I was born in Beirut in 1966. My mother was hidden during her pregnancy, and was forced to abandon me at birth. I was adopted a few months later in France. After a long and arduous search, I was lucky enough to find her in 2017. As this journey enriched my life so profoundly, since this time, I’ve been committed to helping other adoptees from Lebanon in their endless search for their biological roots.
Every year, a handful of people feel profoundly happy when they find their mother, their father, a sibling…people they resemble, a piece of their history, a biological home port, a possible response to the nagging question: "Why was I abandoned?". But too few get to experience this solace, and I just cannot remain silent in the face of the suffering of all the others.
Three years ago, I launched an appeal "Mamans, nous vous cherchons et nous ne vous en voulons pas"1 (Mothers we’re looking for you, we’re not blaming you) via the daily newspaper ‘L’Orient-Le-Jour.’ Thanks to Anne-Marie El-Hage’s article, a few biological mothers found the courage to ask for help to find their children. This article also provided an opportunity for a few half-siblings to launch their search. And yet….
And yet today, my observation is a sad one: the adoptees’ search is all too often in vain. In fact, when we go to Lebanon, all too often we’re faced with the tired old remark "but you already have a family back home!" The point is not however to find out whether or not we were lucky enough to have been brought up in an adoptive family, it is to find the person to whom we owe our life!
We’re here, ready to welcome you and listen to your story without judging, simply in response to the natural need to find a face in which we can find the reflection of our own, in order to make it easier to move forward, hear a birth story that we can root ourselves in. Unfortunately, we all too often come up against an incomprehensible omertà from those who have participated in our adoptions, as well as from a great number of Lebanese that we come into contact with - including those in the diaspora. Adoption is a subject so taboo that from the moment the word "adopted" is uttered, contact is often permanently cut off.