Survival in the Killing Fields Read online

  I don’t know when he stopped beating me, because I lost consciousness. When I came to, my feet and hands were still tied to the lumber, but I had rolled over on my side. The sunlight was coming in at a low angle over the rice fields. It was late afternoon. My mother and my favourite sister, Chhay Thao, had come out of the house. They untied me, and they asked me what they could do.

  I lay on the ground without moving. They stood over me. Gradually I collected my thoughts.

  ‘You didn’t trust me,’ I said slowly. ‘You treated me like an enemy of the family. So don’t bother helping me.’

  My mother knelt next to me.

  ‘Your will is still strong, eh?’ she said gently.

  They helped me upstairs and led me to my bed. I slept. But that evening I woke up puzzled and angry. What had I done to deserve a beating like that? I loved sports. I loved to get out of the house and play as often as I could. And yes, I got in fights with other boys. If that made me bad, if they were going to beat me for that, they could go ahead. That was their right. But I hadn’t stolen anything. I didn’t need any money. There was nothing I wanted enough to steal from my family. If they didn’t trust me, how could I live with them under the same roof? How could I accept their authority?

  Early the next morning I ran away.

  My first stop was Samrong Yong’s open-air market. It took up one corner of the village’s only road intersection, across from the garrison of French-backed troops and their tall stone watchtower.

  The market was the centre of village commerce and gossip. Women thronged the aisles, bargaining, pinching the neat piles of fresh vegetables and fruits, peering critically at the basins of live, wiggling fish. Vendors sold grilled chicken and rice confections wrapped in banana leaves. At restaurant stalls, customers sat down to order bowls of soup prepared to their liking. I couldn’t buy anything, though. No money. I talked with people I knew and kept an eye out for my family.

  In the early afternoon, an old passenger bus rolled into the lot next to the market. The driver was a distant cousin, a man whose name was Kruy.

  ‘Uncle, Uncle!’ I called to him.2

  ‘Well! Ngor Haing, eh? What happened to you?’ Uncle Kruy said to me from the driver’s window.

  I came around to the door of his bus. ‘My father beat me last night for stealing playing cards from the store. But I didn’t steal them.’

  ‘Well, come along, then. I’ll give you a shirt to put over all those bruises.’ I got in, and off the bus went with a roar of its diesel engine as Kruy shifted through the gears.

  Kruy and his wife lived south of my village, in central Takeo province. He was the sole owner and operator of the rickety passenger bus. Every day he made a trip from his village to Phnom Penh and back again along National Route 2, stopping in the marketplace of every village and town along the way.

  At his house Kruy gave me a shirt and a straw hat. The next morning I began working for him, collecting fares. It was unbelievably noisy inside the bus: The pounding of the worn-out suspension on potholes had loosened all the bolts and rivets. Passengers squeezed in next to one another on the hard wooden benches until they were almost on each other’s laps. Just when it seemed the bus could take no more, Kruy slowed and stopped for an old wrinkled monk standing beside the road with his parasol. The monk climbed up into the bus and headed for the seats in the back. The passengers shifted over to accommodate him and, amazingly, there was plenty of room. Everybody knew how important it was to treat monks with respect. It was particularly important that women not touch them, even accidentally, because monks had to be pure. And it would have been unthinkable to ask monks to pay fares. They rode free. Even I knew that, on my first day.

  When he saw that I knew how to collect fares and count money, Kruy put me on top of the bus, in the luggage rack, and made me responsible for cargo. The luggage rack was piled higher than my head with packages and suitcases and bicycles and furniture. There were wicker baskets with live pigs grunting inside, baskets with chickens and ducks clucking and quacking, tightly woven baskets with live snakes and baskets with produce for the Phnom Penh market. At every stop, I lowered cargo from the roof to the outstretched arms of its owner on the ground, and reached down to pull the new cargo up.

