Nothing in Sara's attitude would have made you think that she blamed herself. She maintained a distance between herself and us that we chalked up to her depression. With all her energy being poured into her lost homeland and the people she had left behind, she no longer felt that she needed to worry about us – after all, we were safe...she was helpless...she didn't know how to be a mother anymore. Our uprooting had turned us into strangers, not only to other people but to one another. People always think hard times bring you closer together, but that's not the case with exile. Survival is a very personal matter.