive their experiences and consequences of terrorism over time. This analysis will allow us to trace and theorise three key temporal dimensions of victimhood starting from the traumatising incident—the ‘moment zero’. In doing so, the chapter will explore the factors that shape temporal dimensions of victimhood such as age, gender, the existence of previous trauma, degree of acquired agency, and the extent of harm suffered. What this temporal causal modelling of victimhood attempts to highlight are the key causal relationships in time series data coming from more than 100 interviews with (in)direct victims of terror attacks from 1969 to 2022.

In contrast to the supposed linear temporality of personal and societal recovery from the trauma of terrorism, the consequences of past violence continue to impact victims’ lives and are exacerbated by contemporary experiences of victimisation. Witnessing or even hearing about new terror attacks can often rewind the clock, setting off the victims’ personal progress of recovery. In this study, I identify several areas of temporal conflicts: the speed of collective/individual healing and its associated objectives, such as e.g. ‘resilience’; (immediate) state securitisation of memory/(gradual) victims’ claiming of ownership over memory; permanence/impermanence of public memory; and the pace of social and personal transformation. This temporal analysis of victimhood thus not only highlights the mismatch between victims’ needs and political and cultural expectations of closure, but it also draws attention to the temporality of memory itself—mutable and not immune to deterioration with the passing of time.

Methodology

This study included more than 100 interviews and 8 focus groups conducted over 6 years of research and follow-up with the victims of terror attacks between 1969 and 2022. The selection of cases and interlocutors allows for a temporal analysis of victimhood. Interviewees range from the descendants of direct victims of the attacks of The Piazza Fontana bombings in Italy (1969) and victims of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1980s to local residents witnessing the bow and arrow attacks in Kongsberg, Norway (2021). The multitude of cases examined reflects the variety of motives and methods used by the perpetrators (either as ‘lone wolves’ or of a more organised nature).

The motives behind terror attacks in this study are multiple and sometimes compounded: ethno-nationalist, far-left, far-right, antisemitism, homo- or transphobia, and Islamic extremism. Equally, the methods employed by the assailants are patently diverse, including explosives and bombings, stabbings, mass shootings and killings with different types of cold arms and firearms to hostage-taking situations, and mass murder using motorised vehicles (e.g. car, cargo trucks). In terms of victims’ groups, the data comes from 19 countries predominantly in Europe. Cases from the US, New Zealand, Mali, and Tunis are included in the analysis to deconstruct methodological nationalism of rights-based interpretation of the victimhood. I intentionally sought to include EU and non-EU victims of the attacks regardless of the location where victimisation occurred, their access to justice, and the presence or lack of restorative justice instruments.

All interviews were conducted in person. Participants were recruited either through victim organisations or through personal contact through my work with the Radicalisation Awareness Network and the DG Home Affairs (European Commission), in my capacity as a memorialisation expert. Interviews were semi-structured, addressing themes such as the impact of time on personal memory, victim identity, access to compensation and justice, the role of media, personal expectations regarding public memorialisation. In addition, interviews explored public expectations towards ‘healing’ here operationalised as ‘closure’ and ‘resilience’, as well as prevention and countering of violent extremism (P/CVE), and other forms of meaning-making of trauma in the present and the future. Over six years of data collection, I have conducted 8 focus groups within the same pool of participants (cases presented in Table 14.1) and practitioners, policymakers, and media representatives that operate in the narrow field topic at hand. For instance, while discussing the role of media in the construction of victimhood, journalists were invited to engage in the discussion.

Table 14.1 Breakdown of cases examined in this study 1969–2022

Several ethical safeguards were included in the research design of this study from the initial research idea to the dissemination of its results. While working with the victims of terrorism, efforts were made to adopt preventive measures to avoid redundancy and oversampling, consider the vulnerability and sensitivity of the interlocutors, and importantly, to avoid potential re-traumatisation that might occur as a result of participation in this research. Some interviewees for instance were victimised twice in two different and unrelated terrorist attacks. The physical, psychological, and emotional well-being of the victim must not be negatively affected by intrusion into the grief and other coping processes that might change and evolve over time.

