Survival in the Killing Fields (65 page)

There were no real temples to go to. There was a makeshift temple inside an ordinary house in a run-down section of Long Beach, southwest of LA, where a lot of Cambodians lived. There was a Thai
temple with traditional architecture and Thai monks. But for most Cambodians these temples were beyond walking distance. We had to drive to go anyplace, and we had to organize trips on the
weekends, when those who had cars were free.

Almost everything was different about America. Men who used to be wealthy merchants and officers in the Lon Nol regime stayed on welfare. They didn’t want to lose face among their friends
by taking low-status jobs like driving taxis or working in warehouses. Men who had been brave in combat became timid, afraid of the blacks and Hispanics on the streets. They went into supermarkets
and only saw what was not as good as Cambodia, that the vegetables were not as fresh, that there were few tropical fruits, that there was no bargaining over prices. They noticed that much of
American daily life is impersonal. Shopping. Driving on the freeways. Watching TV. They found they could go for days at a time without talking to anybody.

I missed Cambodia too. The food and the bargaining and the market gossip. Praying in the temples and walking along the boulevards in the warm, quiet evenings. Most of all I missed Huoy. But I
saw many good things about America. It was much cleaner than Cambodia. There weren’t as many flies. The tap water was safe to drink. People were more educated. Ngim liked America too. She was
getting excellent grades in school. Her classmates couldn’t pronounce her name easily, so we chose a new name, ‘Sophia.’ It is Western but also Eastern, a name that came to
Cambodian culture through Sanskrit.

I had a job, a car, a niece I was raising as a daughter. Life was very comfortable. I never had to worry about
chhlop
spying on me, or soldiers tying me up and taking me away. When I woke
up in the morning, I felt no terror. I knew for sure that I would live through the day and through the week and for many years ahead.

Once, as I was driving along in my VW and stopped at a light, I saw a dog being walked on a leash. The owner stopped to pat the dog, the dog wagged its tail and I remembered what I told Huoy
about dogs in America living better than people on the front lines. It was true: dogs did live better. America was a prosperous place. Then the light changed to green and I drove off to my next
appointment, amazed at my good fortune.

By March 1982 I had lived in America for a year and a half. I spent most of my time with fellow Cambodians. Through my work I helped refugees adjust to their new lives, and
indirectly this helped them recover from the trauma of their old lives. But we didn’t talk much about what had happened under the Khmer Rouge. We kept our memories bottled up inside.

One day in March two acquaintances of mine dropped by the Chinatown Service Centre to see me. They were Sisowath Sourirath, of the minor branch of the Cambodian royal family, and Jean Fernandez,
the younger brother of a general in the Lon Nol regime. We were all getting by, but none of us had regained the status or the wealth we had had in Cambodia. Jean Fernandez was selling life
insurance. Sisowath was working for the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Long Beach. He had helped me fill out an application to buy a set of encyclopedias, but the encyclopedia company had turned me
down because my credit wasn’t good enough. When Sisowath and Jean came in that day they said they were applying for something else now, for roles in a Hollywood film about Cambodia. They said
I had to apply. I told them no thanks.

They tried to get me interested in the film, but I really wasn’t listening. Clients were walking into the office and I had to help them find jobs. My clients were real people with real
problems, and I didn’t have time for daydreams.

But rumours of the film swept through the Cambodian communities in LA and Long Beach. Everybody had heard about it. A lot of people dreamed about being in a Hollywood movie, and many had
applied. For them, I think, that was the real America, the money and the opportunity they’d wanted to believe in back in the refugee camps. I knew how their minds worked. Everybody who
applied for a part in the movie secretly thought he was going to be a star and get rich overnight. They wanted to forget about the other America – working in a regular job to pay for rent and
food and gasoline while never getting ahead, or only getting ahead slowly.

I didn’t want anything to do with movies. In Cambodia acting had been a low-paid profession without any particular status. I had been a doctor. I had owned a Mercedes and part of a medical
clinic. Maybe I wasn’t a doctor now, and maybe I wasn’t wealthy, but everybody knew that I used to be. There was no need for me to stoop to a low-class job like acting.

