Survival in the Killing Fields Page 7

  In the early war years I belonged to a student group that collected donations from private companies for victims of the war. As a representative of the group, I flew to Kampot, where Huoy was from, and to other provinces. On most of the trips it was necessary to fly because the roads had been cut by the communists. The planes passed over vast stretches of apparently empty forest and uncultivated fields. Once at my destination I distributed blankets, kramas, sarongs, candles, canned foods and other goods to soldiers and their families, and also to refugees.

  Some of the refugees lived in camps run by the Red Cross and CARE and World Vision. But most came to the traditional places of refuge in Cambodia, which were the temples. They lived next to the walls of the temple compounds in tents or covered oxcarts or else out in the open on mats woven from palm leaves. Dark-skinned women and children, they were away from their land and they could not farm, though some of them planted garden vegetables. Their husbands and sons were off fighting for one army or another, for Lon Nol or the communists, and to them it really didn’t matter which.

  If a government official walked among them the women fell silent; but as soon as he left they started complaining about the government’s corruption and the incompetence of Lon Nol, and why Lon Nol allowed the war to continue. They all wanted Sihanouk back, because they remembered peaceful times under him. They knew nothing of politics, of the foreign powers behind the war, the Americans backing Lon Nol and China backing the North Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge. All they knew was they wanted the war over with, so they could go home and live in peace.

  Besides bringing gifts to the refugees and to the soldiers’ wives, who followed the soldiers from one place to the next without adequate food or supplies, I worked in nearby hospitals and clinics. There were always bandages to change and battlefield wounds to clean and suture. There were never enough doctors to give the soldiers sufficient medical care. But the refugee women and the soldiers’ wives needed medical care just as much as the soldiers did, and got even less of it.

  In rural Cambodia, traditional health care is provided by spirit doctors, who interpret dreams, cast spells and use magic, and by herbalists, who make their own medicines from plants. Sometimes the spirit doctors are able to help their patients, because the patients believe in the treatments; and some of the herbal medicines are good. (The herbal cure for syphilis, for example, a strong, nasty-smelling tea boiled from bamboo joints, black pepper and about a dozen other ingredients, is reasonably effective, though why it works is hard to say.) But traditional medicine has no concept of infection and no real method of surgery. It is helpless against many of the diseases that are easily treated by Western techniques.

  The field of women’s health is particularly backward in Cambodia because of all the taboos about the reproductive organs of the body. The refugee women and the soldiers’ wives bathed in their sarongs, either in the nearest river or else simply by pouring basins of water over their heads. They were out in the open. Everyone could see them. So they washed their exposed skin, but out of modesty and ignorance, they didn’t wash anywhere else. As a result they had a high rate of vaginal infection. When they got pregnant – some of them didn’t know exactly what it was that got them pregnant – local midwives attended the births. Between uncleanliness, unskilled midwives, superstition, malnutrition, and lack of medicines, the infant mortality rate for Cambodia was well over 50 per cent.

  In the hospitals I saw numerous cases of leucorrhea, or white discharges, which seemed to be linked to a high rate of cervical cancer. There were many cases of damage done by rural midwives – primitive Caesarean deliveries that didn’t heal right and became infected from herbs placed on the wound, cases of acute shock resulting from placental debris left inside the mothers after childbirth and so on. It was terrible to see the suffering of those women, because most of it was unnecessary. And it was gratifying to help deliver a child and to see that both mother and baby were healthy.

  Back in medical school in Phnom Penh, I began specialized training in obstetrics and gynaecology. Besides the need for doctors of this sort, I had personal reasons for my choice that went all the way back to the beating my father gave me as a boy. My mother was always kinder to me than my father. My sister Chhay Thao was always nicer to me than my brothers. In Samrong Yong and Phnom Penh and other places I had many good male friends, but none of them meant as much to me as Huoy and her mother. I am a man with an affinity for women. A rock with a liking for paper.

  The government required all doctors to work for it but allowed us to take other part-time jobs even before we got our degrees. I took one part-time job in the government’s military hospital, a position that made me technically an army officer and gave me the use of a military driver, and another part-time job with a private clinic that did mainly obstetrical and gynaecological work.

