Alive in the Killing Fields (2 page)

Back in Battambang, Chantha, my brothers, and I ate what Dad had supplied for us, and we shared it with the homeless children who begged on the streets. The Khmer Rouge had killed their parents and burned their houses, so many orphans in the city struggled to get enough to eat.

One weekend when I was at the farm with Dad, he said, “I have heard that the Khmer Rouge are gaining power. They are moving closer to the cities. Help me hitch the trailer to the tractor, and we’ll drive it to Battambang.”

As we rode along, my father said little. But I told him about Van Lan, who spent a lot of time with Chantha even when they weren’t studying. He was starting to feel almost like a big brother to me, and a smart one at that. He had read a lot of books, and I liked hearing him talk.

I was used to riding in the tractor in Salatrave, but when we got to Battambang, it felt funny to be driving a farm vehicle into the city. People glanced at us, but no one stared. I think many of them wished they had any kind of transportation at all. We were lucky.

“Chantha and Bunna,” Dad said, “if the Khmer Rouge come and you need to leave the city, load up as many of your belongings as you can fit into the trailer and return to Salatrave. You and your brothers can ride on the tractor.”

Chantha looked down and then asked quietly, “What about Van Lan?”

My father said, “Chantha, what about Van Lan?”

“We want to get married,” she said.

“I thought so,” he said. “Of course you should all be safe together.”

Chantha smiled slightly. This was not the way an engagement announcement was supposed to be made. Like most Cambodian girls, she had always looked forward to planning her wedding with the help of our mom, and savoring her beautiful day as a bride. As for my arranged marriage to Deenah, that idea was a thing of the past. Most of her family had been killed by the Khmer Rouge. Deenah survived, but I had no idea where she was. After the Khmer Rouge came, sorrow and uncertainty had taken over our lives. Our world had fallen apart, and we didn’t know what our new world would be like.

“Thank you for understanding,” she said to Dad.

Dad left the tractor and trailer with us, and he took a taxi back to the farm. Soon his prediction proved true.

We heard rumors that Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, thought city folk were too privileged and couldn’t be trusted. Pol Pot said farming was the only right way for everyone to live. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge streamed into Battambang and Phnom Penh. They didn’t talk about their philosophy. Instead, at gunpoint, they yelled, “Get out of here, or we’ll shoot! Now!” They were deadly serious. We could hear gunshots, and terrified children screaming. Van Lan said, “Mop, help me carry
all the bags of rice that we have. Then choose any clothes you want to take.”

Chantha said, “I’ll get our clothes and help Hackly and Chanty with theirs.”

Van Lan said calmly, “We can do this. Bring everything to the tractor, and I’ll load it all up.”

Van Lan and I each carried two bags of rice out to the tractor. At age ten, I still wasn’t very strong, but fear gives you muscle power you didn’t know you had. The street was jammed with people lugging as much as they could manage on their backs and in their arms. A few had bicycles or taxis, but most people walked. I heard a little girl cry, “Mommy, where are we going?” I ran back into the house and grabbed a couple of shirts, a pair of shorts, and my pajamas. I put them in a sack and took them to Van Lan. Chantha brought out a larger sack, and Hackly and Chanty, looking scared, trailed behind her. Van Lan organized everything in the tractor, and we piled in.

We had it easier than most people, because we had transportation. When we recognized other families going to Salatrave, we added their belongings to ours on the tractor, and they walked alongside. We were all nervous. I was glad Van Lan was with us. He spoke slowly and acted confident in spite of the chaos in the street. He was barely 20 years old, but to me, he seemed like an adult.

The Khmer Rouge walked in the streets, yelling and waving their guns. “Thanks to our great leader Pol Pot, we have a new Cambodia! Call us ‘Angka.’” “Angka” meant “savior,” but we needed saving from these hoodlums.

“City ways are evil,” yelled another Khmer Rouge. “In the new Cambodia, everyone works for the common good. They don’t sit around in fancy offices. They grow rice. If you don’t like the new way, then you are the enemy. The enemy will not live!”

