Survival in the Killing Fields (52 page)

I went to the leaning
sdao
tree and prayed to Huoy for protection. I began sleeping near her grave, and then in the fertilizer shed, and in a different place each night, afraid of Mao,
afraid of Pen Tip. I stopped stealing. The night wasn’t safe for stealing anymore.

I packed everything needed for a quick getaway and stored it under the manure pile. I told Sangam and my brother Hok and Ngor Balam to get ready if they wanted to go with me. Balam was a tall,
older man, formerly an airlines executive in Phnom Penh. He was only distantly related to me on my father’s side, but we were of the same clan and trusted each other. We agreed to go together
to the Thai border, to meet up with the Khmer Serei.

Before we could leave another wave of newcomers arrived. This time they did not come from the east, like the first wave, or from the south, like the second, but from the northwest, from villages
outside Battambang City. They too walked in long, single-file lines, carrying their possessions in knapsacks and on shoulderboards, some of the women with baskets on their heads. They were better
clothed than we were. They did not dare talk to us. The third wave converged on the first two waves and briefly overlapped and then separated as the newer evacuees retreated toward the Cardamom
Mountains.

We had lived in the Phnom Tippeday area for more than three years. It had been our universe, and our jail. Now we saw it as others did, as a patch of rather unimportant territory in the
far-ranging manoeuvres of war. We guessed that the ‘enemy’ was approaching on two fronts, from the east, the direction of Phnom Penh, and from the northwest, near Battambang City.

Mao disappeared, taking with him all the oxen and water buffalo, sacks of rice and salt, supplies of dried fish and other food from the common kitchen, all the kitchen utensils, his family and
his personal possessions. In his absence no one gave orders in the village. I thought it was time for us to leave, but Balam and Hok persuaded me to wait. Mao reappeared, and for a few days more we
had meals in the common kitchen. We went out into the fields to harvest the rice, and we went to political meetings at night. We listened to the same old tired speeches about ‘launching an
offensive’ against the forces of nature and ‘struggling to achieve true independence-sovereignty.’ Like a record player playing the same song over and over. We listened quietly,
because we were afraid, and planned our escapes.

Mao and the other Khmer Rouge leaders left again, secretly, at night. Pen Tip proclaimed himself temporarily in charge. He told everyone in the village it was time to evacuate. And the people
obeyed. They packed their possessions on shoulderboards and baskets and homemade knapsacks, but there was much grumbling among them.

I packed all my possessions, including the medical textbooks that had been hidden for years. Sangam, Hok and Balam, plus their wives and children and me, fourteen of us in all, tried to walk
northwest toward Battambang City, but soldiers blocked our way. We turned around and trudged after the rest of the villagers.

By this time the whole Phnom Tippeday region was on the move. Several villages camped together in the rice fields, guarded by soldiers. Far to the southwest, beyond the uncompleted dam, the
first rumblings of artillery could be heard. In the following days the sounds of artillery came from the south and the east, and then mostly from the east. Judging from the direction, the heaviest
fighting was somewhere near the town of Muong, where National Route 5 and the railway converged. We heard no small-arms fire, which meant that the fighting wasn’t yet nearby.

We waited ten days, and then the ‘enemy’ attacked from the northwest.

When the chattering of automatic rifles and machine guns broke out, I was with my group. Artillery shells landed and exploded on the hillocks and in the rice fields to either side, and smoke and
dust spewed up where they landed. We picked up our luggage and ran with a strength we never knew we had. Everyone around us was running. Trees fell, and water buffalo stampeded with their eyes
bulging and the whites showing around their irises. Dust filled the air, there was a mad tinkling of ox bells, and those with oxcarts stood up like charioteers, shouting at their oxen and whipping
them to make them go faster.

We poured toward the railroad tracks, but Khmer Rouge in their black uniforms sprinted toward the jungles, outrunning all of us. It was almost enough to make me stop and laugh to see them run
away so fast, after all their boasts about what good soldiers they were.

When the shooting finally stopped, we were in an area called Boeung Reaing, where Huoy and I had dug canals on the front lines. There were thousands of ‘new’ people around us,
confused and leaderless. We didn’t know where the Khmer Rouge were. We were afraid to move, afraid to take the initiative. So we stayed where we were, hoping that the freedom fighters would
come to us.

