Survival in the Killing Fields (36 page)

Most of one wall was missing, the concrete broken up for the metal reinforcement rods inside, which the Khmer Rouge used for making nails. The thick, intricately carved wooden doors found in all
temples were missing. So were the door frames, the windows and the window frames, leaving ugly, gaping holes. The ornamental railing leading up the stairs from the terrace in the shape of a holy
naga
or snake had been smashed, also for the reinforcement rods. The scavengers had wrecked the lower part of the roof, taken the wood away for the lumber and left the coloured roof tiles in
broken heaps on the terrace.

We went inside. Debris and bird shit covered the floor. Pigeons flew in and out of the holes in the roof. At the far wall, once filled with Buddha statues in ascending rows, all the statues were
gone, except for the largest Buddha at the top. The vandals had cut off the statue’s head and right arm, but they had been too lazy to destroy the rest.

To my ears came the polytonal tinkling of the wind chimes, from the eaves outside.

We stood there, eight ragged, barefoot men.

Without a word, we dropped to our knees and prayed.

Lord Buddha, I said silently, forgive us for what we are about to do. We do not wish to tear down your temple. Our hearts are not in the work. Our hearts belong to you. We obey only to save our
lives, because we are weak and afraid. Please do not punish us. Please protect us. Punish those who give us these orders. Punish those who do not let us come here to worship or to clean the grounds
to make merit.

There was nobody else around the temple, nobody watching. The previous scavengers had left bamboo ladders outside. Slowly, reluctantly, gesturing apologetically to the headless Buddha, we
climbed the ladders to a part of the lower roof where the tiles were already broken and the wood exposed. We pried rafters loose with our axes, as few of them as possible. Then we left the temple
quickly and slid the rafters down the steep mountain slope.

Fortunately we didn’t have to go back to the temple the next day. Or ever. The authorities were always changing their minds.

Instead we were sent back to canal work. It was the same dreary routine as before. Bells day and night. Walking out to the site before dawn in single file, enduring the taped music from the
loudspeakers, working until the lunch bell rang, walking back to the common kitchen in single file, on and on. Too much work, not enough sleep, not enough food. No real friendships. I was luckier
than most. For me, the lack of friends was no problem, as long as I had Huoy. We shared everything. There was a bond between us as instinctive as the bond between animal mates.

What was hard was the terror. I had already been to prison once. Every morning I wondered if I would make it through the day. Every night I wondered if I would make it until morning, or whether
a shrill child’s voice would bring a circle of accusers. It was the same for all the ‘new’ people. We never got used to the terror, we just kept it inside, in our hearts. Our arms
and legs could be as thin as bamboo. Our hair could be turning brown or white, but we didn’t show the terror on the outside. Inside, we were thinking all the time, maybe the next hour. Maybe
tonight. It was always on our minds that the soldiers would take us away.

‘Be careful – bodies disappear’. That was one of the sayings that sprung up among the ‘new’ people as a warning not to attract attention. Another saying was
Dam
doeum kor
, which literally means ‘Plant a kapok tree’. The word
kor,
however, also means ‘mute’, as in ‘Keep your mouth shut’. Stay quiet. Plant a
kapok tree. Bodies disappear. The warnings were muttered and indirect, but the meaning was clear: avoid the soldiers completely. Don’t give them a reason to single you out from the crowd.
Whenever my work group walked anywhere, we changed directions if there was any chance of crossing paths with soldiers.

Except to answer questions, I hadn’t spoken a word to soldiers since the ride to Phnom Penh and back on my Vespa. On the front lines the low-ranking soldiers seemed very much like the
mit
of that trip: dark-skinned, illiterate, not very clean, unfamiliar with modern objects like engines and toilets and televisions. They spoke in the accent of the Battambang hill people,
with a singsong intonation. They could walk forever. Their feet were too wide for their rubber-tyre sandals, but they were proud to be wearing them, and their uniforms, and their silk kramas and
Montagut shirts, because most of them had never been fully dressed until joining the Khmer Rouge.

