Source: DC-Cam
Posted on The Khmer Rouge Trial Web Portal
The Tragedy on April 17, 1975
Between 1970 and 1975, I was married to Huot. We had a three-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. I was then a military nurse at Preah Monivong hospital. The medical personnel at the hospital were Dr. Thaong Boran, chief of the hospital; Dr. Tea Kimhy in charge of the x-ray department; Dr. Tim Mam, who specialized in the respiratory system; and my team leader Dr. Ing Poleng, who specialized in the digestive system and general illnesses. I forgot the names of several other doctors. I do not know where they are now.
April 17, 1975 was a black day in Cambodia. Young black-clothed comrades with ruthless faces forced people to leave Phnom Penh at gunpoint and go to the countryside. We were told to leave quickly without taking along too many belongings, because we would return home in the next three days. My husband, my son Pheak, my daughter Srey Sros, and I also went out of the city with many people. We brought along with us pans, ice cans and a few clothes. I also took along four or five sacks of my mother-in-law’s clothes which she had left with us.
Before the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, my father-in-law visited us for ten days. He said that our country would be peaceful and we should no longer be worried; then he went to his farm as usual. We were waiting for his return. But we could not see him, even his shadow. We decided to leave without him. Before our departure, my husband went into our house to take his gun license and jewelry to bury behind our house. My children and I looked at him while he was burying them and telling us, “A-Barang (he always addressed me like this), please remember the place of our belongings. I measured 10 steps from the fence.” “Please remember by yourself,” I responded, and added that we would come back to take them in the next three days. Oh, God! I did not expect he would never return!
My family drove a Volkswagen slowly along the Trasak Pha-em to Kbal Thnal road. We could not cross Monivong Bridge to continue our journey because it was already crowded. Many people who were evacuated from their homes stopped at Kbla Thnal. I saw then that a lady delivered a baby on the Monivong Bridge. We stopped near a rice warehouse. Some people went into this warehouse to take rice at will; some died when rice sacks fell on them and others took four or five sacks. My husband also took one sack and put it in the car.
[We spent a night there] and were able to pass the bridge in the morning with difficulty. Many people did not know where to go. Some children lost their parents, some old people were carried on the back of their son or grandson, and others were put on carts or threewheeled trolleys. We were able to walk just about one kilometer in a day. At night, we reached Niroth Rangsy pagoda. My husband said that we needed to sleep in the car on the edge of the street. At midnight, a few A2 Jeeps drove from the east to the west honking loudly, which indicated there was an emergency. A group of young Khmer Rouge soldiers stood on a truck and screamed with savage faces, ordering people to get off the streets quickly. In the meantime, the young soldiers shot and killed four or five people when they stood blocking the way. We were very fearful after seeing such a scene that we had never seen before.
Three days later, we stopped at a sapodilla farm in Kien Svay district [Kandal province]. I stared at the April 17 people who were staying in huts or making cottages. [People who were evacuated from cities to the countryside were called April 17 people. They were also classified as parasites]. Some people looked sad, some seemed happy, some had meals with the hope that they would return home after three days. In the evening, some ladies wearing sarongs and holding shampoo went down to the river. Young men and women looked carefree. After staying there for ten days, four or five young soldiers with rifles, black caps and clothes, and shoes made from car tires announced, “Brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts who used to work for the Lon Nol regime, please list your names. Angkar would send you to work as you had done in the Lon Nol regime.”
About two weeks later most people in that area disappeared. Only three or four families were left. An uncle who was staying next to us told us that he was waiting for his relatives to go to his birthplace the next day. He added that they [the Khmer Rouge] would not allow us to enter the city so we could avoid the B-52 bombing by the US air force.
My family decided to go to my husband’s birthplace, Tani district, Kampot province to return my mother-in-law’s luggage which she kept with us. The next morning we backtracked to the river, but we could not cross the bridge. We decided to negotiate with a man to exchange our car for a boat. I also took some rice to exchange for fish for making a meal.
After we reached the other side of the river, our family walked on the dusty road without knowing the direction. We often asked people for directions to Tani district. They only told us it was several kilometers away. We got the same answer ten times, but we still did not reach the district. On the way to Tani, we met young soldiers who slept in hammocks under the trees. They checked our belongings. While checking, they saw some canned fish. However, they did not dare take the cans because they thought they were grenades. We thought they wanted only a watch. I kept some medicines and a syringe in a sack of rice, so they didn’t find them and take them from us.
We continued our journey as directed by the villagers. The road we traveled on was abandoned because of the war and was filled with holes. Our car could only inch forward. At noon, we reached a village called Kram Yov. This village was very quiet and the fences in front of each house were painted with ghost pictures. My husband said that “even though it was too quiet, we need to cook rice. We are too hungry to go on.” Before the rice was cooked, I saw people carrying four or five corpses to bury behind the village. A villager told us, “Don’t stay here any longer. Many people here are dying every day because of cholera.”We rushed to leave without having our meal.
