We Are Here (7 page)

Late that night, my mother, holding her baby, moved through the rice fields which lined the road to and beyond the border. She was accompanied by one of the men Mr T
had contracted. It was rough terrain, often with no clear path. The border was heavily guarded with armed guerrillas on both sides. Close to the border, my mother tripped and fell into a small ditch. Immediately she clamped her hand across my brother Văn’s face as he struggled to cry out.

Someone yelled into the darkness. ‘Who’s that?! Who’s there?!’
Bang, bang, bang
. The frighteningly rapid thunder of gunshots punctured the air. Paralysed with fear, they huddled in silence, my mother trying to soothe her baby. Strangely and fortunately,
as if aware of the danger they were in, Văn was quickly compliant and placid, like an old man with deep knowing trapped inside a baby’s body. They stayed crouched in the vast and empty rice fields for a long time until the night was silent once more. Eventually they continued walking, arriving scared but safe in Bavet, at a small hiding spot where they met up with my father. The next day, my mother’s father crossed the border on a motorbike and met them to say goodbye to his first daughter and youngest son one last time. My grandfather looked long and hard at his son. He observed with pride that H
ng Khanh was tall, highly intelligent and mature for his age. He was sure to survive the journey, he thought. He did not know that this was to be the last time they would ever see each other.

Led by the smuggler, the small group made their way to a large provincial town where they took a ferry across the Mekong River to the busy city of Neak Luong on the other side. They boarded the ferry together with motorbikes, trucks, bicycles, beggars and animals. Once on the other side, they went into hiding, waiting for the smugglers who would take them on the next stage of the journey to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. In the late afternoons, my father would walk by the river, watching as people washed and small children played in naked innocence, oblivious to the monstrous atrocities plaguing their country. One afternoon my father found a French dictionary, titled
Larousse
, discarded on the side of the road. He found it so strange that it lay there so passively, so unwontedly. Something that he would have nurtured like a sacred relic. He quickly picked it up and
took it back to their hiding spot. Inside the book was a map of Cambodia. As he studied it, he realised how far away from the Thai border they were. The realisation devastated him. But, he reminded himself, when they’d made the decision to leave Cambodia, they had knowingly chosen to risk death rather than face what life held for them in Vietnam. Despite the dangers, they would have to keep going, wherever fate would lead them. There was no turning back.

After ten days or so in Neak Luong, they made contact with the new smugglers, who took them by bicycle to Phnom Penh, approximately sixty kilometres away. Once they arrived in the capital, the hungry, tired fugitives and their weak baby hid in the roof space of a small house. In the early hours of the next morning, they set off for the provincial town of Battambang, the second most populous city in Cambodia after Phnom Penh, three hundred kilometres away. They followed the national highway by foot and at night slept hidden in the shadows by the roadside. Along the way, my father saw many European cars—Peugeots, Renaults and Mercedes—abandoned by the side of the road. Chaos had descended upon Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime. Anyone caught in possession of a luxury vehicle—a sure sign of a capitalist—was likely to be butchered by the Khmer Rouge.

One night, as they were preparing to sleep on the roadside, my father walked away from the group in order to go to the toilet. To his surprise, he came across a manufacturing facility which was heavily guarded by Vietnamese forces and allied
Cambodian soldiers. It looked as though this was some sort of checkpoint. The factory appeared to be newly built and bore the logo of Blackstone. My father knew of the company because his sister had had a Blackstone diesel engine in her rice-husking mill. The sight of the familiar logo brought his family sharply to mind and all at once he missed them so much his body ached. He knew that his departure would mean trouble for them with the authorities.

Days turned into nights, comprising a series of anxious hours until they finally arrived at Battambang. From there they travelled along the railway towards the town of Sisophon. Like Vietnam, Cambodia too had been colonised by the French, and between 1930 and 1940 the French had built a railway from Phnom Penh to Poipet on the Thai border. From Battambang, there was a single-track line. People travelled along the railway on a single flat panel made of bamboo and attached to wheels; it was moved along manually with a type of pump. If there was an oncoming traveller, everyone would gather their belongings and lift the wheeled panel off the rails. This method was used to transport animals, people and produce. As the smugglers got the contraption ready, my family sat in a nearby field among some cattle, eating a small ration of food.

Finally they arrived at the town of Sisophon, roughly fifty kilometres from the Thai border. There they hid in a tailor’s house until the smuggler could arrange for another four people and bicycles to take them further. The gentle old Cambodian tailor gave my mother a mandarin. It was almost completely dried
but had enough juice left to give to my brother Văn. A little juice and vitamin C was a luxury that he sucked on ferociously. The old man’s kind presence radiated humanity. ‘Go to Thailand?’ the tailor asked in Cambodian. My father understood the word Siam and indicated that they were. The old man looked at the baby boy gnawing the fruit and smiled. This simple generous gesture from a gracious stranger would forever embed itself in my father’s memory. He would later reflect that it could have been this little drop of juice that separated Văn from life and death.

This moment of humanity soon dissipated when the smuggler demanded money from my parents, declaring that Mr T
had not paid him. Drenched in desperation, my parents explained that the only possessions of value were their wedding rings and my mother’s diamond earrings, an heirloom wedding gift from my maternal grandmother. The smuggler searched my parents and discovered that they had spoken the truth; they had nothing left to give. The smuggler stripped them of the wedding jewellery. These were precious items that were symbols of a prompt union, bringing my mother back to a day where she wore a borrowed dress and ate duck. A day so different to the unspeakable fear that now rested permanently on her face. She missed her sisters, her mother. Their constant fussing. The infinite sense of comfort that occurs when generations of women gather. She could see them at home looking out at the river and wondering about her, heavy with worry.

When the items were handed over to the smuggler, they were then taken to hide in a farmhouse set amid a field of palm trees.
The journey was taking its toll. H
ng Khanh had been bitten by various poisonous insects and had open sores on his legs. He was in agony, to the point where he could not walk properly. There was limited clean water. My mother gave Văn water from a pond. Already weak, he had now contracted severe dysentery.

Sisophon was the last checkpoint manned by Vietnamese forces. Soldiers regularly inspected each house in the area. That evening, my father was overcome with trepidation, dreading capture at any moment. As they listened to the soldiers making their inspections of various houses, fear exhaled from everyone’s mouth and rumbled in silence through the house. Somehow, miraculously, they were not exposed.

The next morning, four men on bicycles took the group through the jungle. My father went first, then H
ng Khanh, then my mother with Văn, and finally H
i. A couple of the smugglers who spoke some Vietnamese explained that the wife and child of the man who was carrying my mother and Văn had been murdered by the Khmer Rouge. He spoke some French and was an educated man. They set off, the parties separated by a few kilometres to avoid suspicion. The men posed as merchants and my mother posed as the wife of the man whose bicycle she was sharing. None of the parties knew the fate of the others.

Before they reached their destination, the riders taking my father, H
i and H
ng Khanh demanded more money. When they found there was indeed none to be had, the smugglers abandoned each of the three men alone in the middle of the jungle near the border town of Poipet. In the fight between the Khmer Rouge
and the Cambodian government, about six million landmines had been densely laid in and around the jungles of Poipet. My father and his nephew and brother-in-law were stranded in one of the world’s largest minefields.