While waiting, we spread out into the rice fields, which lay unharvested and inviting in all directions. The skies were clear and hot. Everywhere, within an hour, men, women and children were
harvesting rice. We threshed it with our bare feet, milled it with mortar and pestle or with sticks in holes in the ground. The shooting and the stampede had vanished from our minds. Food was our
first priority, safety our second. The rich rice of Battambang was everywhere for the taking. Nobody could punish us for taking rice. There was rice for all.

And after we filled our bellies and stored rice for future days, we sharpened our hatchets and knives and started looking at the Khmer Rouge who had reappeared, while muttering among ourselves.
The Khmer Rouge knew our minds, and were afraid, and joined their comrades in large groups.

I looked around and saw Pen Tip. He had an oxcart, with large spoked wheels and a narrow high-sided bed piled with bags and possessions. Pulling the cart were two oxen. The cart and the ox
belonged to the community, but Pen Tip had appropriated them for himself. Few others had oxen, or carts, or anything they could not carry themselves.

Pen Tip wore new black clothing, the same as the soldiers. He wore his krama in classic Khmer Rouge style, like a scarf, with the two ends hanging down on his chest. He was talking to his
brothers-in-law, who stayed at his side to protect him, and rolling his cigarette around in the fingers of one hand. He blinked his eyes, looked this way and that. His facial features were
constantly in motion.

The time had come to deal with Pen Tip, I said, and Sangam ran his thumb along the blade of his hatchet and agreed. He was a strong old man, and it was comforting to have him on my side.

But before I could make my move, the Khmer Rouge leaders returned and issued an order. They told it to people like Pen Tip, and Pen Tip relayed it to us. He said we were supposed to go to a
village far off to the east, in the forest. I had never even heard of the place, but the crowd, accustomed to obeying orders, lifted its luggage and began its trudge. The opportunity for revenge
had been lost. Dust rose from the passage of feet and oxen. The road became a twisting, braided maze of paths. As the sun sunk behind us, I brought my group to a halt. Pen Tip was nowhere in sight.
I had no intention of following his orders. I told the group that we were going to cut north, toward the railroad. They agreed.

We set out on our new course. Before long, someone from Phum Ra came up and told me that he had seen Pen Tip split off and go northwest.

I smiled grimly. I had expected something like that from him. Pen Tip wanted to escape from the Khmer Rouge too. He knew they were a losing cause. It was time for him to change allegiances and
collaborate with the Khmer Serei instead. But he also knew that he could not head directly toward the liberation forces without being noticed. So he had issued the orders to the rest of us and then
tried to lose himself in the crowd.

We walked toward the railroad, arriving at a village of houses on stilts set among shade trees and fruit trees.

Thousands of the uprooted had come to the village before us. It was not a sanctuary so much as a no-man’s-land, with no soldiers around. We decided to stay there too.

While we waited, hoping the war would pass us by, there were rice fields to forage. Every day we went out to the fields and harvested as much as we wanted. There was a big river too, and we went
there to bathe. We did not yet have our freedom, but we didn’t move for six or seven days, because here we could satisfy even more basic needs. For water and rice.

Then the liberation army pushed on farther and the Khmer Rouge retreated, and Pen Tip showed up with them, in his oxcart. Blinking nervously and looking from side to side, Pen Tip told everyone
from Phum Ra to move on to the Khmer Rouge camp a short distance away. He spotted me in the crowd and shouted, ‘Samnang, you move on to the military camp. Our leaders are waiting
there.’

‘Pen Tip, you go first,’ I said sarcastically, and spat on the ground.

His eyebrows raised. He pointed in the direction of the Khmer Rouge camp. ‘The leaders are waiting. The front lines are retreating. Uh, you have to move. Angka will provide rice over
there.’

My hand went to my waist, but the hatchet I usually kept in my waistband wasn’t there. I had left it with my luggage.

