Escaping the Khmer Rouge

by Chileng Pa

  He was not to hang around places where controlled substances were distributed, nor associate with people engaging in criminal acts. He was to allow a probation officer to visit him at any time anywhere, notify the probation officer within seventy-two hours of being arrested or questioned by a law enforcement officer, not agree to act as an informant without the permission of the court, and notify third parties of risks he presented. Chileng was prohibited from finding employment as an interpreter, was to allow access to his financial records, and was to submit to a personal search at any time. This he was to do for the next three years.

  He was also to immediately pay $270,968.41 to the federal government. He could deposit his check at the probation office in the regional federal building. He was also to immediately pay twelve thousand dollars. While the Bureau of Prisons, the probation office, and Chileng knew this was impossible, he was nonetheless under constant threat of the debt and he had to make regular payments, no matter the source of his income. He agreed to pay twenty-five dollars a month beginning March 2005 toward the fine, and another twenty-five dollars toward the restitution. Fortunately, his probation officer was understanding and kind, and quickly released Chileng from work requirements, asking only that we keep him informed of his medical progress.

  Chileng suffered through his treatments, and spent time with his family. I finally understood that my knowledge of western medicine made me no more a predictor of what was going to happen to Chileng than his family members, and to try to convince them that his illness was terminal was a disservice, obviously something they didn’t want to comprehend. Always, they had a new story to tell about someone who had liver cancer, but was doing well. So, I felt alone in my anticipation of loss, and immensely saddened as I watched Chileng fade.

  For the first time in years, I received only one birthday and Christmas card in December 2004 from Chileng, Chan, and family, rather than one from him and another from them. Chileng now told me emphatically that he wanted to complete this manuscript, no matter how he felt or what happened. I visited him often to work on the manuscript and transport him to his chemotherapy sessions. Sometimes he was like the Chileng of old—strong, defiant, eager to discuss his story, quick to laugh. At other times, he begged off from work, feeling weak and nauseous from his treatments. He slept much of the time.

  Chileng worsened. The chemotherapy was not working, and his liver was failing. As I took him to his doctor visits, he occasionally expressed awareness that he might die, and he insisted I ask him all the questions necessary to finish his project. He worried about what would happen to his family after he was gone. He’d had to leave them for years; now, he was afraid he was leaving again, this time forever. One day he said to me, “I got stuck in jail my whole life.” We talked of taking a trip to Cambodia in August, discussing the places we’d visit. He was looking forward to seeing his sister, whom I’d met several times on trips to Cambodia. Chileng also wanted to go to Prayap village where he’d endured the Khmer Rouge years, see friends and eat at restaurants along the Japanese bridge in Phnom Penh, and visit relatives in Kompong Cham. He wanted to see Angkor Wat, which he’d seen only from the air when he flew to Battambang in 1970.

  We visited his daughter at her university. While he loved being with her, the trip was painful for him, and he had a difficult time recovering from it. His family moved him from his upstairs bedroom to the main floor so they could more easily care for him and, some weeks later, to his sister-in-law’s house where he could be cared for around the clock. His plans to be monk for a week were scuttled when the abbot said he wasn’t strong enough to sit up for the chanting. His attention faded, and his requests for pain medicine increased.

  One warm March day, however, he said he wanted to go to the temple. Admiring the daffodils on the way, he looked handsome in lovely mustard-colored corduroys and a soft brown polo shirt, although older and thinner. He received a warm welcome and spent some time laughing with his friends. When the abbot pulled me aside to ask what the doctors had said, I told him Chileng was fading, but they didn’t know how much time he had left. With tears in his eyes, he said, “He’s my closest friend.” We didn’t realize then that the next time Chileng went to the temple, it would be in his casket.

  A few days later, I again fetched him for a doctor’s appointment. He asked if I had any more questions about his story. I looked down my list, then at him, and realized our time for this project was over. His eyes were closed and he looked like an old man who was suffering greatly. I asked him one question: I didn’t understand the layout of the hole he hid in while in Vietnam. I wrote: “He answered, and that was it for that day ... and for always. I’ll do the rest of the manuscript by myself, unless he miraculously gets better.”

  That was also the day the jokes ended. At the appointment, I saw other patients glance at him and look away, and I was struck with fear: did he really look that bad? Was his time really approaching? His appearance now approximated the weak emaciated man he’d become under the Khmer Rouge. The doctor gave him morphine drops for the first time. When my biological sister visited him over the weekend, he smiled briefly at her, but soon sank back into himself, into his pain. The expression on my sister’s face was more evidence that Chileng was not experiencing a miracle. He was dying.

  On the way home, I asked my sister if his family knew he was going to die. She said yes. Yet they were working hard to keep him alive, spending a great deal of money on Chinese medicine, particularly an expensive Took Tian Xian Liquid they discovered on the Internet, hoping this would cure him. They talked as if he was going to get better. But he ate little, and visits to the hospital were becoming impossible.

