Girls switched at birth, one Muslim the other Christian, meet at age 12
As difficult and emotionally devastating as this situation must be for everyone involved, it lays bare how so many of our preconceived ideas about who and what “The Other” is have little or nothing to do with DNA or other biological factors, and everything to do with our upbringing and familial & cultural terms of reference.
The former cannot changed, but the latter most certainly can since they are things we were born into, not things we consciously chose. Change will only happen, however, when and if we are willing to open our hearts & minds and put forth the effort required to overcome the fear, ignorance, and prejudice that prevent us from fully appreciating one another’s humanity.
Unfortunately, the racists, bigots, power hungry demagogues, and sundry other “supremacists” among us will doubtless continue doing their level best to stop that from happening since our ire would then be turned against them instead of each other. We’re not mindless marionettes—never have been, never will be—so why should we allow others to attach strings to us that they can yank whenever they please?
Anyway, enough of my grousing—on to the story.
Two Russian families are united by a terrible event more than a decade ago. Their newborn daughters were accidentally mixed up in the maternity hospital and grew up with the “wrong” parents.
In a tiny flat in the Ural Mountains, Yulia Belyaeva and her 12-year-old daughter Irina are looking through family photos.
One of the pictures shows Irina as a newborn baby swaddled in a blanket. It was taken the day mother and daughter left hospital. But 12 years on, Yulia Belyaeva has discovered that the baby she’d taken home - the daughter she’d thought she’d given birth to - is not her child.
“I found this out when my ex-husband refused to pay maintenance,” says Yulia. “I took him to court to prove that he was Irina’s father. We did all the DNA tests. But the results were a total surprise. Not only does my ex-husband have no biological link to Irina - neither do I.” […]
In the house is Naimat Iskanderov - the man Anya thought was her father. Naimat is from Tajikistan. He had married a Russian woman, but they had divorced. It was Naimat who brought up Anya and his other children as devout Muslims. When police told him about the mistake at the maternity hospital and that Anya was not his daughter, to begin with he refused to believe it.
“Then the detective showed me a photo of the other girl, Irina, the one they said was my real daughter,” Naimat tells me. “When I saw her face, it was like seeing myself. My arms and legs began shaking. It was awful to think that my child had grown up with another family. And that I had brought up someone else’s daughter.”
The two families meet regularly now. But the parents admit there is tension between them. […]
This part struck me the most:
For now the two girls say they do not want to swap parents. They are just glad to have found each other.
“To begin with we were a bit shy,” Irina tells me, “but now we’ve become the best of friends.”
“What I’d like,” says Anya, “is for all of us to live in one big house.” […]
We all already do live in one big house, little one—we’re just too busy squabbling with one another from behind the locked doors of our separate rooms to notice. Perhaps one day we adults will appreciate the wisdom of what you girls have already learned: It’s better to be friends, to be glad we have the companionship of fellow travelers on this this long, unpredictable journey we must all take together.
