Killing Fields and Kindness in Phnom Penh

          Phnom Penh will always have an important place in my travel memories, as it comprises two very profound experiences on opposite ends of the emotional scale. After a long, hot bus ride from Siem Reap, my husband and I took a rickshaw to OK Guesthouse (not OK, we left the next day) and immediately called our friend Botr (pronounced Baht) from Battambang. He had made the trip from Battambang for us; he wanted us to meet his family. Botr arrived at our guesthouse, his usual nervousness and kindness tagging along for the ride. We walked through the busy streets of PhnomPenh, Cambodia's capital city that was deserted in one day after the Khmer Rouge rolled in on their tanks. Millions were evacuated from the city and sent to the countryside, where many Cambodians were murdered or starved and worked to death. Now, the city is full of people careening through the streets on their over-loaded motorbikes and women sell fresh skewers of pineapple and mangoes.

           We walked along the long wall of the Royal Palace and stopped in front of a typical, crumbling apartment building. We took the stairs to the roof and discovered the home that Botr's father had built with his own hands, which he refuses to leave even for one day, as he is afraid the city will again be evacuated and his whole life stolen as it was a little over thirty years ago. We were met by Botr's mother, a lovely smiling woman who speaks no English and lost the French she had been taught before the Khmer Rouge made her forget it. Pictures of Botr's eight month old daughter and two adopted children adorn the walls; neither his parents nor his sister have met these children, as his mother is sick and no one is comfortable leaving the home to take the short trip. I felt a bit guilty since I, who have only known Botr for two weeks, had met and played with his children on several occasions. I tried not to talk about how cute they were or what a great father Botr is.

           After an hour, Botr's father, Chan, came home from work. He carried his old bicycle up the flights of stairs and set it down near the front door. It had been raining and he was soaked through, but his welcoming smile belied the fact that he, far past retirement age, had worked all day and biked a total of twenty-four miles to get to and from work. The family can't afford a motorbike and so Chan, who teaches English at an orphanage like his son, bikes each day to work. Chan can't get a better job and we found out later that he was even lucky to get this one: a visiting American met him a few years ago when Chan was driving him around in his Cyclo, a bicycle rickshaw. This is some of the most difficult work in the country and Chan had been a Cyclo driver for years in order to send his kids to school. He'd had a lucky break in the early nineties when he was employed as a translator for the UN during Cambodia's first elections. There was such a deficit in educated people that they had to search tirelessly to find someone in the country that spoke English...and wasn't afraid to admit it. Before the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975, Chan spoke fluent French and English in addition to his native Khmer. He had certificates from educational institutions that he had worked hard to receive - these were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge and now Chan is among thousands of educated Cambodians who cannot get a good job because they do not have the transcripts to prove their capability. Botr had already told us Chan's story about how he was almost killed by the Khmer Rouge and had to pretend he was an uneducated farmer in order to not be shot. No one could know Chan spoke other languages; at one point, he was ordered at the point of a gun to climb a palm tree to get it's fruits. He knew if he didn't climb the tree, he would be shot, but he also knew he could easily fall and break his neck, as he had never done the climb before. He climbed the tree and lived.

           Chan immediately pulled out all the family photos after he sat down with us. There were few old photos - another casualty of the terrible war that ravaged the country. Most of the photos were taken a few years ago with friends and acquaintances. There isn't a whole lot of family, so family photos are few. I wanted to hear about the "Pol Pot Time," as most Cambodians call the years between 1975-1979, but it's a sensitive subject and everyone has a terrifying story and wounds that will never heal. I didn't want to pry, so I tried to make my comments general. The subject came up when I encountered a worn black and white photograph of a Buddhist nun with shaved head and white clothing, her somber eyes and unsmiling mouth directed towards the camera. Chan said that was his mother-in-law, Botr's grandmother. "She died during the Pol Pot time," he said, shaking his head as if to rid it of the memories that will never go away. She either starved to death or was murdered - there were few innocent casualties in those times and Buddhist nuns and monks were among the first people to "disappear."

     Chan is a small, thin man with weathered brown skin and thinning gray hair with a few black strands. He looks more Chinese than Cambodian (another strike against him during the Regime) and he walks in his skin like he's comfortable with it. He has a distinctive ease to his manner, yet his sparkling eyes are alert, inquisitive, and he is ready to engage anyone interested in having a good conversation. This is not a man who wastes his days with idle talk and TV-watching (his TV is broken anyway). He moves his head slightly from side to side as he talks, in a way that is quite similar to the Indian head wiggling. He smiles a lot - a wide, kind smile that embraces everyone it is bestowed upon.