Some Cambodians who lived in Oxnard, up the coast from LA, invited me to a wedding party. I really didn’t want to go. It was an hour and twenty minutes each way on the freeway, plus the
money for gas. It rained the whole way up there, the windshield wipers of my Volkswagen slapping back and forth. When I walked in the door, Jean Fernandez and other friends greeted me. Most of the
wedding guests were Cambodian. The most obvious exception was a black American woman who said her name was Pat Golden. She was from the movie studio. She asked me to sit for a photograph and give
her my name and phone number. But a live band was playing and the guests were dancing the
romvong,
gracefully and slowly waving their hands to the music. It had been a long time since I had
danced the
romvong
and I told her no.

She didn’t let me get away. Every time I left the dance floor she came up to me. She had already taken Jean Fernandez’s picture. She had taken nearly everyone’s picture. An old
man who was drunk pushed me forward and told me to go ahead, it wasn’t going to cost me anything.

I told Pat Golden I had come there to have fun and I hoped she wouldn’t bother me.

‘Keep cool,’ she said, patting me on the shoulder. She wore casual clothes, blue jeans and a white shirt, but she looked well dressed in them. She had a low, husky voice and a gap
between her front teeth and a very strong, confident character. She said there were no forms to fill out. All she wanted to do was take my picture and get my phone number.

I told her, ‘Okay. I let you take pictures if you give me vun for a souvenir.’

The living room was crowded and she had me stand in the hallway, outside the bathroom door. She asked me to take my glasses off. She pressed the button on the Polaroid, and the flash went off
and a shiny piece of paper ejected from the front of the camera. She took another picture, gave me one, and I stared at it to see what would develop. It just looked like me without my glasses. Not
a handsome guy, not young, not a movie-star type.

Two weeks passed, then a month, then two months and three months without a word from her.

In the fourth month she called me on the telephone. She wanted to set up an interview about forty miles away from where I lived. I told her yes without meaning it. My friends had told me that
she had asked other Cambodians too. They drove in from San Diego, Santa Ana, LA and Long Beach for the interview. But not me.

The next morning Pat Golden called me at the office and asked me why I didn’t come. I told her sorry, I was busy. There was a pause and I decided to be more honest. I said I didn’t
want to go because I didn’t think I’d get the job. She said, ‘We haven’t made any decisions yet. Please come.’ She was very persistent.

She wanted to interview me that night in Long Beach, twenty-five miles away. ‘Is five o’clock okay?’ she said. I said, ‘No, I work in office hours.’
‘Six?’ she said. ‘No,’ I said, ‘the freeway to Long Beach is too crowded then. How about seven?’

I got there at eight. She was waiting. I said I was sorry, that I had been busy. She didn’t reproach me. She was conciliatory and polite – just like a Cambodian. She was a very smart
woman and she knew something about our culture. She knew if she got angry at me I would use it as an excuse to leave.

Other Cambodians were there ahead of me. Pat Golden interviewed Long Boret’s daughter – Long Boret was Lon Nol’s prime minister at the time of the Khmer Rouge takeover –
and finally called me in.

She said, ‘Okay, Haing, if you were with some Americans and you had to convince the Khmer Rouge that the people you were with were
not
Americans, how would you do it?’

I improvised a scene for her.

After it was over, she said, ‘Thanks. I’ll let you know in a week.’

I said, ‘I don’t believe you. If you say one week, maybe a month and a half.’

‘No, this time I’m serious,’ she said. And a week later she called me in for a second interview. This time it was in a studio in Burbank.

Then there was a third interview, also in the Burbank studio. At each interview there were fewer Cambodians than before.

A young bearded Englishman was at the fourth interview. He was Roland Joffé, the director of the film. Roland Joffé asked me about my story – how long I had lived under the
Khmer Rouge, what happened when I was captured, how I got to the refugee camps in Thailand. I talked for an hour. He watched me with intense blue eyes and listened carefully.