  One day, Chan and I drove to Pullman to pick up her daughter. Chan crocheted a blanket for her husband on the trip, and it lay on his bed the rest of his days. It was nice being away, having time to cry, to talk, and to laugh. We talked of the trips we would make, without mentioning Chileng’s name or talking of death. Chileng’s daughter drove us home, chatting quietly with her mother.

  Chileng faded but lost his pain. He slept much of the time, but responded when someone talked to him. His brothers remained convinced that he was getting better—that the medicine made him better as he slept. There was nothing to contradict that, and I wanted a miracle as much as they did. In the midst of hospice’s kind bumbling, we were able to ask Chileng if he wanted “extraordinary measures” taken to keep him alive. He said no. I struggled to comprehend what was happening.

  The next day, I sat with Chileng while his family prepared the house for ceremonies being held for him the next evening. I watched him sleep, talked to him when he moved, listened to the bustle outside the bedroom, and thought of knowing him. He now refused to eat or take medicine. He was occasionally restless, but settled down when I spoke to him and squeezed back when I held his hand. The next morning, his sister-in-law greeted me with the words, “He’s much worse.”

  Instead of sitting by Chileng’s bed for the day as ceremony preparations continued, as I’d anticipated, I watched as family and friends filled his room, attending to his death. Thoughtful as ever, he postponed that moment until his daughter returned from her university some hours away and his sister-in-law and brother-in-law returned from a trip to another state. Chan sat on the bed next to him, holding his hand, occasionally stroking his head, whispering to him softly. Sokhary knelt beside her mother, rubbing her father’s legs. His brothers came and went, his son cried at my feet, his friends filled the room. The abbot came to bless him.

  At eleven in the morning, he opened his eyes and his breathing slowed. His wife called him, his brother called to him, and then everyone in the room was called, praying, weeping. He did not respond. So many tears from his family and friends. People stared at Chileng, wandered around, wept, hugged, wandered out, came back in the bedroom to look at Chileng. Eventually, Chan and her children asked everyone to leave the room, and they washed and dressed Chileng.

  Throughout the day, people came to s
ee Chileng, to cry, to greet his family. The house was full of people, talking, preparing food, making arrangements, and the street below was jammed with cars. I wandered, listened, comforted, and was comforted. I left once that day to go to the temple to see the abbot. He was alone, painting a stairwell post outside the temple. My friend and I sat with him for awhile, saying nothing, just sitting—apart from the bustle, together in our silent grief.

  When I returned to the house, there were more people there than ever. At the ceremony that evening, there were so many people jammed into the house, no one could move. And there were more outside. Late in the evening, hundreds of people watched his body being taken away. After the abbot performed a cleansing ritual in the room in which Chileng had died, Chan began taking his things out. She handed his large notebook to me, and said, “You take care of this. And this, and this, and this,” and handed me his wallet, eyeglasses, and cell phone. I did it without saying a word. I sat in the other bedroom with Chileng’s children, his brother-in-law, and his sleeping young nephews and nieces. Family wandered in and out. Chileng’s daughter put a pillow under my head and a blanket over me, and I lay there, faint with exhaustion. We talked about Chileng, laughed, and complained about our exhaustion, headaches, and eyes raw from weeping. When our anthropologist friend, Judy Ledgerwood, called to say she was sorry she couldn’t be there, Chan exclaimed into the telephone, “Oh Judy, you won’t see him again!”

  Chileng died on Chandy’s birthday. Late that day, she told me sadly that she’d done everything she could to care for Chileng, but he knew he was going to die, that he’d known it was too late for the Chinese medicine to work. Chileng’s brother said that several evenings before he died, Chileng told him, “Brother, I have no hope.”

  The next week, we spent virtually every day at the temple for ceremonies, eating, and then just being there. I was immersed in grief, mine and others. It was a sad, comforting, and amazingly wonderful time. There was time to talk with many different people about Chileng. The week was a time out from the ordinary activities of life, a time to spend with family and friends in a house of worship and comfort. Chileng’s family was obliged to feed everyone who came to the eight days of ceremonies, and they were aided in that effort by donations of many thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of work. As a woman who didn’t know how to cook Cambodian food or do many of the necessary duties, I was relegated to deal with officialdom along with Chileng’s next younger brother: the funeral home, funeral notice, and other details.

  Chileng’s funeral was held on Cambodian New Year, thirty years to the day after the Khmer Rouge took control of Phnom Penh. His funeral was handled by the funeral home he’d persuaded to do Cambodian funerals in the traditional way many years before, and the funeral staff themselves grieved his loss. The day began with a ceremony that transformed Chileng’s son, Sokchea, into a monk for the day. After his head was shaved and he was dressed in monk’s robes, he was instructed to act like a monk for the day. This meant, among other rules, that he couldn’t touch women, not even his mother, aunties, or sister. A ceremony for Chileng was held mid-morning, and was attended by more people than I’d ever seen in the temple. It was followed by people serving food to the monks and then eating themselves. Sokchea’s vows for the day did not prevent him from substituting a McDonald’s Happy Meal for the Cambodian food.