  I also helped with bribes. When Kruy came to government checkpoints, he downshifted, pulled over to the side of the road and stopped, while I scampered down the ladder on the back of the bus, adjusted my hat and walked into the sentry’s hut.

  Inside, the sentry pretended to scrutinize the bus for an overload, or for communist guerrillas, or for whatever he might choose to think was wrong with it. I took my hat off respectfully and placed it on the table next to his clipboard, moved the hat so the riel notes in the hatband fell out and pushed the money under the clipboard with my hand.

  ‘Your bus does not look so bad today,’ the sentry said in a bored voice. ‘All right, you may go on your way.’ Kruy was already revving the engine. The wooden bar across the road lifted on its rope pulley, I ran for the bus and hopped on the ladder on the back as Kruy drove on.

  I loved my new life. I had no shoes, no change of clothing, and didn’t care. As long as I was working on the bus I didn’t have to think about the beating my father had given me. The problem was, the bus stopped in the Samrong Yong market twice a day.

  When fate caught up with me I was lying on my back on the luggage rack, watching the plume of dust rising behind. The engine noise changed as Kruy downshifted. As the bus slowed I turned my head to look forward. The road was so narrow that two vehicles could pass only if they pulled over to the shoulder and drove at a crawl. A vehicle was coming from the other direction.

  It was a black and brown Ford truck.

  Uncle Kruy stopped the bus so that his window was directly opposite the window of the truck. My father leaned across and spoke with him.

  ‘Your son is up on the luggage rack,’ I heard Kruy say.

  ‘Yes, I’d heard he was working for you. Tell him his mother wants him to come home,’ my father’s voice said.

  ‘No problem,’ said Kruy. ‘No problem at all. Tell me, brother, did you hear the king’s in Europe, negotiating again? Do you think he can get the French out this time?’

  ‘I wish him luck,’ said my father. ‘If we have real peace maybe the times will be good and I can get more customers.’

  ‘Well, if anyone can get those foreign bastards out the Royal Father can . . .’

  I buried myself deep in the cargo, next to a basket of ducks. I didn’t want to talk to my father. He didn’t want to talk with me. All he really cared about was his business, just like the rest of the grown-ups. Kruy too. It was all indirect, saying that my mother wanted me to come back. Probably they needed my help at home.

  The next morning I dropped off the bus when it stopped at my village and walked warily toward my parents’ house. Luckily, the truck wasn’t there. When my mother saw me she began crying. She grabbed my wrist and she wouldn’t let me go, even when I made a show of pulling away.

  That wasn’t the end of the problems with my family. Not at all. But it was the end of that stage of my rebellion. It was also the end of bartering in the countryside or working for Kruy. Something marvellous had happened: just by negotiating, without firing a single shot, King Sihanouk obtained Cambodia’s independence from France. Wild, spontaneous celebrations broke out in the streets of my village. Now we Cambodians could govern ourselves, as we always wanted to do. Now we would have peace, and perhaps we could prosper.

  One of Sihanouk’s first steps as sovereign leader was to increase the number of free public schools. I entered primary school, sitting with twelve- and fourteen-year-old boys just learning how to read, like me. In that first year I passed through four grades. The next year I passed through two more. From there I went to a public secondary school in the provincial capital, Takeo. In this school most of the classes were in French, because France still culturally dominated the thin layer of Cambodian society that was ed
ucated or rich.

  I did well in this school, rising quickly to the category for gifted students. One of the reasons was a teacher named Chea Huon, a thin, pale, stoop-shouldered Chinese intellectual. Chea Huon believed in social equality. He invited all the students who wanted extra tutoring to come to his house on weekends for free classes. He was very kind to me. I didn’t know about his politics then, and I never imagined the strange and fateful circumstances under which we would meet later in life.

  In the last year of this school we had to take exams. Those who passed could begin the next stage of education, lycée, the equivalent of high school. I studied and studied. I prayed to Buddha that I would get good marks. When I passed, with high marks, there was only one thing to do.