  I stayed busy. From seven to nine o’clock in the morning I worked at the private clinic, near Tuol Toumpoung market, in the southern part of Phnom Penh. From nine to twelve noon I was on rounds at the teaching hospital connected to the medical school. In the afternoon I attended medical school lectures. From six to seven in the evening I worked again at the clinic. After that I saw Huoy if possible, but I was also on call at the military hospital. Sometimes I worked all night sewing up wounded soldiers at the military hospital, then went over to the private clinic to begin the next day.

  The war went on.

  One Saturday I got a telephone call from an army general ordering me to go to a battlefield outside Phnom Penh to pick up wounded soldiers. The site was ‘Bridge 13,’ across the Tonle Sap River and thirteen kilometres out along a road to the east. Because the Japanese bridge had been destroyed, the ambulance had to cross the river by ferry, and that was slow. On the road on the far side, a motorcycle drove past us from the opposite direction, the rider wearing a green paratrooper shirt and carrying a camera bag. It was Sam Kwil, returning from a newspaper assignment.

  Eventually we got to Bridge 13, a small wooden structure over a dry gully. We turned down a bumpy oxcart trail leading to a cornfield. The wounded were lying on the ground, moaning, bloody and messy. The medics and I put them on stretchers and carried them to the ambulance. Then the North Vietnamese opened fire.

  Brup! Brup-brup-brup! Brup-up-up-up-up! They were hidden in the cornfield ahead of us. Brup-brup-up! Then the sound of automatic-rifle fire came from behind us, from a grove of trees. Brup-up-up-up brup brup! This time it came from the gully, near the bridge. They had us surrounded on three sides. The Cambodian commander was lying on the ground near the ambulance. He had allowed himself to get outflanked and now he was pinned down in the cross fire.

  ‘Hey, motherfucker! Get us out of here, will you?’ I shouted. ‘We’ve got wounded to take care of. Call in the air strikes, man! Hurry up! Get the planes here!’

  The commander rolled over and looked at me with wide, frightened eyes. He saw I had a lieutenant’s uniform on, the same rank as his. Obediently, he lifted the handset of his radio and began talking into it. Around him were his troops, hilltribesmen from northeastern Cambodia, waiting for orders.

  I worked my way over to the lieutenant. He was about my age, a light-skinned city boy, probably from the Phnom Penh elite. He was still in shock, holding the radio. It was my first time under fire too, but my gang fights as a boy had been good training. I pointed to the side of the cornfield nearest the bridge. ‘Have your men attack there, to clear the road. That’s the only way we’re going to get the ambulance out. Now do it! Don’t wait any longer! Do it now!’

  When I got inside the back of the ambulance the hill-tribesmen, dressed in motley combinations of army fatigues and baggy trousers, had gotten up from the ground. They were firing their assault rifles as they ran forward barefoot into enemy fire. The driver turned the ambulance around to face the main road and lurched forward. As the North Vietnamese retreated, we bounced along the oxcart trail. Then there was an explosion, and the back of the ambulance lifted up. It settled down an
d kept on moving. I felt a pain in my stomach, on the left side. The hole in my shirt was only a quarter-inch wide, but there was blood around it and the stain was growing. I yelled at the driver to hurry. Whatever hit us, probably a rocket-propelled grenade, had also torn a hole two feet wide through the metal side of the ambulance, next to the floor. I could see the dirt road surface through it. Then I could see the gravel of the main road, and the ride was smoother. The medics were raising my shirt and wrapping gauze around my stomach and I was yelling for the driver to hurry.

  Then there was a loud roaring sound coming toward us, getting louder fast. The medics were looking for shrapnel punctures on other parts of my body. By bending over I could see, out the front windshield, the propeller-driven T-28 fighter-bombers coming in fast and low over the treetops. They roared overhead and toward Bridge 13.