           We began talking about the Pol Pot Regime in light of a recent news story: complications are arising in the International Criminal Court, which is finally trying one of the higher ups from the Khmer Rouge. Chan became very quiet as he spoke and at times he was whispering. At first I thought he was lost in a reverie, but I soon realized that he looked over his shoulder and appeared slightly agitated. He was scared. Over thirty years after the end of the Khmer Rouge and he was still afraid he could be carted off to prison for saying anything bad about the "Angka." I later realized, after discussions with other young and older Cambodians that this reluctance to give voice to the past and the pain was not unique on Chan's part - everyone is nervous about being overheard on this subject. It was then that I realized: their fears were legitimate - the oppression continues and the Khmer Rouge can still hurt people...after all these years.

           Chan's eyes had a faraway look as he warmed to his subject - I finally understood the phrase "his eyes clouded over." His brow furrowed  and he passed his hand slowly across it and then down over his eyes. He said, "We don't talk about these things - we keep our thoughts secret. I don't know...about these things." He relayed, in his roundabout way, that things were still corrupt at the highest levels of government. He explained that one of the reasons he had to build his home on the roof of an apartment building was because the cost of an apartment in the city was too high for most people. The Khmer Rouge officials who had moved into stolen apartments during the war sold them to the highest bidders after it. The previous rightful owners were either dead or could not prove they had owned the dwellings in the first place because of fear and the fact that all documents were burned. Chan was only able to build his home with the salary he had from the UN for the elections and he can never hope to make money like that again. I looked around the house, seeing it for the first time. It was sturdy, cosy, and simple. The balcony had a great view - it overlooked a wonderful temple across the street. It even had electricity and some running water , though, of course the "stove" was a pot with coals under it.

           Chan sighed.

           "In Cambodia...it is very hard. Ahhhh. I want to go [to America], but I have all my family. But still, it is hard! But I am sorry - I want you to enjoy yourselves. I have so many sad stories, but I want to make you happy."

           This man who had just told me a moment before that he remembered being scared he would die every night because people were always being taken out and he could hear the shots, who had only one pair of clothes for years, who had managed to keep his children and wife alive in the hard labor communes...he wanted to make me happy! When I think about the hardship of Chan's life, I am so honored that he shared his memories with me. I know it wasn't easy, but I had to remind him that we all need to hear these stories. I wish every silenced Cambodian could shout them from the rooftops of every hut and building around the country. I wish their chorus would be carried away on the soft winds of their beautiful bloodied land to ears that can hear and create change and justice...and peace. But the ears of the world are often deaf and the noise of our collective lives and worries drown out the voices of despair. I felt greedy, like I wanted to soak up the history - awed by the privilege of being able to hear the story first hand, instead of in a book long after Chan and the others were buried in the bone-filled soil.

           Botr, his mother, and his sister came in after those few sacred moments alone with Chan, bearing additions to the dinner they wanted to serve us. We knew they had gone out to get a few delicacies that they would never had treated themselves to. We were honored (and saddened) that they had to spend money they did not have to procure some coffee and treats for us. We sat on the floor eating homemade sour soup and rice, the staple of the Khmer diet. We talked and laughed and shared stories....happy ones this time. I was sad to leave them once the sky had darkened, but it had been a long day and my unfamiliar bed was calling me.

           The next day proved to be more intense than the last, as we had decided to go to the Killing Fields and S-21, the main torture prison of the Khmer Rouge. I have been to many museums, but I have never been so physically and emotionally affected by anything I have seen in my life before. I felt cold inside for hours afterward and had to take a shower because my clothes, which smelled moldy after a botched laundry experience, smelled exactly like the tower of skulls at the Killing Fields. I smelled like death...like murder...and I wondered if I could ever wash it off. I walked around the Killing Fields and wondered how it was possible that I felt light headed, almost ill. Maybe it's because I had fallen in love with this country and its people and my grief was genuine and had nothing to do with pity. A part of me died that day and I know I will never get it back.