  I shaved my head. I shaved my eyebrows. For the few weeks required by tradition, I became a monk. In the induction ceremony, held in a wat or temple outside Samrong Yong, my parents put their palms together in the gesture of greeting and submission that we call sompeah. I nearly died of nervousness – my parents, sompeahing me! But they were only saluting the Buddha in me, the holiness that resided in me while I wore a monk’s robes.

  Each morning I walked barefoot in a line of monks, keeping my eyes fixed on the pavement, silently chanting prayers. Housewives put rice in the bowl I carried in my shawl. The days were spent doing chores around the temple and in prayer. We novice monks sat in the temple on the floor with our palms together in the sompeah and our feet respectfully tucked to the side, because pointing our feet is impolite in our culture. We prayed facing the altar, which filled an entire wall. At the base of the altar were flowers and brass boat figurines with votive candles and sticks of incense inside. Above were statues of Buddha in ascending rows, gleaming softly in the candlelight. The largest of the Buddhas sat highest up and farthest back, looking down with a tranquil and mysterious expression.

  Buddha was not a god but a wise human being. He left a series of steps for us to follow to lead a correct and moral life. He taught that after life comes death, and after death comes rebirth and life again, on and on in a cycle. If we follow Buddha’s guidance, the next life will always be better than the last. Only by following his teachings can we ultimately escape the cycle of birth and suffering and rebirth, which we Cambodians call kama and other countries call karma.

  A wrinkled old monk made sure I understood the essential points. ‘What is holy and divine,’ the monk explained, with his kindly smile, ‘is life itself, as it runs through your family. You must understand this clearly. It takes a father and a mother to bring a child into the world. They protect him when he is young. It is the duty of the child to honour the parents and to protect them when they grow old. You must also honour all the children of the family who came into the world ahead of you. You must always serve and protect them. Obey your elders, boy. If your family is happy, you will have a good life. If all the families are happy, then the village will be happy. If all the villages are happy, then the land will be strong and content.’

  I believe what the old monk taught me. And everything he said came true, only in reverse. My family was unhappy, my village was unhappy, and so was the country. And now I look back at it all and think about the connections, and wonder whether I myself was partly to blame.

  2

  Education

  With the country at peace, my father began to make more money from his trucking business and from the dry-goods store. In 1964 he bought a lumber mill located between Samrong Yong and Phnom Penh, just off National Route 2. By Cambodian standards the mill was technologically advanced – that is, the saw was driven by a motor rather than pulled by hand. But the motor, which had been taken out of a jeep, still had a manual crank starter.

  The first time I tried to start the engine the crank went around for a couple of rotations until it built up compression. Then it kicked back suddenly in the other direction, nearly breaking my wrist. In a rage, I pulled the crank off and threw it at the engine as hard as I could. Water spurted from the radiator. My mother’s dog, a miniature poodle, barked and yipped behind me. I turned around and kicked the dog, which sailed off in the air. My father saw the whole thing. He didn’t say a word. He just turned his back on me and sighed, shaking his head as he sadly walked away.

  I had been a monk but had not yet learned the monks’ self-control.

  The mill was a success from the time my father took it over. Soon he had added trucks to haul the logs to his mill. He hired men to cut trees for him in distant forests. He bought a place to live near the mill so he could spend most of his time working. Papa knew exactly what he wanted, which was to become a rich merchant, to have his sons working for him, and to have grandsons sitting on his knees when he grew old. He gave generously to charities, like the temples and the Chinese protective association, because it was expected of him, but his view of the world was fixed and narrow.

  One of the things my father could not do was read and write Khmer, the native language of Cambodia, though he spoke it fluently. My older brother Pheng Huor could read and write Khmer but not well. Neither of them knew French. Most of the government documents were in both Khmer and French. On weekends I bicycled the five miles from Phnom Penh to the mill to help with the paperwork.