When attempting to recover the memories of victimisation itself, I first researched the availability of video and audio documents of previously given testimonies. If the victim/survivor decided to share their own story, necessary time and space were given to enable the interlocutor to do so at their own pace. The identity, age, gender, and extent of psychological, physical, and emotional damage to the individuals are reported only in their wording and with their consent. Although all research participants were over 18, several interviewees were minors at the time of their victimisation. This aspect of participant selection allows us to better understand the temporality of victimhood, and to better grasp its evolution and eventual temporal conflicts that might emerge from it.

To complement the data from desk research, interviews, and focus groups, the analysis included field notes from attended commemorations (national and the EU), visits to attack sites and other places of memory—identified as important in the construction of private and public memory of the attacks. For instance, I have visited annual commemorations in front of the Bataclan theatre for six years in a row to capture the ritualised expression of commemorations and the agency of victims. The analysis is informed by a constructivist grounded theory approach, emphasising the reflexive meaning-making and meaning-interpretation of research participants and researchers as well as the subjective experiences and narratives of participants (Charmaz, 2006).

Temporal Dimensions of Victimhood

Do you sometimes have the feeling of entering a loop? We carry out the weight of the past—so painful—like a backpack full of stones. We try to move towards a new future and sometimes we seem to have a glimpse of it. We manage to open a window and a breath of fresh air enters and renews our energy. But then… the ghosts from our closets and the force of the destruction of that unresolved past pull us back. We return to the exhausting loop, to the same unanswered questions, to the knot in the stomach that becomes a ball of yarn, a tangled skein that we do not know how to undo. The sensation of turning repeatedly on the same wheel to the fatigue of our spirit and our hopelessness… The life that was not possible projects its shadows over us, over the future that wants to emerge, yet it brings us back to the one that was taken away from us.

(Sara Buesa [daughter of Fernando Buesa, assassinated by ETA in 2000])

Memory is a trigger that activates and re-activates lived experience, with all its perceived and lived impact both in the present and for the future. For many victims, the process of thinking back to that specific moment is in itself an unwelcome and painful experience and a path they wish to avoid at all costs. Some victims, like Sara, have revealed that they involuntarily replay the traumatic incident in their minds, or are only able to talk about the traumatic incident, entering a sort of a loop. It goes without saying that every traumatic experience is different. How we cope with such experiences largely depends on our own personalities, identities, and many other factors that can potentially amplify the consequences of trauma such as a prior trauma, disability, or even our own gender and age. These internal factors shape alternative temporal frameworks, reflected in victims’ everyday experiences and the ways they process trauma.

Yet, before it becomes a memory, the trauma of ‘becoming a victim’ creates a rupture in one’s own personal plane of existence, affecting not only the body and the mind, but influencing the individual’s past, present and the future, and their own personal identities to the core. Victims,¹ indirect and direct, often refer to the traumatic incident as a moment ‘frozen in time’. ‘Time stands still’² for those who personally experience and witness violence as well as for those who are struck the most by its consequences. As such, a terrorist attack is felt not only individually by (in)direct victims, but also by the ‘shell-shocked’ collective (see Truc, 2018). Society members ‘feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever, and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways’ (Alexander, 2004: 7–8). Yet, the time, while being endless, is felt by everyone differently.

Psychologising trauma’s impact on social groups and even nations suggest homogenising different trauma-related experiences and projecting their varying effects and consequences from the level of individuals to the level of a collective. Firstly, this is due to the organic understanding of memory as something natural and biological, a universal human capacity. In addition, memory is seen as a universal right of both individuals and ‘the collective’—a social group based on similarities (e.g. religious, ethnic, sexual) that ignites ‘a collective consciousness’. Such an organic bond is often thought of as being immune to the passing of time. Thirdly, defining terrorism as an attack on the state implies that victims of terrorism, although innocent and ‘with unblemished moral capital’, are seen as a randomised sample of the main target—the collective (Schmid, 2012). This makes their experiences particularly vulnerable to the collective appropriation of trauma.