At the beginning of our journey, we felt happy. I imagined that it would be like a vacation trip around the world. But at that moment, we were exhausted. Both of my both children looked sad and had become feverish, but they said nothing.
In the morning I met two young women; the elder sister was light black and a bit short. I am sorry for not remembering her name. The younger sister had white skin and was friendlier. Her name was A Da (she is known today as Ma Chhorda, a presenter on Television of Kampuchea). The two sisters asked if they could join us on our journey because they had lost their parents. We were pleased to have them with us. Of course, we needed more teammates.
At five o’clock, we arrived at Angseang pagoda in Takeo province. Four or five soldiers with rifles and savage faces appeared and accused us: “Why do you walk freely while most people are working hard in the rice fields? Stop moving around; you must stay in this pagoda tonight! We will take you to the village to work with other villagers tomorrow morning.” That night, my son got a fever and became delirious. I gave him medicine. A neighbor asked me to pray to the Buddha as if I had done something wrong.
Early the next morning, I saw three trucks parked in the pagoda waiting for us. A soldier with a rifle shouted, telling us to prepare our belongings and get on the trucks. Another soldier told us that “all friends had to live here for a year to farm with the villagers here, and you will be allowed to return to your birth place afterward.” I was very happy to hear this; at least I had a chance to learn about this village. But actually, the soldiers were lying to us.
My car, a Lambreta, was abandoned at this village. Everyone carried their packages and got on the truck. I stood happily on a new Mercedes ten-wheel truck because I could get fresh air, although the road was a bit bumpy. At that time, I wondered about our future.
Prey Koam Village
The truck took us to a village called Prey Koam. The soldiers told us to live in a wooden house with four other families. The families included A Da’s brothers and sisters. A Da and her siblings lost their parents because they were at school when the Khmer Rouge soldiers moved into Phnom Penh. Three families of my husband’s relatives were also living with us in this house.
We loved and took care of each other. A Da, especially, liked children very much, and she helped look after our children when I was busy. This is a sweet remembrance that is still in my heart and I will never forget.
There was a big rice warehouse near our house. No one cared about the rice, though, because we had enough to eat. Prey Koam village consisted of about 30 families of base, or old, people, and 10 families of April 17 people. The old people wore clothes with patches and they had joined the revolution a long time ago. When we first came to their village, they stared at our clothes. Some people had whispered to me, asking if I had another sarong. We exchanged my parent-in-law’s clothes for food like chickens, fish, wax melons and pumpkins. They sometimes also asked me to exchange malaria tablets and other medicines for food.
The Friendly Leech
We lived in the village for three months. Every morning, I went to the field to transplant rice seedlings. Before we reached the field, I slipped several times. When I became covered with mud, everyone always made fun of me. The base people laughed, saying, “Hey comrade Nang! How can you do business in Phnom Penh if you cannot walk steadily?” I could not plant seedlings as fast as the old people; and they often helped me.
One day, I caught a small leech that was biting my ankle. A lady said, “Why aren’t you afraid of it?” “I was in the rice field since my feet were pink [since I was a kid],” I gently replied. But I had never known it was a leech; that’s why I wasn’t afraid of it. Indeed, it made me tremble after I knew what it was. However, after a while, those small leeches became my friends. Some other women were bitten by them and sought my help. I used seedlings to pull the leeches from their ankles. Most base people here were not an eye-for-aneye, a tooth-for-a-tooth types. They were helpful and kind.
Angkar’s Hospital
For many days, my daughter vomited and no longer had an appetite for rice or water. I asked the group chief for permission to take care of her. I was allowed to stay at home rather than work in the field. But after ten days, my daughter had not recovered, so the village chief suggested that I take her to the commune hospital about two kilometers from the village. It had no medicines, only wooden beds, and some patients died because of the bedbugs.
That night, my daughter cried until morning. Due to the lack of medicine, a young medical man at this hospital told me to ask for permission to take my child to the district hospital instead. He knew that the district hospital had enough medicine. I asked permission from a kind hospital chief. She told me she would ask a young man to bring us to the hospital by oxcart. My husband asked if he could accompany us as well. Early the next morning, we left for the hospital. The oxcart ride was bumpy and we felt sorry for our daughter, so we decided get off the oxcart. We put our daughter into a hammock and carried her. We did not know where the hospital was, but dared not ask anyone. We just knew that we had passed several villages. We reached the district hospital when the sun had almost set. It was a pagoda that had been converted into a hospital. We were too hungry to continue walking. The oxcart owner and my husband were allowed to have meal in a special kitchen. It had nice foods for people who accompanied patients. I was given watery rice with salt. However, I found it delicious because I had not eaten since morning. After dinner, my husband left for his work site with the oxcart owner after kissing our daughter’s forehead.
