by Somaly Mam
The Khmer may scorn us as cannibals, but we Phnong see them as treacherous serpents who never move straight and will hurt you even if they have no need to eat.
Even though he was a Muslim, Grandfather gambled frequently. He would take his small wooden chess set wrapped in cloth wherever he went. He smoked cheroots of rolled-up tobacco leaves and drank rice alcohol every night. When he didn’t have enough money for drink, his eyes would grow hard. He would make me kneel and beat me with a long, hard bamboo stick that cut into my flesh and made me bleed with every blow.
I learned fear and obedience. Grandfather made me work for other people to earn him money. Every morning I had to fetch water from the river for several villagers. At first, it was almost impossible to climb up the steep riverbanks with the heavy pails balanced on a stick across my shoulders. I would slip and fall, the zinc buckets cutting into the backs of my legs. Sometimes the cuts became so infected I could hardly walk.
In the evening, I had to use stones to grind rice into flour before I could make it into noodles for dinner. That’s how it was in those days. If you had enough rice to eat, you were rich. We often didn’t. When that happened, Grandfather and I would root through the food that the other villagers had thrown out for their pigs.
Grandfather often rented out my labor during the day. I worked in the rice paddies, near the river. In the dry season we rebuilt the small clay walls that kept the water in, and when the river began to rise, we planted seedlings.
Sometimes men and boys would appear from the forest and help us harvest the rice. They were Khmer Rouge fighters. In those days there were still large groups of soldiers in the countryside. There was a new, Vietnamese-backed government in power, but the Khmer Rouge didn’t melt away into thin air. Instead, Pol Pot’s army retreated into hiding.
For a long time, there were a lot of skirmishes in the countryside between the Vietnamese-backed government army and the Khmer Rouge fighters. In Thlok Chhrov we often heard outbursts of gunfire and exploding land mines and saw soldiers or Khmer Rouge fighters running through the village. When this happened, the villagers always ran indoors. They were terrified.
One time a boy who often worked in the fields with me—who wasn’t right in the head—went looking for a buffalo at nightfall, even though there had been a lot of shooting. The next morning we found his body. His head had been cut off, and it had rolled into the scrub growth along the path.
I don’t know which side was responsible—the Khmer Rouge or the Vietnamese-backed government—and I didn’t really understand the difference. In those days, nobody talked in Cambodia. Nobody wanted to discuss the murder and starvation and death camps of the four years they had just lived through under the Khmer Rouge, or talk about how we were now living under Vietnamese occupation. They never talked about the Pol Pot time, the years of starvation and murder. It was as if they had blanked it out.
People learned from those years that they couldn’t trust anyone—friends, neighbors, not even their own family. The more you let people know about yourself—the more you speak—the more you expose yourself to danger. It was important not to see, not to hear, not to know anything about what was happening. This is a very Cambodian attitude toward life.
I never saw parents explaining things to their children. They told them what work to do and they beat them. Many children were beaten every day, as I was, and some of them were much younger than I. It’s mostly women, in these cases, who do the beating. Men hit more rarely, but when they do, it’s more dangerous because they’re so much stronger.
I dreamed of killing Grandfather, but it never occurred to me to slip away and try to make my way back home to the forest. That part of my life was gone forever—somehow it didn’t seem possible for me to make my way back. I had discovered his true nature and I hated him. But I owed this man—even though he starved and hurt me, I belonged to him. He accused me of bringing him bad luck. Since I’d been with him, he said, everything was going wrong with his business, and it was my fault.
Sometimes Grandfather would leave on long trips, and I would get relief. But most of the time he didn’t work—he would sit at home, or gamble, and leave it to me to bring in the money. If I washed the dishes before I went to get fresh water, he beat me because there was no water to drink; if I went to get fresh water before I did the dishes, he beat me because the dishes weren’t done. Sometimes I cried, but I grew accustomed to neutralizing my emotions. Who could I count on? People seemed to think it was normal that I should be beaten, since I was this small black savage, the lowest person in the village.
Most of the people I fetched water for never had a kind word for me. They were only angry when I came late, or if the water had spilled a little. But one elderly woman who lived alone was good to me. She used to fuss over my cut feet. One day she gave me a pair of blue rubber flip-flops—my first shoes. They rubbed uncomfortably between my toes, and they were very worn: the soles had two large holes and were so thin that thorns could pierce my feet through them. But they were shoes, and to me, that was really something.
From time to time I’d chat with her. I asked her why Cambodians were so horrible to the “black savages,” why they accused us of being cannibals. While I was living in my village with those supposed savages, no one had ever beaten me, but in Thlok Chhrov, the villagers beat their children for the most trivial things. So who were the savages?
I remember the misery I felt during that first dry season in Thlok Chhrov. Huge mounds of rice stalks had been piled into haystacks, and I began to burrow holes into them, making nests in which I could hide from Grandfather. Sometimes I slept there. It was dark and hidden, and I felt safe.