The complexity of manifestations of trauma and memory on both the individual and collective level is, however, far more nuanced. They are situated somewhere in between the capacity and willingness to remember, voluntary and involuntary action, visible and invisible consequences. Memory is above all a product of personal experience before it is a public knowledge about the past or a collective trauma. As such, private memories and the type of victimisation experience itself have a profound impact on victims’ self-understanding, which affects their life and identities in multiple ways. In addition, these play a crucial role in victims’ positioning in the legal-judicial quest for truth, justice, and reparations. Legal interpretations of victimhood³ are quite narrow in defining who the victim is, and what the rights and needs of the victims are. In the legal interpretation of victimhood, memory has a witness-bearing quality that attests the causality between the perpetrators (those who inflict harm) and the victims (at the receiving end). Yet, legal systems, trials, and compensation schemes are not equipped to deal with the temporality of victimhood and its conflicts.

How do (in)direct victims of terrorism perceive their experiences and consequences of terrorism over time? The analysis based on Image 14.1 suggests that on a personal level, we can trace and theorise three temporal dimensions of victimhood by connecting the past, present, and the future: the year zero (immediate aftermath to 1 year); mid-term (1–5); and long term (5–+). In what follows next, I will present a detailed discussion of the perception of time and its effects on victimhood. I will point out the temporal conflicts that characterise victims’ experiences in dealing with the trauma over time.

Image 14.1

(Graphic by Ana Milošević)

Temporal dimensions of victimhood

The Year Zero

The traumatic incident itself is a ‘moment zero’ inciting a reaction: absorbing the shock of experience and immediate consequences of victimisation. In the immediate aftermath both (in)direct victims and society absorb the shock of terrorism, yet the modality and the intensity of collective and individual responses to harms suffered are patently diverse. The mother of a young boy killed in the Brussels attacks (2016) explains this quite succinctly: ‘It was a breaking point of my life’, as ‘the foundation of my life has been destroyed’.⁴ Guillermo Pérez, brother of Pablo, killed in the 2017 La Rambla attacks, testifies of his ‘flashbulb’ memories (Brown & Kulik, 1977)—a sequence of actions performed—efforts to reach out to his brother on the phone, travelling to Barcelona with his family to identify the remains of his brother behind a screen. Yet, over the first days and weeks came the realisation and acceptance that Pablo was really gone. It was then that the anxiety, loss, and grief concentrated in Guillermo’s memory created, in his own words, ‘an interior rupture’.⁵

Loss and violence can produce immediate but also delayed and prolonged consequences on individuals. An immediate consequence is, for instance, a sudden loss of some or all physical or cognitive capacities. Walter Benjamin, a victim of the Brussels attacks (2016), woke up after the blast at the airport to a devastating image: a man next to him was headless. At that moment, Walter realised he had lost his leg (Benjamin, 2018). Like Walter’s, physical recovery of direct victims can be very long and complicated, resulting in long stays in hospital beds, sometimes even years, due to numerous surgeries and further medical complications. Importantly, delayed reactions can emerge over the course of days and even years after a trauma occurred.

Psychological consequences can be severe, and recovery is protracted, leading towards destructive behaviours and actions (self- or other-oriented). Victims suffering from extreme forms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by traumatic incidents have been known to seek refuge in drugs and alcohol abuse and engage in other forms of self-destructive behaviours. Yet, from a psychological perspective,⁶ most people interviewed in this study (around 80%) over the years reported having experienced some mild, transient distress such as sleep disturbance, fear, worry, anger, or sadness. Some of them returned to ‘normal’ function without any treatment. Others with more persistent symptoms of distress sought community-wide support and professional help, a process that is still ongoing and which over time often involved many setbacks.

The anniversary of a traumatic event, especially the first, is a moment of ‘settling scores between the expectations and reality’—particularly in terms of the perceived success at gaining public recognition, truth, justice, compensation, and adequate (or any at all) assistance⁷ as a victim of a terrorist crime. On a personal level, the first anniversary creates a temporal conflict—a crossroads between the past and the future. As explained by one of the Utøya survivors, a minor at the time of his peers’ mass murder in 2011: ‘By the first anniversary, either you define the event, or the event defines you’.⁸

‘It is the day’, a young girl⁹ who survived the bombing in Brussels said to me, as we were taking the staircase of the Maalbeek metro (2017) to the exact location of the attacks. ‘The day’ was the first time she was returning to the place where, precisely one year before, she was suddenly confronted with the possibility of dying. Returning to the location, at the origin of trauma, is emotionally hard for the victims and survivors. For many, it is a rather unwelcome experience they are not ready or willing to face, especially not such a short time after the attacks. ‘Christmas time is such a terrible moment for me’, shares Astrid Passin, who lost her father in the Christmas market attack in Berlin (2016). The fear of reliving those moments, of memory ‘flooding in’ and ‘overwhelming’ her is very strong.¹⁰ Others who chose to return shared that they came back ‘different persons’¹¹ than they were a year ago.

