When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge

by Chanrithy Him

  Just as humans rise to work, so do birds, ready to start their day. Already they are up, flying like black waves. They maneuver over rice paddies as if trying to select the right ones to feast on. As soon as they land, children whose assigned fields are being invaded run toward the birds. Their heads bob between the heads of the rice. They give chase. They shout “Shoo! Shoo!” Their little arms flail in the air.

  The birds take off, making fierce chirping sounds as they fly to other rice fields—mine. Then I too run toward them. “Shoo! Shoo!” I shout, joined by a chorus of other children. My hands thrown in the air to scare them.

  Laughter erupts in the air as the birds fly from rice paddy to rice paddy. Now it is like a game of land-and-chase. They chirp, we laugh. Beads of sweat roll down my forehead. Our laughter is food for my soul. It has been a long time since I had some. I feel revived—like a little girl again, the thirteen-year-old that I am.

  With improved food rations, better than in the village, I think of my family, wishing they were here. Every night I wish fervently that they could enjoy what I’ve been having: steamed rice and soup with fish and vegetables. I wonder where Ra is now, whether she is still at that camp bordering Zone 3, or whether she has been transferred elsewhere. I wish Avy, Vin, Pa, and Mak were still alive. Mak would have been happy just to have rice and salt. “Having solid rice and salt is like going to heaven,” I remember her saying, her eyes filled with longing.

  As the night sets in, lying on my earthen bed made of a pile of hay in a small shack, I think of Mak. Images of her pale, swollen face at the Choup hospital pop into my head as in a dream. It seems only days ago when Map and I visited her, and now she’s gone. Since I feel better, my mind allows me to go back in time to be with her again. Drifting into sleep, I yearn to talk with her, wishing she were here with me.

  Mak appears, sitting across from me and Map at the end of an oaken table that resembles Pa’s medicine desk at our Phnom Penh home. Below hazy fluorescent lights, I’m spellbound by her presence—her complexion is pretty and healthy, just like it was back in Phnom Penh.

  As she gazes at me, I notice the deep sadness in her beautiful face, framed by her neatly combed black hair. I stop feeding Map rice gruel, place the spoon on his plate, and get up from the chair. I pad gently toward her, but before I can say anything, she floats away toward the ceiling. She begs:

  “Athy, please take care of your little brother. Feed him food, koon Mak. Look after p’yoon for Mak…. Saniya Mak [Promise Mak].”

  “Mak, I want—”

  “Saniya Mak,” Mak interrupts me before I can finish what I wanted to say. Her face is despondent, and I look at her searchingly.

  “I promise…” I answer, wanting so much for the deep sorrow in her face to disappear. I want to tell her why I couldn’t go take care of her at the Choup hospital. But as soon as I make my promise to her, she vanishes as suddenly as she appeared.

  “Mak, please come back…” I cry, looking for her.

  Eyes open, I awake in the darkness. Where am I? I ask myself. As I turn my head, the soft sound of the crushing hay beneath my back speaks. Then I know: I’m in a shack, not in my Phnom Penh home with Map or Mak.

  Mak was real. She talked to me! Mak, did you come to tell me what you couldn’t before you died. Oh, Mak, please talk to me again. I’ll be waiting.

  But she doesn’t come; instead, a firm voice awakens me.

  “Get up. It’s time to work.” The shack is rattling.

  The familiar shadow of Comrade Thore Meta, my brigade leader, peeks into my shack. When I crawl out of the shack, she disappears. It is early in the morning, still twilight. Another day running along the rice fields, I think tiredly. At least there are no informants to police me. I’m on my own all day with the other children.

  Thore Meta, a neradey, the Khmer Rouge from the southwestern part of Cambodia, is unlike my former brigade leaders. She has never scolded me when I’m slow to wake up for work. She is lenient and understanding. She is, perhaps, in her early twenties, with a calm face and chubby cheeks. Her eyes are big and dark. Her complexion is white, in striking contrast to her new black uniform, lighter than many neradey women’s. Hugging her cheeks and earlobes is her naturally curly black hair. She’s short, and so is her neck. It looks as if she doesn’t have one, as if her head is attached to her shoulders. Though she’s not pretty, her kindness makes her more approachable.

