Damages

by B.K. Bazhe

Bazhe's life story is uniquely his own, but at the same time it is a story that we can all relate to. That alone makes Damages a good book worth reading.-The Weekly News,, FL"Bazhe knew a world that turned to violent ethnic strife after years of civil unrest, echoed by his own inner turmoil. Damages is the story of his inner and outer wars."-Recorder Newspapers, NJ Damages is a memoir about one man's fight to overcome the psychological wounds created by his peculiar upbringing as he struggled to find his true identity and freedom. The story begins with the death of his abusive father, a Communist official. His mother is diagnosed with cancer, and Bazhe immediately returns to Macedonia to take care of her. Meanwhile, his more than thirty-year search for his biological mother ends, and Bazhe tells her his life story, starting with his lonely childhood and adolescence. After finding his "new mother" to be very understanding, Bazhe reveals to her his first gay experience in the army, his desire for self-realization that caused scandals in the College of National Security, his escape to Turkey where he transformed into a stunning transvestite after meeting a handsome wealthy man, and his return to Yugoslavia where he wandered in the underground world of a country that was falling apart.As Yugoslav nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism rose, Bazhe almost lost his life before he succeeded in immigrating to America. Although he finds his biological mother, Bazhe ultimately discovers that it is his adoptive mother's devotion that is irreplaceable.

Genres: Memoir

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 2012

About the author

B.K. BAZHE is a writer, poet, and artist.
He is the author of DAMAGES
(creative nonfiction)
—Winner in the Writers Digest Awards; IDENTITIES (poetry), and COLORS (art).
He is published and exhibited
in Europe and America.

Amazon Books Art & Multimedia by BK Bazhe:
Damages:
http://www.amazon.com/Damages-ebook/d...
Identities:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07...
Colors:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08...
All Books:
https://www.amazon.com/B.-K.-Bazhe/e/...

More info at:
BK Bazhe Website:
http://www.bazhe.com

Amazon Books & Art by BK Bazhe:
https://www.amazon.com/B.-K.-Bazhe/e/...

YouTube Videos by BK Bazhe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIbNna...

Google Blog by BK Bazhe:
http://bazhe.blogspot.com

Reviews

[Allyson Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

I met Bazhe on a trail walk with my partner and our dog. We had a nice conversation and he generously gave us a copy of his book. He was not lying when he told us he’s had a “crazy life.” Bazhe is an emotionally intelligent person with many interesting perspectives on life that I found I could relate to.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bazhe's compelling memoir of self discovery as a young man told while caring for his dying mother is an emotionally raw page turner. The reader is immediately drawn in as Bazhe receives the phone call that his abusive, emotionally distant father and a powerful government official in Yugoslavia, has died. The call propels Bazhe from Morristown, New Jersey to his childhood home in Macedonia. Soon after the official period of mourning for his father, Bazhe learns his mother has colon cancer. As he cares for her, contacts from his homeland help him find his biological mother, Mila, in Croatia. Mila flies to Macedonia, to meet the son she gave up for adoption. They become acquainted with each other as Mila stays in a bedroom upstairs while Bazhe cares for the mother who raised him as she lays ill just downstairs. Bazhe begins to tell Mila the story of his isolated childhood and troubled young adult life as he is forced to attend the College for National Security and Social Self-Defense, referred to as the Center. The Center is a punishing place for a man like Bazhe who is unafraid to express his true self and sexuality. Bazhe escapes the Center to have an affair with a prominent sculptor and later to Istanbul where he is the young lover of a handsome, powerful and wealthy man who showers Bazhe with gifts and affection. But the relationship can only last if Bazhe transforms himself into a true "mistress". Refusing to do so, Bazhe returns to Macedonia. Unable to return to the Center, Bazhe goes underground as one of the "Aunts" as gay men secretly refer to themselves in the repressive Balkans. As separatist movements make war in Yugoslavia imminent, Bazhe realizes his only true escape is to America.

All this is told to Mila in episodic chapters as the condition of Bazhe's true mother worsens. My only criticism is this structure. For the most part, Mila is just a sounding board or device that Bazhe uses to tell the reader the story of his young life. There is very little reaction from Mila -- to the point you forget she's in the room as Bazhe tells his story. Each chapter seems to end with a brief, sympathetic reaction from Mila but little else. Then Bazhe moves on with the next chapter. I would have liked to have heard more of Mila's reaction and more dialogue between Bazhe and Mila. Bazhe repeatedly expresses anger that Mila won't reveal the identity of his biological father. We learn early on that Bazhe's conception is the result of Mila being raped as a teenager by a prominent official. Bazhe is desperate to know who that man is but he only expresses this to the reader and not directly to Mila. I would have liked to have seen Bazhe confront Mila with his desire to know who his father was and to hear her excuse of why she won't tell him. It would have added some dramatic conflict to the story.

