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Chapter 2

Beginnings

If the Lord had not been my help,

my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.

PSALM 94:17, ESV

Ihadn’t always lived with my grandparents in Germany. Their daughter Ingeborg, a stunningly beautiful photographer sought by major publications in Europe, had moved to Canada in the early 1950s. That’s where I was born and lived for the first 26 months of my life.

When I was young, I didn’t know much about my mother—only snatches of what I had heard from my grandparents. But when I was older, I found out more about her from my dad. As a result, I have partially come to understand her enigmatic personality and have been able to reconstruct events in her life with some insight. Here is Ingeborg’s story the way I see it.

Just like me, Ingeborg enjoyed an idyllic childhood with my grandparents. But also, like many young women who suffered the effects of the war years in Europe, Ingeborg became a troubled soul. I adored my grandparents, and it was hard for me to understand how someone raised in their home could be so different from them. I experienced the warmth, stability and love of their home for six and a half years, and I knew what her childhood had been like. It was wonderful.

Oma would have prayed to Jesus with her daughter every night just like she did with me. Ingeborg would have known the serenity of playing in the garden with her dolls while her parents pulled weeds and grew delicious fresh fruit and veggies. She would have smelled the aromas of my Oma’s kitchen and known the security of sitting at their table. It was a post-Victorian environment—very proper and exceedingly happy. Unfortunately, she wasn’t raised entirely in their home.

EFFECTS OF WAR

Fearing for her safety in Germany’s political climate of the early 40s, my grandparents had sent 11-year-old Ingeborg to northern Germany to live with friends of her great-aunt. Their desire was to protect her from the harm that could come to young girls during the war. Their efforts backfired.

Before they sent Ingeborg away, she was a sweet, kind, lovely, talkative little girl who enjoyed life with parents who loved her very much. Oma and Opa used to say she was like me when I was with them. But something devastating must have happened to her in the eight years she was away. The war destroyed her.

At 18 Ingeborg returned transformed: sullen, angry, withdrawn, depressed, lacking trust, and quick to lie. She had shut down emotionally and found it difficult to love and be happy. It’s anyone’s guess what might have happened. She refused to speak of it and was never healed from the psychological and emotional wounds she had experienced. Oma lost her daughter, and it broke her heart.

What happened?

As I now reflect on the circumstances, it seems she had become hardened to life like one who has experienced deep trauma or abuse. Perhaps she tried to protect herself from men or soldiers through lies. I can only imagine. Even if she hadn’t been abused, she would likely have felt abandoned, rejected and unloved by her parents. She was young and wouldn’t have understood their motives for sending her away.

DISILLUSIONED

When she was 22 years of age the pain of her past had receded just enough to allow Ingeborg to fall in love and become engaged, but the relationship dissolved three years later, and she was devastated. It was more than she could bear.

In an effort to escape the memories, she left Germany and immigrated to Canada, only to discover that pain can’t be healed by distance. Heartbreak and trauma kept her bound in chains of suffering. Her effort to distance herself from them was futile, but in her attempt to escape she turned her back not only on painful things but also on the good things of her past—the solid foundation her parents had laid and the abilities that had brought her success in her photography career. She tried to restart her life on empty.

THE ICE PRINCESS

Ingeborg settled in Toronto. Occasionally on weekends she accompanied friends to a dance hall where she sat at a table, her long legs crossed, smoke curling from her lips around her shoulder-length dark hair. Detached, reserved and frozen, she surveyed the activity in the smoke-hazed room but refused to join in.

One of those nights Ingeborg deliberately ignored a handsome young man laughing at a nearby table with his friends. Dark and confident, he attempted to catch her eye with a friendly grin. Twice she noticed him looking at her, but she averted her glance quickly to signal disinterest. One of his friends pointed toward her and said, “Her? Everybody asks her to dance, but she always turns them down.”

He was undaunted. Without taking his eyes off her, he pushed away from the table. “She’ll dance with me,” he said with a smile. He stopped before her, extended his hand and waited. Ingeborg stared into his friendly eyes, put her hand in his and rose to dance. At five feet seven, she was slender and graceful. Bari Basar (Ejubowic)—then known as Gino Ejubowic—moved her masterfully onto the dance floor, where his skills as a ballroom dance instructor showcased the beauty of the mysterious ice princess.

Bari Basar was raised in Yugoslavia, where his father had been a lawyer—the wealthiest man in the country. He had owned restaurants, hotels and many blocks of buildings. In 1945, however, when King Petar surrendered to Tito and the Communist People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was established, Bari’s father was targeted because of his wealth and education and thrown in jail. His properties were confiscated by the state and his businesses were allocated as state-owned enterprises.