My daughter and I were in a hospital room with other patients and slept in a bamboo bed. In the morning, two medical women came in with trays of tablets for the patients. One asked me “what kind of illness does your daughter have?” and then gave us tablets without checking anything. The young medical women acted as if they were very good at treatment. They sometimes fought with each other to inject the patients. Some ran out of the kitchen with their hands dirty with lard and said, “Let me inject this patient!” For four and five days later, my daughter felt better, although they sometimes gave us the wrong tablets. They were made in China so I couldn’t tell what was in them. I sometimes saw the traditional drug known as “rabbit dropping medicine.” Our lives there almost like hell. We always heard patients groaning and crying, while the medical staff used curse words.
On the day we were allowed to return home, I felt nervous because I did not know the way or with whom I would go. At noon, I saw an old man riding on his oxcart, taking his wife and child home, and asked him for a ride. But, at an intersection, he asked me to get off because he needed to go a different way. He told me to walk fast because we still had about 10 kilometers more. Oh God! I had to carry both my daughter and our package, and it was getting darker and darker. Fortunately, I saw another oxcart and asked him for a ride to the commune hospital. The medical staff there who knew me were happy when they saw me return with my daughter. They asked me to spend the night there, but I was worried about bedbugs. I left my package with them and held my daughter as we walked on a new dam. I saw several graves to my left in the brush. In the moonlight, I saw some torture instruments. This gave me gooseflesh and I walked faster and faster. I felt that someone was following me. I told myself “don’t be afraid!” I sometimes sang to occupy my mind. I reached a village, but it was flooded. I walked very carefully because I knew there were deep holes. I arrived my house at about 2 p.m. Members of our family were waiting for me. We were very happy.
Day by day, the rice supplies dwindled and we almost ran out. We received less food than before. The village chief warned us that “we need to save rice.”We now began to think of rice in our house. Every day, we took rice to cook secretly until it ran out. One morning, we were told to prepare our belongings and then left for Battambang province. Everyone felt happy because we knew that this province had a lot of rice. Some spoke in secret, saying “in fact they are allowing us to go to Phnom Penh, but they told us a lie because they are afraid the base people will mingle in and go with us.” And some just looked sad and mysterious.
That morning, we said farewell to the base people; some cried because they said they would miss us. We got on the train. Every carriage was full of people. My friends and the relatives of my husband were lost after that. After the train had been traveling for a while, I got a stomach ache. One of Angkar’s old medical personnel with a big bag walked around through the crowds of passengers. He looked at me but did not give me any medicine. One hour later, this medical cadre came again and saw that my face looked pale. “You are really sick, I know that you are not pretending,” he said and gave me a tablet. Oh, my God, I was so sick I almost died. On the train, we were given two small breads with a little sugar or soy sauce for each. It did not matter how many children we had, we had to share this with them.
I could not eat or swallow anything; I just pressed my stomach. My husband took a lighter and exchanged it for oil of turpentine. I got better after I applied it on my stomach for a while. At 5:15 p.m., the train stopped at a station. I did not know where it was, but some said the train was about to arrive in Phnom Penh. Some went to the field to defecate or urinate, and some took their clothes or mosquito nets and went into the village to exchange them for a few pieces of potato. This was because they were starving. Others said, “We will rebuy clothes soon after we arrive in Phnom Penh.” As dusk fell, the train blew its horn to warn us to get on quickly. The train went through the city; there were a few lights in some parts. Our teardrops fell; some cried and some said farewell to Phnom Penh city, the houses, friends and everything. We never expected to come here again.
Svay Sisophon
After two days, the train took us to Svay Sisophon. We stepped off with stiff limbs. The houses were not occupied and the owners were nowhere to be seen. They let us stay in any house we preferred. Two or three families stayed in the same house. We could also dismantle the furniture to use its wood as firewood for cooking.
Each person received two cans of rice a day. We looked for other supplements ourselves. We exchanged rice or salt for prahok [a condiment made from fermented fish], fresh fish or dried fish in nearby villages. After one week, Angkar announced that Vietnamese people would be allowed to return to Vietnam if they had clear biographies. My husband and I discussed whether we should lie and say we were Vietnamese because it was better to be in a place where money was used. We asked an old Vietnamese woman to be our mother by giving her some clothes.
A few days later, Angkar summoned us for questioning again. They asked my fake mother why I spoke fluent Khmer and my face did not resemble hers. She replied that I was born in Cambodia and I took after my father. But it seemed they did not believe her. The rest of the people who did not list their names as Vietnamese had already been brought to villages. About 30 to 40 Vietnamese families remained. We continued to stay there for two months and they questioned us once every half month. The rice ration was the same, except that other food was not plentiful. One night I dreamt that I walked to a village near a mountain; it was scattered with tall palm trees and the breeze was warm. I was relaxed.