Still, this is a small criticism, and it makes Bazhe's incredible story as a young, gay, adopted man growing up in the Balkans no less compelling. Bazhe is a talented writer and I had a hard time putting this book down.

[Ronald · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read lots of books that are true stories, but Damages really hits home with a unique perspective on todays world events from Bazhe's experiences that are, in your face, honest.

Believe me, I haven't read anything like this since "Before Night Falls" by Arenas.

Bazhe's story is a movie director's dream.

Bazhe's writing is very picturesque (and he is not born in America) that while reading Damages I felt like I am watching a movie. I hope Bazhe will get into writing movie scripts.

Do yourself a favor and pick up this book.

Also don`t think for one moment that this is a one-theme novel. Far from it. And if you do, you are in for a big surprise. This marvelous book encapsulates everything and everyone around the author from his early upbringing to his adulthood and his undying total devotion to his mother and her tragic illness, colon cancer. It encompasses the turbulent Balkan history and the consequences of nationalism and religious fanaticism that destroy any society. This is a touching characterization of a young man growing up in a setting alien to most. Bazhe manages to weave issues of identity,sexuality,class and a search for his birth mother with ease. He is not afraid to speak the truth and to feel trust because of that truth. You will be taken in very subtlety the first few chapters and then be lifted into a kaleidoscope of heartbreak, terror, much humor, and a lot of happiness. One major attribute it teaches us is to listen to our own hearts. After finishing the last chapter one is amazed that he survived and shows us the shining example of the human spirit. Don`t pass this gem up!

[Huang JingLin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riveting autobiography

BK has written a raw unflinching account of his life experiences growing up in the former Yugloslavia as an adopted son of a local leader. He writes about coming of age as a gay man in a small insular town Prespa, travails in Turkey and Belgrade, moving to the U.S., before returning home after his father's death and eventually, taking loving care of his sick mother.

[Shakiya Simpkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author's book was quite intriguing and wonderful. Being a nonfictional book, everything felt as if I was experiencing his turmoils and adventures along with the character. It was also an encouraging read as well. To overcome his challenges was amazing, and also so was his poetry and artwork at the end. It was an awesome read.

[Stanley Clay · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Damages,” a brutally honest and poetically eloquent memoir by Yugoslavian-born Bazhe DeKargo, is nothing short of brilliant! This first time book author (he’s written and has published several poems and short prose pieces) is as self-assured and self-examining as anything by Didion, the biographical Gordon Parks, and Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.”

An orphan adopted from a Macedonian facility by an important and staunch Communist Official and his beautiful but barren wife, the infant Bazhe is reared in comfort, privilege, and under the iron-thumb of a wife and child-abuser. A talented and strikingly beautiful little boy, after giving public performances for scores of spectators on several occasions, bets are taken on whether Bazhe is a boy or a girl. The child is then made to drop his pants and reveal his male genitalia.

Labeled ‘sissy’ and often beaten in school because of his privilege and beauty, he even suffers a harrowing abuse at the hands of his father when his mother is away. Upon refusing to eat fatty meat during a meal, seven-year-old Bazhe is beaten by his father who then stuff’s his member in the boy’s mouth, choking him with the fluids of his ejaculation.

But most of the horrors and heartbreaks of this ultimately brave and resilient young man’s life come later in this well-written, often brutal, but never gratuitous autobiography of a beautiful young man growing up gay and effeminate in a culture where such nature and appearance is illegal and met with great physical and verbal abuse.

Bazhe is a legal immigrant living in New Jersey when he gets the call from his mother Kostadina that his father has died. Feeling free of the iron fist of the man she hated most of the years she was married to him, Kostadina encourages Bazhe not to come for the funeral.

But a month later Bazhe returns to Macedonia to help his mother with family affairs, only to realize that she has been hiding her own serious illness from him.

With admirable devotion and against his mother’s protestations, he stays to nurse her through her illness, which turns out to be colon cancer. The first half of the book is Bazhe’s almost too-painful-to-read detailing of his caring for his mother and his guilt over his obsessive thirty-year search for his birth mother.

He actually finds his biological mother, the still beautiful and statuesque Mila who gave birth to him when she was fifteen years old after being raped by a government official in her native Croatia and, pressured by her family, turned the new born over to an orphanage.

Bitterness and regret clash uneasily as Mila and Bazhe meet. While Kostadina lays dying in her downstairs bedroom (but never unattended by her devoted son), Bazhe, not wanting her to feel that her position as his true mother is questioned, hides Mila upstairs where, over several days, he tells her the story of the life he lived and the life she missed.

And what a story it is indeed. Starting with his lonely childhood and adolescence, he reveals to her his first gay experience in the army, the scandal that he caused at the College of National Security, resulting in his expulsion, and his escape to Turkey.

