Escaping the Khmer Rouge

by Chileng Pa

  There will be no thinking or talking about the old regime. There will be no form of fornication allowed. Anyone caught committing lewd behavior will be immediately killed by the supreme Angkar. Next, every day each of you will be assigned a measure of ground to dig. You must finish your portion each day. We will give you fourteen hours of free time every day, two meals, and some breaks during the day.

  Remember, Angkar wants the canal and levee to be completed as soon as possible. So, if there is clear weather and the moon gives sufficient light, we will also work then. If we finish our work here, we will go to help other regions complete their work. If I find that any of you are slacking off or are unable to complete your share of the work, I will withhold your daily rations or send you to the re-education center.

  There was no need for him to elaborate on what being sent to the re-education center meant. It meant death. It was an insult to the intelligence of the most feeble-minded of us for these yothea to even attempt to keep alive the myth of the re-education center.

  The speaker paused for a drink of water, and then continued spouting the rules.

  If anyone tries to play tricks on us and feign sickness to avoid work or is just lazy I will withhold one day’s food rations. For the second offense, I will send you to a special treatment center designed to deal with those who are disrespectful of Angkar’s directions. There’s one more rule. If any of you attempt to sneak away from the worksite without permission, not only will you be punished but also your whole family, and I will show no mercy. I hope we are all clear about this.

  He paused again, then paced back and forth in front of us, scowling at us. He paused, and said, “You have all heard the rules. I’ll give you a chance to speak up if you disagree with any of them or if you have any questions. If there’s anything you don’t understand, I’ll let my yothea explain it to you more clearly.” He looked us over as if he was saying to himself, “Well? Are any of you stupid enough to ask questions?” Of course, no one dared to speak.

  The meeting was over. Sovong looked at me, and must have seen how disgusted I was.

  “Be careful, Mit Thy,” Sovong warned me. “There are many spies around us. Don’t trust anybody. The rats will come to you acting friendly, trying to get you to talk about the old government. Then, they’ll report you to gain favor with Angkar.”

  I nodded in agreement as Sovong and I walked back to the shelter. Our group had been selected to guard the perimeter of the worksite this night. I was assigned the shift that ended at midnight and Sovong had the shift following mine. When midnight arrived, I woke Sovong to relieve me, but found I couldn’t sleep. I sat on a tree stump while Sovong stood his watch. I thought about the past and contemplated the future, trying to forget how much I missed my wife and son. I also tried to forget how I missed the life we had in Phnom Penh.

  Sovong watched me in silence as I sat, lost in thought. Over the long months we had known one another we had become intimate friends and had come to trust one another. We shared a common hatred of Angkar’s dictatorial regime. Sovong had also been in the military and had served as a policeman during the Lon Nol period.

  “Thy, you’re not sleepy yet?” he asked finally.

  “No, I can’t sleep, Mit Sovong,” I told him. “My mind is still back with my family in Prayap village.”

  “So, you have to stay awake to keep me company, eh?” he kidded me.

  I nodded my head instead of answering. Then, I moved closer so we could talk more quietly and not risk being overheard.

  “So, are you homesick?” he asked. I didn’t have time to answer before he continued. “Thy, have you heard anything about your wife’s family? What about her brothers? Did they get drafted to work on the canal and levee, too?”

  “I don’t know, my friend,” I told Sovong. “I haven’t heard from them in quite awhile.”

  “Mit Thy, would you dare ask the worksite chief for permission to visit your family?” Sovong asked me.

  “Sovong, I don’t think I’d dare ask him. I saw some workers from our group ask Mit Huot, the worksite chief, for passes to visit their families. Not only did he deny them, he accused them of trying to avoid work. A couple of days ago, Proeung asked Mit Huot permission to see his wife because she was ill. Do you know, the son of a bitch Huot told him not to worry, that Angkar had a better doctor in the village to treat her, that if she died the village Angkar would know what to do. Huot is a cold-hearted bastard.”