  Months ago, rumors spread of vicious killings that took place soon after the neradey arrived in Daakpo and other villages around Battambang province (in the western part of Cambodia). Their aim was to take over the leadership here and to purge local Khmer Rouge leaders. Even though Angka forbids people from talking, word of its orders to execute these leaders spread like the pungent smell of rotten rats. This killing calls to mind a Cambodian saying: Domrei gnob khom yok chong-ey tao kroob. “An elephant dies, and one tries to cover it with a flat basket.”

  That “elephant” was Ta Val, people said. He was the top Khmer Rouge leader who oversaw the building of irrigation canals and dams in the western part of Cambodia. He, among others, was captured, placed in a sack, and then run over by a tractor. His crime, the neradey charged, was building a dam toward Thailand so that he and his conspirators could escape. Shocked by the news, I wondered why Ta Val and others wanted to escape. What did they fear? How terrifying it must have been for them in their last moments, as the muffled sound of the roller approached, quivering the earth, then crushing them to death. The neradey are brutal, people say, but I’m grateful that Thore Meta doesn’t fit that description.

  Many rice fields turn golden. The head of the rice weighs down the stalks. Women have been sent here to reap the crop and process the unhusked rice. Their huts sprout near the wooden bridge like mushrooms after a drizzling night. One used to process rice is half a mile from my shack. Behind it, women winnow pounded rice. Their hands tilt rice baskets, one at the back, the other in front. Their fingers spread at the brims, so that the husks fall freely and separately from the white rice.

  Inside the hut, other women sift the winnowed rice on a large mat. Diligently, they swirl flat round baskets in circular motions; the grains of rice filter through the tiny holes. Before the evening ration I am hungry, so I linger at the entrance of this hut. Since no one scolds me, little by little I move to squat by the rice piles, then my hand pinches a few grains and shoves them in my mouth. Other children follow, stealing glances at the women. In return, the women flash us warnings as their hands keep busy.

  “If you keep it up, you’ll get diarrhea,” warns a woman in charge who is known as Comrade Murn. She’s in her fifties, stocky with dark skin and black hair covered by an old cotton scarf.

  I’m relieved to hear a caring warning, and not a scold or a slap. Diarrhea later, but hunger is now. My teeth grind away at this new crop, producing a sweet powdery flavor in my mouth. We take whatever amount Comrade Murn tolerates, shoving it in our pockets or whatever we have, a scarf, or our hands.

  As the weather gets hotter, the rice ripens quickly. Bags of pounded rice lean against the outside walls of the hut. The women are twice as busy, working up a sweat as they sift, winnow, and bag piles of processed rice into burlap sacks. Suddenly a woman shoves her sifting basket aside, gets up, then cries, “Oh, I can’t hold it anymore! I’ll pee in my sarong.” She staggers as if her legs are numb from sitting too long.

  “Who forbids her from peeing?” says Comrade Murn, chuckling. Her eyes glow, lines form around her dusty temples as her hands sift vigorously. Other women glance at her, their mouths flashing a weak smile.

  I stare at the lonely basket sitting on the rice pile and the spot vacated by the woman. On an impulse, I jump into the woman’s area, scoop the winnowed rice into the basket, and swirl it. The sifting around me stops. The only thing I hear is the sound of my own sifting basket. I fear Murn will soon scold me.

  “Look, look at her! Young like that, yet she knows how to sift rice like an adult,” Comrade Murn s
ays in amazement. “And she’s not even a farm kid.”

  Koon la-aw (good child) Comrade Murn calls me, and wonders from whom I learned this skill. I gaze briefly at her, then at everyone. I learned it from watching my mom, I explain.

  After Pa was executed in Year Piar, I wanted to learn the ways of farm life so I could help Mak. I watched her process rice from start to finish. One day I thought I was ready to make use of my observations. I thought I had gotten everything down, so I told Mak that I wanted to help her, and she let me. As I sifted the rice, I felt awkward. The rice in the basket didn’t go in a circular motion as it did with Mak. The basket was bigger than me, Mak concluded, and I needed practice. I perspired profusely as I struggled with the weight of the rice and the size of the basket.