‘You go first,’ I repeated. ‘Nobody trusts you, Pen Tip. Nobody believes what you’re saying. Before, you told people who had no oxcarts, who carried all their belongings
on shoulder-boards, to go someplace very far away. But you didn’t go there yourself. You went in a different direction, and you had an oxcart to carry your luggage.’

Dozens of people from Phum Ra had clustered around to watch. They all understood what was happening, which was indirect and ritualized and very Cambodian. This was a declaration of war, like
slapping someone with gloves to provoke a duel. I was ‘breaking his face.’

Pen Tip looked worried and glanced away. ‘You, uh, you don’t have to talk that way. Um, I’m not that kind of person.’ He twisted the bamboo-leaf cigarette in his
fingertips. ‘No, you don’t have to talk that way, Samnang. Words like that are for temple boys.’

‘Because you are a temple boy. You never told people the truth, or treated them correctly. You always lie to innocent people.’

Pen Tip said, ‘If you don’t want to go, you are responsible for yourself. Angka told me to tell you to go. I’m just trying to help you by passing on the information.’

I stared at him but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

Then he drove away.

When the adrenaline finally drained and I calmed down, I still felt good. I had acted properly. In Cambodian society, which is inhibited and indirect, you must publicly insult
someone first before moving on to the next phase. Only in this way can you, the accuser, keep face yourself. To attack someone physically without establishing the basis for the fight is low-class
and unethical, like the behaviour of the Khmer Rouge.

Anyway, I thought, we will have the showdown soon enough. I can use my hatchet then, to defend myself or to attack. Pen Tip is small and he will be easy to defeat.

But after I bathed in the river and lay down and thought about it some more, I realized my mistake. What was wrong with me? How could I have made such an error? Pen Tip wouldn’t give me
the pleasure of a one-on-one duel. Not when he had re-established himself with the Khmer Rouge. He would get soldiers to take me away.

I told my group to pack quickly. We would leave as soon as it got dark, before Pen Tip could make his move.

When the last light left the sky we waded across the river, making several trips until we had all the baggage and all the children on the far side. We walked on. Soon we came to the railroad
tracks, dimly reflecting the starlight. We camped beyond the tracks on a hillock. I lay awake, thinking about Pen Tip, gripping my hatchet.

At dawn the others went off into the rice fields to build up our supplies while I made a reconnaissance. I looked all around for Khmer Rouge and the liberation soldiers, but I saw nothing and
heard nothing.

No sounds of artillery. No trains coming along the tracks. No planes in the empty blue skies.

It was quiet around us. I didn’t like it. The previous day there had been gunfire to the east, the north and the west, none of it nearby.

Sangam and his wife decided to go east toward Phnom Penh, along the railroad tracks. I decided to take my group north to National Route 5, and from there westward toward Thailand. We wished each
other luck and parted on excellent terms. Sangam had been an honest, reliable friend.

Now our group was down to twelve, all of us related. I was the leader. Ngor Balam and his wife had two children and a nephew. Hok and his wife had an infant daughter, whom they carried, plus the
three children of my late brother Pheng Huor – two girls, named Im and Ngim, and the little boy, Chy Kveng. All of the children in the group were sturdy and well behaved. Even Chy Kveng could
walk all day without being carried. But having so many children made us vulnerable and slow.

We walked along oxcart paths, through rice fields and jungle, choosing the paths that led in the right direction. Every hour or so I checked our bearings by climbing trees. From the treetops,
the Phnom Tippeday ridge was in sight, the ruined wat and the stupa together making one white dot in the distance.

Because of the children and our frequent stops to gather food, we made slow progress. I was nervous and alert, going out on frequent, short reconnaissance trips and then returning. When we met
other civilians we asked them if they had seen soldiers, but they all said no.

Soft, hot dust covered our feet and ankles as we walked. We came to a canal, bathed in it, kept going and came to a deserted village. Bananas and green mangoes hung invitingly in the trees, and
yams grew in the gardens. We helped ourselves. Later that day we came to another deserted village, with papaya and jack-fruit trees, and ate again. The next day we saw a pig rooting for yams in a
field. We three men in the group chased after the pig and caught it. When we cooked it, other travellers appeared, and we shared it with them gladly. Everyone ate his fill and sat around, talking
and relaxing.