Survival in the Killing Fields (37 page)

Our group of eighteen prisoners was taken outside, past a parked Honda 90, into a neighbouring building, where my guess about the visitor was confirmed.

In Cambodian folk religion one of the main mythological figures is known as the King of Death. He is a judge, the one who assigns souls to heaven or hell, and he knows all about everyone’s
good and bad deeds. Nothing is hidden from him. The souls he sends to hell become
pret
, spirits of the damned, the victims of gory and everlasting tortures brought upon them by their own
misdeeds. Looking around the room at our group of eighteen prisoners, all of us afraid, dressed in ragged, stinking clothes, I decided that we were already
pret
; our fates had already been
decided. The Khmer Rouge who had ridden in on his Honda 90 and who sat smiling at us now – he was the King of Death.

He was muscled and well fed, holding paper files and a black notebook under one arm. He wore a green Mao cap and an old green-and-white krama around his neck. His black clothes and rubber-tyre
sandals were dusty from his motorcycle ride. He sat down in a chair at a small table and asked us to sit. We sat on the floor while he scanned the files. Several guards with holstered pistols stood
at his side.

The King of Death was calm and sweet. He was like Chev, but more sophisticated. For a guess, he might have finished high school, or lycée.

‘Please tell Angka the truth,’ he told us. ‘If you do, you will not be punished. Angka never kills people unnecessarily, or kills the innocent. Those who tell the truth will
merely be re-educated.’

One by one the prisoners went before him, sitting at his feet. He read from their files. He knew some of their names. Their crimes were: being a CIA agent, a Lon Nol officer, the wife of a Lon
Nol officer, a ranking member of the Lon Nol government. All of the prisoners denied that the charges were true. At a signal from the judge, which I could not detect, even though I looked for it,
the guards came around the side of the desk and kicked the prisoner. The guards did not kick everyone, but they kicked the pregnant woman next to me in the ribs and in the stomach for denying that
she was the wife of a captain in the Lon Nol army. They dragged her back to where the rest of us sat, and then it was my turn.

I sat in front of the judge with my hat in my lap and my krama neatly folded on my knee. From where I sat I could only see his trouser legs and his feet with their black rubber-tyre sandals.

‘Samnang, Angka knows who you are,’ the King of Death began gently. ‘You were a military doctor. You held the rank of captain. So please, tell Angka the truth. You will make it
much easier on yourself.’

Now I was certain that Pen Tip had informed on me. In Phnom Penh, few knew I was in the military, because I hardly ever wore a uniform. Since then I had not told anyone about it. Only a former
hospital insider like Pen Tip would know that a government doctor my age would have held a captain’s rank. The only thing Pen Tip didn’t know was my real name. And Angka didn’t
either.

I didn’t say anything.

‘If you tell the truth,’ the King of Death said, ‘Angka will forget the past and give you a high-level position. Angka will let you operate on wounded soldiers, and teach
medicine to students of the younger generation. The students will look up to you for giving them this knowledge. You will be a hero. But,’ he said, ‘if you don’t tell Angka the
truth, you will be held responsible.’

I cleared my throat.

‘Good comrade,’ I said, ‘I was not a captain, or a doctor. I was a taxi driver. My taxi number was 213755.’ (The numbers were from my motorcycle licence plate.) ‘I
went to Takeo, Battambang, Kampot, anywhere the passengers wanted to go. I’m telling the truth. This is the second time I’ve been to jail, and still Angka doesn’t believe me. I
work hard for Angka. I struggle to master the elements for Angka. I do everything for Angka, and I never make trouble. Why doesn’t Angka believe me?’

‘Because you are a liar,’ the judge answered in his calm, soothing voice. ‘Please tell Angka the truth. If you do, Angka will give you an excellent job. You are an educated
person. You can lead people. You can help the country develop. You can help the country build its independence-sovereignty.’

I said, ‘Comrade, if I were a doctor I would tell you so. I want to help Angka. If you don’t believe me, go to Phnom Penh and check the files at the medical school. If you find I am
really a doctor, Angka can do what it wants.’

