Never Fall Down: A Novel
Page 14
“Thank God, thank God,” he says.
How I can tell this guy, this guy who give me all this good thing, this guy who save my life, how I can tell him I think all the time about people who die, people I kill? He take me outta the camp, and I think I can leave all this death, leave all these people, leave them in Cambodia. How I can tell him they follow me here? How I can tell him, “You a nice man, Peter, but, me, I’m bad”? All I think is: I want to die. I want to kill.
“It hurt,” I say. The words in Khmer, they just come out.
Peter make a worry face. “What hurts?”
I point at my chest. “My heart. Like a tiger,” I tell him. My heart, like a tiger inside, clawing my rib to get out. So much hate in there it hurt. Hate for the people who kill my family, hate for the people who kill my friend, hate for myself.
“Why I live?” I ask Peter. “Why I live and so many people die?”
“I told you,” Peter says. “You’re the chosen one.”
I don’t understand.
“Arn, you’re the one who will tell everyone what happen in Cambodia,” he says.
“Why?” I ask him. “My family still dead, my friend still dead, my other friend still living in the camp.”
“You tell the story,” Peter says. “It’s a way to save people still in Cambodia, bring them to the US. But also to save yourself. Speaking out, telling the story, it’s a way to choose living. To say you are with the living now. Not the dead.”
This idea, it wrap around me like a warm blanket, it settle my shaking bone, it calm my heart, and I understand. All the time you fighting, you think only of how to survive. All the time you survive, you wonder why you don’t die. But now my life can be something different. Now, in America, I don’t have to fight. I don’t have to survive. I can chose a new thing: to live.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
NEW YORK CITY 1984
I SWALLOW A BIG BREATH AND START. “MY NAME IS ARN,” I SAY. “I’m from Cambodia.”
Big speech I’m giving. My own speech, not the one from Peter. Long time I work on learning English—ABC every morning with Shirley, every day with Pat, the special teacher at school—but mostly I learn it on TV, Duke of Hazzard, A Team. I learn it so much I even graduate New Hampshire high school. And now I get invite to speak at big church in New York City, St. John the Divine it call. Flowing with people. Ten thousand people, Peter say, with lotta VIP, like guy name Desmond Tutu and singer name of James Taylor and guy from New York Time. All waiting now for me to speak.
I start very slow, very careful. I tell a little about my life before the Khmer Rouge, about doing the twist with my brother, about frogging with Hong. Then I tell about how all the people have to leave the city, about the body at the side of the road, about being force to leave my family, probably all now dead. And then the story pour out of me, about the kid dying from no food, the ax hitting the skull, the people calling to me from the grave. And then something happen. The paper I hold, big splash of water on it, the word now dripping off the page. And my voice now, my careful American voice, it crack and break and die in my throat. Never have I cry, not one time, all these year. From eleven-year-old kid till now, not one tear. So many year, I think I kill off all the tear inside me. But after this long, dry season, now finally the rain.
Nice man who introduce me, he come to my side, ask me if I want to stop. I say no, I want to finish my speech. And now all the word come; they come not careful, they come with sob, my body shaking like a fever, with tear dripping off my nose, off my chin—my shirt, my collar now all soak through—until finally I finish.
A very great quiet now, hush in this audience, silence like after we play the first time for Khmer Rouge, waiting to see if we live, we die.
Then one applause. One more, then many, many hand all together clapping, so much applause like thunder, like the church, it roar from its bones, and oh, the sound, it lift me up, up high, like on top of a mountain, and I look out now and see all these people, American people—men and woman, boy and girl, even the guy from the New York Time—all these people crying, too.
And finally, the tiger in my heart, he lay down a moment and rest.
EPILOGUE
ARN CHORN-POND HAS BEEN SPEAKING OUT ABOUT THE genocide in Cambodia ever since that day in 1984. As a representative of Amnesty International and a founder of Children of War he has traveled the world, shared the stage with rock stars such as Sting, Peter Gabriel, and Bruce Springsteen. He’s met kings and presidents—including Jimmy Carter, whose wife, Rosalynn, visited his bedside in Thailand.
During the 1980s and ’90s, Arn returned to Cambodia many times—once to win the release of ten thousand hostages being held by Khmer Rouge holdouts. And he visited Cambodian refugees still living in camps in Thailand along with the princess of Cambodia, the woman he’d loved as a little boy, to teach the children traditional songs of their homeland.
