by Chileng Pa
I was living with Nim and his family. Like so many of our countrymen, we spoke often of leaving Phnom Penh and fleeing to a camp called Nong Chan near the Thai border. Nim frequently asked me, “Lam, do you want to flee to Nong Chan with my friend, Sareth, and me? We can work over there. I know officials in the resistance movement and we might be able to have better lives there than here under Vietnamese persecution.”
I knew he was talking about the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, a resistance army that was fighting against the Khmer Rouge. The people who’d wrecked our lives were determined to retake Cambodia, and were building up their strength in western Cambodia and along the Thai border. I finally consented, telling him, “Sure, it’s a good idea. We’re living here without freedom. The Vietnamese threaten us on a daily basis. They’re even forcing some Cambodians to leave the country and work for them in Saigon.”
The very next morning, Nim’s friend came by our house to pick us up, bringing along his wife and brother. Nim, his wife, three children, and I piled into the tiny car and headed toward the Western Region, toward Thailand. We drove through the city, the districts, and the villages along National Highway Five and were shocked to see so many places in ruin and so many people still trying to return to their homes. We realized then that the war had caused much more devastation than we’d thought, considering all the Cambodians still traveling along the highway trying to reach their former residences six months after being liberated by the Vietnamese.
We arrived in Battambang Province in late afternoon and stopped there, camping by the side of the road. The next morning, we began traveling again. It took us another half day to reach Svay Sisophon District, which is near the Thai border. The trip was exhausting, the highway nearly destroyed by the war. In addition, we were running out of gasoline and there was no place to obtain more. We decided to stay the night with a friend of Sareth’s. In Sisophon that evening, we sought information from everyone we met on how to reach the refugee camps and were finally told by a local resident that the journey to the Nong Chan border camp could only be made on foot.
He also told us the trip would be perilous. Renegade Khmer Rouge yothea had been mining the trails through the forest leading to the camp. Where the landmines had been cleared away, Khmer Rouge soldiers and Thai bandits lay in ambush for Cambodians trying to reach Thailand, and they routinely kidnapped, robbed, and raped refugees passing by. The people of Sisophon advised us to hire a professional guide, an expert who’d made the trip to the camps many times. They said we needed a guide if we were to have any chance of reaching a refugee camp alive.
The next morning we found our guide. We waited two days for suitable weather while the guide gathered more families to make the trip worth his while. Finally, on the appointed day, we packed our few belongings, abandoned the car, and left at dawn with twenty other families to follow our expert guide. The paths we hiked over were rough, through wild reed fields and dense jungle forests. Along the way, we passed a few abandoned hamlets littered with the lifeless bodies of our countrymen and women.
Once when we passed through an area littered with bodies of families that had been killed recently, our guide said to us urgently, “Brothers, we need to find a place to hide while we rest!” We hid in the midst of dense vegetation and the families who had food began preparing a meal.
While we rested, I asked the guide, “Brother, what happened back there?”
“Oh, yesterday another group of families, like yours, were ambushed by the Khmer Rouge,” he replied. “They tried to defend themselves but most were killed. Only a few made it back to Sisophon. That’s how I heard about it.”
We walked on in fear for another day and a half. At mid-afternoon on the second day, our group finally reached Nong Chan border camp, which held about ten thousand Cambodian refugees. Another million refugees were located in similar camps along the Cambodian border with Thailand. Those of us who hadn’t eaten for several days were grateful for the rice, wheat flour, and canned foods provided in the camp by the Red Cross.
I immediately began building a shelter, but my building plans were interrupted by Nim bringing the good news that the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front was giving Nim, Sareth, and me positions in their resistance. Nim was to be a military nurse, Sareth a lieutenant commander, and I was made second in command of a warehouse that stored United Nations provisions, including food and medicine. They moved the three of us to a nearby camp called Zero Zero Seven.