There he was abducted, robbed, beaten, and raped by a pair of nefarious locals, and reduced to near starvation and homelessness before being rescued by Genghis, a wealthy Turkish bon vivant. Genghis falls madly in love and transforms Bazhe into a stunningly beautiful and high-class transvestite, replete with the requisite high-end jewelry, designer wardrobe, exclusive spa treatments, and plenty of spending money.

But sudden revelations about, and unexpected demands from Genghis send Bazhe fleeing back to his homeland, a country on the verge of great change and turmoil as the Bosnian-Serbian conflict begins to boil over.

No longer a transvestite but decidedly androgynous, Bazhe wanders into the underworld gay scene where ‘Aunts’ (self-identified, usually flamboyant homosexual men) entertained ‘trade’ in bushes, public parks, and public restrooms, often resulting in unspeakable violence from both policemen and sadistic partners.

After nearly losing his life at the hands of a sadist pick-up, Bazhe immigrates to the United States where he lives until he gets the call from his mother regarding his father’s death.

Bazhe’s birth mother is moved by this fantastical tale not told totally to anyone else. But a certain closure is attained here, and the young man reaffirms what he has always known: blood does not necessarily make a mother.

His devotion to his adoptive mother, his ‘real’ mother, is the power that fuels this terrific book. His caring for her on her deathbed is so completely loved-filled, that by the time she dies in his arms, our tears flow as uncontrollably as his.

Indeed, this is the story of one individual damaged by so much of life’s cruelties and injustices, but it is ultimately a tale of survival and the triumph of the spirit.

In spite of everything he was made to endure, Bazhe proves to be a person of great conviction and resilience. His story is a lesson for us all on when we fall down (or get knocked down) how to damn well get back up. Highly recommend.

[elissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

interesting story but needed editing. HIs emotions bounce back and forth and in many parts his feelings seemed to conflict with what he had said in an earlier chapter. Still, it was interesting.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Identity Crises: Confessions to a Birth Mother

DAMAGES is a memoir of a brave young poet, artist, performer and writer whose life story holds as many elements of a richly detailed fictional novel as well as moments of eloquent poetry, philosophical views gained from living through the rise and fall of communist Yugoslavia and the subsequent fracture of that country into the parcels we now know, observations of the surface and the core needs of the people at the battled intersection of Christianity, Muslim faith, and atheism, and experiences of identity crisis that haunt many adopted children/adults.

To make this vast amount of information work for the reader, author Bazhe has wisely elected to tell his story as bifurcated between the realities of the present in relating to his adoptive mother on her deathbed and his at times lurid past to his birth mother, conveniently placed just up the stairs from his dying mother. It works as a gimmick or technique that allows the reader to understand the present Bazhe by allowing him to very gradually escort us through the damages of his early childhood through his bumpy road to manhood.

The crises here are from two vantages: Bazhe was reluctantly given up for adoption by his 15-year-old birth mother Mila (his very beginning was the result of a brutal rape), his adoptive parents were wealthy and privileged due, oddly enough, to the high communist government position of the father. His early years were frosted with gifts and advantage, but his childhood was damaged by his position of wealth in a country (Macedonia) struggling under dictatorship and inequality. Bazhe, a beautiful and bright child, drew attention because of his androgynous appearance - a factor that would provide problems for him throughout his life. His father was highly respected by the people, but feared by his abused wife and child. Entering school, Bazhe gradually became aware of his same sex orientation and began to dress 'inappropriately' and attract male lovers in a community that would not tolerate homosexuality. His adventures in escaping to Turkey resulted in his being courted by a wealthy man into the world of cross-dressing and the eventual rejected demand that he undergo sex reassignment surgery. Returning home, his confession of his lifestyle brought the expected conflict from his parents and he fled to Belgrade where he became a Madam for the unwanted gay population of 'aunties'.

While undergoing this seemingly endless series of life changes, Bazhe searched for his birth mother without success. After a final life threatening incident that underscored the bitter and vicious collapse of his country's belief systems in the person of a brutish, abusive, conflicted anti-communist, Bazhe fled to America, only to return to comfort his mother at the time of his father's death. Upon arriving in Macedonia his mother's devotion is focused on her beloved adopted son and Bazhe discovers that his mother has progressive cancer: he spends his time as a nurse to his mother's increasing needs while finally making contact with Mila, his birth mother. The story of his life is related to the birth mother while Bazhe attends to his adoptive mother, and it is this dichotomy of allegiance that forms the true conflict of the book.