  Mak beamed and said, “Koon, swirl the basket, not your koot [butt]. Look at you. Your face is red, your veins bulging. You look like you’re going to the lavatory.” Her hands reached out to take the basket from me, but I wasn’t done learning. I lightly pushed her hands away and resumed my sifting practice. Mak laughed at my awkwardness. It had felt good to hear her laughter.

  Comrade Murn grins, glancing at me, and so does everyone there. I’m surprised to be the center of attention. I feel a sense of connection with these people. Suddenly I feel as if they’re my family, a surrogate family.

  I’ve saved up rice in a bag and salted fish in a tin can, hidden in my shack for Map and Chea in Daakpo. Chea has been staying in Daakpo to look after Map, Ra had told me when we were in the labor camp near Zone 3. Ry is still at the hospital and Than has been sent away, Ra didn’t remember where. Sometimes I wish I could just run to Daakpo and take this food to them. I imagine how happy they would be.

  I would say to Chea, “Chea, chasing birds away from rice is not hard. Even you would like working as a scarecrow. It’s not like building irrigation canals.”

  Chea would be delighted with me, I imagine, like a proud mother.

  The harvest reaches to full speed. Men from various villages will be here, Comrade Murn tells me, to take processed rice to their respective villages. Perhaps someone from Daakpo can take the rice I’ve saved to my family, she suggests, somehow knowing I’ve been saving the rice for Map and Chea.

  A few days later a caravan of oxcarts arrived by the time I’d finished with the day’s work. In the nearby field are skinny cows eating small stacks of hay set in front of them, as if their food is also rationed. Their bodies are covered with sheets of skin, their hip-bones protrude like their eyeballs.

  Quietly I pad beside the oxcarts. I prowl, peeking beneath each oxcart, where exhausted men are resting. They are sound asleep, arms bent over their foreheads to shield them from the sun. But at one oxcart an old man stands untying a rope from it. Something about him is familiar.

  “Excuse me, are you from Daakpo?” I ask in a soft voice. The man turns, his eyebrows creased as if to say, Who are you?

  “That’s right,” he says, pausing from untying the rope.

  “Are you Ta Barang?” My memory speaks. “You used to work in a sugar place in Daakpo, didn’t you?”

  “How do you know my name?” he asks.

  “Do you remember Chea? I’m her younger sister!” I say, surprisingly excited.

  A year ago, I tell him, he was kind to Chea and me. At the Daakpo sugar factory where palm sugar is processed for the whole village, he let us scrape white bubbles of sugar formed atop the rim of a huge, heavy pot in which the liquid palm sugar was being reduced to a dark brown, viscous sugar. “Sometimes you gave Chea sugar to bring home. Other times you let her dip yucca roots in the sugar until they were cooked and coated with sugar. Chea said you were the nicest person there.”

  Ta Barang glances over his shoulder. “In this era,” he says, “when you are kind to people, you get punished for it. They took me to reform and replaced me with someone else who is good for Angka. Niece, now our country is so different; it’s hard to understand.” Ta Barang sighs, but agrees to take the rice and salted fish to Map and Chea.

  A month later, after most of the rice has been harvested, my brigade is sent back to Daakpo. We are told to go back to our families until we are needed again. After a long march, I see a glimpse of my hut. Suddenly two skinny people come running, as if the hut spits them out. It’s Chea and Map! Chea dashes in front, scrawny-looking, with Map behind her, his stomach bulging out, a sign of starvation. Carefully, like frail old people, they walk on sticklike legs. Chea manages a smile that conceals pain. Her arms reach out to embrace me.

  “When did you get to the village?” she asks, her voice a mixture of excitement and sorrow, tears in her eyes. Map looks at me eagerly, yet his face is tired.

  “I just got here, Chea. Hey, Map,” I say softly, reaching to touch his head. Having spent countless days thinking of them, I’m jubilant, so grateful to see them. But my excitement is short-lived. Chea’s and Map’s depleted faces shock me. I have forgotten that their lives have been so different from mine.

  In the alcove of our hut in the cool evening, Chea, Map, and I sit, facing each other. Map sits close to Chea like a child wanting to be cuddled by his mother. Chea’s fervent, sunken face possesses that motherly quality. I ask her questions, eager to find out if the rice rations have been better in Daakpo since the crops turned out well this year.

