‘Like Looking in a Mirror’: Twins Reunited in North Macedonia

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Trajche Ordev's 18th birthday was one to remember. For a start, it wasn't his real birthday. Then he found out that the people he believed were his parents weren't in fact his biological mother and father, and that he had a twin he had never met.

Now 55 years old, Ordev said he's proud of himself for not going off the rails.

"I was tossed on a dunghill, but I was born under a lucky star," he told BIRN. "Everything I have accomplished, I accomplished by myself, and that's difficult. I had nowhere to live and no food on the table. Now, I have everything."

Ordev and his twin brother were born on April 8, 1968 to a woman whose fiancé had left her because his family did not approve of his choice of wife. The woman had no way to raise her two children. Word spread in the rural region of central North Macedonia where she lived, and soon she was contacted by a couple who were unable to have children of their own. The couple had already adopted a girl, and wished to have a boy.

The chose Ordev, who was bigger than his brother, and his date of birth was registered as the day he was given away, July 8, 1968. His mother kept the other child and went on to marry and give birth to four more. Ordev's new family, however, soon fell apart.

Like looking in a mirror

The family home in Stanugovci. Photo courtesy of Trajche Ordev.

Ordev lived at first in the family home in the village of Stanugovci, part of the Sveti Nikole municipality of central North Macedonia, until his new parents divorced when he was three years old. Ordev and his sister went sent to live with their grandparents in the neighbouring Lezovo village.

Elderly and poor, the grandparents eventually took the adopted girl to an...