The story of Bazhe's life is fascinating and horrifying, and were that all that this book had to offer it would be enough. But DAMAGES goes far beyond that: this is one of the better insights into the history of Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro - all places that we understand so poorly but all places that hold the keys to the discord between the religious seeds that lie at the center of the constant conflict we still are experiencing. Bazhe's comments on governments and religions are harsh, both in his evaluation of his native country and his adopted country of America. 'Anyway, it's we who are to blame. Everything about [God] is a myth. We're the creatures of our beliefs. We're the source of good and evil. Our big mistake was creating Him and all these evil religions, so we can be divided and hate each other to death as enemies. Whether Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, or whatever, we stress the 'other'-ness of others when true differences between us don't exist. We are all humans. We're a grown-up race. We should see that religions are superfluous. In the past, religions made some sense: to give young nations identities and a reason to fight for survival. Now, we need a new identity. We need global unity. We need a new order and a new progressive faith of peace and love. It's time to put the holy books where they belong, on the shelves of museums'. Powerful words frrm a man who has survived a life few of us could tolerate. Perhaps we should listen. What on the surface is a fascinating autobiography by a very unique writer gains importance as the observations of a damaged philosopher! Grady Harp

[Chase Von · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damages by Bazhe is something I truly didn't expect. It took me a total of three days to read it, although if time and life would have permitted, I would have simply read it all the way through because I didn't want to put it down. I have never read a personal life story that was so detailed, so shocking, and so blatant in regards to everything that their life contained. This book is for an adult audience, but what it contains is something all of us can benefit from. Bazhe is not only a man that in many respects, is lucky to be alive. He is also a person that by sharing of his truly genius and genuine gift, the world is a better place because of it. In addition to the book itself being timeless literature and comparable to all the greatest writers that have ever existed, it is even more alarming that 'English' is not his first language and he exudes complete mastery of it. His descriptions of events, places and occasions that occurred in his life honestly do rival the best authors to ever live, to include greats like Anne Rice. Although some of his words read as seamlessly and poetically as the Prophet himself, Kahlil Gibran. Parts of this book are indeed shocking, much of it is. Parts of this book are filled with incredible insight and wisdom. And all of this book is collectively woven into what one could only call a masterpiece.

I am almost as shocked by the fact this is his first book as I am by what I read of his life. Not to exclude how beautifully and eloquently he does write. At times I held back tears, at times I laughed, at times I wondered, and each page contains something that will hold any readers attention. Straight, gay, heterosexual, homosexual or whatever your particular sexual persuasions might be. The bottom line is if you're human, this book will touch you immensely in ways that you will have to read it fully, to appreciate the merit of that statement. Giving this book a ten rating would be selling it short. And lastly, for someone to A). Live what he has lived through, B). Be so completely honest about it barring what anyone might think, and C). Write all this down in a way that is on par with some of the greatest writers to have ever lived, is like three miraculous events merging in one place and in one life time. And if this doesn't become a movie I will be more shocked by that, than I was reading this book! The life of a man realizing his sexual identity might not be something a lot of people think they can read or might care to read. I can only say that if those indeed are your thoughts, you are perhaps missing out on one of the greatest writers alive today and who has proven that in his very first book to be released to my knowledge.

Sincerely,

Chase von

Your Chance to Hear The Last Panther Speak

[B.K. Bazhe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review
"Bazhe explores the full spectrum of his emotions. A revelatory, pained, unyielding ride. Hold on tight." --Kirkus

"Bazhe has led what Leo Tolstoy or George Eliot might have called an epic life." --Lavender Magazine

"Vivid talent for powerhouse story telling. A remarkable, compelling read." --White Crane Journal

"Very well written, fast-paced, occasionally shocking. One of the worthier books I've read." --The Star Democrat

"Powerful read and certainly not one that one will forget in a hurry."--The Independent
From the Author
DAMAGES is a memoir about one man's fight to overcome thepsychological wounds created by his peculiar upbringing as he struggledto find his true identity and freedom. The story begins with the deathof his abusive father, a Communist official. His mother is diagnosedwith cancer, and he immediately returns to Macedonia to take care ofher.

Meanwhile, his more than thirty-year search for hisbiological mother ends, and he tells her his life story, starting withhis lonely childhood and adolescence. After finding his "new mother" tobe very understanding, he reveals his first gay experience in the army,his desire for self-realization that caused scandals in the College ofNational Security, his escape to Turkey where he transformed into astunning "girl" after meeting a handsome wealthy man, and his return toYugoslavia where he wandered in the underground world of a country thatwas falling apart.

War is coming. And as Christian nationalismand Islamic fundamentalism rose, he experienced them directly, almostlosing his life. But he eventually succeeded in immigrating to America.Although he finds his biological mother, he ultimately discovers thatit is his adoptive mother's devotion that is irreplaceable.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

A heartbreaking, moving memoir about the struggle for love, for self-esteem, for validation.

[Terry Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better than expected

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. It is quite good. Wonderful mother/son relationship. Interesting setting.