“Mak, Pa, God of the Earth, please protect us, please protect us.…” Ry prays hysterically. She grabs loose dirt and throws it over her head repeatedly.
Propelled by Ry’s hysteria, I begin to pray as she does. I call upon the spirits of Mak, Pa, and the God of the Earth, then powder my head and face with dirt and at the same time try to breathe.
Ry and I move behind the mound, in the opposite direction of the area where I spotted the Khmer Rouge. There lies a shallow-breathing man whose head is caked with blood and whose uniform is like that of the PARA soldiers.
Ry moves closer to him. “Uncle, where did you get hit? Can I help you?” Her voice is warm and gentle.
Slowly, the pale man speaks. “I’m hit in the temple. I’m thirsty, but maybe I’m okay. There’s a woman hiding by me, right there.” He points. “She is bleeding a lot, she got hurt in the stomach.”
I follow his hand, and there she is, pale, lying in a pool of blood. Realizing we could be next, I suggest to Ry that we move to lower ground to hide. She agrees, and when an artillery shell explodes nearby, Ry crawls swiftly, disappearing into a water hole near our shack, leaving me panicked.
On my stomach, I pull myself to the wall of the shack, hoping the fierce popping sounds of rifles will let up so I can join my family in the trench. Suddenly another artillery shell explodes. In a flash of horror, I thrust my body through the wall of the shack, crawling across it and down to the trench.
“God in heaven, please help us, help us. Save us from evil, from the bombs and bullets. Help our children…” shouts a woman in prayer as she lies on her stomach, the palms of her hands pressed together.
A Thai merchant whom I’ve seen before hides beneath a cave-like groove in the trench. Compulsively, he claws the earth that houses shards of broken glass, his hands soaked with bright red blood mixed with dirt.
“Samdech Aov [Father of Princes], please help me. Help us, help us, Samdech Aov…” an old woman prays, her palms pressed against her forehead.
Samdech Aov? I’m distracted from my silent prayers by this mention of the person to whom she’s praying: Prince Sihanouk. He’s a man, maybe once a king, but not a god. I stare at her in disbelief, and for a moment my mind tunes out the cries and the surrounding noises.
The shelling and firing stop. We sit up and look at one another, relieved, yet we’re not sure what to do. But soon some of us share our own fears, describing our close escapes. A woman, our neighbor, rambles, gesturing with her hands. “I didn’t know what happened, but suddenly the shelling scared me to death so that my spirit almost left me. But when I saw Ra crawling, I followed her. I kept my head close to the ground….”
Ra’s anxious face wants to tell her story. Everyone else’s is a mirror of the person who is sharing his or her story. Suddenly everyone’s head turns toward the woods where I spotted the Khmer Rouge. I’m startled to see men marching toward us, wearing black uniforms with checked scarves around their necks. Fastened to their shoulders are rifles, bazookas, and rocket-propelled grenades; their waists are decorated with rounds of ammunition.
Walking by, they study us. I watch them, bracing for the moment when they will shoot us. Everyone else begs for their lives. I don’t. I’m too petrified.
“We are not going to kill you!” a tall Khmer Rouge declares sternly.
“Thanks, loks, very much, thanks, loks, very much…” a neighboring woman says in tears, her hands pressed together, which she raises to her forehead many times.
Shortly after they disappear into the community of shelters, gunfire starts up again. Everyone cries as before. The Khmer Rouge are clashing with the PARA soldiers somewhere in the camp. Everyone climbs out of the trench, runs, and hunches down alongside the trench into the woods. For a second I don’t know where my sisters and brothers are. All I know is that I am running for my life. Suddenly a bullet whizzes by; I jolt forward, avoiding it, and when I look ahead, there’s Ry, holding Map’s hand, and Ra with Savorng. I pray to the spirits of Mak and Pa to protect me.
In a grove of trees, we rest. Other families do the same. On the second day Than, bang Vantha, and other men venture through the forest near Thailand. When they come back, they are excited. They say they’ve seen “Americans.” And these Americans told them that we will be picked up and taken inside Thailand.
