"If we get married, we will never ever have a child. I have to always use a condom because of the disease I have. It can't be cured and you can catch it through sexual intercourse. Will you still marry me?"
That was the way Hasan (not his real name) proposed to his wife-to-be, given his condition as a person living with HIV/AIDS.
He said he knew for certain the explanation could lose him the chance to marry her, but he made up his mind anyway, adding he did not want his marriage to be based on a lie that could later lead to his wife's death from the disease he might give her.
"I lied to my first wife," Hasan told The Jakarta Post at his home in the Pasir Putih Beach resort in Situbondo on Monday.
"She died in 2007 after being infected with the virus."
He added he had been sexually promiscuous prior to marrying her in 2000, but had not told her about it until near her death.
Hasan said dropped out of school in the fifth grade school and later worked as a dive tour guide in Bali, through which he easily met girls and engaged in a lot of casual sex.
He said his adventure ended unhappily in 2007, when he was diagnosed with HIV after suffering acute diarrhea for about a year. His weight dropped drastically from 89 kilograms to 55.
"I was like a living skeleton," he said, adding he took the HIV test in Bondowoso, East Java, where his first wife was from.
He was then referred the voluntary counseling and therapy clinic of Dr. Soebandi General Hospital in Jember, where he learned he had full-blown AIDS.
Hasan said the news left him suicidal, adding, "But I tried to recover, having my 7-year-old son with me, and especially after learning my wife also got the disease."
He later learned that the spirit to live was the most important thing a person living with HIV/AIDS needed to survive.
"I do whatever I have to live longer, even for one more day," he said.
"I really believe that human life is in the hands of God. As long as I'm alive, I have to take care of my children."
He added it was lack of faith that caused his first wife to fall drastically ill. Unable to accept the fact that she had contracted HIV, he went on, his wife refused medication and her condition worsened.
She died after being bedridden for a month.
Hasan said he had learned a lesson from that experience. Two years after his first wife passed away, he tried to start a new life. He said he was lucky to meet Maryam, who accepted him in spite of his condition.
"I believe in the God's will. I also believe alienating HIV sufferers won't help you avoid the disease," said Maryam, 22, a ninth-grade dropout.
"If I get the disease, then I'll consider it my destiny."
Hasan and Maryam married in 2008, and since then Maryam has routinely gone to the VCT clinic every three months for a checkup.
"Thank god, though, it's been negative all along," she said.
The couple's happiness was rounded out with the birth of their baby girl three weeks ago. The baby is on a formula-only diet for precaution.
"I don't want to take the risk of having my baby infected by the virus through the breast-feeding, although my wife has been declared HIV-negative so far," Hasan said.
"The detection window makes things uncertain," he added, referring to the initial three- to six-month period during which the virus is not yet detectable.
In commemoration of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, Hasan called on people living with HIV/AIDS not to lose hope.
"Having HIV/AIDS is not a death sentence," he said. "I'm proof of that. I can still live a normal life."