  I wanted to change the subject. “Sovong, do you have any idea how big this canal levee project is? I wonder how many of these levees Angkar has ordered for our Eastern Region.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know the answer,” Sovong said.

  “So, how many are there?” I asked.

  Sovong answered, “I overhead the Angkar regional director discussing plans with our worksite chief and their yothea. The way I heard it, Angkar is going to build a system of five interconnected canals to bring water from the Mekong River to the Eastern Region for dry season farming. Each canal levee will be ten meters high. The canals will be five meters deep, fifteen meters wide at the top of the levee and ten meters at the bottom. The canals will cover a distance of fifty kilometers.”

  “Wow! Working by hoe and eating only a few ladles of gruel a day, how can we possibly finish it?” I gasped.

  “That’s what I heard, Thy.” He continued. “They also said the project would be finished by the end of 1977 because Angkar wants this project to become the legacy of the Democratic Kampuchea, a symbol of the stark purity of the communists.”

  “So, my wife’s brothers are surely at one of these canal and levee locations, no doubt about it,” I said.

  “Friend Thy, don’t get your hopes up. It just makes missing them more difficult to endure. I’m in the same situation as you. My parents died on the road from Phnom Penh to Prayap. My brothers and sisters were separated from me when the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh and I haven’t seen them since. Now, all I have is my wife and daughter. I know how you feel, Friend, because we have the same story. You miss your wife and son but you’re also afraid that now that you’re separated from them, you may never see them again. From what we see these bastards do every day, that would not seem so unlikely, eh?”

  He looked at me. “But, Friend Thy, we are alive! Don’t forget that most of the workers in our group have suffered as much or more than we have. Think we have it bad now? Just wait! We’ll be lucky to live through this. We’ve only just started this job and I’m already starting to get weaker. But yes, my friend, we’ll try to survive.”

  I did not want to dwell any longer on these depressing thoughts.

  “Sovong, I want to sleep now. Good night,” I said, and stood to leave. “See you in the morning.”

  Sovong was prophetic. It got worse. The yothea in charge of the April 17 levee were idiots from the highest rank to the lowest. In addition to having no knowledge of engineering, few of them could read or write. There were no blueprints, no plans, just confusion. Every day new orders were issued which contradicted those of the day before. Our group was moved from one location to another, always in what appeared to be a reaction to an emergency. There were times when we were given orders during a meal to move immediately. Once, we were awakened at midnight to assist farmers building a rice paddy dike and channel system in a neighboring village.

  The stress on the Khmer Rouge yothea became obvious and they took it out on us. We were building rice paddies by constructing dikes on the upper and lower sides of the large fields. The dikes were a meter high and a meter wide, and extended the entire length and width of the fields. The supreme Angkar established new quotas for the district and village leaders, who passed them down to each of our group leaders, who then established new numbers for each worker. Each of us was required to complete twenty meters of the dike every day. In order to do so, we had to excavate and remove twenty cubic meters of material each, using only hoe and basket.

  We worked from sunup to sundown and oft
en beyond, whenever there was sufficient sun or moonlight to see. We slept under trees, exposed to the cold wind. We were not allowed to inquire about the time, but it mattered little because we rarely had time to think about whether it was day or night. A day was a year. At dusk, I worried about being killed in the night. In the morning, my first thought was, “Oh, I’m still alive. I’m still alive for one more day.”

  We were expected to work constantly. The guerrillas were ever-present, always looking at us. We were required to ask permission before changing position: lying down, walking, standing, or sitting. Failure to receive authorization before any such move resulted in severe punishment. We became less than human under this method of control.

  We also became phenomenally efficient workers. We were able to meet the twenty meter quota on a regular basis so the leaders assigned more work. The slogan they constantly recited was, “Pouring rain can come at any time, so we can work at any time.” None of us questioned the obvious absence of logic in the slogan. We just bit our lips, and worked whenever we were told to work. No one talked about the former society while we worked. There was no time for social interaction. Our only friends were the hoe, the dirt basket, and the pole we used to carry the dirt basket on our shoulders.