The degree of those consequences, their eventual reversibility or management, and ways in which assistance is provided over the first year are crucial for the psychological, physical, and emotional well-being of the victims. The intrusion into the grief and mourning by the media in this phase, eager to communicate about the terror as a spectacle, can negatively affect the victimisation experience and leave permanent marks. Pressuring a victim or a witness to give a video testimony under emotional duress or publicly sharing an image of the victim in visible distress (crying, hurt, naked) creates a ‘permanent reminder’ of that state of shock. It is indelible evidence of the traumatising experience. Some materials were taken without consent. Yet, even if consent was given, the victims often feel that their overall emotional and psychological well-being has been abused for the sake of newsworthiness.¹²

Temporal conflicts emerge also as a result of societal and political efforts at closure and installation of public memory through commemorations and monument building. Fast or untimely removal of spontaneous memorials made by society in the aftermath can interrupt the collective mourning process, by taking away a public canvas for the expression of emotions (e.g. Milošević, 2017). In addition, locations where the attacks unfolded are situated in the urban environment such as supermarkets, theatres, metro stations, or airports quickly reassume their initial purpose, leaving little if any trace of violence. By the first anniversary, there is an important acceleration of time with a pressure to ‘return to normality’ (Milošević, 2018): politically reassuring the public of their safety and security, giving promises of non-repetition and the certainty of penalty for the perpetrators. Yet, societal and political expectations about closure evolve along different timelines than those of the victims.

This is visible in criticism surrounding the installation of first anniversary monuments and state-led commemorations, seen as ‘a rushed attempt of the authorities to give a closure – set in stone’.¹³ State memorials, often very imposing architectural structures, are made with the intent to commemorate by leaving a permanent footing in space and time (Milošević, 2023: 235). However, public memory cannot be considered in isolation from political attempts at sense-making and inscription of meanings the event has for the society. State securitisation of memory, with its meanings and values, might not be necessarily aligned with those of the victimhood communities. Over the first year, victims’ own making-sense of trauma takes only slow and fragile shape. Instead of ‘memory set in a stone’ as an aspiration of a monument at the permanence and immutability of memory and imposition of its meanings, the victims are initially more prone to engage with memorials that appeal to the aesthetics of ‘nature’ (see Heath-Kelly, 2018). One such example is the memorial created by the architect Bas Smets in collaboration with victims of the Brussels attack. In the Sonian Forest in Brussels, a tree is planted for every direct victim. Such a memorial emphasises the passing of seasons and the progression of time, enacting two temporalities through the representation of both the past event and subsequent societal and personal recovery (Milošević, 2023: 236).

Symbolic recognition by the state and the public remains crucial for the victims to feel part of society again. Yet, it demands a degree of victims’ ownership of memories and active participation in the process of memorialisation. The year zero is the most sensitive period for the victims and compounded with strong emotions of loss, grief, anger, and sadness, to name a few. In the first year, many victims do not feel empowered or ready to share their experiences publicly through testimonies, or to participate actively in the creation and implementation of memorial initiatives made in their honour. The (perceived) lack of victims’ agency and authority in the process of state-led memorialisation tends to lead to the feelings of alienation and abstraction of the image of the victims. In other words, the first-year anniversary reflects divergent timelines in the recovery from the attacks. For societal actors, it is an attempt at closure; for the victims, it is a moment when those visible and invisible wounds come to the surface.

Mid-term (1–5)

Coping with the consequences of victimisation is reflected differently in victims’ everyday experiences and contestations around memory and trauma. While the passing of time and its effects on victimhood is subjective, most of the interviewees in the focus groups agree that the second temporal dimension lasts a minimum of 3–5 years. Mid-term, victims are confronted with the realisation that time does not stand still. Life does go on, and it puts pressure on the victims and survivors to explore and find meanings and give sense to their experiences. This can be traced in the self-perception of the victims themselves and the words they chose to depict their experiences as well as in their actions of claiming ownership of their experiences and narratives. Both revolve around the personal processing of trauma—ranging from many stages of denialism or alternatively acceptance, propelled by claiming one’s agency in the process.

