Sabila's Story
For the hearing, it’s hard to comprehend the challenges facing the deaf. The story of Sabila Beganovic, a patron and presenter at DLC, illustrates those challenges well.
When Sabila immigrated to the United States with her family, she was so young that she remembers nothing about her native Bosnia. Out of seven children, Sabila and two of her older sisters were born deaf.
With two deaf sisters, you’d think that Sabila would be able to communicate well with her family. Yet her family never learned sign language because in Bosnia, she reports, educating girls is unimportant.
The only communication Sabila had with her family was through a limited, rudimentary set of hand signals the family invented. And while Sabila was still small, her deaf sisters both married and moved out.
Life was lonely for Sabila with no one she could really talk to or share her experiences with.
At age seven, Sabila finally started attending school. She learned ASL and sometimes tried to teach her mother, who would quickly give up. “It’s too much,” her mother would say.
When she was 15, Sabila began attending programs at DLC, and a whole new world opened up to her. Finally, she had a community and a support system.
Learning about the deaf world was also an eye-opener. “I had no idea there were famous deaf people,” she signs.
Rodriguez soon recruited the teen to present a program. Sabila took on the challenge and has since become a regular presenter at DLC.
Now 23, Sabila has done things she never thought she could do. She credits DLC with enabling her to move out of her parents’ home at 18 and attend college, where she became the top student in her speech class.
Summing up DLC’s impact, she signs, “It changed my life.”