  When we got to the flat expanse of the Tonle Sap River we had to wait by the remains of the Japanese bridge. I was furious. There was a long line of cars and trucks and only one ferry. I cursed the Vietnamese for blowing the bridge up, cursed the Lon Nol military for not protecting it, and most of all cursed the inept field commander back at Bridge 13. No leadership at all. I knew the type. He probably felt ‘above’ his dark-skinned hilltribe troops. What brave, wonderful soldiers those hilltribesmen were, charging directly into enemy fire to open up the escape lane! They had saved our lives. They deserved a much better commander than the one they got.

  We finally got onto a ferry and made it back to Phnom Penh that afternoon.

  At the military hospital, my colleagues operated on me. There wasn’t much damage, just the small puncture in my abdomen and minor cuts around my waist and left arm. Only four stitches. It was nothing compared to the wounds on the soldiers coming into the hospital every day. Still, Huoy cried when she saw me, and I couldn’t help feeling the pride of the veteran soldier bravely hiding his wounds. My driver, Sok, took me back to her apartment and she made a big fuss.

  By this time Huoy was mine. Busy as we both were, we managed to see each other three times a day. First, in the early mornings, I drove from my bachelor place over to her apartment for breakfast, which we usually took in a little restaurant on the ground floor of her building. After breakfast I took her to school on my scooter, a white 150 cc. Vespa, a gentleman’s version of a motorcycle and a popular model at that time. If I couldn’t drive her myself, Sok took her to work in a car. Sok was friendly and respectful, a man who enjoyed his undemanding role.

  The second visit was lunch. At noon, when Phnom Penh was drowsy with heat, everyone who could went home. Huoy and I met at her apartment. There we changed from our Western clothes into comfortable cotton sarongs, which we wrapped about our bodies, sighing with content. We relaxed, enjoyed each other’s company, showered and then ate lunch before returning to work at about two. Finally, after work, unless the hospital called me in, I came over to Huoy’s for the third time. I ate dinner and stayed until it was time for me to go home to my apartment. We had to follow the outward rules of Cambodian society, like staying in different places overnight, but we were together as much as we could.

  And yet I was not truly hers. Not yet. I was not so easy to tame. There had always been a rascally streak in my nature, and my new medical specialty, obstetrics and gynaecology, gave me plenty of opportunities. Put it this way: once my female patients visited me professionally, some of them began thinking about me personally. I had a lot of offers. I didn’t always refuse.

  One morning I was in my small office in the hospital. Sitting with me was a certain woman patient. We weren’t doing anything. Not yet, anyway. We had just been talking. There was a knock on the door. I opened it and found Huoy standing there. I wondered how long she had been listening. Huoy smiled sweetly and said she had no classes that day. She thought she would just drop in to say hello. I introduced Huoy to my lady patient. A sweet feminine conversation ensued. After what seemed to me hours, my lady patient excused herself and left.

  ‘When are you coming home?’ Huoy asked me, still sweetly.

  ‘At noon, same as usual.’

  I went back to Huoy’s, memorizing my excuses. But when I got there, Huoy didn’t behave as if anything out of the ordinary had happened. If anything, she was even more affectionate than usual. When we changed out of our city clothes she brought me a silk sarong, treating me like an honoured guest. We relaxed and had a wonderful time. We showered and eventually we ate. We had the place to ourselves. Huoy’s mother was a tactful old soul, and as usual she was out.

  That evening after lectures and work at the clinic I went back to Huoy’s again. She was kinder than ever. Instead of sitting across the table from me at dinner as she normally did, she put her chair next to me. She had cooked fresh fish, garnishing it with lemon, coriander and other spices. Her mother was off in the kitchen. When my appetite was satisfied I sat back contentedly.

  That was then she dug her thumb and forefinger into my thigh. She pulled on the flesh as hard as she could and twisted it. Her frowning face was dark with anger. ‘What were you talking about with that lady patient this morning?’ she demanded.

  I had to laugh. She was far cleverer than I’d thought. ‘Ma!’ I called out to Huoy’s mother, for we were now on familiar terms. ‘Ma, help me!’