After a few months I found another place where I could take refuge. A younger boy who worked with me in the rice fields used to go and eat at the schoolteacher’s house, and he took me along too. Mam Khon, the village schoolteacher, was poor, but he and his wife looked after children. They had six children of their own, but they also fed a number of children who attended school but lived too far away to return to their homes every day. There were often twenty or more children in the house. It was a small house on stilts, made of plaited bamboo, with just one room. Everyone slept on the floor, and in the dry season the boys slept downstairs, on the bare earth, on beds laid out underneath the house.
Mam Khon’s wife, Pen Navy, made cakes she used to sell, and sometimes she would give me one. I began helping her with the cooking and I would eat over there sometimes. She fed us all, though the family was so poor they often didn’t even have rice, just rice soup.
Pen Navy was kind but stern, a rough authoritarian. She was half Chinese and had very pale skin. I thought she was beautiful. One afternoon while we were working she asked me why I didn’t go to school.
The village school was an open-air classroom, with a thatched roof to give shelter from the rain. Mam Khon and another teacher had started it up again after the Khmer Rouge regime fell. There were crowds of laughing children, all in uniform—a dark blue skirt or pants and white shirt. Of course, I longed to go there, but I didn’t think Grandfather would ever let me, and I told Pen Navy this. I called her “Aunty,” as a sign of respect. For a while, we left it at that. It was clear to us both that Grandfather had the right to stop me from going to school if he wanted to.
Mam Khon himself hovered over the household like an apparition—he was a gentle, good man, but he rarely spoke. One day he found me crying, because the other children had insulted me. He bent down—he was a tall man, with a strong face and clear, dark eyes—and took my face in his hands. “You’re not a savage,” he said. “You’re the daughter of my brother. My brother left to go to Mondulkiri with a woman and had a child there, and now I have found that child—it’s you.”
I had no idea whether or not I should believe him. But Mam Khon told me he would register me for school and said he would sort this out with Grandfather. Grandfather finally agreed that I could go to school as long as it didn’t cost him anything. School
itself was free in those days, because we were living under Communism, so he meant that I must still work for him and bring him money.
School was from 7:00 a.m. till 11:00 a.m. As long as I got up before dawn to fetch the water and bring home the money, I’d be able to wash and dress in time to leave. When I arrived, Mam Khon’s colleague, Mr. Chai, a dark-skinned man, pinched and dry, said I couldn’t register for first grade—I was already over ten and far too old.
Mam Khon told him a story to appease him. “She’s my daughter,” he said. “I lost her in the Troubles, but now I’ve found her. She’s mine.” This was how I got my name: Mam Somaly. Mam, like him. And Somaly, which he had chosen for me. I liked it.
I was so proud of my school uniform and was always careful to wash and care for it. The skirt and shirt were hand-me-downs, from Mam Khon’s daughters, but they were beautiful to me. At last, I felt I was like everyone else. But the others didn’t feel the same way. The village children called me “khmao,” which is like “nigger.”
In Thlok Chhrov the darker you were, the dumber you were—this was an established fact. But I found it wasn’t true. I studied and learned quickly. Soon I had learned mathematics and how to read and write Khmer.
There was no school in the afternoon, but we often had to do physical work there: every school was supposed to have a productive component, a vegetable garden or rice field. We planted jackfruit trees and coconut palms. I remember when we had to dig a huge pit in the schoolyard for a duck pond. It was hard, dirty work, but fun.
Sometimes in the afternoons we did military training in the neighboring field because there was still a war going on in the countryside. The soldiers taught us how to clean and handle rifles, how to shoot, and how to throw a hand grenade. We learned how to dig a deep pit with sharp spikes sticking up in the bottom of it—to capture men—and how to cover it with large dry leaves.
There were accidents. Sometimes during military training children were wounded. Once a hand grenade blew off a boy’s foot. They took him away, but he died. This was sad but didn’t seem to affect people a great deal. Death was random, normal—it was too routine to care much about one kid.
I remember the time the teacher asked us to list all the bad things that had happened to us under the Khmer Rouge. I had been living in the forest with the Phnong—nothing had happened to me under Pol Pot, so I gave back my paper blank. This teacher was Mam Khon’s colleague, Mr. Chai. To punish me, he made me kneel for an hour in the sun on the thorny, hardened skins of dried jackfruit. My knees bled.
But other than that there were no real punishments in school. I was never tied down and lashed, as Grandfather used to do to me when he was drunk and out of money.
When we did military training I always took the role of the Khmer Rouge, because I wanted everyone to be frightened of me. I hated everyone—not just the children in my class, but all Khmer. But I didn’t hate the Khmer Rouge fighters who sometimes emerged out of the forest to help us with the harvest, and I didn’t hate the government soldiers who taught us, either. Occasionally the soldiers would give us things to eat—their rations allowed for milk and sugar. There were times I would have sold my soul for a glass of milk.
After about a year it got better. I had a new best friend, Pana, a boy who also worked in the fields and lived in a nearby village. We used to walk home together, though his walk was longer than mine. One day I had just arrived at Mam Khon’s house when we heard a huge explosion from the direction Pana had taken. Mam Khon told me to take his bicycle, and I rode to Pana’s house, still too small to reach the bike saddle. He had exploded. A rocket-propelled grenade had hit him. Apparently a soldier some distance away had thrown his RPG launcher on the ground and it had gone off. Pana’s hand was in a tree, his arm was somewhere else—there was no body left, but I helped find all the pieces. Afterward I had nightmares about it. I went to the pagoda sometimes to pray for him. It was a long time before the nightmares went away.
