Cambodian Book of the Dead

Tom Vater

THE CAMBODIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD

 

To the ones of the first hour…Janey, Lo, Flintman, Rockoff and Pesey (RIP)

 

 

 

Cambodia: Where the Appalling is Commonplace

– Jerry Redfern

 

 

IN THE SHADOW OF ENLIGHTENMENT

 

In retrospect, Maier could see that the catastrophe in Cambodia had been the turning point. But in retrospect, everything always looked different.

War was never simple. As soon as the first shot was fired, carefully made plans changed beyond recognition. As soon as the first shot was fired, everything was unpredictable, and no one got away scot-free.

Most men were simply blown away by the wilful mayhem, like dry leaves in a fast wind.

Others found themselves in the horror of the moment and got stuck there, making the world die, over and over. A few went by another route, on and on, into themselves, until they experienced a kind of epiphany, a moment of arrival.

War correspondent Maier was about to arrive.

 

Maier and Hort sat on a crumbling wall near what was left of the railway station in Battambang, or what was left of this once-picturesque and industrious town in north-western Cambodia. Perhaps a school had stood here forty years earlier. A few metres of tired red brick work was all that had survived the recent vagaries of history. At midday, the wall offered no shade. It was just a structure to sit next to. Better than being exposed, in a world of dust, misery and possible aggravation. A group of men sat next to the two journalists on low stools. They drank rice wine as if their lives depended on it. Perhaps they did.

Garbage and dust-devils blew across the shabby, run-down space between the wall and the railway tracks – scraps of paper, plastic bags and diapers. Who had money for diapers around here? Where could you even buy nappies in Cambodia?

A young woman with a pinched face served the rancid drink from an old oil canister. There was only one glass, which went around in a circle. People in Cambodia drank quietly and with great concentration. Everyone was waiting. The railway station was a good place to wait. The trains were less reliable than the next glass, as the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot's feared communist army, frequently mined the tracks between the capital Phnom Penh and Battambang. The Khmer Rouge was the main reason why people were waiting. Despite UN sponsored elections, boycotted by the communists, the war just would not die. Most Cambodians wanted peace, and peace meant waiting.

Hort passed Maier a joint. “The war will be over in a few weeks, Maier. 1997 is our year. At least that what they say in Phnom Penh. Around here, people not so sure.”

Hort laughed, as the Khmer sometimes do when they don't feel like laughing.

Maier wiped the sweat from his eyes, rearranged his matted beard and shrugged his shoulders. “Your country is sick of war, Hort. And you are getting married next week, when we are through and you have earned yourself a sack full of money.”

The young Khmer was working as Maier's fixer and had been accompanying him for the past four years, every time the German journalist had been on assignment in Cambodia. Four years and six visits to this cursed country. And yet Maier had fallen into uneasy love with this sunny and wicked paradise.

Hort had saved his life on at least two occasions. In a few days, Maier would be the best man at his young friend's wedding, hopefully without making a drunken pass at Hort's attractive sister.

What would Carissa, beautiful and twisted Carissa, say if she found him in the sack with a young Khmer woman? What would be left, when the war really ended, when the international media left this tired land to its own devices? Maier had come with the war. Would he not also disappear with the war? Move on to the next war? Lack of choice wasn't the issue. War was always in vogue.

Hort interrupted him in his thoughts.

“As long as Pol Pot is alive, we not find peace. Why don't UN arrest and kill him?” Hort answered the question himself, “My people no longer have expectation that anyone come and help.”

An old woman, her lined forehead almost hidden beneath a faded
krama
, the traditional chequered scarf many Khmer wore, her eyes black and numb like the tropical small hours, passed the two men slowly and silently spat on the hot dusty ground in front of Maier.

Hort's contorted stare followed her.

“I think I could do with a glass of rice wine myself.”

Maier and his fixer were waiting for an officer serving with a regiment of government troops. Their contact was involved in peace negotiations with the last remnants of the Khmer Rouge fighters. The civil conflict, which had prevented recovery since the demise of the communists' agrarian utopia in 1979, some eighteen years before, was drawing to a close. The government in Phnom Penh had some control over most of the country, or at least over what was left of Cambodia after a half century of catastrophic politics, war and genocide. Every time he made eye contact with a Khmer, Maier could see that that wasn't much.

The Khmer Rouge had retreated to the west, to the provinces bordering Thailand. Several conflagrations had taken place in Battambang in recent weeks. Nasty, dark stuff.

Maier knew there wasn't much time left. One of the great nightmares of the twentieth century was drawing to a close and Cambodia was moving towards an uncertain but less violent future. He'd come back to find out what that future might look like from the country's last battlefield. Finding out anything in Cambodia usually involved waiting. Maier had been waiting for three days. Today, Hort had assured him, the interview would materialise. Hort had been equally optimistic the previous day and the day before that.

A group of young men in torn work clothes, their dusty, hard feet in plastic flip-flops, walked past the wall, smoking cigarettes and talking quietly amongst themselves. Maier had picked up enough Khmer to understand that the conversation revolved around him. Was the tall foreigner a soldier? Was he looking for a girl? One look from Hort made them shut up.

“What gift are you give my future wife on her wedding day, Maier?”

The young Khmer could hardly wait to return to Phnom Penh. Two extended families were waiting on the groom and his tall, white employer – his protector. They had already put up the marquee.