Sres Village, Preah Net Preah District, Battambang Province
Early one morning when I was still in bed, the Khmer Rouge announced on a loudspeaker: “Everybody, pack up, the trucks have arrived, hurry.”We were happy. We packed up our belongings in a hurry, taking some and leaving some, as long as we could leave. A few trailer trucks took us across the endless golden rice fields. On the truck, we sang. The real Vietnamese sang Vietnamese songs aloud in joy. The trucks drove up a dirt road from the rice field until we reached a mountain. They dropped us one family at a time from the beginning of the village to the end. My family was among 10 others to be dropped at the end of the village. A few comrades stood welcoming us. A rather old comrade, who perhaps held the highest rank, told me, “All Vietnamese brothers have to stay here and help the people farm for a year. Later you’re sure to be brought to your home country; don’t worry you’ll meet your relatives!” Our faces changed colors. Some wanted to cry, some were unable to speak.
The village where I stayed was called Sres Khang Cheung. Its scenery was like that in my dream the night before. The village was in Preah Net Preah district, Battambang province. In the old regime, the villagers earned their living by breaking off large chunks of rock from the mountain to make hand-powered mortar and grinding equipment. We stayed in a pagoda near the mountain, as we were not allowed to go into the village right away. We were told to be patient and stay there several days before they found accommodation for us. We stole a look at the large Buddha statues in the pagoda and prayed with our eyes wide open.
That morning two or three comrades, wearing black pajamas, cotton scarves and rubber-tire sandals, walked up to where we were staying. Each of them held a bag. I recognized one of them as a Lon Nol first lieutenant. He used to receive medical treatment at my hospital. His name was Ly. Just as he saw me, he winked at me, to let me know I should not indicate that I knew him. He brought us some traditional medicine to prevent us from being sick because we were unable to adapt to the new forest environment. Mr. Ly came close to me, explained how the medicine should be used, and whispered, “Don’t say you know me.” I nodded in appreciation. A week later, Angkar gave each of the families a piece of land on which to build a cottage. We helped each other building the cottages. They were not easy to build.
Go to Study or Nirvana?
Angkar had not yet ordered the Vietnamese families to work. Perhaps they wanted us to regain our strength. In fact, only a few families were Vietnamese; the rest were of Chinese origin.
One morning, several young comrades walked about holding a book to record the names of young people who wanted to be educated. My younger sister, who was digging soil behind the cottage, enrolled with joy. After she enrolled, she prepared her clothes. I secretly said to her, “Don’t go sister, stay here with me.” She declined: “No, I want to study. You see, they don’t close down schools.” She handed me a piece of soap and said, “Keep it for Pheak and Sros, goodbye, sister.” She boarded the Camion waiting outside, already filled with about ten youths. She never returned; I don’t know where she went.
Because we were free, my husband prepared soil behind the cottage to grow potatoes and some mint, which we had asked from the villagers. I was asked by a female chief to screen rice. I was yelled at for spilling rice on the ground and they ordered me to pick up all the grains before I could have a meal. Although they blamed me, I did not complain. Later they had compassion on me. At dusk my husband and children bathed in a pond near the pagoda. My husband borrowed a bucket from the neighbors to carry water for use at home. One day we were summoned to a meeting. The village chief assigned us to work and said we would have enough to eat. After talking about work, he began talking about morality. He said, “Some did not abandon imperialist culture. They gathered together to bathe in groups, as though it was very joyful, but our youths are still fighting ferociously with the American imperialists.” At this point, eyes turned on my family. After that, we bathed one at a time.
One morning, the group chief called the Vietnamese families to work at a dam site about one kilometer from the village. The Vietnamese families arrived just two months after the other families, but those who arrived earlier acted like base people. We were still April 17 people. They laughed at us when we carried water, chopped wood or dug the soil, because we looked a bit awkward. Each person who returned from the dam site carried a bunch of firewood on their heads. I carried palm leaves. The leaves filled the road and banged against other people.
They told us to dine in a collective hall with base people. We ate our fill, but after they ate a few spoonfuls of food, the base people took their plates and walked home because they had special dishes there. I met Mr. Ly occasionally. He whispered to me all the time and his eyes kept looking around. Two months later, I worked in a field near the mountain. It was rumored that Mr. Ly had been taken away the night before. I did not know or believe that they took people to be killed. I pitied Mr. Ly’s wife who was five months pregnant and his six-year-old daughter. Mr. Ly’s wife was assigned to clear grass with my group, but no one dared to talk to her.
A month passed. I did not see Mr. Ly’s wife. I heard that she was sick. When I returned from the field one evening, I walked near her cottage, but dared not climb up to see her. I heard a groaning sound from inside the cottage. My tears dropped, but I had no idea how to provide help. The next day she died. A few combatants buried her in the forest. They told us that before burying her, the baby was taken out from her womb to be buried separately in order to prevent bad luck to the village. That was the tradition of the village. Mr. Ly’s daughter lived with a base family. After that, Ly’s family disappeared.
I met an old man who had been a Lon Nol soldier at the field. He had been a colonel, but now he was a dirty, gray-haired man. One day he whispered to me that he had a big jackfruit he wanted to give to my family. My husband dug a hole and buried the jackfruit to make it ripe. Two days later, when we woke up the smell of the ripening fruit spread to the road. My husband hurriedly dug it out and took a few pieces to the old man. We did not think that jackfruit could be smelled that far.