In one of his visits home, where he organized hundreds of kids for a cleanup of the war debris in Phnom Penh, a woman approached him. It was his second oldest sister, Maly. Then, at a speech in Lowell, Massachusetts, where Arn was working with youth gangs, another woman came to the podium. It was his sister Jorami, who told him that their aunt had also survived. His aunt died soon after she and Arn were reunited. The rest of his family had perished.
Kha and Siv also survived; the other members of the musical troupe all disappeared or died. Runty was adopted by a family in Cambodia.
Sojeat and Ravi both live in the United States; Peter Pond’s family eventually adopted seventeen Cambodian children.
Sombo lives with his wife and children in the northern part of Cambodia, in an enclave where thousands of Khmer Rouge remain to this day. Koong, the boy Sombo carried to the Thai border, also survived and was adopted by a family in Canada.
Arn eventually reunited with all of them. But despite searching for nearly twelve years, he had been unable to find Mek. Then one day, on a visit to Battambang, Arn saw a destitute man in a lean-to by the road. It was Mek—who had been searching just as hard for Arn. He had arrived at the Thai refugee camp just days after Arn left for the United States.
Determined to help Mek return to his profession as a musician, Arn began to search for the few other master musicians who had survived the Khmer Rouge. Using funds he raised by speaking about his experiences, Arn founded Cambodian Living Arts in 1998. Today, CLA master musicians travel throughout Cambodia, teaching children the traditional music that would have otherwise been lost.
To learn more about Cambodian Living Arts, visit www.cambodianlivingarts.org.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
OVER THE COURSE OF TWO YEARS, I SPENT COUNTLESS HOURS with Arn Chorn-Pond—at my home during long, emotionally draining interviews; in New England, talking to his adoptive family; and in Cambodia, where we retraced virtually every step of his life during the three years, eight months, and twenty days of the reign of the Khmer Rouge.
With the help of a translator I interviewed Kha, Siv, Mek, and a number of Arn’s fellow survivors as well as “Missus Gotobed.” We even traveled to a remote part of the country still controlled by the Khmer Rouge, where we spent a day with Sombo. I asked Arn difficult, probing questions about his actions—the heroic and the horrific. I verified, as much as possible, the truth of his story.
Then I wrote his story as a novel. Like all trauma survivors, Arn can recall certain experiences in chilling detail; others he can tell only in vague generalities. For instance, he can describe the eerie click of a land mine being sprung and the hideous stink of a gangrenous leg. But he can’t remember the name of the little girl who lost her leg or when or where the attack took place. So I added to his recollections with my own research—and my own imagination—to fill in the missing pieces. The truth, I believe, is right there between the lines.
Sometimes, when Arn talks about his childhood, it’s as if he becomes that little boy all over again. He speaks with an urgency, a pure terror at times, that is palpable. But when he
talks about the way music saved his life, about his work to preserve the traditional music of Cambodia, about his belief in the power of forgiveness—he is absolutely radiant.
Trying to capture that voice was like trying to bottle a lightning bug. Every time I imposed the rules of grammar or syntax on it, the light went out. And so, in telling Arn’s story I chose to use his own distinct and beautiful voice. The end result, I hope, captures the courageous and unforgettable person he is.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I FIRST WANT TO HONOR THE CAMBODIAN FAMILY I HARDLY knew: my grandfather Chhit Leung; my grandmother Yeay Heur; my father, Chhit Jawn; my mother, Ki Savinh; and my aunt, who raised me, Kiet Yeum. I honor my living sisters, Chhit An and her family, Ny Loeung, Vichhai, Bo, Vichara, Chussets, Jong, and Lap; and Chhit Anne and her family, Phat, Pha, Ramon, and Ravi; and all my other family members both dead and alive.
With much gratitude, I want to acknowledge my adoptive American and Khmer family: my father, the late Peter L. Pond, and his children; my mom, Shirley Pond, and her children; together with all my other adopted Pond family Cambodian brothers and sisters.
