by Chileng Pa
When my father and I arrived home, I jumped off the motorcycle and ran into the house to hug my grandmother. I told her how much I adored her and missed her, and how sorry I was to leave her without telling her goodbye. “I’m sorry to depress you so, Grandmother. I won’t ever run away again,” I said to her.
She looked into my eyes and shook my shoulders, saying, “Grandson, I must plead with you never to run away again.” Her eyes became moist. “If you ever have any problems, you must promise to come to me. I will solve them.”
I hugged everyone else in the family, even my stepmother, but she was cold and indifferent, as always. I knew it wouldn’t be the last time I had a problem with her.
Early each morning before my father went to work at the leather factory, he went out on his bicycle, house to house, collecting garbage to feed his hogs. He attached empty kerosene containers to the back of his bicycle to hold the waste. He frequently found that thieves had beaten him to the garbage. This enraged my father. He’d turn red, and scream expletives. I looked forward to the times this happened because I could learn a few new curse words. I also got a lot of satisfaction when my father came home with empty cans because, instead of taking it out on me, he began grumbling at my stepmother, telling her to prepare food for the hogs. When she argued with him, that only made him angrier. This I also enjoyed.
My job was to draw water from the well to fill the water jars, wash the hogs, and clean the hog troughs and pigsty. Before I ran away, my stepmother chided me for not doing an adequate job. If I disputed her words, she ensured that I received punishment from my father. After I returned home, I did my hog tasks efficiently and without complaining. This made my father happy and disappointed my stepmother.
When I recall the events of my life after living with Bu Chung, I must give credit to my stepmother. She was the indirect cause of most of my good behavior. Every time I did something right or behaved well, she was annoyed because she then had no reason to complain about me to my father. I took so much satisfaction when this happened that I intentionally behaved well in order to irritate her. This was especially the case with my homework.
School resumed in September. With the students assembled, the teachers read off the names of those who were being advanced to the next grade. All my friends advanced; only a few students and I remained behind.
School was more of a drag then than it had been before, but I was now a determined student. My father and grandmother were so pleased with my new attitude that they agreed to enroll me in a private school in order for me to get caught up with my former classmates. I attended the private school every day after my regular classes. I convinced my grandmother to get me a bicycle so I wouldn’t have to waste time walking to school, and I’d have more time to study. I studied hard, and the private school students helped me with my public school work.
My studying paid off. I received good grades, and discovered how fun it is to learn. By the end of the school year, I had rejoined my former classmates. My grandmother was so proud of me that she went through the neighborhood, bragging about my progress. Never again did I disappoint her or my father with poor academic performance.
2
Love at First Sight
In 1966, I began the ninth grade. I was sixteen years old. I was excited to be with all my old friends and schoolmates, but from the first moment I saw her, my attention focused on a new girl in class named Chan. In an instant, I understood the meaning of “love at first sight.” I was captivated by the beauty and grace of the girl. She was slender with smooth black hair and light chocolate skin. Her deep brown eyes were most alluring. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Instantly, my mission became getting to know her, although that would be more difficult than I imagined.
As the days rolled by, I discovered that Chan was smart and serious about schoolwork, too. I tried to talk to her about our lessons, without success. How could I get to know her? She was friendly, but aloof, and she seldom smiled. She avoided the jabbering done by most of the students, and never spoke with boys. It was soon obvious that she had been raised in a family that observed Cambodian traditions. For a girl, this meant avoiding even the slightest appearance of impropriety when it came to dealing with boys, such as not approaching them, not being alone with them, and avoiding flamboyant or suggestive words and gestures. These were the values of my own family, and I was delighted to see that she respected them, too.
After rebuffing me countless times, Chan one day replied when I asked her yet another question about our lessons. I was so surprised when she answered that I forgot what I was saying, and simply stared at her. She must have found this amusing because she smiled, looking as if she was going to burst into laughter. She immediately checked her reaction, however, and turned serious. Although it was only a brief smile, it was the most wonderful smile I had ever seen. In the days that followed, I had merely to think of her smile to cheer myself.
Chan began talking to me often, but only about our schoolwork. I became so preoccupied with knowing the answers to her questions that I became the best student in class. Chan had a close friend named Mari, who constantly teased Chan about me. In a sing-song voice, she said things like, “Chan and Chileng should get engaged because Chileng loves Chan.” Oh boy!
When Chan heard Mari make such comments, she’d fume with anger, and rebuke her. “Mari! Don’t say stupid jokes like that in public! It’s not right for girls to act like that,” she’d say. But Chan’s anger never threatened their friendship. My friendship with Mari, however, was severely damaged when she tried once too often to play matchmaker for Chan and me. We were practicing writing in Khmer, and the teacher had us exchange dictation books to check one another’s work. Mari conspired with my buddy, Pheng, who was collecting the books, to make sure Chan got my notebook to correct. When Chan discovered that it was my dictation book she was grading, she turned and glared at me across the classroom, her anger directed at me like daggers from those beautiful eyes. She threw my book to the floor. For a week, I heard not a word from her, until Mari convinced her that I had not been part of the dictation book conspiracy.