On the canal site we ‘new’ people moved with a feebleness that made us seem old. No wasted movements, no spring to our step, no playing around. Here and there were those of us who
had lost their minds. They sang snatches of old songs and then broke into tears. Or sat down on the clay when it wasn’t break time. The soldiers took them away, six one day, two the next,
none the day after, three the day after that, culling the insane and the politically suspect from the ranks in the late afternoons. Bodies disappear.

I worked harder than ever, because Huoy asked me to. She said our best chance lay in being model workers. If I worked hard, she pointed out, it might prove to Chev that I had reformed my ways
after being sent to prison. At her suggestion, I cut back on food-foraging too. Now that she had her job in the kitchen we didn’t need wild foods as much anyway. I only continued foraging at
all to keep my fellow workers from suspecting how much food Huoy was bringing home.

Because of my energy on the job (made possible by the food Huoy stole from the kitchen), I was promoted to group leader, a supervisor of nine other workers. There were no extra rations or
privileges that went with the position. Now I was the one who got blamed for being unfair when I spooned the portions of watery rice into the bowl. I went to meetings with other group leaders to
listen to our bosses, the section leaders. Invariably I agreed with whatever the section leaders said, even when it didn’t make sense.

The other group leaders were also ‘new’ people who inwardly opposed the revolution but who obeyed to stay alive. There was only one group leader I wasn’t sure about, and that
was Pen Tip, who had been promoted just like me.

Pen Tip was an odd-looking man, with a duckfooted walk like Charlie Chaplin. He liked to hang around with ‘old’ people and Khmer Rouge. He joked with them and flattered them, and
somehow he got away with it – other people who got close to the soldiers were taken to the woods. Pen Tip knew how to manipulate people, how to make them feel obligated. He conveyed the
impression that since he was well connected to Angka we other group leaders needed to stay on his good side. I began to avoid him whenever possible.

I knew Pen Tip couldn’t tell Angka about the clandestine evening meeting about joining the resistance. He had been part of that too. However, he could conceivably tell Angka about my
background. Pen Tip had seen me in hospitals in Phnom Penh. He knew I was a doctor. But he didn’t know any details. He didn’t know my real name.

He called me over one day when he was sitting on a bamboo bench that soldiers sometimes used, near the common kitchen. He was so short that his legs didn’t reach the ground. He swung his
feet back and forth like a child and rotated his cigarette in his fingertips.

‘Tell me something, uh, “Samnang,” ’ he said, pronouncing the name with deliberate irony. He had a way of lifting his eyebrows in surprise or puzzlement, and darting his
eyes around without looking directly at me. ‘Uh, tell me the truth. You were a doctor back in Phnom Penh, but’ – he took a puff on his cigarette – you’re a nice guy
and, uh, I like you very much.’

He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to. He was threatening to expose me if I didn’t give him a bribe.

‘Look, Pen Tip,’ I said, ‘I helped sick people in Phum Chhleav, same as you. You weren’t a doctor, I’m not a doctor. We were just concerned about public
health.’

‘I hear you have had, ah, problems before with your own health,’ he said. His eyes rested on the stub of my little finger, then darted away. I found myself suddenly perspiring.

‘I really don’t have time to talk now, Pen Tip,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get some more mud baskets for my crew. But you’re mistaken about me. So
dam doeum
kor
, eh?’

‘People disappear,’ he replied.

I walked away, calm on the outside, angry inside. It was bad enough to humble myself to the Khmer Rouge. I wasn’t about to humble myself to another ‘new’ person. And I
didn’t like people who played up to the Khmer Rouge. Aunt Kim in Tonle Batí, Pen Tip here – people like that made me sick.

Over the next few weeks Pen Tip managed to extract concessions from all the other group leaders, food or tobacco or other signs of respect, but I held out. It became a contest of wills. I
didn’t tell Huoy about it. There was no sense upsetting her.

Then one afternoon during tobacco break, when several groups were resting together on a hillock near the canal, Pen Tip made the struggle public. There were no soldiers or high-level supervisors
around. We were smoking our tobacco cigarettes and relieving our depression by joking about what we had done under the old regime. One man said he used to be the king, but he had resigned to be a
toilet inspector. The next man told him how lucky he was, that he had been only an assistant toilet inspector. We all laughed and tried to outdo each other with the most ridiculous stories.

