The Road of Lost Innocence

by Somaly Mam

  We moved in with a friend of Pierre’s to save a little money while he looked for the right place. After a few months, he found an apartment on the first two floors of a building overlooking the river. Pierre wanted to make a little café out of it, a place you could go and have breakfast, with good coffee, but where you could also drink a beer in the evening and eat some food. He decorated it with palm leaves, like a village house, and put flowers everywhere. He called it “L’Ineptie”—“Nonsense.” And it opened in 1992.

  Pierre hired an Italian friend of his to make sandwiches and fondues and he took on four waiters. He waited on tables too, and so did I, sometimes till 2:00 a.m. I told Pierre I wasn’t prepared to work for free, and he agreed to pay me twenty dollars a month. When I pointed out that this wasn’t much, he told me I was getting free room and board.

  Pierre invested all his money—a few thousand dollars—to get the place into shape. And at the end of the first month, he paid me. It was good, honest money. I went out to the market and spent it all on a sumptuous violet dress with a white lace collar and a little jacket. I thought I looked utterly beautiful in it! The Chinese man who sold it to me for twice its value pulled a fast one on me, but I didn’t want to bargain. This little piece of happiness wasn’t for bargaining over. That evening, when I had stopped work, I went up to the apartment and put my dress on again. I never showed that dress to anyone, because I was too shy. It was only for me—a magic gown that transformed everything.

  One day Pierre telephoned his mother to say he had split up with his former French girlfriend and was living with me. She was horribly upset that he was living with a Cambodian. I was disappointed; I hadn’t realized French people could be racist, just like the Khmer. But Pierre told her, “I don’t give a damn what you think.” It shocked me to hear him talk like that. How could he say “I don’t give a damn” to his own mother? In Cambodia, no matter how old you are, you keep quiet in front of your parents and always show respect.

  Pierre’s friend Théo owned a video camera and he suggested we make a video to introduce me to Pierre’s mother. Pierre filmed me, but I was paralyzed with shyness. I couldn’t open my mouth and I doubt his mother warmed to me much after watching it.

  In those days, it never ceased to amaze me how much French people talk. Cambodians are a silent people. We have learned to stay mute the hard way. The French, on the other hand, talked for hours when they hung out at L’Ineptie. I’ve never seen people talk so much. I was exhausted just listening.

  In November 1991 the prince returned to Cambodia. He rode through Phnom Penh in the backseat of a pink Chevrolet convertible, and children in the streets waved at him. The return of the prince from exile was part of the peace agreement that the United Nations had cobbled together for Cambodia. The Vietnamese agreed to withdraw from their occupation of the country, Prince Sihanouk returned, the United Nations agreed to oversee the government and hold elections, and the guerrilla fighters—the Khmer Rouge and all the other military units—agreed to try to win those elections by all means possible.

  Most of the Cambodians I knew were less than thrilled by these developments. We have learned to be cautious; when there is change in high places, this is often not good news in low ones. When Khieu Samphan, a Khmer Rouge leader, returned to Phnom Penh in late 1991 to open an official office for the Khmer Rouge, a mob attacked him and tore his office apart. Soldiers had to rescue him in a tank. Most people feared that was just the beginning of the trouble that the new election process would bring. Nobody believed the fighters would turn in their guns and let the country glide into a parliamentary democracy.

  In 1992, twenty-two thousand foreigners arrived with UNTAC, the UN peacekeeping force. Almost everyone welcomed this huge influx of barangs—as the Cambodians label all white people—with their limitless money. New restaurants and bars opened almost every month in Phnom Penh to service the foreigners’ constant needs. A lot of them were prostitute bars—places that were a little nicer than the brothels—where the peacekeeping troops could go to pick out girls. That business was booming, but there was no prostitution at L’Ineptie.

  If a foreigner turned up with a very young girl, as often happened, Pierre would yell at him and throw him out. I remember how angry he got one time when a big German man came in with a girl of twelve or thirteen—I thought there would be a fight. Perhaps that was why business wasn’t very good. The place was often full, but mostly during the day, when people just hung out and talked.