We worked at Zero Zero Seven camp for three months. We then began hearing rumors that the United Nations had established a new camp across the border at Aranyaprathet, in Thailand. This camp, called Khao-I-Dang, was a place where refugees would be safe and could seek a sponsor for immigration to a third country: the homeland of the refugee being the first country, the country of refuge the second country, and the resettlement country the third country. For us, the first country was Cambodia, the second, Thailand, and the third, any of a number of countries: France, the United States, Canada, Australia, even countries in Africa.
Nim, Sareth, and I confirmed that the rumors were true and agreed that we would try to reach Khao-I-Dang camp. This would not be easy because the United Nations gave aid based on the number of refugees in the border camps. The Khmer People’s National Liberation Front controlled the camp and recruited and fed their soldiers with this aid. They were thus reluctant to allow people to leave unless wounded in battle, quite ill, or so handicapped that they were more liability than asset.
One morning, I discovered the solution to our problem when I saw several families scramble aboard a Red Cross bus just leaving Zero Zero Seven camp after dropping off workers and supplies. All we had to do was sneak out of camp and wait for the bus. It was some time in October 1979 when Nim, Sareth, and I agreed to use this means of escaping to Khao-I-Dang.
The decision to leave Zero Zero Seven and our beautiful country was difficult for us to make. We loved Cambodia. But we were weary after so many years of war and so many memories of death and destruction. We each sought a new life of freedom and adventure and we agreed that the only way to pursue these dreams was to leave.
We were up before dawn the next morning, carrying our meager possessions. We made our way carefully and quietly out of the camp, the sun’s rays filtering through the tree leaves. We approached the bus route on a narrow path littered with fallen trees that slowed our progress. As we drew near the red pebble road down which the bus traveled to pick up its refugee passengers, we suddenly heard the voices of Khmer National Liberation Front soldiers. “All of you out there in the jungle trying to leave Cambodia,” they shouted, “You’re betraying your country and leaving your land to the Vietnamese!” The soldiers screamed, “If you go, don’t return!” I just didn’t believe it. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to be a soldier any longer. I didn’t want to see more people die and more Cambodians suffer.
I kept walking toward the bus. After a few minutes that seemed like hours, the soldiers left and, shortly thereafter, the bus arrived and we were headed for the Thai border. We reached Aranyaprathet, Thailand, a few hours later. The bus turned off the main road onto a small gravel road toward the Khao-I-Dang mountains, at the base of which the United Nations had placed its refugee camp.
When the bus stopped, we walked from the bus onto Thai soil, yet one more step toward freedom. I stood gazing at the bulldozers still clearing the brush and flattening the ground in the foothills of the lovely Khao-I-Dang mountains. About two hundred families had built makeshift shelters out of blue plastic sheets handed out by the International Red Cross. Nim, Sareth, and I also received the squares of blue plastic and we quickly began constructing our shelter for protection from the burning sun.
The Red Cross bus delivered more refugees to the camp each day and, within a week, several hundred more families had arrived in camp. The United Nations began supplying bamboo and palm leaves to the refugees so they could build better shelters. The Thai administrators appointed Nim, Sareth, a
nd me to be camp police officers. I started out as a patrolman but was soon put in charge of water distribution, supervising five men. Our job was to fill the water barrels from Thai trucks that arrived twice daily and then distribute the water from the barrels to all the refugees in the camp, including the new arrivals. We were not paid a salary but, rather, received cans of food and other amenities. As the weeks went on, I was assigned many more men. By the end of the year, the camp grew to occupy more than a square mile of territory and to contain over 10,000 refugees.
In November of 1979, the Thai climate was intolerably hot and humid. There was no rain and the sun’s rays baked the red earth dry. Dust blew everywhere and the road was watered regularly to combat it. One day as the midday sun hung in a cloudless sky, I saw several Red Cross buses enter the compound. They stopped near the water distribution barrels and began unloading refugees who hurried to find shelter from the blazing sun. A camp official instructed the refugees to bring a container and wait for water. Everyone waited patiently in the long line for their turn.
