It was just a few years after the Liberation War in 1971. Caroline Amena Lauritsen was a child then. She does not remember how old she was back then, but her adoption papers say she was three years old.
With a group of children, all from the same “baby home” as hers, Caroline flew to Denmark on November 13, 1975. The only memories she has from her life back in Bangladesh are a few words—words that she finds hard to pronounce now.
“Amena no ghum” and “paani” are the only words that she remembers, she tells me, as we settle down for a chat in a cosy apartment in Dhaka and I ask her what she remembers of her life in Bangladesh, decades back. She also has one lasting memory of her best friend “Moti”.
“The first thing I named when I arrived at my parent's house in Denmark was their cat. I called it Pilai.”
Caroline Amena Lauritsen is now a woman in her late forties and is visiting Bangladesh in search of her lost family.