A few days later, before we can even see anything, the sound of a truck shifting gears approaches. It emerges from tall trees along the road in a cloud of dust. Then another truck, and another. A total of three trucks, bow-roofed and covered with thick cloth. Everybody moves near the trucks. Women and children are helped into a truck in front of us. Men climb into it on their own. Quickly, the truck is filled. Fortunately, we are in it.
Leaning against the tailgate, I gaze at the disappearing landscape on the side of the Cambodian border through a cloud of dust. Then it hits me—I’m leaving my homeland. I silently bid good-bye to the spirits of my family. Good-bye, Mak. Good-bye, Pa…Chea…. We have to go….
18
Khao I Dang Camp
The truck caravan has been traveling on unpaved, dusty roads studded with trees and open fields, turning from one winding road to another. Then the trucks pull into a charred field with a dark, ashen ground containing blackened stumps as small as my thumb and as big as my wrist. They look like burned matchsticks.
The trucks pull out, driving away one after the other. A man informs us that the trucks are going back to get the rest of the people, and that food and water will be brought to us.
There is no shade to be found, so we stand barefoot on the hot ground, and my feet become darkened by the ash. Little children cry for water and none of us have any. Map and Savorng, too, are thirsty and hungry, their faces sad and sour, their brows knitted. More Cambodians are brought in those trucks, and later in the evening food and water are finally brought to us. At night we sleep on the ground, the sky our roof.
The next day the trucks bring us bamboo rods, thatches, and strings. Every man, woman, and child helps out in the building of huts, handling tasks ranging from carrying bamboo rods to bringing strings to the Cambodian men who are doing the construction work. Within days long-thatched huts with ten compartments for ten families are erected side by side, separated by an alley. To each one, a leader is assigned to represent the families, ensuring that they receive food and water rations. This camp is called Khao I Dang,* surrounded by a barbed wire fence near which a few Thai soldiers patrol. They make me feel safe from the Khmer Rouge.
We are given colorful plastic plates, bowls, water buckets, and blankets. These are our blessings, and I count them. Yet I wish for the day when we won’t have to ration food or water, when we can each just help ourselves to the steamed rice or soup and not have to worry that we might have taken too much.
A few weeks after our arrival, Thai merchants come to the fence, hovering by it, away from where the soldiers are patrolling. We’re hungry, and they bring cooked corn on the cob, eggs, and vegetables to sell to us. Word spreads from one hut to the other. At night boys and men run to the fence to trade, which results in one death—a boy is shot by the soldiers.
In a month, instead of people running to the fence to trade, Thai merchants bring their goods inside the camp. After midnight the shuffling of feet and the whispering of anxious voices echo along the alleys on both sides of our hut. They have to keep their activities secret from the Thai soldiers.
Every night there’s trading, then the chase along the alleys, followed by the search of people’s huts. Through it all, whether we are involved in the trading or not, we get harassed. But the people who suffer most are those Cambodian buyers who get caught, whom the soldiers kick and beat with the butt of their rifles. Eventually a makeshift market springs up during the daytime, filled with noodles, vegetables, and even beautiful blouses and sarongs.
Today our hut is filled with the sweet fragrance of curry spices cooked with freshly squeezed coconut milk, beef, onions, string beans, and yams. In a green plas
tic strainer on an empty water bucket are bundles of noodles arranged in a spiral formation, which are to be eaten with the beef curry, bean sprouts, and mint. Fifteen guests, mostly Ra’s and bang Vantha’s friends, are all crowded into our hut. With their legs folded, some sit on the mats spread on the earthen ground near Ra and bang Vantha. Others stand by the door.
Savorng, Map, Ry, Than, and I sit on the bamboo deck on which we sleep, watching Ra and bang Vantha being married by an old man, perhaps a former Buddhist priest. In the far corner of the bamboo deck is an offering Ra makes to the spirits of Mak, Pa, Chea, Avy, Vin, Tha, and our ancestors. Two bowls of curry. Two bowls of noodles. Two waters, and burning incense secured in a small tin can of rice. This offering is an invitation to the deceased to attend the wedding, and at the same time signifies that a favor is being asked of them to bring happiness and health, and whatever else Ra has prayed for.