  I thought Pierre was brilliant. I admired him and if I ever thought of an ideal future it was to stay with him. He was a vehicle for me to escape my former life, to learn new ways to live in the world, and to be able to help my parents. I tried to love him too, and perhaps if he had been kinder that would have worked. But Pierre was rough, he yelled at me, he was not tender—it wasn’t a fairy-tale romance.

  By now I understood enough French to get by with the customers. Often the foreigners came in with Khmer who worked for them in the various nongovernmental organizations, UN agencies, and peacekeeping units. It was clear to me that these Khmer had a good life—nice clothes, and respect. I thought it would be good if I could learn enough French to be able to do that one day.

  I sent money to my parents regularly. It was not money I took from Pierre—it was my own clean hard-earned money. One time I went back to Thlok Chhrov. My old friend Chettra drove me there on the back of her motorcycle. When we arrived, in the early evening, Father was in shorts, still beating the grains of rice out of a pile of rice stalks, though the light was fading fast. From Phanna’s shack I could hear my sister crying out in pain and her baby son howling. I walked in—her husband was hitting her.

  I told him to stop it. “Don’t try to give me any lessons, whore,” he said. I grabbed the chopping knife from the kitchen and made a gesture like I was going to cut his head in two, and he ran off.

  Father probably intervened sometimes when Phanna was beaten. I’m sure it hurt him enormously to think that he had chosen such a bad husband for her. But it didn’t change things much.

  I told Phanna I thought she should get a divorce, but she said no. I have no idea whether or not she would have been the first woman in Thlok Chhrov to seek divorce, but to her it was unthinkable. I gave them money and returned to Phnom Penh with a heavy heart. A few months later I heard that she was pregnant with another child, her second.

  A little later, Pierre hired a new waiter, a man I didn’t like. He looked down on me because I was a Phnong, even though he knew I was with the boss. One time we had an argument and this waiter called me “khmao,” and I went to Pierre. I said he had to back me up, but Pierre said, “It’s not my problem. You deal with it.” I got angry and he actually hit me, right there, in front of the waiter. That was a real setback for me. I felt I could never really trust Pierre again. Barang or not, all men were alike.

  For me, it’s normal to work seven days a week, but Pierre found it exhausting to keep L’Ineptie going. He needed a break. One time he took me to Kep, on the coast, near where his friend Jean-Marc worked. They met there, talked and drank all night, and next morning slept till noon, like French people do. Then with more friends we took a boat out to Rabbit Island, just off the coast. We all slept at the house of an old woman on the island. It was beautiful: the full moon over the water, just like it was on the banks of the Mekong in Thlok Chhrov, with the woven crab traps bobbing on the surface of the sea.

  The sea itself was unfamiliar, and I went in with all my clothes on, like a Cambodian woman. I couldn’t even bear to look at the other women with us, who were wearing bikinis. The water stung my skin—it was not like river water at all—and it tasted salty. I wondered if people put salt into the water. To make it easier for people to cook, perhaps?

  Another time, Pierre said it was time for a real vacation. He left L’Ineptie to a friend of his and told me we were going to Siem Reap to visit the thousand-year-old temples of Angkor. I knew nothing about them, I only knew that the silh
ouette of the Angkor Wat temple was printed on our currency.

  We took a boat out of Phnom Penh and moved upriver to cross the great lake where the fishing people live out on the water in movable, floating villages. The trip took all night. In Siem Reap we stayed in a house rented by a friend of Pierre’s who worked for an NGO. The Cambodians who owned the house were very nice to me. They didn’t see me as trash picked up from the street—they saw me as the companion of a white man, somebody who deserved respect.

  I was dumbstruck by Angkor Wat. The ruins were beautiful, but more moving to me was the way they were embraced and surrounded by thick forest. I had completely forgotten the forest, the huge trees and leaves of my childhood in the hills of Mondulkiri. Here were vast palaces and walkways with even vaster trees growing straight out of them, broad and gnarled, with vines almost as high as you could see, their roots making a towering frame around the carved stone walls. I felt a sudden sense of recognition so strong I could barely keep still. We couldn’t go everywhere we wanted to, because of the land mines, but I could tell that the forest was deep and strong all around us.