Also, when I was sixteen, I began thinking about making money. Without my father or grandmother’s knowledge—and certainly not my contrary stepmother—I started a balloon business. I knew my family would disapprove, insisting that I devote my energies to my education.
I began slowly. I blew up sixty to one hundred balloons, tied them to thin sticks of bamboo, and carried them on my shoulder as I walked through the crowds. When they were sold out, I blew up more balloons and did it all again.
My early efforts were crude. I had to blow up the balloons by mouth and it was exhausting, eventually even painful to my lips. I set up a small balloon stand in the riverfront park in front of the grand Royal Palace along the Tonle Sap River where families took their children. When I gained a little experience and had accumulated sufficient supplies, I began selling balloons in a multitude of colors: blue, red, orange, green, white, pink, yellow, even spotted. My business was especially good during special events and on holidays when the crowds were large: on Independence Day, during the canoe race festivals, and throughout the New Year celebrations.
Independence Day celebrates my country’s independence from France in 1953, and is a major holiday in Cambodia. For this holiday, families gather together to show their love, respect, and unity for one another, and attend events in the Buddhist temples. Men, women, and children go to the temple to show off their new colorful clothes of silk, linen, and cotton. There, they pray to the Buddha, and play their beloved games and music. But the main purpose of the holiday is to have fun. In the villages, men and women dance in the ancient way, moving single file in a circle, swaying, and lifting and lowering their arms and hands in slow motion, without touching one another.
I was also successful at selling balloons during the boat races, or water festival, which occur each year in late fall and mark the annual reversal of the Tonle Sap River. At the height of th
e monsoon rains, the rising water of the Mekong causes the Tonle Sap River to back up into Tonle Sap Lake. At the time of the boat races, the rains are ending and the river is reversing back again to its normal flow into the Mekong. In those days, dozens of crews from over fifty different villages descended from the districts and provinces to meet on the Tonle Sap River in front of the Royal Palace to race their huge boats, decked out in lights, flower blossoms, and streaming banners. The competition lasted three days, ending with a presentation of awards by the king and queen. The races were extravagant and gorgeous, a grand event, and always a favorite of the crowds.
On the first day of the festival, I sold balloons from the back of my bicycle. I inched through the park, stopping where children gathered. I loitered in front of the Royal Palace for awhile, and soon found myself surrounded by parents and children clambering for one of my balloons for their sons or daughters.
I took all the profits from my first two days at the boat race festivals and purchased more balloons and a compressed air machine. I hadn’t been able to get one until I’d made some money and arrangements to hide it, along with the balloons and bamboo sticks, at a friend’s house. If I hadn’t done that, my simple stab at entrepreneurship would have been discovered by my father or grandmother, and that would have been the end of it. I was certain that my family wouldn’t see me at work, because my brothers were still small and my family remained at home in the evenings and on weekends and holidays. Now that I was doing well at school and doing my chores at home, my family was not concerned about my whereabouts in my free hours. Besides, Chinese-Cambodian boys had considerable freedom in the years I was growing into manhood. Now that I was using helium, I attached the balloons to string rather than bamboo sticks.
I was not the only vendor at the festival. The sidewalks were packed with people selling every conceivable kind of food, souvenir, and trinket to the crowds who came from every part of the country wearing various types of colorful clothing. The men were especially decked out, wearing tight western-style trousers and close-fitting bright-colored shirts. The women wore more traditional outfits: a blouse falling to the waist, and a samput, or traditional skirt. Most women were too modest to wear cosmetics, but the women were beautiful and charming in a natural way, making them very attractive to young men. Since I was a vendor, I wore simple long dark trousers and a light shirt.
I enjoyed watching the swirling mob of happy faces and sharing the excitement of so many people seeking all sorts of amusements. It was a happy time. Policemen in their light khaki uniforms patrolled the streets on foot and motorcycles, but most of them had little to do but nod greetings and converse with the crowds.
At night, the yellows, oranges, reds, and purples of the gorgeous sunsets filled a calm, cloudless sky. Later, the moon illuminated the evening with a brilliant orange glow, which reflected off the river. Fireworks in a multitude of colors—many shades of red, yellow, blue, and green—began exploding over the river, as boats sponsored by the government and the national festival committee floated past. Each boat represented a different government ministry and was decorated with hundreds of flickering light bulbs, like floats in an American parade, with music thundering out over the crowd. Painted in bright colors, the parade of boats drifted by the Royal Palace to the delight of the people on the riverbanks.
From the three days of the canoe race festival I made a profit of forty American dollars which, in Cambodia in 1966, was a great deal of money. I spent the money on school extras, like snacks and going to restaurants with my friends, and for treats I would have felt guilty asking my father or grandmother to fund. It was a good feeling to have money I’d earned by my own hand. During the next year, I made a considerable amount selling my balloons, and I managed to keep both business and profit from my family.
