We Are Here (8 page)

My father spotted a heavily trodden path made by merchants trading along the Cambodian–Thai border. But the jungle was dry and most of the large trees had been cut down. There weren’t even vines from which he could rehydrate himself. The jungle was also sparse, which made it immensely difficult to hide. He saw scatterings of dead bodies and severed limbs. One decapitated head had been mounted on a wooden stake on which Vietnamese words had been written in blood:
Vietnamese are not welcome
. It was not clear to whom the words were directed. Perhaps it was a message from the Khmer Rouge to the Vietnamese forces who were trying to oust them. Whatever the case, it was a chilling and atrocious reminder of the danger that surrounded him. But there was only one way to go: forward.

My father decided to continue on the path, but not long after he was met by armed soldiers who did not wear any recognisable uniform. They wore khaki fatigues and had cartridge belts draped across them. They captured my father and took him to an enclosure surrounded by barbed wire. Here he met a Vietnamese helicopter pilot, also a refugee, as well as some Cambodians of Vietnamese descent. That night he was haunted by dreadful thoughts. There was no way any of the others could have made it, he reasoned. If they didn’t die at the hand of soldiers, they would never survive the landmines or the lack of water. Occasionally,
gunshots could be heard from the direction of the jungle. My father lay awake in terror.

The next morning, he discovered that the guerrillas who had captured him had contacted the Red Cross, who were operating near the border. For each refugee they safely delivered, the guerrillas were given a quantity of rice. In the morning, personnel from the Red Cross were brought to the enclosure and he was released to the Red Cross. They offered my father an aerogram with which to send a message to his family back home, but he refused it. The horrific journey he had endured and the thought of his missing son and wife had left him devoid of hope and the will to live. The devastation he felt was so pervasive, he could not face the empty and brutal reality that was before him. He had accumulated a heavy heart traumatised by re-education, landmines, guerrillas, severed limbs and gunshots. The trauma crept underneath his fingernails and into his eyes, his hair, his nostrils. My father promised himself that if he did not see my mother within a few days, he would take his own life.

Left alone in the jungle, H
ng Khanh had all but given up; his open sores had grown so infected he was rendered virtually immobile. H
i, who had been several kilometres behind when the smuggler had abandoned him, had decided to keep going in the hope of somehow catching up with H
ng Khanh. H
i had just caught sight of him—tall and fair, H
ng Khanh was easily recognisable especially in these surrounds as he was too
fair to look Cambodian but could be mistaken for a Vietnamese soldier—when suddenly a patrol of Khmer Rouge soldiers emerged from the jungle. Shrinking into the shadows, H
i watched in horror as a blindfold was put around H
ng Khanh’s head, signalling an execution was imminent. Then a large piece of wood was swung at H
ng Khanh’s head. Instantly, his legs collapsed beneath him.

Awash with terror, H
i ran away as fast as he could. Then, in the distance, he saw my mother up ahead. The man who was transporting her had not abandoned her. H
i began to wave, calling out in Vietnamese to my mother. ‘Aunty, stop! Stop!’