Survival in the Killing Fields (21 page)

The soldiers searched the cart again. They didn’t find the rest of the medical instruments, which I had hidden underneath the cart by the axle, but they did find some of the other
reference books. They took the books and threw them violently on the road. ‘No more capitalistic books now!’ they shouted. ‘Capitalistic books are Lon Nol-style, and Lon Nol
betrayed the nation! Why do you have foreign books? Are you CIA? No more foreign books under Angka!’

I gave them the usual story about finding the books on the road, but they didn’t listen.

‘Angka says no more travelling!’ the soldiers said crossly. ‘Wherever you think you’re going, whatever village you are trying to reach, it will be the same as the
villages around here. They are all destroyed. So you have to stop here and go to work.’

‘No, please,’ I begged. ‘We have a newborn child. We got separated from it in Phnom Penh, and my sister took it to Kampot. Please, comrade, the baby has no milk! She needs her
mother!’

‘Angka only says once!’ the soldier thundered. ‘No more travelling! No is no! If I chose to let you go, I would let you go, but no is no!’

We sat sadly by the side of the road as the soldiers checked families arriving at the checkpoint after us. The soldiers gave them the same treatment, the interrogations, the confiscation of
their goods, the raised voices and the angry, suspicious glares. It was depressing. It was a mentality I had seen many times before, and not just under the Khmer Rouge. It was typical of uneducated
Asians who were used to obeying orders from those above and giving orders to those below. There was no place in their minds for reasoning with equals. For them, even listening to us would mean
deferring to us, and they could not do this without losing face.

They sent us off on a side road with the other families and with two soldiers as escorts. The dirt road quickly degenerated into a sandy oxcart path, uneven and twisting. I strained to push the
cycle and the trailer through the sand and then it became easier and I looked back and saw Huoy pushing too. She was tired and sweaty, and there was a wild look in her eyes that told me she had
taken a psychological beating and was on the edge of breaking down. I asked her to let me push by myself, but she said no, she wanted to help. I told her again in a firm voice not to worry, to let
me push alone. Eventually she let go of the Vespa and walked with her mother, who was tired and afraid too.

The soldiers led us to a small village on the edge of the jungle. The houses were on stilts in the rural style and had not been damaged in the war. The inhabitants were
moultan chah
– ‘old’ people or ‘base’ people – meaning that they had consented to Khmer Rouge rule while the civil war was still being fought. Their early decision not to
oppose the Khmer Rouge put them in a middle category of revolutionary society, below the Khmer Rouge themselves but above people like Huoy and me, who were
moultan thmai,
or
‘new’ people, and at the bottom. The midlevel status of the ‘old’ people enabled them to stay in their homes, without having to evacuate. The ‘old’ people of
this village showed us traditional Cambodian hospitality and were very kind to us. They brought us palm-tree sugar cakes to eat, and they listened with sympathy to my tale of wanting to get to
Kampot to reunite with our baby. But they didn’t have enough influence with the Khmer Rouge to enable us to leave.

In the morning Huoy and I were ordered to go to work, along with the other ‘new’ people. Leaving Ma behind in our camping spot, under another house on stilts, we walked for about an
hour to a mountain called Phnom Chiso. It was a place of boulders, bare rock outcroppings, scrubby brush and trees whose leaves had fallen off in the heat of the dry season. One part of the
mountain was a rock quarry. I knew it well, for my father had often driven there to get loads of gravel for his truck when I was a child, and sometimes I had gone along for the ride.

The supervisor issued us ordinary-size hammers, took us to piles of fist-size rocks and told us to break the rocks down into gravel size. The gravel was going to be used as ballast on railroad
tracks, he said.

We began. Chips flew off the rock when we hit it, and I told Huoy to wrap her krama around her face so it covered everything but her eyes. I did the same, and I had the additional protection of
my glasses. We found that the rocks had a grain running in one direction and there was a knack to hitting them to make them split. We hammered rocks all morning and tried to avoid hitting our free
hands or our faces with flying chips. There was no shade on the mountain and it was very hot.