Fake Couple
The Khmer Rouge observed a young couple who did not seem to be couple. In fact, they were not a real husband and wife. They were cousins, but when they arrived in the village they told Angkar that they were husband and wife to avoid being assigned to a mobile unit. Ty, the husband, whispered to me that he could not relax at night because there were combatants eavesdropping on them below the house. My husband, who was a joker told him, “Why don’t you do something to make them believe you?” Ty said, “If I do so I would die.” So they tried to keep their secret. Even when they had an argument, they hid it. Today, Kea, the wife, is a rich woman in Phnom Penh with two children, but her husband is not Ty.
Flea Comb, a Valuable
In the black-clothed regime, apart from rice, dried fish and prahok, a comb was a most valuable belonging. In the regime, we could not get rid of fleas no matter how short our hair was, because we had no shampoo. Thus, having a comb was like having a fishing rod. Eng was a careful person; she brought along a few combs. Everyone borrowed hers. Sometimes she lent happily; other times in discomfort. Soon she had an idea. The borrower had to give her some food before taking her comb. If base people tried to borrow from her, she did not lend her comb. One day Angkar brought her away to be educated; they said her brain was filled with capitalism.
Elderly Woman of the “Absolute Group”
One day, my husband told me that he found a place a kilometer from the village where people made sugar from palm juice. The place was occupied with people from Takeo province. The houses were surrounded with thorny sticks, and about twenty families lived there. It was like a fortress. They ate separately, not with base or new people. They were called the “absolute group.” My husband said they had plenty of medicine and were looking for a physician to them.
The next morning, under the glaring sun, I walked along the dam behind the house to the “absolute group.” The elderly woman who was the chief of the group had a hard-looking face, gray hair and was in good physical condition, which indicated that she had enough to eat. She brought out a few large bottles of medicine to show me and asked what the medicine was for. The bottles contained medicine for malaria, building strength, healing wounds, etc. The group members wanted me to inject them with colorful ampoules. I had only a glass syringe and a few needles. The other medical equipment I brought from Phnom Penh was confiscated by Angkar after I left the train. I boiled the syringe and needles in a metal pan and used hot water instead of alcohol to clean them. After I gave the injections, the chief woman ordered the younger people to prepare a meal for me. The rice, processed in factory, was as white as coconut flesh. I brought the rice close to my eyes because I had not seen it for a long time. They made a fish and vegetable soup. The fish was large, and perhaps was brought from Tonle Sap lake. How delicious it was. I ate until my stomach almost burst, although I had eaten something before I came. The chief did not permit me to bring rice home, fearing Angkar might learn about it. But I still kept dried fish and a few lumps of rice and hid them in my cotton scarf for my children and husband at home. I kept coming to the “absolute” place and the chief liked me. She gave me food and dessert, but not to take home. I did this anyway.
Field Rats, Special Food
Rats were a delicious food for all in the district. During the noon break, each of us shouldered a hoe to the middle of a harvested field to look for rat holes. The holes were large enough for the children to put their hands in. First we had to check if the hole was occupied. Then we needed to locate nearby escape holes. When a rat ran out, we had to be quick to catch it. I could not catch one, but the children wanted me to go with them. A grilled rat was better than roast pork by far. My husband was punished and made to work overtime because he searched for rats instead of going to work. Some people disappeared because of this kind of crime.
Elderly Say was an April 17 person. She knew a lot of stories because her husband was an ox-cart driver who traveled a lot. One morning when uprooting grass in the field, she whispered to me, “Last night my husband told me that when he was loading rice onto the cart, he heard people talking about a person named Seung Phoeuk Thar, the editor of Meatophoum newspaper. At first he was a very prestigious person in the village. He even had a bicycle (having a bicycle was a luxury). He and his family were taken away on a truck.”
Nightfall Reminding of Love in Youth
Night was a good time for me and my husband, because we could recall our old memories together. Under the moonlight and a palm-leafed roof put up unskillfully by my beloved husband, I leaned on his shoulders and he recollected our first meeting. It was when we were playing a traditional game, called angkugn, at the end of the school year. My husband was very brave. He rode his bike back and forth in front of my house. It was three years before we lived together. My husband complained that my father was too mean. Then I talked about eating nice food. I told him I was hungry for the coconut cake sold behind the Royal Palace, which he bought for me. If the cake was not nice, I would throw it away; if it was otherwise then I ate. I told him, “I repent throwing those cakes away, husband.” He stroked my hair and said, “Tomorrow I’ll collect ripe palm fruit to make a cake for you.” He always spoke as though everything was easy to do. But with only that, I felt satisfied. Only at night could we speak caressing words to each other. My husband put palm leaves around the house as an alarm bell when someone came to eavesdrop on us.