  “Nothing changes,” Chea says dismally. “We’re still eating rice gruel, not even enough, mostly water. Every day all bang wishes is to have solid rice just for one day. Only for one day…. When bang asks the cooperative leader why we don’t get more rice, he says most of the rice is sent to people in battlefields who build padewat.”

  Tears flood her eyes. “Life is difficult, Athy. One season is just like another. I’ve been praying for the harvesting season to come so that we can have more rice. But when it comes, the rice ration is still the same, still little. When life continues to be this terrible, Athy, bang just wants to die. I…” Chea wipes away her tears. “I just want to close my eyes and die. If I live on, life doesn’t have meaning. No meaning at all. Except to live for that day just to have more rice, and that’s all.”

  Chea’s tears drip like raindrops. My own burn my eyes. Map looks at her through his tears, then his hand reaches out to her. It is deeply hurtful to see her suffering. Her pain compounds Map’s. His four-year-old sunken face looks wounded. Amid all this, I remember what I’ve been wanting to ask Chea: about the rice and salted fish, my promise to Mak.

  The thought of it lightens my spirit. “Chea, did Ta Barang bring the rice and fish I sent you and Map? Did he?”

  She looks at me, then at Map as if trying to find the right words. Calmly she says, “He brought only fish, a little bit of fish.”

  “How much?” My brow furrows. “I sent a bag of rice, this much rice, and a can of salted fish, this much to the rim.” I show her with my hands.

  “Athy, he apologized that he ate all the rice and most of the fish,” Chea explains. “He was so hungry and he couldn’t help himself.”

  “No! It wasn’t for him, Chea—” I wail, unwilling to believe what Chea has just told me. “I saved it for Map. For you. I promised Mak, Chea. She came to me. In my dream. She begged me…. Ta Barang, ta aakrak [bad old man].” My head hurts, my chest is stuffed with deep pain. I feel so betrayed.

  Chea hugs me tightly. “Athy, don’t say that, p’yoon srey,” she whispers into my ear. “He was hungry—he’s only human. If you were him you’d have done the same.”

  “But it wasn’t for him, Chea, not for him….”

  12

  Though a Virgin, I’m Called an Old Man

  New Internationalist

  April 1993

  “Return to Year Zero”

  Year Zero was the dawn of an age in which, in extremis, there would be no families, no sentiment, no expression of love or grief, no medicines, no hospitals, no schools, no books, no learning, no holidays, no music: only work and death.

  The wind howls. Thunder rumbles with low popping sounds,
followed by a deafening clap. It trails away in the sky, then it starts all over again. The hut rustles, the panels of the thatched wall flapping. Dense raindrops strike madly against the hut. The monsoons are already here. The summer of 1978 has already flown away. Chea cuddles close to Map and I close to her. On this night, I’m grateful to have the warmth and comfort of my own family. As soon as the beating rain dies down and the wind loses its breath, I fall asleep, snuffed out like a candle. A moment later I’m jolted by a voice. “Get up, go to work,” an ugly, blotched-faced informant bellows.

  I dread these days. I have to meet other children at the sahakar, then the workday begins. As I’m getting out of the hut, I see that the sky is still dark. The night rain freshens the air. The cold breeze makes me shiver. I wish we could go back to sleep, cuddling closely, sharing our warmth.

  Chea curses under her breath. Something about Angka going to hell. I hope they will, but I’m too tired to be angry at Angka now. The sky is cloudy. Along the dike that snakes between vast flooded rice paddies, I walk behind a long line of children and adults, marching off to salvage rice seedlings. By this time of year the rice paddies along the dike would normally be green with thriving seedlings, but now they are all covered with water. Everywhere, as far as the eye can see. It looks as if a giant lake has been created overnight. Only the tips of the seedlings peek out of the water. It looks like there are more heavy rains to come.

  The next day is another gloomy day. Wet ground. Overcast sky. The drizzle turns into a pouring rain. The line of children in front of me halts, backs up. The line moves again. Everyone walks around a person who squats on the dike, her head resting on her arms, which are wrapped around her knees. I look at her shivering body, covered with her faded cotton scarf. Her shuddering cry is familiar.