  We spent about fifteen days visiting the temples. Pierre seemed to know all about them and lectured me on which king had built each one. I was amazed that I, a Cambodian, was so ignorant and he, a foreigner, was so knowledgeable. I asked him if he’d lived in Cambodia in a previous life. Pierre said that he had read books on Cambodian history and that if I could learn enough French I could read them too. I knew he thought it was a joke and that I would never be able to read that sort of French.

  In Cambodia, there’s nothing unusual about three people riding on one motorbike, and Pierre hired a man to drive us around. Sometimes we had to get off and push the motorbike through the rutted paths in the thick forest. We went as far as Banteay Srei, a small-scale temple in red stone about twelve miles into the forest. As we drove back down the paths through the forest, I plunged into distant memories and buried sensations. I asked Pierre to stop for a while. He quickly grew restless, but I would have stayed there forever, remembering what a forest sounds like, the noisy birdcalls and the cool, deep smells.

  Pierre decided that we should make the journey back to Phnom Penh by plane. I had never gone up in a plane before, and I didn’t trust the idea: I have never been able to understand how an airplane actually works. I spent the night thinking about it, eaten up by worry. By the time we got to the airport I was a complete mess, and when I saw the plane up close it looked like a metal bird—a tin can, some kind of joke. Pierre had to push me down into my seat and fasten my belt, which made me feel even more imprisoned. It felt like being tied down in the brothel. During takeoff and landing I was in a state of panic. When we arrived I was so green with nausea, I could barely stand up. I wondered if it is ever really possible to clear the past completely, or whether you will always be haunted by what has been done to you and what you have done.

  In about February 1993, after L’Ineptie had been going for about a year, Pierre told me it wasn’t making enough money. Neither he nor I had ever run a business, and I guess we weren’t very good at it. And Pierre thought trouble was coming. The elections were being organized by the United Nations for May, and Pierre said nobody knew what would happen, whether the government would ever give up power and what kind of violence, even war, might flare up. Pierre said it was time for us to go to France.

  I didn’t feel ready for this huge new change, but at the same time, I wanted to see all the things Pierre had talked about. He said the world was much bigger than I had ever thought. I could already speak a little basic French, so I thought it wouldn’t be too hard, and that if I went to France for a while I could come back and work as a translator or something. A lot of Cambodians were nervous about the political situation and would have leaped at the chance to get out. I could get a passport and a visa—but only if Pierre and I were married.

  That’s how we decided to take the plunge—as part of the visa process. I didn’t want to get married at all. I don’t even like the sound of the Khmer wedding music. To me marriage was like a chain, a prison. In Cambodia once you’re married, your husband owns you.

  After Pierre sold L’Ineptie he went to the French consulate to get all the forms we would have to fill out to be married and get visas. They all asked for my birth date, which of course I didn’t know. I told Pierre it was sometime in 1970 and he wrote “1 April,” because, he said, it was a kind of joke. It made me angry—I crossed it out and wrote “2 April” just to annoy him. I did the same thing with the date for our marriage to take place: Pierre wrote down “8 May,” which is a French holiday, but it was also the date of Pierre’s first, brief marriage to a Frenchwoman. That annoyed me too, so I struck it out and wrote in “10 May.”

  For my name I wrote “Somaly Mam.” It was the truest name of all—Lost in the Forest—and anyway, Somaly was what Pierre called me. It had been years since anyone called me Aya, or just plain khmao. I called myself by the name my adoptive father gave me: his name, which I am proud to carry.

  We went to the French embassy to be married. In those days the French embassy was an old colonial building with a red roof and jackfruit trees. It was impressive to be going there, but to me getting married was just part of the visa process. I didn’t dress up or invite anyone. At the embassy I answered questions and said what Pierre told me to say and then we signed the papers. Pierre dealt with most of it.

