Note: You'll be seeing lots of these 'notes' along the way. This is an unfolding story - a rough draft - and rather than start all over every time the picture gets filled in a little more, I'll just add notes

Before the Beginning

Sopheak's earliest memory is of her previous death. "I no live this one," she tells me, pointing into empty space. "Before I live, I don't know English this one, Cambodia speak 'taan soo-a'." I look it up in my phonetic dictionary. "Taan soo-a . . . Heaven." That was the simple dictionary definition, but it wasn't quite enough for me. I asked her to elaborate.

"This one name Cambodia 'taan kandal.' Down say 'taan kraam'." So, like virtually every other culture, Cambodia recognises three basic worlds: heaven, hell or the underworld and the one we presently inhabit - the one we call earth. But unlike most Westerners, Cambodians don't seem to see a distinct barrier between the various worlds. Probably because, for them (or at least for Sopheak and many other Cambodians I've come to know), there isn't one..

"Can fly there, no have come down," she goes on. "Can see taan kandal, but no have come down. I have six sisters, no brothers. One day I look down. They (people) mui tak at mien my clothes (swim naked) in water. I laugh too much! 'Why you do like this?' I say. 'Come down!' they tell me. I come down but fall and die."

"How old were you," I ask stupidly, assuming that in 'taan soo-a' time passes and individuals age the same as here.

Her brow furrows. "I don' know, not same here. I girl. Not young young but no have boy. Maybe twelve."

Little by little a picture emerges of a happy family of fairy-like beings flitting about above the jungle tree-tops, just enjoying themselves. They see a body of water, a lake or a river (she told me it was not sa-moat, the sea). While her sisters are content to just observe the strange goings-on down on taan-kandal from a distance, Sopheak becomes overly-curious and ventures to speak to the people down below. Later she speculates that she had to be reborn here because she "speak bad" to them. That made me laugh because it's so plausible! She "swears like a trooper."

"What you say?" I ask. She's not sure. At any rate, she fell and now has to live here on taan kandal "maybe one time two time more."

In the Beginning: Shanghai and Svay Rinh

This time around Ni Sopheak (Ni is her family name) was born here on taan kandal. She was conceived in the Cambodian province of Svay Rinh, which borders Vietnam. Anyone who has taken the tourist bus from Ho Chi Minh City has probably stopped for a lunch break in the city of Svay Rinh - an unremarkable town. But the village her parents are from, though only about an hour's drive north of the city, is a different world. I visited there in 2006 and even then the closest thing to electricity they had was a car battery that they used for an hour or so every night to watch a black and white TV. A few of the local children ran away in terror when they saw me the first time - they had never seen a 'barang' (foreigner) before. Later, when they got used to me and saw that I wasn't dangerous, they followed me around in droves.

She was conceived in Svay Rinh, but born in Shanghai, her mother's native city. She was the third child of her mother and father's second family. Papa was too immature the first time he married at about the age of fifteen and he and his wife split up when their baby daughter was only an infant. He moved to Svay Rinh looking for work. That's when he met Mama. He met Mama, but didn't find work, so in about 1975 he moved to Phnom Penh and set up a motorbike repair business under a tree near the Tonle Sap. The tree is still standing and serves as traffic roundabout. I know he was working there on September 16, 1975 because that's the day the Khmer Rouge swept through Phnom Penh, emptying the city and claiming revolutionary victory.

Note: One evening Papa was a little drunk and told me a bit about his past. He speaks very little English and I speak very little Cambodian, but he managed to tell how in the years between 1970-75 he had several run-ins with American soldiers. He told me how his house was bombed. That was no surprise because America was conducting bombing raids inside Cambodia during those years - that's a matter of public record. But they also landed their helicopters and stole livestock and even jewelry. His village started a militia of sorts (got some weapons) and he proudly told me that he killed some American soldiers when they came back Then, 75-80 he had to deal with the Khmer Rouge. It's no wonder he's sometimes 'scoot' (crazy)!. back to narrative - - -

Papa, along with most of Phnom Penh's population, was immediately "recruited" by the Khmer Rouge. Young and fit, he was to be a soldier. He may or may not have done this willingly, as many Cambodians supported the Khmer Rouge as liberators until they realized they were being forcibly recruited into a life of slavery in the rice fields or unimaginable brutality on the battle fields. At any rate, he was quickly disenchanted and when the opportunity presented itself, he and a group of friends attempted to escape into the jungle. They were hunted down and only five out of thirty-five survived. Papa was shot in the leg and then shot in the head to finish him off and his body dumped in a heap with the other victims. Later, the remaining survivors found him, nursed him back to health and helped him find his way back to Svay Rinh, where Mama was now "employed" as an interpreter by the Khmer Rouge. Unable to walk, Papa was useless to them and on several occasions Mama had to talk KM soldiers out of killing him. He can walk just fine now, but his bad leg gets sore quickly. It's one of the reasons he quit driving a tractor.

After the Vietnamese drove Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge out of Svay Rinh both Mama and Papa went to work for the new provisional government. One day I took Sopheak and Mama to the National Museum where Mama saw a cannon similar to the one she was trained to use. She proudly told us how she had killed five KR soldiers with one cannon shot. Sopheak's oldest brother Rote was conceived during this turbulent time. He was her seventh child. She was separated from her first husband and six children by the KR and never saw them again, though she is certain they are all dead.