BAM!
The kick came to my ribs. I fell over on my side. Then the other guard kicked me with the hard edge of his rubber-tyre sandals.
BAM!
I arched my back in agony. The guards took
turns with me, first one, then the other. Then the judge rapped on the table and the guards stopped. They dragged me by the legs back to the line.

By the time I counted my bruises the judge was already interrogating the next prisoner. The guards had kicked me in the rib cage, in the shoulders, the thighs and the back of my neck. They were
professionals. They knew what they were doing. A beating like that would have been hard even on a healthy man.

When all eighteen had talked to the judge, the guards led us outside. We walked in single file, away from the mango orchard, through another grove of fruit trees and into an uncultivated rice
field.

There we saw wooden structures with uprights and cross-pieces, like soccer goalposts, except narrower and higher. There was a double line of them, each one the same. On the ground in the middle
of each, where the goalie would stand, was a pile of rice hulls and wood. In front of each goal lay a wooden cross with a length of rope.

At first I couldn’t figure it out. Then I looked farther down the rows, which stretched over several dykes and far down the field. At the far end of the rows, prisoners were being punished
in a manner I had never heard of before. They were tied to the crosses, the weight of their bodies sagging against the ropes. The crosses were upright, hanging from the goalpost crossbars. Smoke
and flames rose from the fires around the prisoners’ feet.

The soldiers stood crosses behind each prisoner and began tying us up.

I thought, I hope Huoy never knows about this. I didn’t tell her about the worst things of prison last time, about how they cut the poor woman open. I don’t want her to know. It
would hurt her. She is so tender. She saved my life. I love her so much. If I am gone, who will take care of her? Please, gods, save Huoy and keep her away from this kind of punishment. But she has
little chance. The soldiers will probably come for her anyway, because they are after the wives of soldiers and doctors. It is just a matter of time, unless the gods intervene.

And please, gods, I prayed, when I have gone either to hell or to paradise, keep me away from Khmer Rouge. When I am reborn, don’t send me near them. I don’t want to be anywhere near
Cambodia. If I did something wrong in my last life I will pay for it now, but please, gods, surely this is payment in full. In my next life let me be happy.

I was still on the ground and the soldiers were tying my wrists to the cross. ‘Just shoot me!’ I shouted at them. ‘Just shoot! Get it over with!’ I fought them, but they
were much stronger and they outnumbered me. They tied my upper arms to the cross and then my thighs and my feet. Then they threw the rope attached to the top of the cross over the goalpost and
hoisted me up until my feet were above the pile of wood and rice hulls. I swayed there, back and forth, with a view of the double line of goalposts and the uncultivated rice field.

After the guards tied all of the prisoners they went around to each pile of rice hulls and lit it with cigarette lighters.

Rice hulls have a consistency like sawdust. Fires with rice hulls give off thick, stinging smoke and burn slowly, for days.

When the cross stopped swaying I was facing the double row of goalposts at a forty-five-degree angle, twisted around to the left. Judging from the position of the sun I was
facing due west; the rows ran southwest to northeast. Behind me was the grove of fruit trees we had walked through from the prison. To my far left, at the edge of my vision, was a rooftop of a
separate building where teenage girls were imprisoned for ‘crimes’ against Angka, like premarital sex. In front was the rice field, weeds covering the flat patches and the raised paddy
dykes, and the horrible, unavoidable sight of the other prisoners hanging like me.

Of those who had been crucified longer, some had already died from starvation or thirst – generally women, their heads dropped against their chests, their bodies sagging heavily against
the ropes, their feet burned and blistered. Their sarongs had dropped to the first tight circle of rope around their thighs. They didn’t have underwear. Unable to control their bodily
functions, they had soiled themselves. Beneath them the fires smouldered.

Oh Huoy, Huoy, I am glad you are not here to see this.

My feet were about six feet off the ground and three feet above the pile of wood and rice hulls. The fire had not yet spread to the wood underneath, but the smoke rose into my nostrils and
eyes.

Our group of eighteen prisoners didn’t do any more talking. We were too thirsty to talk out loud. We were too busy praying.