As I stood on the top barrel supervising the men busily serving water to the refugees, I noticed a girl in line whose face seemed familiar to me. I intently examined her features from the distance. She was thin, like so many other young women just liberated from the regime that had starved so many hundreds of thousands, but she looked beautiful to me with her straight black hair falling over her shoulders.
She wore the clothes of a refugee but she carried herself proudly and without shame. I stared at her anxiously, trying to recall where I’d met her before. As she drew nearer in the water line, she looked in my direction. When our eyes met, I could tell she felt the same recognition and uncertainty.
As she came nearer still to the water barrels, I grew angry that my memory was failing me. Then on an impulse, I shouted out a name as if it were a question. “Chan?” When she heard me, she turned and smiled at me. I was suddenly weak with emotion, for I had found my love, my Chan, again.
I hadn’t seen her since a brief encounter on a city street back in 1973 before the Khmer Rouge took over our country. Chan was now twenty-four years old. She was almost unrecognizably thin, but her smile was unmistakable. I thought I might be dreaming, so I clambered down from the water barrels to speak with her. But, by the time I reached the water line, she was gone. A couple of hours later when I finished work, I began searching the camp for her. I went to each of the huts of the new arrivals. I didn’t find Chan, and I began to think I had indeed been dreaming. Then, I saw a woman I remembered standing beside her in line earlier, so I took a chance. I respectfully introduced myself to her and told her about knowing Chan.
“Yes,” the woman said. “I’m Chan’s older sister. She mentioned you. If you care to wait with me for a moment, I’m sure she and our other sister will be back soon.” I made conversation with Chan’s oldest sister for several minutes, but I don’t recall what was said because my heart was racing and all I could think of was Chan.
I happened to turn and saw Chan standing outside the hut with her other sister. How long they had both been standing there, I couldn’t tell. I was speechless. When I could finally speak, I said quietly, “Hello, Mademoiselle Chan!”
She stared at me and then with a brilliant smile on her face, said, “Yes, Monsieur Pa Chileng.” Inserting French words into our conversation had been common when we were students, since many of our classes were taught in French and it marked us as students rather than common workers. Now, it marked us as classmates from another life.
“Mademoiselle Chan, I just can’t believe fate has brought us together again after all this time,” I said with great emotion. I was so grateful to be speaking to someone I knew from before the war. “Do you still remember me as your friend?” I asked with a smile.
“Of course, you’re Monsieur Pa Chileng!” she replied.
I told her I’d fled to Khao-I-Dang camp following the slaughter of my family and relatives and that I was alone. Then I asked her carefully, “Pardon me, mademoiselle, if you don’t mind, could we become friends again?”
Chan’s eyes traveled from mine down to my feet and slowly up to my eyes again. Then, she replied, “Monsieur Pa Chileng, let me talk this over with my older sisters and I’ll tell you later.”
I was never told whether Chan’s sisters agreed to allow me to see her but I began visiting her shelter in the evenings, so I guess it was okay with them. Every day, soon after the sun had slipped from the sky down the side of the mountain leaving the moon’s rays shining over the night’s landscape, it shone also over two young people newly in love. Cicadas crying in the trees seemed so happy, supporting our feelings for one another. The night birds flew above us singing of our joy.
The times Chan and I spent together were wonderful. We sat under a tree, the cool wind caressing us as we breathed in the fresh night air. We spoke of many things, including how fortunate we were to have survived the Khmer Rouge. Despite the trying circumstances in which we found ourselves we were happy, walking, talking, and sharing our grief over the parents, homeland, and peace we had once known.
We discussed marriage. Well, I discussed marriage and Chan listened attentively. After we talked, we strolled through the makeshift marketplace to purchase snacks sold by refugee vendors. As we walked by the refugee huts holding hands and giggling, the moon rose high in the sky, occasionally winking through the thick cloud banks rolling north.
