JOHNNY GONE DOWN (6 page)

I stared at him in incomprehension, but I was too breathless to ask anything more. I looked around to check on Sam. Finding him all right, although still lagging behind the others, I began to run faster.

We spotted the embassy at the end of a deserted Parisian street with empty colonial bungalows and abandoned cafés on either side. My heart leapt
when I saw the American flag still flying high atop the building, and I felt even better when I saw no sign of the Khmer soldiers anywhere on the street.

We raced up to the spiral embassy gates at the end of the street, panting, and joined a large group of Cambodians, all dressed in plain clothes, standing outside the closed gates and shouting in their dialect. We pressed ourselves against the gates, begging to be let in.

‘American citizens only,’ said the two crew-cut marines guarding the gate.

A howl of protest broke out from the Americans who were safely on the other side of the gate. Apparently, they were trying to get their Cambodian friends evacuated too.

‘He is my cameraman,’ said an agitated, red-faced giant on the other side of the gate, pointing to a thin young Cambodian who was clutching the bars of the gate tightly. ‘The
New York Times
cameraman, goddamn it.’

The marines remained impassive to this and similar shouts:

‘He is a Red Cross worker who saved American lives.’

‘A hospital nurse.’

‘She is the Ambassador’s nanny.’

‘Citizens only,’ the marines repeated.

‘We are Americans,’ shouted someone from our group excitedly.

The Cambodians holding onto the gates moved aside to give our group space. They looked at us longingly. I felt bad for them for a moment, but shrugged away the thought. My own life was at stake here; the drowning couldn’t save the drowning.

‘Take out your passports,’ said the marine.

We began to fumble through pockets and backpacks to get our passports out amidst the growing din.

I glanced quickly at Ishmael as the rest of our group began to queue up in front of the gates.

‘Why don’t you run to the French embassy or some other European embassy?’ I said desperately. ‘Maybe there is a chance there.’

‘If the Americans don’t let me in, it’s unlikely anyone else will,’ he said.

‘What will you do?’ I asked.

Before he could respond, there were shouts from the crowd. A large tank had arrived at the far end of the street, about half a mile from where we stood. The crowd began to scatter, afraid perhaps of being seen at the gates of the enemy. Our group moved forward and began to push their way inside. I rushed over to Sam, who was at the end of the queue, and stood behind him.

‘Get your student ID out,’ I said.

He fumbled in the back pocket of his cargo pants, still looking a bit dazed.

‘You need to focus, Sam,’ I said. ‘We are almost out of this, okay?’

His hands were shaking as he produced his MIT student identity card.

‘Don’t show them your Indian passport,’ I said. ‘Show this. Do you understand?’

He nodded.

‘Take this map,’ I told Ishmael, who was standing behind me, staring vacantly at the tank. ‘And this.’ I emptied my pockets of money.

He accepted the map and the money without question. ‘Good luck,’ he said.

He sauntered casually to the sidewalk and began studying the map while he sized up the street.

The rest of us shouldered our way in through the gates - to freedom. It had worked, I exulted; we had pulled it off.

‘You can’t enter with this,’ said the marine at the gate when Sam showed him his student identity card. ‘Show me your passport.’

My fear had abated; now it returned with a numbing force.

‘Are you a citizen of the US?’ the marine repeated. ‘Where is your passport?’

Sam stared at him nervously. ‘I…I…’

‘We are both students of MIT,’ I said forcefully. ‘The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Boston.’ The Ivy League namedrop didn’t have an impact.

‘American citizens only,’ said the marine flatly.

‘His citizenship is being processed by General Electric,’ I said in a rush as the street shuddered with the rumbling of the approaching tank.

‘Please,’ I said. ‘We came in with a group of marines from Boston just this morning. They must be inside. You can check with them.’

‘American citizens only,’ he repeated impatiently. ‘Is there anyone else with an American passport?’

No one came forward.

‘Okay, we are all in,’ he shouted to someone inside. He began to move the Americans away from the gate, perhaps to board the helicopters that would shepherd them to safety.

‘Wait,’ I said, rushing up to show him my passport and escape to safety.

I glanced at Sam quickly as the marine came up to us. Sam’s baby-face had contorted in fear.

I don’t know what came over me. ‘Here is his passport,’ I said quietly.

The marine looked at the passport reluctantly, then looked at Sam.

Our grainy photos would pass for each other’s, I knew, at least to an eye unaccustomed to Indians. Besides, all he cared about was matching the number of passports to the number of people; if somebody wanted to be stupid, that was their choice.

What was I thinking? For a second, I almost wished he would catch the bluff.

‘Okay,’ he said. Sam looked confused as the marine pulled him inside.