In the meantime, I enjoyed going to school because Chan was there. I liked her and everything about her. She always looked pretty, even wearing the less-than-flattering blue skirt and short-sleeved white shirt of her school uniform. I was the only boy in class to whom she spoke more than a few words. Mari and Pheng solemnly swore to her that they knew I was in love with her. Her reply to them was that she didn’t love me because girls her age are too young to know what love is, a typically traditional Khmer answer. I figured the reason was that I was a skinny little kid with a bad complexion, but I didn’t let it stop me from loving her with all my heart.
Eventually, Chan and I began spending time together during recesses and school exercises. I wanted so much to tell her that all of Mari’s jokes were true, that I really did love her, but I was afraid if I did, I would offend her sense of propriety. I was worried that if she knew how I felt, she would feel uneasy even talking to me. In Cambodian culture, when a young man meets a girl and falls in love with her, he must not make a move without speaking to her parents. The parents of any young couple must approve and then arrange the engagement and marriage of their children. I would have done anything to have Chan as my fiancée while we were still students, but it was not to be.
Chan and I remained close friends the following school year, and we both excelled as students. But when classes once again resumed in 1968, Chan’s name was not called. When I didn’t see her in the classroom, I became anxious. What had happened to my Chan?
Mari must have seen the concern on my face because, at the first opportunity, she took me aside. “Pa Chileng, Chan asked me to say goodbye to you. Her father has been selected by the government to go work in Takeo Province. So, Chileng,” she said, “Your fiancée, Chan, has moved away with her family. She will be going to school in Takeo.”
I was crushed. My heart felt empty. I was certain that I would never see her again, and uncertain about how I would go on without her. Never would I miss anyone so much.
I buried myself in my studies, making my grandmother and father very happy. I began playing sports, and especially enjoyed and excelled at soccer. I also took to fighting again. I wanted to fight no matter how bruised and bloodied I ended up. Other students began shunning me for fear I’d pick a fight with them. My father became upset when I got into fights, but my grandmother always managed to calm him down, saying it was just a phase I was going through. My grandmother was right, as usual.
By 1968, the population of Phnom Penh had swelled to more than one million. My father and stepmother were tired of living in the city, so my father sold our home and land in the capital city, and purchased a large lot in Dangkar District in Kandal Province, a southern suburb of Phnom Penh called Chamkar Dong. There he built a spacious wooden house with a roof of zinc. Our house was nice, beautiful in its warm dark wood and quiet, and I was still close to my school and friends. After the move, my stepmother convinced my father to stop raising hogs, which she found degrading and distasteful, and begin growing bean sprouts to sell to restaurants. Father continued to work at the leather factory.
To my stepmother’s credit, the bean sprout business proved to be a great success. The business grew so fast that everyone in the family was required to work, including my younger brothers. My sister, Bunthy, had to quit school in the fourth grade to help our stepmother. I would have quit, too, but my grandmother wouldn’t allow it. I was the firstborn, and they wanted more from me. But I still had to help with our family business. I worked before and after school and through the weekends, pumping water from the well to spray the sprouts. My evenings were long, as I stayed up late studying my lessons by candlelight.
My stepmother resented that I was allowed to continue going to school instead of working fulltime with the business. She wouldn’t think of blaming my grandmother for insisting that I continue my education, for that would have placed her in bad graces with my father. So, she blamed me. She blamed me for everything bad that happened around the house. Regularly, she complained to my father about something I’d done. She never had the nerve to punish me in any way, waiting instead until my father returned from the factory, by which time she had figured out a way to exaggerate the facts she
told my father. Despite his promise to Bu Chung, he continued to beat me.
There was peace in the house, despite a lack of warmth. I drew farther away from my father, avoiding him whenever possible. I dove into my schoolwork again, often finding myself longing to discuss my lessons with Chan whom I missed a great deal. Eventually, I graduated from Wat Mohamontrey Elementary School, and went on to secondary school at Indra Devi Secondary School, located in the Touk Kok section of Phnom Penh. I studied more intensely than ever because the lessons were difficult and I was keenly interested in becoming an educated man. I didn’t want to suffer from blindness, a condition my grandmother equated with a lack of education. I spent countless hours studying by candlelight and was rewarded with superior grades.
In 1969, Cambodia was still at peace, and Prince Sihanouk was the head of government. Although education was in theory available for everyone, there were still few schools and most Cambodians were illiterate farmers. They respected the prince as a god and, for this reason, the prince was able to increase his power over the country. He was highly visible, attending with great fanfare every opening of a school, temple, road, or dam. But the prince had a dark side with which more educated people were well aware. Anyone who opposed the prince or in any way threatened his power was quickly apprehended and often killed.
During this time, I became a member of the Royal Cambodian Socialist Youth Movement. We supported the idea of a society in which people were free to disagree with the government without risk to their freedom or life. We often attended the prince’s ceremonies, and watched him flying in on his personal helicopter, amusing himself by tossing gifts from the sky to the masses on the ground, many of whom had waited hours under the blazing sun for his arrival. I once saw a huge throng of people chasing after two meter lengths of expensive fabric the prince was dropping from above. They nearly trampled one another, fighting like wild dogs, trying desperately to get a piece of the fabric.