And thank you to so many close friends and mentors who have, for all these years, supported and loved me, including the late Somdech Maha Ghosananda, a great friend of my adoptive father; Princess Buppha Devi of Cambodia, whom I met in the Thai refugee camps before I came to the USA in 1980, and who later welcomed me back to Cambodia when she had become Minister of Culture and Fine Arts; Judith Thompson and the Rev. Paul Mayer, who helped me found Children of War; all who helped me and my adoptive father start Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development, Judge Mark Wolf, Judy Jameson, and the late Father Cunningham, past president of Providence College; John Burt and Alan Morgan, my cofounders of Cambodian Living Arts (CLA); Charley Todd and Ingrid Martanova, past CLA copresidents; Dickon Verey, current CLA president; and all the many international CLA donors and advocates, particularly the original supporters, Martin Dunn, Scot Stafford, Wendy vandenHeuvel, Libet Johnson, Alison Van Dyk, Henry Chalfant, Alec and Anne White, Peter Gabriel and Dickie Chapel, Theary Seng, Phloeun Prim, the Burt family, and my teacher, Master Yuen Mek. Thank you to Jodi Solomon Speakers, which has represented me as a speaker for more than a decade; World Education, which embraced and gave structure to my original idea of saving the Cambodian master artists; and the Marion Institute, which manages Cambodian Living Arts today as one of their largest programs. I want to acknowledge the outstanding Cambodian musicians Chinary Ung, Sam Ang Sam, Him Sophy, and Khuon Sithisak; the artist ChathpierSath; the director of the documentary film The Flute Player, Jocelyn Glatzer; and the founder/director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, Youk Chang. My very special gratitude goes to Thon Seyma, Nanda Shewmangal, and Ker Lee.
Finally, I want to thank Patty McCormick, who has brought to life the characters in this book, many of whom were children who lost their lives at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. I want to honor them with this book, and I want them to know they live on in my heart, and now, in these pages.
Arn Chorn-Pond
Cambodia, 2012
About the Authors
PATRICIA McCORMICK is a former journalist who has won much acclaim for her compassionate approach to hard-hitting subjects. Her most recent book, PURPLE HEART, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2009, and her book SOLD was a National Book Award finalist. Other seminal books she has written are CUT and MY BROTHER’S KEEPER. Patty lives in New York with her family. You can visit her online at www.pattymccormick.com
ARN CHORN-POND has dedicated his life to humanitarian causes around the world, especially to young people in need. He founded Children of War, an organization that aids children held hostage by war and violence. He is the founder of Cambodian Living Arts, a group that helps preserve the traditional arts of Cambodia by pairing young students with the few master musicians who survived the Khmer Rouge. He also started Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development, which provides education and computer and job skills to children, farmers, land-mine victims, former prostitutes, and others. He has been the recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Amnesty International Human Rights Award, and the Spirit of Anne Frank Outstanding Citizen Award. Arn lives in Cambodia and spends part of the year speaking in the United States.
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Advance Praise for NEVER FALL DOWN
“One of the most inspiring and powerful books I’ve ever read. never fall down can teach us all about finding the courage to speak our truth and change the world.”
—ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU
“IN NEVER FALL DOWN, Patricia McCormick captures brilliantly Arn Chorn-Pond, the man, his heart, and his passion to make Cambodia and our world a better place for all. Arn’s against-all-odds survival story and McCormick’s crisp prose gripped me from the first page to the very end.”
—LOUNG UNG, author of FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER and LUCKY CHILD
“This is a powerful account of Arn’s incredible story, of how music saved his life and led him on a mission to save the soul and culture of his people. Despite the unthinkable inhumanity of his experiences with the Khmer Rouge, Arn remains one of the most gentle and inspiring people I have ever met.”
—PETER GABRIEL , musician
“Powerfully, hauntingly unforgettable.”
—ALA Booklist (starred review)
Also by Patricia McCormick
Purple Heart
Sold
My Brother’s Keeper
Cut
Copyright
This is a work of fiction based on a true story.
BALZER + BRAY IS AN IMPRINT OF HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS.
Never Fall Down
Copyright © 2012 by Patricia McCormick
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCormick, Patricia.
Never fall down : a boy soldier’s story of survival / Patricia McCormick. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Cambodian child soldier Arn Chorn-Pond defied the odds and used all of his courage and wits to survive the murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge.
ISBN 978-0-06-173093-1 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-173094-8 (lib. bdg.)
EPub Edition © MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780062114426
1. Cambodia—History—1975–1979—Juvenile fiction.
[1. Cambodia—History—1975–1979—Fiction. 2. Party of Democratic Kampuchea—Fiction. 3. Soldiers—Fiction. 4. Genocide—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M13679Nev 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011052211
CIP
AC
12 13 14 15 16 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
❖
FIRST EDITION
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