‘You want to hear something funny?’ Pen Tip said. ‘I’ll tell you something funny. Samnang was a doctor.’ The tone of his voice made everyone fall silent.

‘No, Pen Tip,’ I said wearily, ‘that’s not true. And don’t call me that. Angka might kill me.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Pen Tip replied. ‘Everybody knows you’re a doctor.’

‘
Comrade
Pen Tip,’ I replied, ‘don’t say that. If you play around like that and Angka believes you, I’m in a lot of trouble. Don’t play
games.’

The break ended and we all went back to work. From that time on it was common knowledge that I had been accused of being a doctor, though nobody knew whether it was true or not.

A week or so later I was resting on a mat and Huoy was lying in the hammock when two teenage soldiers came up. I had never seen them before. They were not the soldiers usually assigned to our
cooperative. One of them held a rope in his hand. It was all I could do to persuade them to wait for me to change into fresh trousers. There was gold in the trousers I was wearing and, since it was
obvious where I was going, it seemed better that Huoy keep it. They tied my elbows behind my back again. Then they kicked me as I stood on the edge on the hillock. I fell on my face in the rice
stubble. Huoy was hysterical. They marched me away past the common kitchen in full view of hundreds of people. If Pen Tip was watching, I didn’t notice.

A warning: this chapter tells of the very depths of suffering that people like me saw and experienced under the Khmer Rouge regime. It is an important part of the story, but it
is not a pleasant part. So if you wish, or if you must, skip this chapter and go on to the next one.

The soldiers directed me to turn left and right on the paths, and soon there was no doubt that we were heading toward the prison at Phum Chhleav. Then they told me to stop. We
waited for about an hour, until six or seven more prisoners and their guards came up. We prisoners were tied together in a line and began walking again.

When we reached the prison another group of tied-up ‘new’ people was waiting, like us the victims of a roundup that had been planned in advance. Our guards tied the two lines
together but loosened the bonds around our elbows, enough for the circulation to return to our arms. We sat with our backs to the prison wall, which was part thatch and part corrugated metal, and
tried not to look in the direction of the mango trees, where other prisoners were in various states of torture.

‘What did you do wrong?’ I whispered to a woman next to me.

‘Nothing. I don’t even know why they took me here,’ she said. ‘I’ve been working very, very hard for them in the front lines.’ She was pregnant, one of five
obviously pregnant women in the line.

None of the others knew why they had been arrested either. Quietly, in whispers, up and down the line, we agreed not to tell the Khmer Rouge anything.

A young guard, fifteen or sixteen years old, asked us disdainfully if we were hungry or thirsty. When everyone said yes, he brought a large bowl full of water. He held it in his hands and the
first person leaned over and put his mouth in it and drank like a horse. Then the guard put the bowl in the first person’s hands, which were tied behind his back. The first person turned,
holding the bowl behind him so the second person could drink like a horse, and then the second person took the bowl in his hands and held it for the third person and so on down the line.

‘ “No one will take care of you,” ’ the guard said smugly, reciting one of the regime’s favourite expressions. ‘ “You have to take care of
yourselves.” ’

We spent the night inside the jail, a long, narrow structure with an aisle in the middle and a row of prisoners to each side. We lay on our backs with our heads to the wall and our feet locked
into leg-irons attached to a long piece of wood running next to the centre aisle. Low wooden partitions gave us each a space to lie in, like a private pigsty, already dirtied with wastes. The air
reeked of shit and piss and an odour like ammonia. It was hard to breathe. For me, it was impossible to sleep. There were about eighty ‘new’ people in the jail, and some of them were
always moaning.

Early the next morning the noise of a motorcycle came to our ears. The motorcycle approached, downshifted, stopped nearby. I thought: Somebody important has arrived. In the Phnom Tippeday
region, messengers and low-ranking cadre usually rode bicycles or horses, middle and upper-middle cadre rode motorcycles, and those at the very top rode in jeeps. A motorcycle rider would be
someone like . . . like an officer in the state security apparatus, I decided. Yes, that was about right. It had been prearranged, the fresh capture of political prisoners and our interrogation the
following morning.