The Death of My Daughter
Half a year later, my daughter fell seriously ill. She vomited every time she ate. In one unforgettable night, my daughter died as thunder and lightning were striking outside. I cried aloud to win over the sound of the rain. “O my beloved daughter, if it was at our house, I would not let you die,” I murmured. I husband covered my mouth and cried as well. He felt equal sorrow, but he controlled himself better. The next day, the neighbors helped us to bury her. When the ritual was complete, we had to look for a chicken to make food for them to express our gratitude. Three months after my daughter died I was pregnant. Oh god, my beloved daughter, how could you come to his hell again? Day by day my belly grew larger. The group chief forbade me from going to work. They said I was nine months pregnant, but I knew it was just eight. Having nothing to do, I went with the children to collect water spinach in the ponds. In the evening I carried home a large bunch of the vegetable on my head, but I was careful not to trip. I complained to my husband that he gave too many vegetables to other people. He told me we should be kind to our neighbors because in the future if I was a widow, they would help me. I never realized his words would come true.
Giving Birth without a Midwife
One night I felt a little pain after dusk. By midnight the pain peaked. My husband quickly went out to look for a midwife. Luckily an elderly woman was staying in my house after she returned from the field. She gently massaged my belly. My son sat nearby, not knowing what to do. Another woman living close to my house made a fire to boil water. A while later my husband returned alone. He said, almost wanting to cry, that the midwife had gone to the village chief’s home to look after the chief’s wife. When she returned she said my husband invited her with bare hands. It was the midwife’s norm to receive something; otherwise the delivery would not be successful. The neighbor cursed at them in anger. She boiled a scissors and comforted me, “Don’t worry neighbor, neighbor, I will deliver for you. I also know how to be a midwife.” At dawn I gave birth to a baby son. He was heavy. Perhaps I had eaten a lot of water spinach. The next morning my husband slaughtered a chicken for the two women to eat. I am very grateful to them, although I do not know where they are. My house was filled with smoke from the fire under my bed. The eyes of my husband and children reddened. My husband was able to obtain a three-day leave from work. I did not understand why I was hungry for coffee. I told my husband I wanted to drink coffee. He went out not knowing where to look for it. When he returned he was happy.
He began to make fire and fried a few spoonful of dried rice until it became rather overcooked. Then he poured water in and boiled it with the rice. Last he put some palm sugar and some kind of medicinal grass. He then poured the solution into a coconut shell and told me, “Wife, this is my most delicious coffee, drink it up.” After drinking I was energetic. I did not know how he came up with such an idea. My son drank some. At that moment we seemed to forget that we were in hell.
The next day rain water flowed into my fire pit, putting out all burning embers. That was great because I had been on fire for a long time. My husband boiled tree roots for me to drink. Three months later my newborn son died because I had no milk for him.
Tire Sandal Soup
Soon I had to return to the field. I felt a little better when meeting and talking with other people. I met Sauy once again. We secretly called him C.I.A. One morning when uprooting grass, he whispered to me: “Last night my friend secretly turned a radio on and he heard Samdech Ouv [King Sihanouk] speaking.” Then he turned his eyes up and down to recall what he heard. A few elderly women moved close to me to listen. Then a woman walked to me and gave me a hoe, and reprimanded us, “Everybody, why don’t you work, or do you want to eat nothing this evening?” We walked away and continued our work.
In the evening, we tried to walk close to Sauy, asking him about what was said on the radio. “How could I hear anything since the bad radio shut itself off as the King said ‘My beloved people…’”
We were disappointed to know nothing. I headed into the cottage. On the fire pit, a pan was boiling with water and in the water there were a few black objects which I could not see clearly. My husband might have some cow bones to make a soup, I thought. Delighted, I sat down and added more wood into the fire to speed up the cooking. A while later my husband returned from the pond. I did not ask him at first, waiting for him to give the buckets back to the neighbor. Then I asked, “What’s in the pan?” “What do you think?” he asked. I answered, “It’s buffalo meat, because it’s black.” My husband burst out laughing. He said, “It’s a rubber tire. I’m boiling it to make shoes for you and our children. It’s hard to find.” He boiled the tire for many hours to make it more supple and made shoes for me and our children. It was better than being barefoot.
Bakkprea Village
One day the village chief summoned all peopleold and newto a meeting. He wanted to choose two families in a village to do work in the fish business in Bakkprea. They chose families with few children and who had a mosquito net, since Bakkprea was said to be infested with mosquitoes. My husband was the first to volunteer. The chief asked him, “Can you use a fishing net, Comrade Huot?” “Yes I can,” he answered. I signaled him that I didn’t want to go, since the newly grown mints at the back of our house would die if they were left unattended. “Don’t care about such unimportant things,” he replied.
That night, the village chief allowed my family and the other one assigned to Bakkprea to kill our chickens as food for the journey. We had only two chickens, but we slaughtered almost twenty of our neighbors’ chickens.