In the early afternoon they gave us our first meal of the day, a bowl of salted rice porridge, or rice that has been boiled into a sort of mushy cereal. There was nothing else in it, no meat or
vegetables to give it flavour. ‘Angka is poor, so you must sacrifice for your nation,’ the supervisor explained apologetically. ‘We are starting to rebuild the nation, to make it
rich. We just got free from the hands of the capitalist oppressors.’

I looked at my hands. At my capitalist hands. Blisters had erupted across my palms and on my fingers. Huoy’s blisters were even worse. As a schoolteacher, she had never held a heavier tool
than a piece of chalk. She was not used to physical labour. All morning long while she broke rocks she had been crying quietly, not just because of the hard work but because our entire universe had
been turned upside down. She was a soft, shy, maternal woman, and she wanted nothing more than to have babies and stay home and run a clean, well-ordered household. And that’s what I wanted
for her.

We went back to work, squatting on the mountainside in the afternoon heat, hitting the rocks with our hammers. When we built up a pile of gravel I hauled it in a basket to a nearby truck. As a
boy I had waited in trucks just like that while other men broke the rocks and brought them over. Back then I had taken those men for granted, but now that I was in their place I remembered them
with new respect. I knew now how hard it was to break rocks for a living.

At the end of the afternoon we walked back to the village of the ‘old’ people. Dinner was a bowl of rice and some soup with vegetables and bits of fish, not enough to replace the
energy we had used, but better than lunch. We settled back to massage our blisters and rest our tired bodies, thinking that the day was over. Then a soldier came up and told us, ‘Angka
invites you to a
bonn.’

Bonn
is an ancient religious word meaning a celebration or ceremony at a temple. I asked the soldier for time to bathe and change clothes and prepare food to bring to the monks. He told
us to come as we were. Huoy and I obeyed rather reluctantly, because we were dusty and dirty. He led us to a clearing in the forest and turned us over to a
mit neary,
a female comrade, who
was about eighteen years old. She took us down a path farther into the forest to another clearing where about twenty other ‘new’ people were sitting. We sat down with them in front of a
big clump of bamboo.

Like the others of her kind, the
mit neary
made no attempt to look feminine or attractive. As she faced us in the fading light I saw a young woman who aspired to conform. If she had
ambition, it was to obey Angka with perfect zeal. Her appearance was standard, her tunic buttoned to her neck, her hair cut short and parted in the middle with the sides tucked behind her ears. She
had that same contemptuous expression toward us ‘new’ people as most of her comrades.

She addressed us in a harsh voice, without any opening remarks or pleasantries:

‘Angka won the war,’ she began. ‘Not by negotiation. Not by
sompeah
’ – she gestured scornfully with her palms together – ‘to the Lon Nol
government, or to the US government, or to the other capitalists. We won by fighting!

‘At the beginning we had only empty hands,’ she declared. ‘We had no rifles, no ammunition. Then we got slingshots. Bows and arrows. Crossbows. Wooden traps. Knives and
hatchets. We used hoes and sticks. And we fought until we won against the capitalists! We were not afraid of the American government or the other big powers!’

What kind of folk tale is this? I wondered. They had AK-47s. They bought heavy weapons from corrupt generals of the Lon Nol regime.

The
mit neary
raised her fists and shouted, ‘We were like an ant that bit an elephant! The US government looked down on the small ant and laughed! But then the big elephant died
from our poisonous bite! We are not afraid of elephants! Or anyone else!’

A mosquito whined in my ear and settled on my cheek. I slapped it.

I had never heard anything as ridiculous as an elephant dying from an ant bite.

‘We have won the revolution but the war still goes on!’ she said. ‘Now we are in a new phase of struggle. We warn you that it will not be easy. We must maintain a mentality of
struggling against all obstacles.
If Angka says to break rocks, break rocks. If Angka says to dig canals, you must dig canals. If Angka says to farm, you must farm. Struggle against the
elements! When there are obstacles, smash them. Only in this way can we liberate the country and liberate the people!’

In the brief silence that followed, I nudged Huoy and she leaned close. I whispered to her, ‘When do we go to the
bonn?’

Huoy whispered back, ‘Be quiet.’