From a distance of almost 20 years from a traumatic incident, Sudhesh Dahad, a survivor of the 7th July 2005 attacks in London, can segmentalise the temporality of his victimhood and illustrate how the passing of time reflects in his own experience. Sudhesh explains how over the first two years he tried to disengage with his experience by immersing himself in work. ‘I tried to distract myself and convince myself that everything would be ok if I just got on with my life. Two years after it happened, I found myself promoted to a rather high-pressure role just because I’d been heavily immersing myself at work and managed to achieve quite a lot. But the high pressure was the tipping point – I absorbed it for about three years without realising the impact it was having on me’. He suffered from constant anxiety over everything—work, home life, health, and finances, affecting his sleep until ‘the whole thing became one vicious circle’. By 2010, five years after the attack ‘I began to realise this and took a different role at work that would give me a little breathing space’.

The passage of time can put important pressure on individuals to deal with, engage, or disengage with a traumatic experience, the memory, and the consequence of it. Given the complexity of becoming and being a victim, it is not surprising that the consequences of these experiences have prolonged effects. The issue of recovery and temporality of victimhood is also compounded with time.

Every time something new comes along, it is difficult to heal the old wounds when you have to start coping with new challenges. For many survivors, their home becomes the only place they feel safe, so when my home was burgled in 2011, it compounded the trauma that I was still trying to recover from. Now nowhere felt safe. In the following years, I also had to deal with the sudden death of my father and my marriage’s ending. It all gets thrown into the mix and then you don’t know which emotions are due to what. It becomes quite complex for mental health professionals to disentangle what is really going on and how best to treat you.

Some victims decide to move out of the country, change their lives, and start over by never speaking of their trauma again. Sudhesh shares that he is ‘not sure it gets easier with time if you still feel like you have to be exposed to the same environment day in, day out. Some of my fellow survivors left London or even left the country altogether to start new lives because it just wasn’t getting any easier for them’. By suppressing memories, keeping silent to avoid stigma and the ‘victim’ label, as well as changing of the surroundings, some victims seek to restore the normality that was violently taken from them. Some, like Virginie, who survived the attack in Zaventem airport, needed seven years just to be able to reach out to other victims. Opting for anonymity rather than oblivion, some victims choose to disengage from their victimhood identities seen as an obstacle for living a life as free as possible from the burdens of the past.

It is not uncommon to learn from young survivors, some of them minors at the moment of victimisation, that victimhood can be a source of stigma preventing them from succeeding in the job market. Others, over time, choose privacy like the family members of two youngsters killed at the Utøya, who did not permit the use of their children’s photographs in the 22. juli senteret museum in Oslo (created to commemorate the victims the tragic events of 2011). For some, media presence is remembrance work against oblivion—a way of keeping the public eye on their plea for memory and justice. The family of young Ferhart Unvar, killed in Hanau in 2020 by a far-right extremist, is one such example of how indirect victims become active memory agents in promoting tolerance, and condemning hate and racism. The work of the education campaign Bildungsinitiative Ferhart Unvar testifies to the crucial role that grassroots initiatives play in breaking the static image of ‘the victim’ by shedding light on individuals, on people who lost their life to terrorism.

Some victims display reluctance to identify with the word ‘victim' due to its connotations of passivity and vulnerability. They tend to choose alternative wording to describe their experience, such as survivor (see Milošević & Truc, 2021). Self-perception and self-validation are seen as more important than terms that come with legal definitions and rights bestowed. Reflecting on their understanding of victimhood, some of my informants could identify the exact moment of their transformation from a victim to a survivor. Matteo Dendena, a relative of a victim in the Piazza Fontana attacks in 1969 Italy, believes that a moment arrives ‘when one decides to take ownership of their own story’. For another young man from Norway, the traumatic experience affected his self-understanding and that of his experience. The trauma he suffered has had a transformative effect. ‘Before the attacks, I was an introvert. But I felt the need to speak out about my experience. I dared to speak out. It is important not to be a victim, I would like to be called a survivor. I want to contribute; I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me’.