While throngs of people trudged out of the city, the Khmer Rouge started killing “the enemy.” They shot educated people, advanced students, civic and military leaders, old people, and anyone with money. The Khmer Rouge had no laws. There were no courts. If they did not like somebody, they killed him. If a bystander complained, he got shot too. We watched in horror, silently. Fortunately, the Khmer Rouge did not know Van Lan was a teacher. They simply did not notice him. We got out of the city safely, but we had no idea what awaited us.

We returned to our village, Salatrave. But nobody was allowed to move into their old houses, or what was left of them. We had to build huts made of leaves, grass, and poles. Each family had a hut. The Khmer Rouge made us build them side by side, in long rows. Ours was at the end.

One day right after we got to Salatrave, my father said, “Chantha and Van Lan, you should have a beautiful wedding, full of celebration and joy. But it’s obvious that is not possible in these times.”

“I want to marry your daughter properly,” said Van Lan.

“I know,” said Dad, “that’s what we all want. I have a
friend who can perform the ceremony. I’ll invite whatever family is able to come.”

The ceremony was simple and short. In our village, people usually celebrated a wedding by playing music on a battery-powered record player with a speaker so large that everyone in town could enjoy the music. Someone still had one of those players, and after the ceremony, hearing the traditional music made me feel good. Chantha and Van Lan grinned, and I did too.

“Mop, I am now your brother,” said Van Lan with a wink. That gave me the biggest reason to smile that I’d had in a long time. But I could tell the grown-ups were not as happy as you would expect at a wedding. We didn’t know what the future would bring.

Only a few days later, the Khmer Rouge brought their guns again and yelled, “Move, now!”

They made all of us leave the huts we had just built. In the next weeks, a pattern developed. Over and over again, they forced us to work in a field for a few days, and then set up a camp nearby to sleep in. Then they would make us move to another area and do the same thing again. I never asked why. I just did what I was told.

My father heard that the Khmer Rouge near Salatrave did not like him, and he understood what that meant—his murder. So he left us and hid in the jungle where the trees, shrubs, and vines grew so close together that it was easy to become lost. But he was really smart, and he quickly learned his way around. He brought two friends to the area where he was living, and together they fished
and gathered honey at beehives he had found. Then the men took the fish and honey to people in Salatrave. Some of the Khmer Rouge were glad to have the food added to their supplies, so they accepted what my father’s friends brought them, and they did not go after my father in the jungle. I missed him so much!

The Khmer Rouge made us work in the fields every day. We did not get paid, and there were no days off. I had never worked in the fields before, but I did what the Khmer Rouge told me to do. I was just a kid, but that didn’t matter. I was a slave.

Everybody in Cambodia, even people who had never been farmers, knew that rice grows in shallow water. We built levees to keep the fields flooded. Sometimes we weeded the rice paddies. We made fertilizer out of tree bark and spread it in the fields. The other kids and I scared away birds that tried to eat the rice. At the end of the day, the Khmer Rouge made us set up our sleeping shacks.

One day when I was working in a rice field, I saw Zhen, the drunken employee my father had fired. Now, like the other Khmer Rouge men, he wore black. I pretended not to see him. When he got really close to me, he said in a mean voice, “Where is your father?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Yes you do,” he said. “Tell me.” He grabbed my arm and yanked me closer to him.

“I don’t know. I really don’t.” I looked down, the polite way for children to talk with adults.

“I’ll find him, you nasty brat,” he said. He shoved me away and strode off, sneering at us in the field.

Before the Khmer Rouge took over, he never would have been so mean to me. He worked for my father and was courteous to my whole family. Now Zhen was the boss with his rifle, black clothes, and show-off swagger.

Once when the Khmer Rouge made us walk to new fields, we marched past our old village. We saw that our house and all our neighbors’ houses had been flattened. Even if the Khmer Rouge decided to let us go home, I saw that I no longer had a home to go to.

