Marie Claire UK - 11.2019

90

First person

I’ve only seen the news footage

of me as a five-day-old baby

once. That was enough. There’s

a woman speaking to camera, she’s

saying she can’t look at me as it

reminds her of the men who raped

her. Then she admits that if she

holds me she will strangle me.

I was 19 and could see how

distressed the woman was. Having

a baby should have been one of the

happiest moments of her life, but

all I did was give her flashbacks

of violence. I couldn’t really see

her face, only her side profile, and could tell she

was consumed by anger. But as I watched her, I knew

I had to find her.

I had a wonderful childhood, growing up in Hungary,

London and eventually Wales, with my adoptive parents,

Sîan and Dan Damon. Dad is a journalist and Mum was

a camera operator and they had worked abroad before

settling back in the UK. I was seven when I first heard about

my adoption, after coming home from school to tell Mum

about a class discussion we’d had about what day of the

week we’d all been born on. That was when she explained

how I’d been adopted from a country called Bosnia, and

that the lady who had given birth to me couldn’t look after

me because of the war.

The revelation didn’t feel like a profound moment and,

throughout the rest of my childhood, my parents revealed

as much about my background as they could in an age-

appropriate way. We even had a family holiday in Bosnia

and they encouraged me to learn

the language, although at the time

I wasn’t interested.

It was only when I turned 18 and

wanted to go on holiday to Bosnia

with my then boyfriend that Mum

and Dad knew it was time for me to

hear the full story of my birth.

I remember sitting in our living

room on the big blue sofa as they

told me what my birth mother had

endured. ‘Her name was Safa and

she was raped in a concentration

camp by Serbian soldiers,’ said

Mum, who explained that they had been working in the

country during the atrocities.

It was while they were conducting interviews in a hospital

in Sarajevo that they had a tip-off about a woman who had

been raped in one of the camps and had given birth on

Christmas Day. A few days later, they saw me for the first

time. I’d just been fed and was wrapped up in blankets,

so only my face was visible. My birth mum was so

traumatised,she was unable to care for me. That was the

moment they filmed the news report, the one I finally

watched 19 years later.

Afterleaving the hospital, my parents said they were so

upset, they couldn’t stop thinking about me. They realised

if they didn’t get me out of Bosnia, it was unlikely I would

survive. My fate would have been a neglected life in an

orphanage with staff struggling against impossible odds to

take care of so many orphaned and abandoned children.

Three days later, they made the decision to adopt me

Duringthe Balkans war in the 90s, thousands of Bosnian women – like Lejla

Damon’s mother – were held captive and raped in camps by Serbian soldiers.

Here, she tellsLouise Courtabout the day her adoptive British parents revealed

the truth about her birth, and the journey to find the woman who gave her up

‘The day that

I diScovered I waS

a war rape baby’

Nursessay goodbye

to baby Lejla as

she leaves hospital