This kind of thinking is not unique but shared by many victims and survivors of terrorism I worked with over the years. Reclaiming one’s agency is crucial for sense-making about the experience of victimisation and its life-altering consequences. Yet, how the victims perceive their own traumatic experience and what label they want to use to describe themselves is a deeply personal issue. Sometimes, it’s a matter of choice based not only on their personalities, but also affected by their experience of victimisation.

Long Term (5–+)

‘Time goes too fast’, says Florian Henin, who lost his father in the 2015 Bamako attacks when he was only 16. And with the time fleeting ‘there is a fear of forgetting or leaving behind’. The greater the distance from the ‘moment zero’, the higher the possibility that the victimised individuals assign a more permanent meaning to their experiences either by means of (non)acceptance or sense-making. ‘For years I denied that there was any effect on me’, but ‘rarely a day goes by without me thinking about the events of 7/7. It’s not that I think about the day itself but more about the consequences, and the consequences if something like that should happen again’.

Over time, a traumatic experience and the associated loss, pain, and grief settle gradually into memories and identities of the victims, but often such feelings can reemerge. Sudesh’s testimony, like Sara’s (quoted earlier), illustrates time as a spiral rather than linear category, and memory of a trauma as a trigger that resets the measurement of time passed. ‘Sometimes the fears fade away and the complacency sets in again. And then something might happen to trigger those fears again. The attacks in Manchester, Westminster and London Bridge are examples of such triggers. They remind me of our vulnerability and then push me back into the mode of being hyper-vigilant when I’m in crowded places’. Long term, there is a realisation that the clock cannot be unwound. It is then when the ghosts of ifs—unlived futures, unlived lives, unfulfilled expectations, and dreams, and missed moments and chances start to weigh in. ‘I wish that my father could see me graduate’, ‘I wish that my daughter could meet her niece’, ‘I wish my parents were here’. The victims share that on a personal level, memory of trauma remains a deep wound, with time being a slow and unpredictable healer.

‘The worst thing that can happen is to forget’, explains Philippe Vansteenkiste, the leader of V-Europe, an association of victims formed after his sister Fabienne lost her life in the Brussels attacks. ‘Not forgotten means to be seen, which means the victims are getting recognition for their experience, which restores a sense of self’. In the long term, the role assigned to memory bears historical witness to the attacks and their victims. This is particularly visible in the work of victim organisations that become ‘gatekeepers’ of that memory and who strive to maintain public interest in their work of remembrance. Keeping the public’s interest in their plea for memory and justice after terrorism becomes very difficult with the passing of time and dissolving political and societal interests. ‘Memory is a civil responsibility. It is the responsibility of everyone. Yet, stories of attacks that happened a long time ago are hard to make relevant, the attack might not resonate as much with younger generations, but the idea behind it can. A terror attack is an attack on democracy, it can still take place today’.

Interviewees are very resolute about the transformative power that a traumatic event has on their future. For instance, Bjørn Ihler, in his own words, went through ‘a transformation from a personal storytelling to a subject matter expert’. Over more than 10 years, Bjørn’s professional trajectory builds on his work with former violent extremists and his own experience as a survivor of the 2011 terrorist attack in Norway. Long term, community engagement and peer-to-peer support are among the priorities for many victims as a means of sharing their own stories and experiences and making-sense of their trauma. Many parents, relatives, and friends of the people who lost their lives in terror attacks are active memory agents working in the field of prevention and countering of violent extremism. Their professionalisation as subject experts due to their experience comes as a result of work and engagement with victim organisations which provide testimonies in schools and prisons, and engage in memorialisation work.

The passage of time, importantly, also affects the physical and symbolic remnants of memory and the ways these are used. Monuments are not only a tool for remembering the past, they are also put in service of present needs (for resilience building, reconciliation, dealing with the past, anti-radicalisation) and the future (promises of non-recurrence, awareness raising, knowledge transmission). Utøya, for instance, is one such hybrid example. It is a thriving space for learning about democracy as well as a mass murder location and an open air museum. The site has gone through a heritage-making process aiming to preserve the authenticity of the cafeteria—a still image of the tragedy that bears witness to the bullet holes in the walls and lives of those left behind. In Italy, more than 50 years after the Piazza Fontana attack, however, there are no memorial reminders of the bombings that took place in one of Milan’s most central squares.