“If you keep bugging me, Hort, I will buy her a sack of cold, fried frogs.” Maier grinned at the young man – for his friend's assurance – as the Khmer did not always understand his sarcasm. How many miles had he already travelled with Hort, how many cruelties had he documented, while his fixer had stood next to him, his face expressionless? How many drunk and trigger-happy soldiers had they passed together at road blocks? Perhaps he really was the young Khmer's lucky charm.

Maier got distracted by a young woman in a bright purple sarong. He noticed the boy as well, but you noticed so many things. You had to choose, and Maier chose the woman. Hort, too, held his breath for a second. The woman passed the wall without looking at the men and crossed the railway tracks. Maier could not see her face, but he was sure that she was beautiful. He followed the languid sway of her hips and let his thoughts meander. The war was practically finished and he felt happier than he had in a long time. His plan to stop working in the war news business had become more appealing in recent months, but since his return to Cambodia, he had enjoyed his work, and after all, a plan was only a plan.

Later, as he sat on the back of a pick-up slowly rumbling towards Phnom Penh, he would suddenly recall the most important moment: the short cropped hair and the fixed stare, the dusty brown baseball cap, which the boy had pulled deep down onto his face and which had not suited the young Red Khmer at all. But you saw people with fixed stares everywhere, especially in this mad and lost part of the world.

The boy had just appeared on the potholed road. He wore a ripped T-shirt and black trousers and he was barefoot. Why had Maier not looked at him more closely?

The youth dropped his bag next to the woman who was serving the rice wine. She had her back turned to Maier and he barely noticed the brief exchange between the two. It looked like an everyday conversation. It was an everyday conversation. A few seconds later, the boy was on his way and Maier had forgotten him. He stared across the tracks, but the girl in the bright sarong had also dropped out of sight. Maier briefly turned towards the woman serving the moonshine. She had started a heated argument with her customers. He didn't understand a word the woman said. She had a strong accent, and whatever she was saying, quickly fell victim to the mean, silent aggression of the day. He didn't care. The smell of the tropics, saturated with reincarnation and ruin, this hypnotising combination of extremes, of promise and danger, of temptation and failure, had convinced him once more that he'd chosen the best job in the world. In a few hours, when the interview would finally be in the can, he would drink with Hort. He still had a small bottle of vodka in his bag, and they were bound to be able to organise a few oranges in Battambang. No rice wine for Maier. And in a few days, after the wedding, he'd be flying back to Hamburg. That was the plan.

“I'm really looking forward to your wedding, Hort. It will be a special day for me as well.”

“The day you ask for my sister's hand?”

The years with Maier had changed the Khmer as well. Occasionally he tried his luck with irony and sarcasm, in a gentle Cambodian way.

Maier replied drily, “Carissa will cut my balls off. Or I'll have to flee and will never be able to return to Cambodia.”

“That a shame, Maier. Maybe it better you keep your hands off my sister and follow your western lifestyle.”

Suddenly, the three drinkers next to Maier wrested the sack off the wine-seller and jumped up. Hort jerked to his feet and gave Maier a hard push. The explosion killed his friend's warning. The bomb blew most of the wall straight past Maier. The woman who'd been selling the wine was blown to pieces. Screams and smoke. Maier lay flat on the ground for a few long seconds, not daring to move. Even the sky was on fire. Turning his head, he could see twisted bodies through the clouds of black fumes, shapes covered in blood and dust, frozen in black burns. A few small lean-tos that had been built against the wall were ablaze. Maier shook his legs and arms, everything was still there. One of the young men who'd been sitting behind him was alive. Caked in blood, he cried softly, as he tried to pull a friend from under the rubble. It was too late. A wooden beam had completely severed his companion's legs from his torso.

Hort had disappeared. Perhaps he had fallen before the explosion had gone off. But Maier knew that his friend had been sitting between himself and the woman selling the wine and had jumped up to warn him. The sudden realisation that his friend and fixer was dead came as a physical blow, as if some unchallengeable force had risen at speed from the earth below him and was suddenly ripping the skin off his back, racing up his neck as binary code made of needles and knives, and on, into his head where everything contracted in panicked spasms. He sat in debris for a moment, trying to breathe, waiting for something to come back, for time to go on. In the silence following the attack, a couple of dogs barked in the distance and the whine of a motorbike grew louder. Women cried, somewhere to his right. Otherwise, all he could hear was a high-pitched ringing tone in his ears. Maier forced himself up and climbed through the smoke across the strewn-around brickwork. He had to be sure.

The bomb had taken Hort straight through a big hole in the wall of a building that had been destroyed decades ago. A quick look was enough. Hort was dead.

Without a doubt, the bomb had been meant for Maier. The Khmer Rouge hated westerners, especially journalists. And the Cambodian army had known that Maier would be waiting by the station. Virtually anyone with a modicum of energy could get hold of explosives in this country.

Maier moved away from the carnage and disappeared as best as he could into the crowd that was beginning to gather by the railway tracks. He had to get away before the police and the military showed. He ran to one of the nearest shacks, dived into a small shop, pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Carissa. Then he tied a
krama
around his head and jumped a passing pick-up truck bound for the capital.

He'd call his editor once he'd returned to Hamburg and handed in his notice. Maier was no longer a war correspondent.