The
mit neary
went on:

‘Don’t think back. Don’t think about houses, or big cars, or eating noodles, or watching television, or ordering servants around. That age is over. The capitalists destroyed
the country. Right now, our economy is underdeveloped and we must build it up. You must maintain a revolutionary attitude, and you must keep your mind on the guiding principles, the ‘Three
Mountains.’ They are:

‘ “Attain independence-sovereignty.” That is the first principle.

‘ “Rely on our own strength.” That is the second.

‘And “Take destiny in our hands.” Those are the “Three Mountains.” ’

By then it was totally dark and mosquitoes were everywhere. I rubbed my hands over my ankles and arms and neck to protect myself. The
mit neary
talked on and on about the development of
the economy and how we would all have to sacrifice. She used the same jargon over and over again about starting with an empty hand and struggling with the elements, and about the ant that killed
the elephant, in case we didn’t understand the first time.

It was a long evening.

When we got back to the village, at about midnight, there was no water to wash with. I felt unclean.

‘Sweet,’ I said to Huoy, half-jokingly, ‘we have just taken the first step on the road to hell. We have gone to a
bonn
where all they talk about is war and
economics.’

For another few days, Huoy and I went off to break rocks in the mornings and we went to the so-called
bonns
at night. But I had already begun to plan our escape. From
the beams of the house above us hung a bamboo shoulderboard. I found some braided cord in a neighbour’s yard and stole it. I made friends with the one dog of the village, patting him on the
head and stroking his fur. On the fifth day, when the supervisor told us that Huoy’s mother would have to begin working, I made the decision to leave. Ma wasn’t strong enough to work
with us in the quarry. And if she went off to work with us someone would be certain to search our luggage and discover the truth about our pasts.

That night, long after everyone else in the village was asleep, we packed our essential belongings into two giant bundles to hang from the ends of the shoulderboard and into smaller bundles for
the women to carry. With regret, I decided to leave the Vespa and the trailer behind.

We crept out of the house in total darkness. I went off to calm the dog, who growled but didn’t bark, while Huoy and her mother went on ahead. When they were out of hearing I shouldered
the heavy load and hurried after them. I came to a fork in the road but didn’t see them. I whispered, ‘Sweet! Sweet! Where are you?’ The two women, who had taken the wrong fork,
reappeared and we set off in the right direction. When we walked beyond the trees of the village and into the open rice fields we found ourselves in bright moonlight. The moon, which was nearly
full, was over our shoulders, distinctly illuminating the chequerboard pattern of the dykes in the rice fields.

We cut across the fields. In the distance, at an angle, the headlights of truck convoys bobbed along National Route 2. Directly in front of us was a dark island of trees: another village. We
detoured far around it. The dogs of the village heard us, and barked in the stillness of the night, and continued barking until we were on the other side of the village and far away.

Near National Route 2 we took a break, resting in the tall grass. The muscles on top of my shoulders were sore from carrying the heavy loads. Still, I was encouraged. I knew where we were and
where the checkpoints were likely to be. The women were tired but did not complain. They trusted me to lead them. And they cared about me. Huoy’s mother wrapped my shoulder-board in cloth, to
cushion it, and we went on.

We walked through Chambak on the road, and then through the flat wasteland of Samrong Yong. The young Khmer Rouge who had stood sentry at the main intersection was nowhere in sight. As dawn
approached we hid in the ruins of a temple outside the village. Huoy rubbed my shoulders, which were red and badly swollen on both sides.

We rested only an hour, then began walking again, up the deserted highway and then across the fields and through the forest. My shoulders hurt so much that I had to stop every few hundred yards
to rest and shift the load to the other shoulder. Huoy gave me cold water compresses with her krama to soothe the pain. She was upset and it worried me that she was upset, but she kept herself
under control.

We walked on and off and rested in the fields. The next morning we got to Tonle Batí, and who should we see by the ornate village gate but my father and the rest of my family and the
jeep. Much had happened since I had seen them last. We had camped on the ruins of the old family home. We had tried and then abandoned our plan to leave the country by ship, because of all the
checkpoints. We had begun forced labour, attended
bonns
and escaped from the village of the ‘old’ people. It seemed like a lifetime, but we had only been apart from my family for
a little over a week.