Utøya and the Piazza Fontana are two contrasting examples, yet many locations have undergone some sort of light transformation to publicly accommodate the memory of the atrocities that took place. For instance, in Madrid’s Atocha station, there is a memorial bearing witness to the 2004 attacks. In Brussels’ metro, artistic installations (announced weeks after the attacks) and a wall with citizens’ messages bear testimony to the attack in 2016. Other places such as the Bataclan theatre, or the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris have memorial plaques installed on the external walls of the buildings. In Nice, where in 2016 a perpetrator drove a lorry into the crowds walking down the Promenade des Anglais, for five years a temporary monument stood enclosed in a front garden of a museum, Villa Massena, also used as a luxurious event location. For the 6th anniversary a permanent memorial was unveiled right on the Promenade.

Not only the creation but also the maintenance of these places of memory and monuments can give rise to criticism by the victims’ groups as being unmindful of their memorial needs and the dignity of the victims (e.g. ‘hidden from sight’, errors in names on plaques, or no names at all) (see RAN & Milošević, 2021). When authenticity and recognition of victims’ memories are threatened by the passage of time, new temporal conflicts emerge. The passage of time increases the invisibility of places of memory in the urban space. Remnants of past(s) lose their visibility as citizens become accustomed to their presence—they become decorative rather than significative. The impact of time on memorial spaces is manifested also through their gradual deterioration. The physical deterioration is accentuated by poor maintenance and diminished interest. Marble stains, dirt and dust accumulate, and names and numbers fade. Without public engagement with these places of memory and monuments, the memory itself becomes invisible. Ironically, it begins to symbolise forgetting, something that the victims and their descendants are fighting against.

Conclusion

This chapter has theorised and analysed the impact of time and temporality on memory of and for the victims and survivors of terrorism. For the victims, time travels in a spiral rather than in a linear manner. The chapter has demonstrated that three temporal dimensions of victimhood can be traced in the experiences of victims/survivors. The first, beginning with the traumatic event itself and ending with the first anniversary. The second, mid-term, lasts up to 5 years on average before the third, reflecting the long term, sets in. All three dimensions are plagued with temporal conflicts that affect victimhood in a myriad of ways. However, the relationship between time and victimhood is not measured and viewed as linear, having a beginning (trauma) and an end (healing, or other forms of trauma resolution). In contrast, the temporality of victimhood is not following a straight line but rather it is seen as a spiral, in which time and victimhood at times come close, or alternatively collide.

The key argument is the issue of temporality of victimhood in relation to society and the victims themselves. Private and public dealings with the memory of terrorism follow different timelines and are burdened by irreconcilable uses of the past and meanings assigned to trauma. Public memory’s aspirations at durability and immutability, as endless and timeless, are fickle. The constellation of political and societal actors that manage the process of memorialisation is changing frequently, and loyalties and affections change as well as the utilitarian value of the past. As such, public memory is at odds with temporality of experienced victimhood as, over time, such memory spirals back to the pre-trauma stage, transforming into knowledge about the past.

Almost instantly after the attacks, society, seen as a collective victim of terrorism, bounces back with resilience, healing, and recovery objectives exercised through ‘duty of memory’. Yet, these are the long-term objectives for those who suffered the harms directly. In the immediate aftermath, for the victims, memory is an unwelcome but unavoidable experience: it is raw, undefined, and an emotionally burdensome manifestation of trauma. Over time, that traumatic experience deeply penetrates all spheres of life, not only the body and the mind but also personal identities, influencing both the present and the future. The memorial objectives of state-led memorialisation, in contrast, start by defining that future, inscribing in stone the permanent, derived meanings that trauma has on the collective and for the victims themselves. For the direct victims, the meanings of trauma are neither static nor linear. The past, present, and the future co-exist in every experience of victimisation, and every path towards grasping those temporal realities is different. As one of the survivors explains: ‘Time may not be healing all wounds. There will be things in life that will always hurt or be tender. Yet, I am releasing the idea that I must get over things to find peace. I can again be happy and still have some things in my life that hurt’.