  Huoy hissed, ‘Quiet! Be quiet!’ She twisted the flesh on my leg even farther.

  ‘How can I be quiet?’ I said. ‘Look what you’re doing to my leg.’ I was laughing and in pain at the same time.

  Ma came in and asked what was happening. Huoy said, ‘Please go away, Mother. It’s none of your business.’

  I said, ‘No, Ma, you have to help me. Huoy is hurting me.’

  Ma said reproachfully, ‘Huoy, don’t make trouble,’ and went back into the kitchen.

  Huoy put her mouth next to my ear and hissed, ‘Tell me about the woman patient this morning. Tell me the truth! Who is she? What is the relationship between the two of you?’

  ‘Don’t be jealous.’

  ‘Oh? With ‘treatment’ in your office like that? The two of you in one small room with no nurses around? How were you going to ‘treat’ her?’

  ‘She’s just a patient. Nothing more.’

  ‘You were lucky this time. I was good to you. I was going to hit her, but I didn’t, to keep your face.’

  ‘No, no, Huoy, don’t hit my patients. Don’t do that. It’s not good for my practice.’

  ‘I wanted to ask her, “Why did you come here? Why are you trying to take my man away from me? One woman for one man. Not two for one.” You were just lucky I didn’t start a fight with her. You were lucky I didn’t kill her!’

  ‘Yes, Huoy, I was lucky. Now please let go of my leg.’

  ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘Tell me the truth! Now!’

  ‘Huoy, she was a normal patient. You’re the only one I care about.’

  ‘Don’t avoid the question!’

  ‘Ma!’ I yelled.

  Her mother’s voice came from the other room, in a tone of warning:

  ‘Huoy!’

  Huoy tried to clap her free hand over my mouth but I turned my head and she got me on the neck. I yelled out jokingly, ‘Hey, you’re choking me! I’ve got no room to breathe!’

  ‘I’m going to call for Sok,’ Huoy said in a quiet, furious whisper. ‘He knows about your girlfriends. Maybe I’m not the only one he drives around for you. Why do I have to wait until I see your girlfriends with my own eyes? Sok, come here!’

  Ma walked across the living room and toward the front door. ‘Huoy, Sok has already gone,’ she said firmly. She went out into the hall for a second. I could hear her tell Sok to leave.

  I got up from the table and walked over to the couch. Huoy came after me, picked up a cushion and began hitting me with it. ‘I’m going to punish you,’ she said. ‘You and Sok both. He knows your secrets. You and he conspire together.’

  ‘Ma, help!’ I had my hands over my head for protection, laughing as she hit me again and again.

 
‘It’s me or nothing! Either me and me only or I’ll fix you so you never have another woman again. I’ll get a knife from the kitchen and fix you right here!’

  ‘Help!’

  ‘Huoy, Huoy,’ her mother was saying sadly, shaking her head.

  ‘Save my life!’

  ‘Next time I will kill the woman if I find her with you again. So I ask you now: Are you going to see her again, or not?’

  ‘I’ve stopped. Never again. I’m sorry. Now don’t hit me anymore.’

  Finally Huoy got tired of hitting me with the cushion. She sat on the sofa, stamping her feet on the floor in frustration, tears in her eyes. She turned to her mother. ‘See! See! He admitted! Sometimes he doesn’t come back here for lunch because he’s seeing his girlfriends outside.’

  I moved next to her on the couch. ‘No, Huoy. I agree with you. I’m a bad boy. I confess. I did wrong. I promise not to do it again.’ I put my arm around her shoulder, trying to calm her down.

  ‘That’s enough, Huoy, enough,’ her mother said. But her mother was smiling, just as I was.

  Huoy pouted. ‘My own mother, protecting you! She should be protecting me.’

  ‘Hush, Huoy,’ I said. ‘You’ll disturb the neighbours. We’ll lose face. I confess I did wrong. I’m sorry.’

  But inside I was glad. Glad that she was smart enough to wait until evening to accuse me, when I didn’t expect it. Glad that she cared about me so much and that she had such a strong character.