Jason Barder and Heng Sok Chheng pay their respects to the couple
who have gone from sickness, to health, to marriage.
CAMBODIA'S
most-talked about newlyweds are settling down to a life of domestic bliss - and
widespread fame - after only narrowly securing official permission to tie the
knot.
Kandal women Khav Sokha and Pum Eth were married in a gala wedding,
attended by more than 250 friends, relatives and the just plain curious, on Mar
12.
The couple have become instant celebrities in Sokha's village of Kro
Bao Ach Kok, about 14 Km from Phnom Penh, where they live, and their story has
been told further afield by Khmer newspapers.
But aside from the fact
that they are both women, this is a conventional marriage.
Sokha - a
former moto taxi driver-turned-medicine woman - is very much the husband in the
partnership. She dresses and speaks like a man and is treated as such by Eth who
calls her "my husband".
After one husband, three children and five
girlfriends, Sokha, 35, is confident she has finally found her perfect
partner.
"It's our future, our destiny from our last lives," she
said.
Thirty-one-year-old Eth-who turned down marriage offers from two
men the same day that Sokha proposed to her-said: "I love my husband very much.
I am confident I can delight him forever."
But their betrothal was not
without its complications. First, they had to convince local officials that
theirs should be a legal marriage.
"The authorities thought it was
strange," says Sokha, "but they agreed to tolerate it because I have three
children already [from her pervious marriage]. They said that if we were both
single [and childless], we would not be allowed to get married because we could
not produce children."
Before agreeing to issue a marriage license,
however, officials quizzed Eth on whether she was willing and happy to
marry.
"They asked my wife whether she was willing to rely on me, the
husband, in the future because I already had children and there was no future
for her, the wife."
By the time the wedding day came around, officialdom
had warmed to their romance. One of Kandal's four governors gave them a $50
wedding present.
However, some of Sokha's former girlfriends - she has
something of a reputation as a womanizer among local villages-we're far from
pleased.
"I had five girlfriends before getting married. Three of them
harassed me when they heard I would be married.
"One of them, on the
wedding day, went to the wedding and cried and said I had a 'black heart' for
marrying another woman."
Notoriety thrust upon them, the couple are
having no problem keeping level-headed about it all.
When the Post
visited, securing an interview required 55 minutes of negotiation over a "gift"
which could be given them in return.
"It's a Cambodian tradition that if
you want to interview and photograph a husband and wife, you should pay
something for it," said Sokha's mother, who headed the negotiations before a
crowd of neighbors.
Complaining that Khmer journalists who interviewed
them had not delivered on promises of money, she said: "If you don't give a
gift, it will cut off the couple's good luck." She suggested $50.
Sokha,
meanwhile, said it was his wife who wanted money.
"For me, no problem,
but the wife..." she said, smoking a cigarette while impatiently waiting for
negotiations to reach a conclusion.
Finally, after agreement was reached
on the giving of $5 as a token of the Post's good wishes, the happy couple were
prepared to tell their love-story.
Theirs was a whirlwind romance which
began in December when Eth, who had suffered a lingering illness for years,
visited Sokha for treatment.
Sokha, who studied medicine for five years,
was able to cure Eth, visiting her regularly at her home in a nearby
village.
"After curing her, I started loving her," said Sokha. In
January, she proposed, and Eth's parents had no objections. "They said their
daughter's future lay with me, because I had cured her."
For Eth,
accepting Sokha's proposal was easy: "There was no hesitation, no difficulty,
because I love him wholeheartedly."
"I had been sick for many years. He
cured me and I love him - I have to marry him."
She was happy to spurn
her two male suitors who also proposed marriage.
"I don't like men. My
brother-in law used to treat my sister badly, so I was determined not to marry a
man."
Sokha, whose previous marriage at a young age ended in divorce,
said she would never have married a man again.
"I never loved men. I got
married [the first time] because of my mother. She made me get
married."
"Since then, many girls have flirted with me, because I am very
good at soothing people [when treating them for illnesses].
Her children,
aged 11, 13 and 15 - "sometimes they call me mama, sometimes they call me papa"
- love Eth and were happy to see the couple married.
While marriage
between women was uncommon, she believed there were many cases of them living
together as de facto husband and wife.
"It is reasonable that [childless
women] should not be married because they cannot produce children."
Sokha
said she had acted like a man - wearing shirts and trousers, cutting her hair
short and using the male forms of Khmer words - for many years.
A
moto-taxi driver for two years before attending medical school, she said many
strangers never realized she was a woman.
She recalled one day in 1992
when she attacked by three robbers who thought she was a man.
"They said:
'If you want stay alive you must think of your wife and children and give us
your moto.' I said: 'You cannot take my moto unless you kill me first' and
started fighting with them."
Stabbed and beaten over the head, she was
left for dead in a sewage pond, where she was found by a passing aid worker.
Today, she earns her - and Eth's - living by traveling around local villages
curing "general sicknesses" such as headaches.
After a three-day
honeymoon at Eth's parents' house, they have moved in with Sokha's mother,
where, they say, "every day is a honeymoon".