  It was my duty to work for my family, but I never felt comfortable doing it. Early on, I found that Pheng Huor was tampering with the mill accounts and putting the money in his own pockets. He also signed some of the mill’s assets over to his own name, without telling my father. There was no easy way for me to solve this problem, not when I was already known as the family troublemaker. On one hand, my father was the head of the family, the ruler. My brother shouldn’t have cheated him. On the other hand, I also had to defer to my brother, because he was older than me. He worked hard at the mill and was nearly as essential to its success as my father.

  Two French words, honneur and bonheur, express what is important to families like mine. Though my brother was violating the honneur or honour, at least he was doing it quietly. For me to have pointed it out would result in the family losing its bonheur, its happiness or good-hearted feeling. Cambodians will do almost anything to keep the appearances of bonheur. We try to stay polite even when we do not feel like being polite, because it is easier that way. To be in conflict forces us to treat one another as enemies, and then we lose control.

  In the year 1968, the mill was prospering but my standing with the family was particularly low. I had failed an exam which, if I had passed, would have enabled me to go on to university. My father wanted me to leave school and work for him full time as a clerk, but my mother had persuaded him to allow me to continue my studies. So I was retaking the year’s courses that led up to the exam. When I parked my bicycle outside the mill on a Saturday morning and walked in, he turned his back on me and watched out of the corner of his eye as I walked to my brother’s office.

  ‘How’s the business going, brother?’ I asked, dumping my satchel of schoolbooks in the corner.

  ‘We make a little money, in spite of the government,’ Pheng Huor said gloomily. ‘But the bastards are getting greedier. Here, look at these papers and tell me what they mean.’ I picked up the sheaf of papers on his desk. They were written both in the Roman letters of French and in the ornate, looping letters of the Cambodian alphabet, with no spaces between the words. I scanned them quickly.

  ‘You have solved the problem of the government foresters, I notice.’ On the form listing the number of logs that my father’s trucks carried was a figure far lower than the actual one.

  ‘“Bonjour, mon ami,” ’ my brother said sarcastically, quoting one of the few French phrases he knew. Bonjour had two meanings. Literally it was a greeting like ‘hello’, but the French practice of shaking hands offered a chance to pass folded money from one palm to another. In Cambodian slang, bonjour meant graft. My brother said, ‘The forester does not have his Mercedes yet, but every time I see him he wears more gold.’

  I read through the receipts and the taxat
ion forms. How boring. What a waste of time. After I filled in the forms they would lie unread, tied up in bundles with string, in offices whose clerks moved in slow motion under slowly rotating ceiling fans. Government regulations had little effect on businesses like ours. The officials did not make their living from their salaries. They made it from bribes. It was an age-old system: those in power took from those who weren’t. As long as the officials did not take too much, there was no protest. But it made me angry just the same. For most of the week I lived in a world of idealistic students. We were young and believed in progress and honesty and change. We were also Buddhist, and the tradition of bonjour conflicted with an even deeper and older tradition of moral behaviour.

  I said, ‘If the government lowered its taxes it would be easier to pay the full amount. Then nobody would have to cheat.’

  ‘You think so?’ said my brother. ‘The government loves to tax and tax. That’s the problem. Look,’ he said, pointing at a map of Cambodia. ‘There’s a new military checkpoint here and another one here. Bonjour and bonjour. Worse, the soldiers just bought motorcycles. This week they started going after the logging truck with their motorcycles, after the driver had already stopped at the checkpoints. The soldiers wanted more money.’ Impatiently, he returned to the table and flicked his fingers across his abacus. The wooden beads made a rapid clacking sound.

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t give it to them,’ I said, reading through the forms.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, the logging truck is new and powerful. Tell the driver to pay at the checkpoints but to head the soldiers off when they come after him on motorcycles. If the motorcycles try to pass him on the left, he veers to the left. If they try to pass him on the right, he veers to the right. They’ll never stop him.’