U.K. woman shares family's Bosnian war story of rejection, reunion
Shortly after the Bosnian war broke out, Lejla Damon's mother was taken to a concentration camp, where men were separated from their families and the women were often raped, killed or both.
Damon's mother, Safa, who is Muslim, was raped and eventually gave birth on Christmas Day, 1992.
Nine days later, Safa gave her up for adoption to a journalist and his wife, who worked as a camerawoman.
The couple took her because Safa, traumatized by what happened during the conflict, could not bear to see her own child anymore.
"I reminded her of all the men that had raped her. I was a constant reminder that if she held me, that she would strangle me," Damon told CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning.
Damon's adoptive parents interviewed Safa at the time as they investigated rumours of "rape camps" that emerged amidst ethnic cleansing during the conflict in eastern Europe.
Multi-generational impact
Damon is in Ottawa this week to speak on a panel at the University of Ottawa organized by the Central and Eastern European Studies Research Group in collaboration with the Studies in Migration Research Group.
She will speak about the multi-generational impact of sexual violence in wars.
Damon's journalist parents smuggled Damon out of Bosnia into Hungary during the war. Later they moved to the U.K., where they built a new life.
After learning about her past and meeting her birth mother for the first time, she now uses her experience as a launch pad to discuss sexual violence.
'A second chance'
Damon knew about the interview her parents did with Safa, but wanted to learn more about her birth mother and, ultimately, to meet her.
"As much as I suppose she hated me and she wanted to get rid of me, she also agreed for me to be adopted, so it was kind of one of those things where it is a second chance," Damon told CBC. "It's taken a while for me to see that as a positive without it being all about rejection."
The search for her birth mother started with a trip to the embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the U.K. An official there knew a hospital spokesperon, who knew a nurse who worked at the Sarajevo hospital, where Damon was born.
Astonishingly, that nurse remembered Damon 25 years later.
"He was like, 'Oh my God. You're the one. You got out. I know your dad. I remember you. I can't believe you came back,'" Damon recalled. "At that point I was honestly blown away."
Meeting mom for 1st time
That rare encounter was only eclipsed by the meeting she was most looking forward to: the one with her birth mother. It happened at the end of last year during a holiday with her adoptive parents in Bosnia.
Gripped with jitters, she made eye contact with her birth mom for what she said felt like an eternity.
"It was probably four seconds, five seconds. But it felt like a really long time. And then she gave me a hug. It was a really strong hug. For those four seconds you sat there like, 'I'm not prepared for this,'" she said.
Her birth mother apologized for what she said in the 1992 interview.
'Broken' by war
Safa is "broken" by the war, Damon said, and never sought mental health support for her trauma because her parents at the time said it would be a "stain" on the family.
But now, Safa's feelings of hatred toward her daughter have turned to joy, she said.
"It's that sense of peace that even at the time she was giving me up because she hated me, she didn't realize what she was giving me. It's that sense of peace that she knows I'm alive, I'm safe," Damon said.
"It's that knowing that you did the right thing even if it wasn't necessarily for the right reasons."
Damon is speaking at the University of Ottawa Thursday afternoon at Simard Hall at 60 University Ave.
The panel begins at 4 p.m.
- Click here to listen to the full interview with Ottawa Morning.