Roland Joffé was at the fifth interview. This time he had a video camera for the screen test. He set up a hypothetical situation: a Cambodian doctor was very fond of an American nurse.
The night before, the radio had announced that all foreigners had to leave Cambodia. How would the doctor tell the nurse she had to leave Cambodia to save her own life?

Pat Golden played the American lady.

I played the Cambodian doctor.

Roland Joffé changed the situation. The American lady believed the Khmer Rouge wouldn’t hurt her, because she was foreign, but that they would almost certainly kill me. How would I
explain to her that Cambodia was my country, that I would stay no matter what?

I acted the part to Pat Golden.

Roland Joffé brought the camera in closer and closer but it didn’t make me nervous. I knew if I really put myself in the situation and believed what I was saying to Pat Golden, the
camera didn’t matter.

‘Now,’ Roland Joffé said to me, ‘you have taken the American woman to the airport, to see her off. What are your last words before she goes away?’

‘You haf to leave right now,’ I told Pat Golden. ‘You haf to listen me. Situation now very hard. You foreign people. Khmer Rouge don’t like you. For me no problem.
I’m Cambodian people.’ I wept on her shoulder and wiped my eyes and told her over and over again that she had to go and I would miss her.

When I finished they said thank you very much.

In interview six I went in front of the camera again. Roland set up another scene with Pat Golden playing my Cambodian wife. I had to tell her to leave because the Khmer Rouge were going to kill
everybody. I broke down and cried again, only this time it was hard to stop.

As soon as I finished one scene Roland Joffé had me do another. All of the scenes were sad, except for the last one. In this one I was a doctor. A patient of mine was about to die. I
operated on him, tried my best and against the odds the operation was successful. What did I do when I learned the good news? What did I say?

I acted it out for him.

Joffé said he would let me know, but he didn’t know when that might be.

I went back to work and tried not to think about the screen tests. Seven thousand Cambodians had applied for jobs in the movie.

Three more months passed before Pat called again, from New York. She wanted to know what kind of passport or visa I was holding. I said it was a resident alien card, with my photo and
thumbprint. She asked whether it would cause a problem if I had to go to Thailand with the company. No problem for me, no problem for my niece either.

She called back a few weeks later. What was I getting paid at the Chinatown Service Centre? Four hundred dollars a week, I said. She said, how about if she gave me eight hundred dollars a
week?

No problem, I said.

She called again with detailed questions about my visa and said, ‘How about a thousand dollars a week?’

‘Don’t worry about the money,’ I said. ‘Give me what you want. I just want the job.’

And it was true. I had changed my mind. If I could be in the film, I decided, in any capacity, I could help tell the story of Cambodia. And that was important because it was a story nobody
really knew. Most Americans didn’t even know where Cambodia was. They had heard of Vietnam, but not Cambodia. Even in LA, non-Cambodian Asians didn’t know what had happened under the
Khmer Rouge regime. If we told them they just nodded their heads and pretended to believe us so we wouldn’t lose face.

And really, the reason I hadn’t wanted the job earlier didn’t have anything to do with losing face, or with not being offered a part, or with looking foolish in front of the camera.
I hadn’t wanted to bring back the suffering. There were too many reminders already.

Ever since coming to the United States I’d had nightmares. If I thought too much in the daytime about what had happened, I had dreams that night. Huoy died in my arms over and over and
over. I saw my father tied to the tree and trying to tell me something, but afraid to speak.

It didn’t take much to set off my nightmares – the sound of water dripping from the faucet was enough. It put me back in prison, looking up at water dripping from a hole in a
bucket.

Almost every night I woke suddenly and sat up to make the dreams fade. Outside the louvred windows the streetlights were shining on the hard pavement of the alley and reflecting off the metal
and glass of parked cars. In LA there was always a background noise of traffic on distant streets and maybe a siren or honking horns. I felt more alienated than ever, and not sure how much better
America was than what I had left behind, because I hadn’t really left it behind, and I couldn’t enjoy the best of America. So I decided to go back to the refugee camps and confront my
past. To try to get rid of my nightmares.