  We developed the ability to conserve energy while appearing to be working as hard as possible. This was difficult. Group leaders were highly skilled at spotting anyone slacking off. Anyone even suspected of not giving one hundred percent was punished with more work and fewer rations. As the days went by, we cared less and less about hygiene. Taking time to sleep was much more important than washing our faces or brushing our teeth. We thought even less about washing our clothes. If we were lucky, we got a chance to bathe in a pond or canal once every week or two. We stank all the time.

  Group leaders placed no limits on the amount of work we were expected to do. They placed strict limits, however, on our food rations. Their most common form of punishment was withholding our rations and it was effective. My stomach was never full. On the many occasions we were ordered to move to other locations, we often missed meals. Along with many others, I tried to stay healthy by eating lizards, insects, grubs, roots, and dead animals, and I was often lucky enough to find food without the guerrillas seeing me. Even so, the thought of a reduction in rations was frightening because getting enough to eat was literally a matter of life and death.

  Along with all the other reasons Angkar punished us, damaging or losing a hoe, dirt basket, or carrying pole were high on the list. If a tool broke, the group leader accused the user of intentionally breaking it and of being an enemy of the Angkar revolution. The punishment was reduced rations for the first incident. Anyone who violated this rule the second time was sent to re-education and never returned.

  One morning while I was working on a rice paddy dike, I noticed another mobile work group walking through my work area. Since this happened frequently, I paid little attention to the young group of workers. Suddenly, I heard someone shout, “Brother Thy!” I quickly looked up in the direction of the voice, and saw my brother-in-law, Rann, now sixteen, running to embrace me. “Bong! I have missed you so much!” he said with a wide-eyed look, tears in his eyes.

  “Rann! How are you?” I said, dropping my hoe.

  “I’m fine, brother,” Rann replied. “Thy, are you working at this worksite?” I knew Rann was hoping that my work group would be going along with his group and that maybe we would have a chance to work together. I explained to him that I was helping on the dike for only a few weeks, and I expected to return shortly to resume work on the April Seventeen canal and levee.

  “Younger brother, do you know anything about our mother, brothers, Samrang and Vibol, and our younger sister, Siphal?” I asked him. “How are they doing in the village?”

  Before he could answer me, Rann’s group leader shouted at us to break it up. Rann immediately returned to his place in line. I expected we’d both be punished but our leaders said nothing further. I was very sad to see his group continue on their way and soon fade from sight. I was desolate that my young brother-in-law had not been able to tell me anything about the others in our family.

  In a few days, we finished construction of the rice dike, and Angkar immediately ordered our group to return to Chhoeu Teal District to resume work on the canal and levee. We arrived back at the worksite that evening, then heard that Angkar was giving us two-day passes to return to our villages to see our families in reward for having done a good job building the rice paddy dikes.

  Sovong and I were thrilled at the prospect of visiting our families since we had been separated for some time. The following morning, we set out for Prayap, following on paths through the fields as rapidly as possible. My heart leapt at the thought of again seeing my wife and my son. We made quick progress, reaching Prayap by mid-afternoon, a distance of about twenty kilometers. Sovong and I quickly said goodbye, wished each other a good visit, and agreed to meet back at the worksite in two days.

  I went directly to the child center to pick up my son because I knew that my wife would be at work. I heard Sokhanarith call out to me, “Papa!” as he tottered over to me with his arms outstretched, gurgling and laughing. I lifted him to my breast and kissed him, tears springing to my eyes. As I held his little body close, I was shocked to realize how thin he was. I carried him to my hut in hopes of finding some food there, but there was none. For a few minutes, he forgot his hunger as we played together, waiting for Devi to return home from her worksite.

  When Devi returned to the hut, she was surprised to see me. She smiled, held out her arms to take Sokhanarith from me, and sat with me on the bamboo bed. I stared at her with moist eyes, then suddenly noticed she had a red stripe between her eyebrows. I supposed she had been suffering from fainting spells or headaches, and had been using the traditional Cambodian cure of pinching her forehead or rubbing it with a coin.