That night it was like we were having a party almost until daybreak. I dreamt that we were allowed to go home. The next day, after saying farewell to the other villagers, we left on an oxcart track with a combatant escorting us. We did not know how far Bakkprea was. We stopped on the road to have a meal. We turned left on a road along the river. In the evening we arrived at Bakkprea, where long boat-houses were made for fishermen to come and rest. These houses could be moved at will as the water rose and fell. The village was magnificent. It was warm; the scenery was nice. A famous classical singer, named Ruos Serey Sothea, composed a song about Bakkprea village: “Oh, Brakkprea in the twilight….”
In Bakkprea, men went fishing in 10 or 20 boats. My husband left with others, though I did not know if he could handle the fishing. When the boats returned, a ring was struck to signal the women to go down to the river with large pans and knives for scaling and cleaning the catch. Whenever the boats arrived, at one or two in the morning at times, women had to clean the fish.
This place was full of mosquitoes. People made many fires to produce smoke to drive them away, but they came in swarms. I scaled the fish with one hand and slapped the mosquitoes with the other. When the work was complete, my skin was full of rashes. I was not good at scaling fish. I could fill only half the bucket with fish, while others could fill it to the rim. We ate so many fish eggs that we had diarrhea.
Malaria
My family had lived in the village for half a month. One day I had a high fever. A week later my condition did not improve. I suspected it was malaria. I lost my appetite, was very thirsty and wanted to eat sour fruits. My husband decided to go the collective kitchen to ask for some fruit and a few grains of salt for me. For me it was like a fruit from god.
My illness did not improve. I had no medicine, even tree roots, and there were no doctors here. One morning, my husband brought me to meet the group chief, and asked him to go to the village where we came from. I was so thin and weak that my skirt barely stayed on my waist. We were reprimanded for not being as hardy as others. They granted us permission to leave, but kept our mosquito net and blanket for others to use. Huot did not care about that, as long as we were allowed to go back. The chief assigned a person to bring us by boat to the road and left us to figure out our way home. They told us to beg for food in villages on the way, that the villagers would not be selfish. In fact, no one was kind to us. They gave us nothing, even leftovers. They said it was just enough for them. When we reached the main road, the sky darkened and a light shower began to fall. We sought shelter in a small isolated house. My beloved son, Pheak, became pale from having nothing to eat, but he did not complain. I pitied him, because through these times he was tortured to become tough. (At this point I dropped my pen and cried.)
The house we sought shelter in belonged to the military. A young comrade soldier of about 20 to 25 came to us and asked about us. He went back and returned with a big bowl of rice mixed with water spinach. He handed it to my husband and said, “That’s all I have.” My husband received it in delight and gratitude. He fed me first, but I shook my head; my mouth had a bitter sensation and I could not eat. The soldier asked me, “What happened to you?” I said, “I’ve had a fever for almost two weeks now.” He went in again and returned with a yellow tablet. He said, “You can stay here tonight. Tomorrow if there is a military truck, I’ll ask him to give you a ride.”
I took the medicine and collapsed on a bed. I woke up at midnight, looking for water. It was dark so I sensed my way to the water jar and quenched my thirst. I might have drunk half the jar that night. It was rain water, sweet and cold. In my mind I was drinking a Pepsi Cola.
In the morning, we hitched a ride on a military truck. The truck dropped us at Cheung Wat village, Preah Net Preah district, 4 or 5 kilometers from Sres village, where we had lived. The soldiers told me to seek treatment there before going to the village. The hospital was in the pagoda and people lived close to it. I rested in the hospital for 2 or 3 days. I was given large, round, black tablets, like rabbit droppings. I noticed they gave the same medicine for all illnesses. Those who could recover lived, and those couldn’t died. A few days later, I felt better and wanted something to eat. That morning I told my husband that I wanted to eat cassava. He went to Sres village and returned in the afternoon with a small piece of cooked cassava. We ate together. My husband whispered to me, his lips shaking, “My wife, Vietnamese families in Sres, 20 families in all, were taken away. The village is quiet. It was done just a week after we left. First they summoned the men to a meeting.” He took a big breath. “Some wore only short pants. Then they called the women and children to pack up and load onto oxcarts, because, as they said, the men were waiting outside the village. Y Kea, our neighbor, had been rich during the Lon Nol regime. She hid her gold in the ground, but as the order to leave was abrupt, she could not find the gold. So she told the village chief about it. Her cottage is now in ruins, but no gold was found.”
I got goose bumps as a chill rushed through my spine. We were lucky. No one knew what happened to those men, women and children. I heard rumors that those Vietnamese families were drowned when the boats they were on were sunk in the river. After that we said we were a Khmer family. I was called Neang Nang or Me Pheak, while my husband was called Huot as usual. A few days later, we met Um Ry, one of my husband’s relatives. He was living in the village. He was delighted to meet us. He wanted us to live in the village and we agreed after we got permission from the village chief.
