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Authors: Somaly Mam
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man’s life span and even lighten his skin.
To make it clear they offer true, bona fide virgins, the brothels today sell children. Often they are very young girls, just five or six years old. After the week is over, they sew the girl inside—without an anesthetic—and quickly sell her again. A virgin is supposed to scream and bleed, and this way the girl will scream and bleed, again and again. They do it maybe three or four times.
Brothels that specialize in virgins for rich men are evil places. After a few months the girl drops in price and they sell her on. There’s a big call for novelty, and most of the brothel keepers have family connections—there’s always a cousin in the trade, in Battambang or Poipet, who will take a girl or make a swap.
People believe sex with a virgin will protect you from illness, which is another reason for the high price of a young girl. People use them like a medicine, to cure AIDS. But the little girls tear much more than grown women, and they get AIDS more easily.
When I lived at Aunty Peuve’s there was no resewing and no small children. Aunty Peuve dealt in young girls, but they were never much younger than twelve. When a girl came in from the countryside, she just told the clients, “She’s a new chicken,” but I don’t know if that meant she got more money. I think in those days there wasn’t the same market in virginity as there is now. Under Communism, there was a lot less money.
This was ordinary prostitution. Stinking mouths and bodies, dirty rooms, violence. The blows hurt, but the act itself was much worse. Sometimes there would be only two or three men a day, sometimes many more. If there weren’t enough, Li would tell Aunty Peuve not to feed us, so we’d try harder. If there were too many, you hurt inside and out, until you managed to shut all feeling off.
It’s still happening, today, tonight. Imagine how many girls have been raped and hit since you started to read this book. My story doesn’t matter, except that it stands for their story too, and their stories are why I don’t sleep at night. They haunt me.
Mom, the dark-skinned girl from Aunty Nop’s house, used to go and see her mother often. She had a different kind of arrangement with Aunty Peuve, semi-voluntary. Aunty Peuve paid Mom money, and Mom used to take it over to her mother every week. Sometimes I went with her: I had nobody else to visit in Phnom Penh.
Mom’s mother accused Mom of being lazy and she used to beat her a lot—there was never enough money to make her happy. She still rented a room from Aunty Nop, just a few streets away from where we’d all lived. Sometimes Aunty Nop would be in when we visited and she’d give me tea or something to drink. I hated her—I never liked that woman—and I didn’t like being there, but she pretended to like me. So I sat and answered her if she asked me something.
It must have been sometime in 1987 when Aunty Nop told me that Grandfather was sick. Apparently he had been coming to see her regularly, to get more money. I suppose he was extending my stay with Aunty Peuve, though in those days I had no idea what the system was—I didn’t know I was working off an ever-swelling loan. Now, Aunty Nop said, Grandfather was ill and he was asking for me.
I didn’t go back to Thlok Chhrov to see him. I was seventeen years old by now and I had been a prostitute for almost two years. I had watched Li shoot my friend Sry Roat. I was full of anger and I wasn’t afraid of Grandfather anymore. I also had no desire to return to the village. If people had been nasty to me before, when I was just a child, they would be truly evil to me now that I was a prostitute.
Aunty Nop didn’t make any comment when I told her I would stay in Phnom Penh instead of visiting Grandfather. She neither approved nor disapproved—she had done her duty. Several months later, when she told me Grandfather was dead, it was the first time in years I felt
To make it clear they offer true, bona fide virgins, the brothels today sell children. Often they are very young girls, just five or six years old. After the week is over, they sew the girl inside—without an anesthetic—and quickly sell her again. A virgin is supposed to scream and bleed, and this way the girl will scream and bleed, again and again. They do it maybe three or four times.
Brothels that specialize in virgins for rich men are evil places. After a few months the girl drops in price and they sell her on. There’s a big call for novelty, and most of the brothel keepers have family connections—there’s always a cousin in the trade, in Battambang or Poipet, who will take a girl or make a swap.
People believe sex with a virgin will protect you from illness, which is another reason for the high price of a young girl. People use them like a medicine, to cure AIDS. But the little girls tear much more than grown women, and they get AIDS more easily.
When I lived at Aunty Peuve’s there was no resewing and no small children. Aunty Peuve dealt in young girls, but they were never much younger than twelve. When a girl came in from the countryside, she just told the clients, “She’s a new chicken,” but I don’t know if that meant she got more money. I think in those days there wasn’t the same market in virginity as there is now. Under Communism, there was a lot less money.
This was ordinary prostitution. Stinking mouths and bodies, dirty rooms, violence. The blows hurt, but the act itself was much worse. Sometimes there would be only two or three men a day, sometimes many more. If there weren’t enough, Li would tell Aunty Peuve not to feed us, so we’d try harder. If there were too many, you hurt inside and out, until you managed to shut all feeling off.
It’s still happening, today, tonight. Imagine how many girls have been raped and hit since you started to read this book. My story doesn’t matter, except that it stands for their story too, and their stories are why I don’t sleep at night. They haunt me.
Mom, the dark-skinned girl from Aunty Nop’s house, used to go and see her mother often. She had a different kind of arrangement with Aunty Peuve, semi-voluntary. Aunty Peuve paid Mom money, and Mom used to take it over to her mother every week. Sometimes I went with her: I had nobody else to visit in Phnom Penh.
Mom’s mother accused Mom of being lazy and she used to beat her a lot—there was never enough money to make her happy. She still rented a room from Aunty Nop, just a few streets away from where we’d all lived. Sometimes Aunty Nop would be in when we visited and she’d give me tea or something to drink. I hated her—I never liked that woman—and I didn’t like being there, but she pretended to like me. So I sat and answered her if she asked me something.
It must have been sometime in 1987 when Aunty Nop told me that Grandfather was sick. Apparently he had been coming to see her regularly, to get more money. I suppose he was extending my stay with Aunty Peuve, though in those days I had no idea what the system was—I didn’t know I was working off an ever-swelling loan. Now, Aunty Nop said, Grandfather was ill and he was asking for me.
I didn’t go back to Thlok Chhrov to see him. I was seventeen years old by now and I had been a prostitute for almost two years. I had watched Li shoot my friend Sry Roat. I was full of anger and I wasn’t afraid of Grandfather anymore. I also had no desire to return to the village. If people had been nasty to me before, when I was just a child, they would be truly evil to me now that I was a prostitute.
Aunty Nop didn’t make any comment when I told her I would stay in Phnom Penh instead of visiting Grandfather. She neither approved nor disapproved—she had done her duty. Several months later, when she told me Grandfather was dead, it was the first time in years I felt
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