Pana was my first friend and he was dead. I thought maybe I really did bring misfortune, just like Grandfather said.
In my second year in school, I came in at the top of the class. In those days, under Communism, the best students were given awards that were meaningful—bolts of cloth, milk, and rice. That year I received two bolts of cotton, blue and pink. I took them over to Mam Khon’s house and his wife helped me cut out and sew a pink shirt with a heart-shaped pocket and a blue skirt. These were the first new clothes I had ever had, and they were my most precious possessions. I kept that blouse until I was in my twenties, when it burned with Mam Khon’s house in a fire.
I began, shyly, to call Mam Khon “Father” a few months after he first took me to the school. It doesn’t sound so unusual in Khmer. It’s a term of closeness and respect, and other children called him “Pok” too. He was such a good man. He used to take me out fishing with him. He could never have survived on his minuscule schoolteacher salary, but he had a small, low rowboat we used to take up the Mekong in the evenings, trailing our nets along bamboo poles at different depths to catch various kinds of fish.
At around three in the morning we would tie up in midriver with other fishing boats—once you were away from the village, it was much too dangerous ever to sleep on the banks. Then, at dawn, we would make our way back and sell our fish on the shore. We gave the rest of the catch to his wife and daughters to ferment and make into prahoc sauce, or simply to dry. That way we could always trade dried fish for rice when the wet season came and fishing was difficult. There wasn’t much money in those days, and we traded for everything.
We never talked much—Father was a silent person. But we grew closer, spending time alone together on the river. He taught me how to mend nets and throw them flat and wide. I loved to be out on the Mekong, far from other people, even though I knew it wasn’t particularly normal for a girl to be doing this work. Father’s daughters never liked to fish. I suppose they thought it was disgusting, or maybe they were worried about keeping their pale skin out of the sun and the wind.
I tried to work hard for Father’s family so they would let me stay there as much as possible. Father had six children, and the older ones were both girls. Sochenda was the eldest, about fourteen, and Phanna was two years older than I was, but I felt they were so far ahead—in school, in life, in everything. They were pale and beautiful, and they cooked and washed and studied during the day, in the house with their mother. They had time for study and were allowed to use an oil lamp to study by. This seemed miraculous—when I studied, it was by moonlight.
Sochenda and Phanna and the younger children were not overjoyed to have me as their new sister—at first I took to calling them Sister, and Pen Navy Mother. Still, they were not horrible about it. Even Phanna, the little princess of them all—the prettiest and the palest skinned—could be very nice.
Mam Khon’s family was a traditional Cambodian family, by which I mean they never spoke about personal matters. It was not only inappropriate, it would give other people a hold on you. Children were taught that one should never give anything of oneself away, either in public or in private. Somebody who understands you can use your words to mock you or betray you. Confiding in someone means you are weak. Anything you say may one day be used against you. Better to hide what you think and feel.
There was a fortune-teller in the village, an old woman who lived near the riverbank in a hut even more derelict than Grandfather’s. Everyone respected her and went to her for advice. I must have been about twelve years old when Pen Navy took us all there one day. I think she really meant to ask about her daughters’ wedding prospects, which we all assumed were good—they were both so pretty and white—but the fortune-teller said Phanna would have an unlucky life with a lot of misfortune. Then she looked at me and said, “But the black one—she will have the three flags”—power, honor, and money. “She will travel in a plane and she will be a leader in the family. She will help you.”
The other children hooted with laughter. Phanna laug
hed the loudest. “You’ll have children so dark you won’t be able to see them at night,” she told me. It was good-humored, and I joined in the laughing. It just didn’t seem possible that this would be my destiny.
Phanna didn’t believe I was her sister in a real, biological sense or even her half-sister, and neither, to be honest, did I. I also wasn’t sure about the story that these were my cousins. Another time when Father found me crying I asked him about it, and he told me he really was my father’s older brother. He said his brother had left, and married a Phnong woman, and had a child, and that this man—his brother, my father—had a bad temper just like me. He held a mirror up and pointed to his eyes and mine, to his forehead and mine and said, “We are the same.”
Another time he told me, “Your uncle, your father, it doesn’t matter—the important thing is that we are together.” I suspect he knows what really happened to my real parents, but he has never talked to me about it. Finally, I have listened to his advice: I no longer ask.
My breasts were growing, and Grandfather began touching them. He would roll heavily across the sleeping pallet at night and I would feel his hands on me. When he did this, I ran. I was fast—even today, people in the village remember me running. I would run down to the river in the dark and sleep there, on the banks where we kept the fishing boats. The reflection of the moon on the water calmed me, and I would curl into the roots of a tree or crawl into Father’s boat and sleep on the nets. I continued to do my water duty and leave Grandfather the money that I’d earned, but I left as soon as possible in the morning, and during the day I tried always to be at school or at Father’s house.