Hot sunlight struck me on the back of my neck. The weight of my body dragged down on the ropes around my arms and legs. My feet had no feeling at all. My fingers were numb but I could still
wiggle them. Iridescent green flies whooshed around my head. I shook them off but they returned and settled on the wetness at the corner of my eyes. I shaped my lips and blew air upward but they
just buzzed around and landed again on my face, and on my back where the skin was bleeding from the beating.

The buzzing of the flies was the loudest sound in the landscape. To my right, a woman in her twenties moaned, begging her mother to save her. She was pregnant, with a full roundness in her
belly. I did not think she could last long.

Gradually the fire spread below the surface of the rice hulls to the wood. There were no flames, but there was a new smell. I looked down. The hair on my legs was shrivelled and burned. My feet
must have been blistering and burning, but I could not feel them. My eyes formed tears from the smoke. The guards had built the fire for heat and smoke more than for flames. Their purpose was not
to burn us to death but to prolong and intensify the pain of being tied to the crosses.

Late that afternoon, when my eyes were shut against the direct rays of the sun, I felt myself swinging around on the cross. The wind had changed direction. I opened my eyes. The wind blew the
smoke away from me, at an angle, but it also pushed the red line of fire farther through the rice hulls. The fire grew hotter, and the heat rose up my thighs. To my left came a quiet sputtering as
the man on the next cross peed in his pants hoping to dampen the fire, but it was no use. The drops of urine fell from his feet to the fire, vaporized and rose up again, and the fire burned as
strongly as before. The flies attached themselves to my arms and legs, waiting for the wind to die down.

The sun inched toward the horizon and sank. It was then, at dusk, that the wind stopped and the mosquitoes came out.

The mosquitoes came in close, their high-pitched whine near one ear, then the other. I didn’t even bother chasing them away.

Oh Huoy, you saved my life when I was sick. You saved my life. May the gods and the winds bring you this message from me, that I am alive for now, that my spirit will always be watching over
you.

The moon was nearly full that night. When it rose above the trees behind me, it cast an elongated shadow of the goalpost and of me hanging from the cross in the middle. When the wind picked up,
the coals glowed underneath and the fire grew hotter; and when the wind slacked, the mosquitoes came back, whining in my ear and biting my flesh, where I could still feel my flesh. The moon rose
silent and calm, and the shadows of the goalposts shortened. The wind stirred the treetops, and the crucified hung like strange butchered animals from the goalposts.

Oh Mother. Oh Huoy. Please save me.

You gods – any gods who can hear. Hindu gods. Jesus. Allah. Buddha. Spirits of the forests and the rice fields. Spirits of my ancestors. Hear me, gods: I never killed anyone. Never, never,
never. I saved lives. I was a doctor and I saved the lives of Lon Nol soldiers and Viet Cong and didn’t care who they were. So why make me suffer?

Spirits of the wind, I prayed. If the gods cannot hear, then carry the news to them. To any god who has power. Tell the gods what is happening to me.

How Huoy would cry out if she were here. I am glad she cannot see me. Please, gods, do not punish her. She is innocent. Do not let her know what I am going through. I am one of the damned, a
pret.
I am already in hell. And I do not know why. I never betrayed the nation. If I killed anybody in a past life, or tortured people, then punish me and get it over with. If this is
vengeance finish it, so my next life will be free.

But I do not think I killed people in past lives. And I do not really know why they are torturing me. This has got to be worse than Hitler and the Jews. Hitler thought the Jews were different
from him, like another race. But the Khmer Rouge kill their own race. And the gods do nothing to stop it.

In the morning the guards took down those who had been crucified before us. They put plates of rice in front of the ones who were still alive and asked them questions. Then
they tied plastic bags over the prisoners’ heads. The prisoners began kicking spastically, to get free. I was too weak to look for long. Or to care. All I knew was that the sun was hot on the
back of my neck and my mouth was dry and my lips were cracked. Whatever was happening between the guards and the prisoners seemed incredibly far away, though it was in plain sight. When the guards
dragged the bodies away and put fresh people in the goalposts, I barely noticed. What was left of me was a core – a heart that still beat in my chest, a mouth that breathed, eyes that stung
from the smoke and the sun. And a brain that prayed.