  In the early afternoon, Chileng’s body was brought from the funeral home. His wife and daughter were dressed head to toe in white. After blessings, prayers, and chanting, Chileng’s brother, Meng, offered a eulogy. As Chileng’s sponsor, I was next. I managed to say that I was proud to know Chileng, honored to say, in front of my biological brother and sister who were in attendance, that he was my brother. There were several more eulogies, prayers, and soon—sooner than I imagined—it was time to take Chileng’s body to the crematorium.

  A caravan of more than a hundred cars accompanied his body there; according to funeral home staff, Chileng’s funeral was the largest they’d ever handled in this city with the procession stretching five miles from the temple to the crematorium. People had been growing increasingly somber, and tears flowed freely. After more prayers, people took turns placing flowers and coins in the casket, then, finally, the casket was closed and rolled to the door of the crematorium, then into the burn area. The door closed. Now, tears were accompanied by sobs from those crowded into the room. I found it difficult to breathe. Chileng’s son had the duty of pushing the button that started the furnace, a duty he later said was the most difficult of his young life.

  Before the ceremonies began that day, a handsome young man came to sit next to me. He glanced at me tentatively, and then said, “Are you Carol?”

  “Yes.” I looked at him curiously.

  “I can’t tell you how much Chileng helped my family,” he said, then choked up. We sat there, unable to talk for a time. Eventually he spoke of Chileng, saying he was only fourteen when his family came to the United States from the refugee camps so he doesn’t remember much. But he knows how much Chileng helped his family, taking them to the market to get food, doing everything for them.

  Among the mourners were hundreds of other Cambodians Chileng had befriended, and numerous families he’d sponsored. There was the man who accompanied Chileng’s family to America as their “uncle.” And there was Chileng’s probation officer. Some days earlier when I told him Chileng had died, he said he thought he was an outstanding man. And when I said I thought he’d been unfairly imprisoned, he said, “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  I sat around with Chileng’s family late the evening of his funeral, and awoke in the night weeping.

  In the days that followed, I was grateful for that intense week of time. It was so different from American funerals. I knew from anthropology, from familiarity with other cultures, that many groups handle death much more intimately, bringing the living into direct and concentrated contact with the dead. There was great relief in that, being with Chileng and those who loved him as he died, spending day after day with Chileng’s family, talking about him, living the grief of losing him in the midst of others similarly stricken. It was an amazing experience, and it helped with my grief.

  It certainly didn’t erase it: this was the man with whom I was going to learn so much more about Cambodians in the United States and in Cambodia. I enjoyed his company, as much as anyone I’ve known. He was smart, he was funny, and he liked me. He was compassionate, passionate, and alive. He was honorable, loyal, loving to his friends and family.

  The ceremonies continued. There was a ceremony a week and a half after Chileng’s death when his bones were brought from the crematorium to the temple. Meng accepted the ashes from the funeral person and handed them to Chan, who placed them on the altar. After the ceremony, the temple nuns packed up everything that had been given to the temple: incense, candles, sweetened milk, among so many different things and stored them away. The straightening and cleaning went on until four in the afternoon. Chan and I talked a long time, sitting and resting and remembering.

  Chileng’s death released him from his financial obligations to the United States government, although his wife worried for months. While she was not responsible for his fines and restitution, she was saddled with enormous costs for his medical care.

  After his death, I found among his papers a scrap of paper on which he’d jotted down some possible names for our landscaping company, including Khmer Landscaping Services, Angkor’s Landscaping Services, K & M’s Landscaping Services, Eastern Man’s Landscaping Services, King’s Landscaping Services, and Golden Dragon’s Landscaping Services. I also found a note he’d written to himself, to “call probation on Tuesday.” He never made the call.

  Several weeks after the one hundred day ceremony for Chileng, his wife, Chan; his sister-in-law, Chandy; our friend, Jo; and I drove to a gorgeous beach. A landslide had blocked the trail down to the beach, so we scrambled down a much rougher trail. The weather was beautiful and, although the hike was strenuous
, it was good to be there with these friends. There, on this isolated spot on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, we could have sailed for Cambodia, a long way away, if we’d had a boat and the skills to sail it.

  Let me digress for a moment. Over twenty years ago, I sat at the funeral of my mother, in shock at her sudden death. Just as the service began, there was a rustle in the back. My brother nudged me and, when I glanced back, I saw Judy Ledgerwood—then studying anthropology at Cornell University—Chileng, and his wife settling into their seats. In my sorrow I felt joy at their thoughtfulness in driving many hours to honor my mother.

  Now, on this same coast, Chileng’s wife and sister-in-law spread his ashes where my sister, brothers, and I had spread my mother’s ashes years before—joining my two families—the family of my birth, the family from Cambodia.

  Man of many names and lives, I love you.

  Glossary

  AK-47 a light compact Russian-made assault rifle produced in greater numbers that any other assault rifle

  Angkar “organization,” the leadership of the Khmer Rouge

  Angkar Wat largest religious building in the world built in the 12th century, this is a symbol of Cambodia. It has appeared on the flags of the last several governments

  B-52s American long-range heavy bomber used to carpet-bomb eastern Cambodia, that killed between 200,000 and 500,000 civilians