‘Do you have an American passport?’ He looked at me.

I shook my head and turned away from the gate.

I walked with heavy steps to join Ishmael. Fuck, I thought with a sudden, sinking feeling, what had I done? What would happen now? So far, escape had felt like a certainty. Now I was caught in the middle of raging lunatics who were likely to shoot me on sight. I was about to
die
, I thought. It felt surreal.

‘Holy fucking fuck, you gave him your passport, didn’t you?’ said Ishmael amidst the roar of the departing helicopters.

‘Can we get to Thailand? How far is the border?’ I asked, my eyes stinging with tears.

I wasn’t a hero. I didn’t want to be a hero. My life mattered more to me than anyone else’s, but did I have an option after seeing the way pale, petrified, clumsy Sam had floundered along since we landed in Phnom Penh? I at least had a sliver of a chance of making it alive; Sam had none.

‘How could you do that? How could anyone do that?’ Ishmael said.

Sam had pulled me out of the darkest phase of
my life. I couldn’t turn my back on him now. Or could I? Was anything more important than your own life?

‘We need to get out of here,’ I said.

Gunshots and hoots filled the air as the tank began to roll our way. From that distance, they couldn’t make out that we were foreigners, but that would change very quickly.

‘Get out where?’ he asked.

‘Thailand?’

‘I told you, the border is a hundred, maybe hundred and fifty miles from here.’

My heart sank. ‘Let’s at least get started, shall we?’ I told him.

He shrugged. ‘Sure.’

We began running in the general direction of the border, knowing we wouldn’t even get close.

‘I can’t believe you did that,’ he repeated.

‘Enough of that now,’ I said sharply. ‘There are things you don’t understand.’

But did I really understand any better? What had made me behave like a hero in a cheap Hollywood flick?

Another tank with soldiers entered the street from the other side and we ducked into an alley, which led us smack into what looked like the city centre.

I stared disbelievingly at the sight in front of me. Like a scene from a low-budget zombie horror flick,
hundreds, maybe thousands of Cambodians were on the street - men, women, young, old - crying, begging, pleading with the black-clad Khmer soldiers in their midst. Shops and houses stood abandoned as everyone walked reluctantly in one direction, shepherded by the Khmer boy-soldiers who coaxed them along with sticks and rifles.

‘They are evacuating the city,’ said Ishmael. ‘Everyone will be moved to the villages to work on farms. We are dead.’

‘Why?’

‘They are going to make it a Utopian communist society. You eat what you produce; everyone works equally, everyone eats equally. Great in theory, but in practice, these idiots don’t know a thing about farming except how to produce rice. Soon, everyone will die of starvation.’

I didn’t care about macro-economic socio-political issues. I just wanted to get out of here alive, to go back to the security of my dorm in Boston. Once there, I promised myself I would gladly embark on the downward journey that Sam kept referring to. I would lock myself in the room and never leave, not to buy groceries, not even to watch films - if I managed to get out just this once.

‘Keep your head down and try to merge with the crowd,’ I said. ‘If we can make it to a village without being spotted, perhaps we can find a way from there.’

‘You aren’t going to give up, are you?’ He smiled. ‘Works for me.’

A heavily pregnant woman fell down a hundred yards in front of us. One of the soldiers walked up to her and struck her on the head with the butt of his rifle, while shouting at her to get up. She resisted. He seemed to go ballistic. Again and again, he hit her on the head with the rifle until all I could see was a pulpy mass of blood and skin. Still dissatisfied, he sliced a bayonet through her stomach and the traditional white Cambodian dress she was wearing turned crimson. She stopped moving and he walked away, satisfied. I watched silently, then continued to walk with my head bowed. No one’s life matters more than my own, I repeated to myself.

Soon though, it became increasingly difficult to be inconspicuous as more and more people became victim to sudden eruptions of violence from the boy-soldiers. An old man had his legs broken with a staff because he had stopped to rest; a baby was thrown into a ditch because it was wailing; a young man’s head was burst open with a rod because he was drinking water from a ditch. The crowd began to thin alarmingly.

‘How far is the closest village?’ I asked Ishmael.

‘Two, maybe three days walk,’ said Ishmael. ‘It’s going to be fun in the sun then. Harvest rice twenty hours a day so that Pol Pot can measure his dick against Mao’s and Lenin’s.’

He was a funny guy, I thought, completely unperturbed by what was happening, almost enjoying himself.

‘What if…’

An intense light blinded me as someone struck me on the back of my head. I turned around in reflex and another blow on my side seemed to shatter every bone. I felt my face hitting asphalt, heard gravel crunching - and then there was silence.