  “Wife, you are so thin!” I exclaimed. “Are you sick?”

  “No, bong,” she said, using the term for husband that the Khmer Rouge had perverted for their own use. “I’m not sick. I’m just having minor headaches. Other than that, everything is fine.” Then, she started to cry.

  Through tears, she asked in turn, “Bong, you also are so skinny! Are you sick?”

  “No, wife, I’m not sick. I’m just fine. Everything at the worksite is just fine,” I lied. Although we were all sick, tired, and hungry, being together was like food, rest, and medicine for us all.

  In the late afternoon, my family of three ate gruel for dinner. I shed my grimy clothes, washed them out, and hung them on the wall of the hut to dry. Then I lay on the bamboo bed, a welcome change after working so hard for so long. My wife came to lie on the bed next to me, nursing my son. Devi had many questions about the situation at the canal worksite. Although I insisted that conditions there were tolerable, she knew I was lying to spare her further heartache. She soon gave up trying to make me admit how things really were. Suddenly I heard the crunch of dry leaves outside our shelter. Suspecting that the guerrillas were sneaking around eavesdropping on our conversation since we’d been apart for so long and were bound to exchange information and opinions, we stopped talking. Soon, the three of us were asleep, our skinny bodies resting together.

  Late in the night, my little son awoke crying. Devi tried to nurse him, but had no breast milk. I realized that this was most likely a nightly event for my poor wife and my heart was breaking for both of them. No wonder my son was so thin. I cuddled my son and rubbed his back until he was again asleep, and told my wife that I needed to use the latrine.

  My true intent for leaving the hut was to find milk for my son. I took a metal bowl and slipped through the dark night to the stables at the back of the rice grinding mill. I squeezed in among the cattle and found a cow standing alone, eating hay. I crouched down and reached for a teat and, in the next instant, was kicked into a pile of dung. The herd became agitated so I quickly crawled into the haystack, certain I would be caught by the
patrolling guerrillas. But I was lucky and a few minutes later, the herd was quiet and I could see no guerrilla guards. I decided to try again. This time, I found a calf and led it to its mother. As soon as the calf began to suckle, it was safe for me to join in. I quickly filled my bowl. Pleased with my efforts, I rushed out of the stable and came face to face with a patrolling guerrilla. He began to giggle, scoffing at me.

  “Hey, Mit! You didn’t get much milk from that cow, did you?” He roared. “The milk you are holding is the property of Angkar, and I’ve caught you stealing it, have I not?”

  I was so frightened, I couldn’t answer. All I could think was that I was going to die right there, right then at the hands of this guerrilla, leaving my wife and son alone. My head felt ready to explode. “I’m sorry, Mit Bong. I was desperate to get milk for my sick child and I could think of nothing else to do. I decided to take this milk and wait until tomorrow to report it to the village leader. I had no intention of stealing Angkar’s milk,” I said, as convincingly as possible.

  The guerrilla gave me a devilish smile, then said, “Mit, I’ll let you go this time. Don’t do this again, for if I catch you, I will kill you. I won’t even ask Angkar for permission.”

  As he turned and walked away, I said, “Yes, Mit Bong, you are such a good revolutionary.” I was so relieved to still be alive I said a prayer to the Buddha. I felt as if I had died and been reincarnated and now I was living in another life.

  When I returned to my hut, Devi was awake, waiting for me and very frightened. “Bong! What took you so long? You told me you were only going to the latrine!”

  I confessed, “Wife, I went to find some fresh milk for our son. He is so hungry. I had to do something for him.”

  She gasped at me. “Bong, are you sure nobody saw you take the milk?”

  “Don’t worry, wife. Nobody knows I stole it.” I didn’t want to alarm her further by describing what had actually happened. She was already distressed for she’d heard rumors that her mother, brothers, and sister had been killed. She was tormented by grief, not knowing what had happened to them.