Young Bari was next to be arrested, but to facilitate his escape, he changed his name to Ejubowic and fled north to Austria. He was assigned to Refugee Camp Number Five in Klappenberg, where he learned German and lived from 1945 to 1948. When camp residents discovered his talents, they begged him to teach them to dance the Viennese waltz, the English waltz, the foxtrot—all the fashionable dances of the day.

In the meantime, Bari’s mother fled with his two sisters to Turkey. Once Bari’s dad was released from jail, he left Yugoslavia and moved to Turkey as well. It would be 19 years before Bari would be reunited with his family.

In 1948, when Bari could return to Germany, he chose Salzburg in hopes of finding a job. He had saved some money, and in 1950 he attended Nurnberg University to study electrical engineering—an undertaking he interrupted for a trip to Canada. He hoped to work in Canada for a short time, make some money to send home to his family, learn English and return to Germany to resume life there.

Bari’s plans failed. He became entangled with Ingeborg.

TRAPPED

It was 1954. Bari and Ingeborg spent time together, and he noticed her instability. A nurturing, helpful and compassionate man, he wanted to help her develop a stronger sense of herself, but her woundedness ran deeper than he realized, and his attempt to “fix” her was unsuccessful. In a flash of manipulative insecurity, she vowed that if he wouldn’t marry her, she would kill herself.

Bari felt trapped. Unwilling for Ingeborg to face such a fate, he rescued her. “I saved her life,” he always said thereafter. They married that year in October. Unfortunately it was not for love. Their relationship was grounded in Ingeborg’s manipulation and Bari’s pity.

Ingeborg didn’t tell her parents she was getting married. Even if they had been in Canada, she likely wouldn’t have invited them to the wedding. When Oma and Opa found out their daughter had married without telling them, they were grief-stricken. Oma wept the tears only parents abandoned and rejected by a child they love could understand.

In hopes of rebuilding a relationship, Oma and Opa invited the newlyweds to visit. They knew nothing about their son-in-law and worried how they might communicate with him so were pleasantly surprised when Bari greeted them at the airport speaking German.

Oma and Opa adored their daughter’s husband. He was handsome, witty and outgoing. He loved people, and people loved him. While Bari engaged everyone in the room, the ice princess sat in a corner hidden behind a book. She rejected attention and let people know she needed no one.

HOPE DEFERRED

In their quiet moments alone, Oma and Opa talked about how wonderful it would be if Ingeborg and Bari would settle in Germany. They contemplated how they might help make it possible and decided to offer Bari 50,000 German marks to start a business.

The idea produced a distinct change in Ingeborg. She loved it and became excited. Her life in Canada had proved unfruitful and she had no reason to return, but Bari could not be persuaded. He didn’t want to be “bought,” and he refused the offer. Again, my grandparents’ hopes were dashed. They grieved, and so did Ingeborg.

Years later Bari confessed he had regretted his decision to reject my grandparents’ offer. He blamed himself for altering the course of their lives for nothing more than foolish, youthful pride. He believed that had he consented to live in Germany, things would have been different. That was certainly Ingeborg’s contention. Upon their return to Canada, Ingeborg fell into a deep depression.

Who is to say how things might have turned out had Bari and Ingeborg remained in Germany? Ingeborg’s personality, rooted in woundedness, would have had the same effect on her relationships whether in Germany or in Canada. Also, a marriage such as theirs, founded on manipulation, was not destined to last.

Bari wanted to introduce his bride to his family in Turkey. He proposed a two-year trial visit, suggesting that Ingeborg might want to settle there, but she refused. It was her revenge for his decision to leave Germany. “I’ll go with you to Russia; I’ll go with you to China; but I’ll never go to Turkey,” she insisted. Instead, she became pregnant with me, and she wasn’t happy about it.

Forty years later, in a most unusual way, I learned the truth—she hated me before I was born.

REVELATION

At that point in my adult life I had a close personal relationship with God and was attending a conference at a church in Toronto where God’s tangible presence was manifest. It was magnetic, irresistible and therapeutic. As people yielded to God, His Spirit filled them with love and healing.

That’s what happened to me one evening. The pastor invited people to come forward for prayer, and I was drawn to respond. As he prayed for me, suddenly the Holy Spirit came over me in such a breathtaking, warm, powerful embrace of pure love that I couldn’t remain on my feet. My knees buckled and I sank to the floor. As I lay there I had a peaceful sense of being underwater. Puzzled at first, I tried to assess where I was because I lay curled in a fetal position. It seemed as if I was back in my mother’s womb. This may sound strange to some, but let me explain.

When God gives one an unusual experience such as this, it’s either a resurrected memory or a vision. God allows it for His purposes so He can reveal something otherwise unknown to the individual. In my case, I experienced what is known as an open vision, through which God retrieved a memory for me of what happened before I was born.