There was no electricity in the camp so when evening came, every hut was lit with candles or a small kerosene lantern. We could see the tiny beams through the walls of the shelters. One night after we bought some snacks, we found a place to sit on a small hill. I sat close to Chan and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Since coming to the camp, she’d gained weight and was not so skinny. She looked beautiful in the moonlight. She must have become self conscious because I was staring at her, so she began chatting about politics. I dared to put my arm around her shoulders.
She immediately pushed my arm away, saying, “Pa Chileng, never do that again! You know that’s not appropriate because we’re not married yet!” She was angry and breathless. “Yet?” So, she’d welcome my proposal?
“Pardon, Mademoiselle,” I said. But I was smiling at her, thinking that she was beautiful when she was angry. I was thrilled that she had actually mentioned marriage. When she saw me smiling, she reached over and gently slapped my cheek but she was smiling, also.
After that night, our relationship grew closer. Although we were careful not to do anything inappropriate, Chan eventually let me put my arm around her shoulders. And I often put my head close to hers so I could inhale the wonderful fragrance of her hair. We were in love and we knew it. We quickly decided that we should marry.
I was familiar with Chan’s family background. She was born in Phnom Penh, the fifth child of hardworking parents, Houng and Navi. She had two older sisters, two older brothers, and a younger brother. She had always been a beautiful, gentle child. She was respected for her intelligence and her delicate feminine manners. I felt fortunate to have won her favor. Every man in camp envied me!
I finally got up the courage to ask her older sisters if I could have her hand in marriage. To my great relief, both agreed to allow us to marry. We decided that the wedding would take place in January of 1980.
In December 1979, I accepted a new job with the French Red Cross as an interpreter, caretaker, and guardian at one of the ten clinics set up in the camp to provide outpatient care to the refugees. I worked hard at this job, even sleeping at the clinic. I was delighted to have the position because I was paid in Thai currency, receiving each month twenty baht, which was about sixty-five cents in American money. Because I worked so hard, I received a large bonus of ten dollars at the end of the year. This money came at the most fortunate time, just before I was to get married.
Chan, my fiancée, as I was so proud to call her, was also fortunate. She was hired as a Khmer language teacher at the elementary school set up by the United Nations.
She was also paid in Thai currency.
The weeks after we decided to marry passed quickly. And, finally, the day we were both waiting for arrived. On January 5, 1980, by the time the sun rose in the clear blue sky, I was already handsomely dressed, if I do say so myself, in borrowed clothes. I wore black leather shoes, black slacks, a long-sleeved white shirt, a dark blue tie, and a loose-fitting gray coat with a red rose pinned to my pocket.
By nine o’clock in the morning, fifteen of my friends and neighbors had gathered at my hut to begin the traditional procession to the bride’s home. Two of my groom’s men also wearing borrowed clothes stood by my side holding umbrellas to shade me from the sun and from evil spirits. Other friends carried gifts to the bride. A small Khmer band, singer, and dancer playing a traditional wedding prayer led our parade down the red gravel path to Chan’s shelter.
True to Cambodian tradition, Chan waited at her hut to greet our party. When our wedding procession arrived there, we had to patiently stand outside, waiting for the bride’s family to give permission for the groom to enter.
Although the wedding was a time for great happiness it was also a moment of great sadness. My parents had died before the Khmer Rouge period and Chan’s parents had starved to death during it, so neither of us could have their traditional support during our marriage ceremony. Fortunately, Chan had her sisters to fill in for her parents and I had my friends.
After making our party wait an appropriate period of time, Chan’s sisters opened the door of their shelter and agreed to allow us to enter the hut with our gifts. After we’d filled the simple room, Chan’s friend opened the door to a side room and brought Chan out. She was more beautiful than ever. She avoided looking directly at me, but her smile revealed her happiness. Her movements were elegant as she walked toward me in her wedding gown, stood before me, and gave me the traditional sampeah greeting, placing both palms together in front of her chest and bowing slightly.