“May Ara and Vantha have a happy marriage and lots of children,” bang Vantha’s closest friend, Uncle Lee, wishes. Everyone laughs.
Ra, twenty-two, smiles sheepishly. Her face is smooth, refined. Her hairstyle elegant with upswept curls, she looks like a Chinese movie star in her cream lace blouse from Phnom Penh, which she managed to keep safe during the Khmer Rouge time.
Uncle Lee smiles fervently, gazing at Ra and then at bang Vantha. He has been to our hut and has gotten to know our family, and we’ve gotten to know his, and he kept telling bang Vantha to marry Ra. Many times he warned bang Vantha in front of us, “If you don’t marry her, I’ll marry her myself. I’m not joking. What are you waiting for? She’s a good woman and from a good family.”
Bang Vantha and Ra sold their twenty-four-karat gold necklace and bought this food for their wedding celebration. Uncle Lee’s mom helped us purchase the meat, vegetables, and noodles as well as do the cooking.
When night falls and everyone is in bed, a soft, gentle voice whispers a song. A song of excitement, lust, and regret. It is Ra’s voice, coming from a room she made by hanging blankets on a separate deck opposite the place where Ry, Than, Savorng, Map, and I sleep.
Ooy…Excited. All my feelings aroused, nervous
On this honey night I regret my body
Hm…Regret, regret, a body that is like a blossoming flower
Now the bee has taken the sweetness, then he flies away
If he really leaves me, my heart will hurt
And there will be only tears
So, this is love, that I’ve known for the first night
Please be kind, kind to me
Honey, honey, a virgin would only be once,
Not twice.
We arrived in Khao I Dang three months ago, in November 1979. Now a private classroom has been set up to teach us English. I have to find a way to pay the monthly fee, which is 150 bahts.* It is a lot of money for me since I don’t have any salary, or any allowance except food rations. I decide to use the remaining gold I brought from Sala Krao and hadn’t turned over to bang Vantha. I will trade this gold for my education, I tell myself. I’m going to sell it, and it’s better that I keep the matter to myself.
Ra is alarmed that she has stopped menstruating. Lately she has been very ill, and so she stops going to the English class. Our women neighbors tell her that she’s pregnant. When a woman is pregnant, they say, she usually has morning sickness. She throws up, feels ill, and has wild cravings for certain foods like pickled green mangoes or tamarinds.
When you don’t get the things you want to eat, our next-door neighbor says, it is like a pain nagging at you. And Ra has these symptoms of a pregnant woman. Eagerly, she tells our neighbors what she craves, and the women laugh. Ry and I join them, and Ra smiles weakly.
Soon everyone is talking about a movie that will be shown. It’s about Christianity, our neighbor says, and Jesus Christ. I’d heard about Jesus Christ before from Chea when she learned about him back in Phnom Penh and had sung songs to Ry, Ra, and me. Now I want to know about him. How is he different from Buddha? When the day comes, I go with my family to an open field where there are already many people standing in front of a big screen secured on a mound.
After the movie starts, it begins to rain. First it drizzles, then it pours. A few people have umbrellas, but most of us stand, getting soaked in the rain. Men use their shirts to shield them from the raindrops. Most of the shivering children and adults leave, including my brothers and sisters. I shudder, chattering, hugging myself, crying as Jesus Christ’s hands and feet are being hammered to the cross. Though I don’t understand all that is being said, I’m deeply sad and feel connected to the movie, to Jesus Christ, and to the sorrow of those men and women who miss him.
I think of Pa and his execution.
Ra comes from the market, smiling exuberantly as she sets down the groceries she has bought. Her stomach is round, protruding like a small watermelon under her blouse. Ry and I are eager to find out what’s on her mind. What is making her this happy and silly?
Ra smiles, rubbing her hands together to display her excitement, then walks away to the cooking area. Tired of being in suspense, I demand excitedly, “Ra! What is it? What are you smiling about?”
“Do you want to know who I saw in the market today?”
