Читать онлайн «The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine»
Автор Somaly Mam
1. The Forest
2. The Village
3. “This Is Your Husband”
4. Aunty Nop
5. Aunty Peuve
6. Foreigners
7. The French Embassy
8. France
9. Kratie
10. New Beginnings
11. Guardian Angels
12. The Prince of Asturias and the Village of Thlok Chhrov
13. AFESIP
14. The Victims
15. Conclusion
In 1986, when I was sold to a brothel as a prostitute, I was about sixteen years old. Today there are many far younger prostitutes in Cambodia. There are virgins for sale in every large town, and to ensure their virginity, the girls are sometimes as young as five or six.
In Cambodia, and throughout Southeast Asia, tens of thousands of minor children are forced into prostitution annually. They are raped and beaten, often for years. Many are killed.
I dedicate this book to the thousands of little girls who are sold into prostitution every year.
. 1.
My name is Somaly. At least that’s the name I have now. Like everyone in Cambodia, I’ve had several. Names are the result of temporary choices. You change them the way you’d change lives. As a small child, I was called Ya, and sometimes just Non—“Little One.
” When I was taken away from the forest by the old man, I was called Aya, and once, at a border crossing, he told the guard my name was Viriya—I don’t really know why. I got used to people calling me all sorts of names, mostly insults. Then, years later, a kind man who said he was my uncle gave me the name Somaly: “The Necklace of Flowers Lost in the Virgin Forest. ” I liked it; it seemed to fit the idea of who I felt I really was. When I finally had the choice, I decided to keep that name as my own.I will never know what my parents called me. But then I have nothing from them, no memories at all. My adoptive father once gave me this typically Khmer advice: “You shouldn’t try to discover the past. You shouldn’t hurt yourself. ” I suspect he knows what really happened, but he has never talked to me about it. The little I do know I’ve had to piece together with vague recollections and some help from history.
I spent my earliest years in the rolling countryside of northeastern Cambodia, surrounded by savanna and forests, not far from the high plains of Vietnam. Even today, when I have the chance to go into the forest, I feel at home. I recognize smells. I recognize plants. I instinctively know what’s good to eat and what’s poisonous. I remember the waterfalls. The sound of them is still in my ears. We children would bathe naked under the cascading water and play at holding our breath. I remember the smell of the virgin forest. I have a buried memory of this place.
The people of Bou Sra, the village where I was born, are Phnong. They are an old tribe of mountain people, quite unlike the Khmer who dominate the lowlands of Cambodia. I have inherited the typical Phnong dark skin from my mother. Cambodians see it as black and ugly. In Khmer, the word “Phnong” means “savage. ” Throughout Southeast Asia, people are very sensitive about skin color. The paler you are, the closer to “moon color,” the more highly you are prized. A plump woman with white skin is the supreme object of beauty and desire. I was dark and thin and very unattractive.