After my father left for the jungle, the rest of my family still stayed together—Bunna, Chantha, Van Lan, my younger brothers and I. Lee was still living by himself in Pursat, and Chanya was still there, too, with her family. We cooked and ate our own food, away from other people. That arrangement lasted for only a few months. Then the Khmer Rouge took our little grill, cooking supplies, and food away from us. We were ordered to eat one meal a day with the group, but there was not enough food to go around. The Khmer Rouge said, “Now there may not be much food, but in the future there will be. If you work hard enough, you will have three full meals a day.”

To have three full meals a day became my dream.

When people do not have enough to eat, they get weak, they get sick, and they die. A lot of people died. We did not know what was going to happen to us. Would we be strong enough to survive? Would the Khmer Rouge decide to shoot us? Would our lives ever return
to normal, or would we always be slaves who did nothing but grow rice, and hope for almost enough food to eat in return for our endless labor?

At night when I tried to fall asleep, my stomach growled with hunger. I tried to remember what it was like to have plenty to eat. I thought about the Cambodian Thanksgiving when Mom prepared delicious, traditional food that I loved. I could picture her soaking the rice in water overnight. Then she put bacon or bananas on it, and wrapped it all in a banana leaf. The next day, she boiled it for a long time, until it cooked through. Sometimes we ate it with a fork, and sometimes we just peeled back the banana leaf and ate it with our hands. We did not have electricity or a refrigerator (nobody did), so we did not store food for long. I loved these rice pockets, and sometimes I hid some, hoping to save them for later. But the bugs, rats, or birds would always eat the food before I got back to it. How I wished I had that food now.

Cambodians do not celebrate birthdays, but we do love holidays, and food is always part of them. At our New Year’s celebration, the family always got together for a big meal. I especially liked the fruit we would have for the party. It came from other regions of Cambodia, so we did not normally eat it. But for New Year’s we would splurge and buy it. To get to the reunion, some relatives from far away came on motorcycles. Others came in taxis. People who lived fairly close came by cyclo, a kind of sofa on a bicycle. On the back, a man pedals a bicycle, and the “sofa” sits on his handlebars, which are supported by two
wheels. I was scared whenever I rode in a cyclo, because if the rider ran into anything, I—sitting in front—would have been the human bumper! But now, we never rode in any vehicle at all. We just walked and worked. The Khmer Rouge even took our clothes. They left me with only one pair of shorts and a shirt, which soon became nothing but rags.

During the rainy season, the Khmer Rouge sent my brother Bunna, then 15 years old, far away to work with a
chalat
(zhaLOT). It was a group of boys and girls about his age or a few years older that would make small earthen dams for irrigation or build huts for the Khmer Rouge. They worked on each project for three or four months at a time, all day long. Like the other teenagers with him, Bunna always longed for his family. One time he ran away to see us. He traveled by day through the jungle. He stayed away from the main trails or roads where he might be seen. He crawled through the murky marshes where almost nobody went during the rainy season. He also traveled by night. He knew that if the Khmer Rouge saw him, they would not bother to ask questions. They would consider him the enemy, and probably shoot him.

But one night, he just appeared!

“What are you doing here?” we asked in amazement.

“Shh!” he whispered. “I’m hungry. I haven’t had enough to eat since I left the chalat four days ago.” It was wonderful to have him back, but we were scared all the time. So was he. His talent was in drawing and painting, not doing brave deeds. Usually a timid person, he did not
like to take chances. He hid in the jungle during the day while we worked in the rice fields, but after we got back and it was dark, he would join us. We had no lights except for small gas lamps, so no one could see him.

We did not ask Bunna to tell stories about what his life was like in the chalat. He did not ask about our work in the rice fields. All we had was the family—or what was left of us—being together. We managed to stay alive, day after day, but we had no hopes or dreams for the future. We had no freedom to control the present, much less next month or next year. We did not know if the rest of our lives would be like this—nothing but work, hunger, and fear, just waiting until we died. Sadness takes away your energy, your laughter, and your love of life. All we had was love for our family, and that’s what made us want to survive.

After a few weeks, Bunna came to us and said, “I know this good luck cannot last forever. It’s not safe for me to stay here with you.” He was worried about what would happen if he were found with us when he was supposed to be with the chalat. Would the Khmer Rouge shoot us all? After a few weeks, he sneaked back up to the work camp he had fled.