“Who?” Ry and I speak at the same time.
“I saw Aunt Eng [Pa’s cousin]. When I saw her, I thought, Who is that? I’ve seen her before. Then I knew. Do you want to know what she told me?”
“What?” I ask.
Aunt Eng, Ra says, has found out that Uncle Seng, who left Cambodia two days before the Khmer Rouge’s takeover, is now living in America. She has written a letter to a friend of hers who lives in California, asking her if she knows him. Apparently, her friend wrote back and said that she indeed knows of a Leng Seng, who lives in Oregon. Aunt Eng has asked him to sponsor her family in America, and now he’s working on the paperwork from there. And we, Ra is eager to add, can also go to America.
I jump up and down like I’m on a spring. I smile, taking in this wonderful, unbelievable news hungrily. After all these years of loss and hardship, I reflect, we receive this news—Uncle Seng, Pa’s only brother, is alive, and he will bring us to America. Oh, God, thank you. I jump, humming and laughing.
After two months of studying English, I have to give it up. Ra has been having cravings. Some nights she tells me and Ry that she cries, wishing she could have these foods. Since she doesn’t have any money left from the sale of her gold necklace, she often saunters in the market just to look at the food she wants, wishing she had money to buy it.
I can’t stand seeing Ra’s sad face and decide to give her all the money I have left from selling my gold. Ra’s eyes glow when I hand her the money. She holds the money close to her heart and smiles. Ry gazes at me, surprised, happy. Later we all go to the market and buy whatever Ra is hungry for, and she is the happiest pregnant woman I’ve ever seen.
One sunny day Savorng, Map, and I are waiting in line for our water rations. Two girls, one about my age and the other about Savorng’s, walk up to us and call Savorng “Peang.” The younger one touches Savorng’s hand and smiles. Savorng pulls back, striding toward me. The girl asks Savorng where she’s living. Savorng squints, staring at the two girls in bewilderment, then looks at me with a frown on her face, as if asking me to help her.
Curious, I ask them how they know Savorng. The older girl tells me a story about Savorng’s family. Back in a village in Cambodia, after Savorng’s parents died, a Khmer Rouge family took her in and raised her. When the Vietnamese soldiers invaded Cambodia months ago, this family fled to the jungle, leaving Savorng behind. Later, as the other families in the village were leaving for the New Camp, she followed them and came to live with an old woman in the camp, who asked her to beg for money and food, and it was then that Ra and bang Vantha met her and brought her to our shack.
Now Savorng is okay, I tell the girls. She lives with my family and we have renamed her. The girls are happy to see her and hear that she’s doing well. Savorng s
teal glances at them, then her eyes return to the gravel ground.
As we wait for the water to be distributed, I think about Savorng’s life. About her dead parents, and the Khmer Rouge family who took her in and raised her. It is interesting how fate has brought her to us, who are also orphans. I’m sad to learn of her story, but relieved that she’s with us, and hope that perhaps she’ll get to go to America, too.
Khao I Dang quickly expands. New huts have been built to accommodate the influx of people being brought in. Lately, rumors spread among us that a lot of people are leaving Cambodia and are now living on the border. I am sad that Cambodia has become a hollow shell with fewer people in it, even though I understand the need to abandon our homeland as war and oppression have been in our lives far too long.
Some people, who either can’t wait to be brought into Khao I Dang or who will never have a chance to come here because of their arrival status on the border, have paid other Cambodians to smuggle them in. One of them is Uncle Aat, bang Vantha’s cousin from Kompong Cham province. For each Cambodian smuggled in, a fee must be paid to the Thai soldiers who patrol the camp.
To supplement our meager food rations, Than, at sixteen, decides to go with some older men to the frontier and smuggle people in. Later he operates on his own, since he knows the way to the New Camp and has learned enough Thai to communicate with the soldiers. When he is gone longer than he told us he would be, I worry. I can see him being shot, and having his money taken from him. When he returns, I’m relieved, gazing at him with admiration for his bravery and his help in acquiring more food for our family. Later, when Uncle Aat and bang Vantha go with him, I sleep better.
When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Page 27