  Afterward Pierre’s friend Thierry wanted us to have a little celebration. We ate in an Indian restaurant with some friends and then went to a nightclub that played mostly African music, for the Cameroonian peacekeeping troops. I remember how amazed people were when the first contingent of peacekeepers arrived from Cameroon, their skin so dark they looked like spirits. Pierre liked the music. He and his friends talked all night.

  We left Cambodia a few days later. I took Pierre to Thlok Chhrov to see my parents and to talk to them. These days it was no problem to appear in the village in the broad light of day. Everything was different now that I was coming back to the village with money, and with a white man. Now everyone seemed to remember what close friends we had been as children, how sweet a child they’d always thought I was.

  Father wasn’t glad that I was leaving Cambodia, as I knew he would not be, and I don’t suppose he was overjoyed to meet Pierre. He only nodded and said very little. I told him I would be back. My mother asked Pierre not to beat me, to love me and look after me; she asked him what my life would be like far away, in France. Pierre told them, “Don’t worry, your daughter can look after herself.” My parents both wept when we left.

  Six days later we left for France. I had no idea what I might be getting into. A few days before we left, Pierre and I had a fight. When we left I was still seething with anger. I packed my suitcase and slipped a sharp knife inside it. If Pierre tries to sell me when we get to France, I said to myself, then I’ll kill him. You never know.

  .8.

  France

  In the airplane, I struggled to stay calm. I’m a proud person and I didn’t want to show Pierre how frightened I was. We arrived in Malaysia, where we discovered that our second flight, to Paris, was delayed. The airline said they would put us up in a hotel.

  To leave Kuala Lumpur Airport you had to use an escalator and I point-blank refused. There was no way I was going to step on this rolling metal serpent. Pierre was exasperated—he had to tug me onto it. In the streets I saw buildings higher than the tallest trees in the forest. Pierre said they were skyscrapers, and I thought he must mean it literally. Everything astonished me—it was all so modern.

  Our hotel room was on the twenty-eighth floor, and to get there we had to take the elevator. When the doors closed, it felt like being in a coffin, shut in and panicky. From our hotel room the people down below looked tiny, like insects. I was terrified. Pierre went into the bathroom and ran a bath full of bubbles. He told me I would like it, that I should get in, but I wouldn’t do it. I had never taken a bath before or washed i
n hot water and I was afraid of the bubbles.

  Then there was another plane. I was more blasé about the flight by now, though it was longer, and we stopped in Dubai. At the Dubai airport I saw how Muslims live—not the Cham like Grandfather was, but the real ones, with the women covered all in black like ghosts, shut away inside their own clothes, so close and hot in such a hot country. I felt sorry for them.

  When we arrived in France we went straight to the house of Pierre’s Aunt Jeanine, in the suburbs of Paris. When we walked outside in the crisp May air I thought they had somehow put air-conditioning outdoors. To please me, Aunt Jeanine had decided to cook rice. In Cambodia we cook rice for an hour or more on coals, and it simmers slowly. When I saw her plunging little plastic packages into boiling water, I thought she was mad, and even more when after a few minutes she took it out and added butter. It looked awful, half boiled, half raw: swollen and much fatter than our rice, which is nutty and fragrant. Out of respect for the rice seedlings, I ate it all. I loved the ham, though, and the bread—the bread was marvelous.

  Then Pierre took off for a couple of days. He said he had to go and see some friends and he disappeared. Jeanine was out most of the day, and I didn’t know what to do. I was too unsure of my few French words to go out, and I was afraid of getting lost. I thought perhaps my friends were right—Pierre did have plans to sell me. I told myself I had to be strong; I had to show Pierre what I was made of.

  Finally, on his return, Pierre suggested that we visit Paris. We were in a distant suburb and had to take the train and then the metro. All these things were new to me, incomprehensible and disturbing. In Cambodia trains move at the speed of a walking man. This train raced at dizzying speed along two thin rails, looking as if it might slip off at any moment, and the metro was underground, hurtling through the dark earth lightning fast.