           I began to notice colorful scraps of clothing at my feet. At first it seemed like a tattered rag until I looked around me and realized that the dirt paths around the fields were full of scraps of clothing. Pieces of plaid shirts, checkered scarves, flowered dresses...small clothes, big clothes, belts. There were so many people killed here that the excavators couldn't possibly get all the clothing and bones out. They're just there....not behind glass cases or labeled. They were under my feet, in the dirt, in the grass...everywhere. I came across an intact blindfold that had been tied around someone before they were shot at the edge of a pit. It was just lying on a rock, in the sun, wind, rain. It wasn't placed there - no museum curator had put it there for effect. It was all just there. Later, I saw teeth and bones embedded in the dirt. Visitors had set up little sections around the pits where they placed bones and teeth as they found them.

           I found my husband sitting on his haunches looking at an old, beautiful tree. I thought he was just having a moment, but his face was all screwed up like he was trying not to cry and told me to look at the sign by the tree. It was the tree all the children were killed at. The Khmer Rouge didn't want to waste bullets, so they swung children by their ankles and smashed their skulls against the tree. I touched the bark, no longer stained with blood and bits of brain. I wanted that innocent tree to get a healing touch, a positive touch. I guess I wanted to cradle a bunch of children who were long gone and whose bones were piled in the dirt under my feet. I didn't know if I was imagining it or not, but the air around me felt so heavy. I couldn't be sure if we were alone - where else would the tortured souls of all these people had gone? It was strange walking in these fields on a sunny day. If you didn't know what had happened here, you might even call it a peaceful place. Frangipani blossoms blew across the pits, butterflies landed in the grasses covering them, and cows grazed nearby. There was even the sound of children's laughter. The Killing Fields were powerful because they were not the least bit sanitized and I liked that. It was real and unapologetic.

            Afterwards, we went to S-21, another horrifying reminder of the Pol Pot Regime. It was extraordinarily creepy, as it had once been a high school. Each room had a wire bed and instruments of torture. Some of the tiles were stained red still and black and white photos depicted the victims. The yellow walls and blue shutters, a remnant of French colonialism, were faded. In some places the roof was caving in. The Khmer Rouge, like the Nazis, kept meticulous records with before and after photos. Hundreds of these black and white head shots, blown up to 8x10 size, were placed in many of the ground floor rooms. Almost everyone in the photos had on the black uniform everyone was forced to wear and the women all had the short, blunt hair cut. If it was a full body shot, they were barefoot and some photos had people with bloodstained sheets covering recent wounds. Some smiled or had the hint of a smile, clearly born out of habit or a desire to please their persecutors. Maybe a smile would soften their hearts...or not. Most of the faces had a dull, already lifeless look in their eyes, while some were clearly resigned to their fate, exhausted by it all. Some had blood on their faces. Some looked angry - I particularly remember a photo of a small boy - maybe three years old - his eyebrows were drawn together and he had a scowl on his face. They hadn't broken his pure spirit, so they would simply kill it and then have a cigarette. Some of the men looked like they wanted to fight back, maybe hit the photographer and set all the men, women, and children free from the hands of the torturers. Many of the adults and children had tears in their eyes or running down their faces, snot piling on  their upper lips. These photos were close, clear...it was if they were really looking at you. Pleading, begging, resigned, terrified. Some of them had such fear in their eyes, as if they knew the terrible stories were true and, oh god, could it really all be happening? You see the walls and tiles from the floor you are walking on right now in those pictures and you are there and you can almost smell the blood, the sweat, the death. Some of the eyes in the pictures looked shocked, as if they really couldn't believe they were there, that it was real. How much will it hurt? Is my baby already dead? Where is my wife? What happens if I'm still breathing when I fall into the pit? Why are you doing this to me?

           One older man looked wild-eyed at the camera, his skin drawn back, his mouth slightly parted as if he were saying, "No! I don't want to die! Get me out!" His eyes, so wide, the insanity already settling in. It was so much to take in: the cells, the photos, the documentary, the torture instruments...It all made an indelible impression on me and the shivers ran down my spine for hours. At one point, I stood on the balcony of one of the buildings, barbed wire keeping me there. I saw two monks sitting by a palm tree, their bright orange robes the most colorful thing around. I hoped they were blessing this place, helping to set some souls free. Behind me, the cells were dark with shadows from the setting sun and few tourists passed by. I knew it was time to go - one can only take so much (the photos all told me that). I was scared, overwhelmed, and I began to imagine that a spirit might appear and beg me for help. I knew I'd reached the breaking point and I scurried down the stairs, willing myself not to run.

           These places are difficult to go to, but important, and I am glad I got to go before they became sanitized museums fraught with politics and curators. Later, I sat with a beer in the Lake District, the water moving swiftly by. I tried to remember what it was like to feel happy and thankful and I had to remind myself that I was alive. I am alive.