This December 2001 will be my first Christmas in my native country after 32 years of leaving it as an adoptee. How can I tell the flow of emotion around this marvellous event for me?
I was born in Lebanon, 13th December 1965. I was raised in an orphanage in Beirut till the age of four. In October 1969, I was given to French loving adopters.

In spite of everything, I feel lucky. The healthy orphans used to leave much younger than I did. Anyway, we, children, were left abandoned and this will mark us forever: I still live that feeling of the a child waiting for parents. Steady nightmares brought me back to the orphanage that I definitely recognised in 1996.

All the papers related to my identity are fake. I was given the name of Nelly Siham Kamla but two names strangely come back to my mind : Fatmé and Sonya. Why?

I don't know where I was born. Almost all the actors of my life at the orphanage died. Despite of all my research, it is extremely difficult to find any information about my birth. Was it at Dichuany or Sahylé, or Baabda Government Hospital, the French Maternity, or the Quarantina or Tripoli?

All my life I was reminded painfully of my native country at its worst moments transmitted on TV. It was not easy. My adoptive parents support me now in my search. We have been working a lot on this point.
I was raised with the idea that my adoption was due to my native parents' death. Since I instinctively never understood this story, my constant questions to my adoptive parents brought me to learn step by step the truth only 3 years ago:

My native parents should be alive. My mother should be now 52 up to 58 if she survived the war.

I was told she could have been a young Christian Lebanese of the mountain who fell in love with a Jordanian, without being married.

I am in a sharp deadlock today. I need help to reconstitute my " source ", the puzzle of my early childhood.
Even though I am perfectly aware of the drama that enhances the illegitimate birth for a woman in Lebanon, moreover, 36 years ago and who ever my parents are, a part of me desperately requires an understanding of what happened. They must be somewhere in this country. Lebanon is small.
At this stage of my life and thanks to the warm support of Lebanese and French friends, I wish, to have the chance to meet, at least once, my native mother and/or father. I would love to talk with them, understand our common past, relief the pain we certainly have suffered from. This, I am sure, will provide me the opportunity to build a positive future on clear and precious roots.