Two years later Rah was born . Until he was eleven, Rah dressed like a girl and liked to play girls' games. Mama attributes this to his being the reincarnation of her youngest daughter from her previous marriage. Having died so suddenly and brutally, it took her until puberty to discover her new sexual identity.

Sopheak was born in about 1985. She was delivered feet-first, still swaddled in her amniotic sac. This was regarded as a powerful sign that she would continue to be able to see the spirits of the dead ('kmout') long after infancy. It is a matter of common knowledge amongst Cambodians that infants have "dogs' eyes" - the ability to see the dead. Part of the reason so many Cambodians keep dogs as pets is because their howling warns them of the approach of malevolent spirits and affords them the opportunity to protect themselves against spirit possession. As a child, Sopheak was occasionally called upon to look for kmout in her neighbours' homes when they felt disturbed by what we might call "bad vibes."

Note: Mama and Sopheak were reminiscing one day and Sopheak filled me in on some of the conversation. Mama's father lived in Svay Rinh in his later years, but did not sleep in the same house as his wife. He lived alone and only Mama and Sopheak were allowed in the little house. Sopheak told me he had many powers: amongst them was the ability to shorten distances, so that what took most of us hours to get to he could get to in minutes. This was one way he eluded Khmer Rouge. He could also deflect bullets.back to narrative

One afternoon when we were out "looking" on our motorbike as we do almost every day, Sopheak saw a little boy and his older brother fishing in a pond with a net. "Stop now! I want looking!" Sopheak exclaimed, bouncing up and down like an excited child. It was a lovely sight - one of those "postcard" moments - but nothing to get excited about, I thought. But while I was looking with detachment at an idyllic rural scene, Sopheak was reliving her past. Fishing like this with her brother Rah was her first "job" in Svay Rinh. Papa was often away for long stretches of time and Mama, though still working for the army as a translator, was only making "tic tic loi" (small money). To supplement their meagre income, Rah and Sopheak would catch fish which they would later trade for rice or other goods at the markets. It couldn't have been easy work for a toddler (could any work be easy for a four-year-old?), but Sopheak remembered it with joy.

Other than that, Sopheak's only other memory of Svay Rinh is of Mama holding her hand on one side while she cradled Ana, Sopheak's younger sister, on her opposite hip as they set off with her two brothers for Shanghai. Papa had taken to drinking and "boxing Mama." Mama, sick of the abuse, took her children back to her family home in Shanghai. Sopheak is about four years older than Ana, so she must have been only four or five at the time.

Papa followed and talked Mama into coming back to Cambodia with him. When Sopheak was six or seven, they left Svay Rinh. They prospered, relatively speaking, for awhile in Phnom Penh but Mama got sick and they lost everything paying her medical expenses. When Sopheak was about ten the family moved on to Virh Rinh. It's only about a three hour drive from Phnom Penh, but it must be a few days on foot - a long walk for a ten-year-old.

Virh Rinh

The markers on Rte. 4 from Phnom Penh call it "Veal Renh," but everyone pronounces the district "Virh Rinh" so that's what I'll call it. After an hour's driving, give or take, from Sihanoukville, you have to slow down as you pass through the city of Virh Rinh. We usually stop for supplies there, whether we're going on another three hours to Phnom Penh or just 5 minutes up the road to the village of Khmeng Wat, where Sopheak's family home still stands. It is just one amongst many similar timber and thatch dwellings in a small subdivision. The main road into the village is a well-maintained dirt road just wide enough for a car and a motorbike to pass each other. It comes to an abrupt end on the bank of a small river that meandres through the uncultivated plains in the shadow of Bokor Mountain.

Most of Khmeng Wat's inhabitants work for the palm oil company that has cultivated a huge area on the other side of the highway. When I met him, Papa was working as a tractor driver for the company, but when the family moved to Virh Rinh he was an itinerant worker and often away for long periods of time. My guess is that he moved the family there in hopes of getting work in the fields, but was laid off after sinking the last of his money into a small block of land and his home. But that's just a guess.

At any rate, money was scarce, so Sopheak and Rah often went fishing and foraging for food as they had in Svay Rinh. Sometimes they would go as far as the foot of Bokor Mountain, more than a half day's walk away from their village. Rather than try to make their way home at night they would just sleep wherever they happened to be at the time and make the trip home in the morning. Our dog Lido is not a big dog, but I still didn't believe Sopheak when she told me that once she caught a frog "same same Lido." I thought she was still seeing the frog through a seven-year-old's eyes. But Mama confirmed it. "Oh, tom tom!" she told me with a laugh as she held her hands about 40cms apart for illustration. Sopheak grinned proudly and added, "We sell for maybe 10,000 Riel!" That would be a large sum for a single frog even at today's prices, but Mama confirmed that, too.

The details about those early years in Virh Rinh are sketchy. What Sopheak remembers most vividly and with the most joy are the times she and Rah went out foraging for food or swimming in the river. Even now she is happiest when she's outdoors - the further we are from "civilization" the happier she becomes I've seen her climb a tree as easily as most of us climb a gently-sloping staircase and get as excited as a child at Christmas when she sees a (to me) nondescript looking plant and cry out, "this one can eat!" as she races off to harvest a bundle of leaves. So it's understandable that when hard times befell her family she chose to run away and "stay in tree" rather than look for work in Phnom Penh as so many young Cambodians do.

Click here to go "In Tree"