The vision of being in the womb was so real that I was totally oblivious to being on the floor in a meeting. I heard talking, but the voices were those of my mother and father arguing. It was as though I was right there with them. My mother was angry at my father because she was pregnant with me.

Then the scene shifted. I became aware of a sharp object penetrating my safe space and coming toward me. As tiny as I was in the womb, I recognized danger, and terror gripped me. My fear was very real. I had nowhere to escape. I pushed as far away from the object as I could, but it jabbed toward me repeatedly. The jabs came and went, seeking to pierce the thin protective membrane surrounding me. Then in a flash the horror of truth flooded me. My mother was trying to kill me.

IN GOD’S HANDS

At that moment I saw two huge protective hands come together and form a wall around me. When the fingers interlocked between me and the sharp object, the frightful blackness gave way to a soft bathing white light, and I felt safe. I knew they were God’s hands. A voice that belonged to the hands said, “Just as I was there for you when you fell off the horse, and just as I was there to protect you in your car accident, so I was there right in the beginning to protect you when your mother tried to abort you.”

Then as I lay in my mother’s womb in total peace, secure in God’s protection, Jesus appeared to me. He lifted me out and laid me in the crook of His arm. There were other babies lined up on His arm with me. He walked us into a room where Father God was sitting in Heaven and presented us to Him. God put His hands over us and kissed us. “These ones need a special blessing because they are unwanted. They have been rejected and will have much rejection.”

After we were blessed, Jesus walked us back and returned us into the womb, but He didn’t leave. He stayed with me in Ingeborg’s womb with God’s protective presence wrapped around me.

Until that night I didn’t know that my mother had tried to abort me. As the vision faded, I lay on the floor, shocked. I wanted to talk to my dad. As soon as I left the meeting, I phoned him. “Dad,” I asked, “did Mom try to abort me?”

He gasped. “Who told you that?”

“God did. He told me a lot of other things too. I’m coming over, and I need you to tell me the whole truth.” Later, as we talked, he hung his head and acknowledged, “Yes, your mother tried to abort you. Three times.”

I have since seen photos taken during abortions. They show the baby in the womb pushing as far from the intruding object as possible. Also, the video The Silent Scream (www.silentscream.org) depicts the abortion of an 11-week-old fetus in terrifying detail through the use of real-time ultrasound. As the abortionist’s suction tip invades the womb, the child cringes and rears in an attempt to avoid the instrument. Her mouth is visibly open in a “silent scream.” Her heart rate increases dramatically to 200 beats per minute as she senses aggression and moves away in a heartrending attempt to escape the instrument.

I didn’t have this insight when I lay on the floor at the meeting, but that is exactly what I experienced in my mother’s womb. But for the grace of God…

Thus began my life on earth. I was rejected by my mother, not just before birth but, devastatingly so, afterward as well. Not so with my dad. He could hardly wait for me to arrive.

DADDY’S GIRL

In those days men weren’t allowed in the delivery room, but my dad worked a 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. shift at the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital, right beside the Women’s College Hospital. He knew the doctors, and the doctors knew him and gave him permission to be in the delivery room when I was born. He donned a gown and helped me make my entrance into the world. When I arrived, he couldn’t contain his delight. He held me, kissed me and doted on me.

“My beautiful one!” he exclaimed to me as I lay on his arm. “You are ma belle! I want to call her Ma Belle,” he announced to Ingeborg. “It means ‘my beautiful one’ in French.”

“And what’s that going to be in English?” my mother objected. “It’ll be Mabel. No! I don’t want that name.”

“Fine,” he conceded. “We’ll turn Ma Belle around and call her Belma.”

Even back then I adored my daddy. I was his little girl, always excited to meet him when he came home from work. He played with me all evening, took me in his arms and danced around the room. It really irritated Ingeborg. She was disinterested in me, but she didn’t want him to play with me. She was jealous of my dad’s affection toward me, and it caused constant fighting in our home.

Rather than bringing joy to the marriage, my birth increased tension between them. The competition was fierce, with each wanting me to speak their language. My dad speaks nine languages, one of which is Turkish. When he tried to teach me a word in Turkish, she would interject, “No! The word is…” and she repeated it in German.

A year after I was born, Ingeborg got pregnant again. My dad arrived home one day to find blood everywhere. She had successfully aborted a baby boy—my brother. Dad rushed her to the hospital, where she remained for two weeks. When she was released, he urged her go to Germany, visit her parents, rest and recuperate. “Have a little holiday,” he suggested. “Take Belma with you and stay a couple of weeks.”

I was 26 months old at the time, and my life was about to take a new direction.