Puk Krak, the Cooperative Chief
The village we were living in was nicknamed “the widow village” because the men who were technicians and doctors had been taken away. I met my old friend Saophea, who had worked with me at Preah Monivong hospital in Phnom Penh. Saophea specialized in illnesses relating to organs from the neck up. Her husband Tork Kan, who was also a doctor, had been taken away. Saophea now lived with her five-year-old son. In the village, only three men had returned home. First was Mr. Dina who was an electrical technician. Second was Dr. Chy, who was able to convince Angkar to let him return. His wife was Bang Samlei who was very polite and had been a teacher in the Sangkum Reastr Niyum. Third was Um Saret who had worked in the railway station. He returned after two days. He advised his three children that “If you are asked to give an opinion, tell them you don’t have any and call them politely ‘Comrade Brothers.’ If you request that a school, market or pagoda be built, you won’t live to return home from the meeting. You understand?”
His three children nodded in wonder. Angkar let me live in a large house with widows Me Tou (who had two children) and Soda (who had three). Me Tou liked the company of my family. Her children liked my children as well.
Me Tou had a very pleasant accent. Almost every night we sat on the front stairs listening to her singing songs from the Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime, like “Letter under the Pillow” and “Night Window,” which was sung by the famous female singer Huoy Meas. Me Tou was a good singer. My husband rested his head on my shoulders and I felt like I was in a restaurant. I laughed and cried with her, but we knew that a few unidentified people were watching us.
One afternoon, an older woman in her 40s, with no front teeth, announced roughly in the dining hall, “We will have a meeting on the pagoda terrace after dinner.” After everyone was there, the meeting began. First the chief who presided over the meeting saluted fathers, mothers and brothers. Then he talked about working hard to achieve the yield of five tons of rice per hectare, so that everyone would not be hungry, have electricity and adequate clothes without the need to use money. The participants applauded. After the glorious vision, he turned to education and morality issues. He threatened and terrorized his listeners. He mentioned, “A few woman comrades do not forget feudal and capitalist culture. They still find time at night to sing and discuss movies and plays which are bad (at this point Me Tou signaled me). Some woman comrades wore improper clothes while dining. Some wore open-necked shirts to seduce the chefs. No, don’t ever think about that. Our comrades won’t be fooled by your beauty. Work hard to change yourself and dress properly.”
On the way home, Me Tou joked with me, “They’re good with their mouths, but base men always peek at us women….”
I asked her who wore open-necked shirts to dinner. She said, “It’s no one beside Kalyan. She’s a widow with one child. Um Ry who lives with her looks after her child. Kalyan was a student from Decartes high school. The base men were fooled because of her many times.
Early one morning, we took a meal with us to the potato field. The field was on a mountain and about 2 kilometers away from the village where we lived. My husband was assigned to build a dam with the men. On the road to the field I met a lot of new friends, including Kalyan. We got together very quickly. We talked and joked around about the Sangkum Reastr Niyum. That’s why they criticized us in the meeting! On the mountain my work was slow and I was reproved by others. But I did not reply, keeping in mind my husband’s advice of “struggling is living.” In the afternoon we returned home with some potatoes that we hid under the leaves in the basket. We talked as we walked.
Arriving at a nice wooden house, I asked others who the house belonged to. An older woman answered that it belonged to Puk Krak, our cooperative chief. A week passed. One morning a man, about 48 to 50 years old, smiled as he walked steadily into the potato field under the midday sun. Me Tou told me this was Pouk Krak. “He looks gentle,” I said. A woman sitting close to me replied, “He might be so, but he kills people like animals.” My hair stood on end.
A Love Tragedy
This evening after dinner, Me Tou and Sauda sat close to me. After Me Tou looked around, she told me about Puk Krak. She said, “Seeing him smiling, don’t think he’s gentle. A few months ago there was a tragic love story. The man was a base person, while the woman was an April 17 person, and both already had families. They fell in love, had sex, and the woman became pregnant. During a work assignment, they tried to meet each other again, but their husband and wife saw it. They reported them to the village chief. The next day, the two were tied up to the trunks of two rain trees on the pagoda terrace (Me Tou pointed to the trees). Then people from all around were gathered to witness.
Sauda cut in, “We thought we were called to prepare our clothes to go back to Phnom Penh. Instead, they called us to judge the crime of the adulterous couple. Puk Krak stood on a high platform, asking how he should punish the two. Everyone was silent, except for a few base men who yelled, ‘Smash them, smash them!’ Puk Krak cried out the same words with a fierce-looking face and asked us to raise our hands in support. Those who did not raise their hands would be accused of conspiracy. All had to force themselves to raise their hands. So the death sentence was given to the couple. Puk Krak jumped down from the platform and walked toward the two criminals with a hoe in his hand. He asked, ‘Do you have any words to say, comrades?’ With his face darkening because he knew that he was going to die, the man looked at his wife, the woman who he had an affair with, and the crowd, as if he was begging for help. But no one dared speak a word. Puk Krak ordered soldiers to untie him from the tree and told him to lie down on his knees and say ‘I will not do that again.’ Puk Prak raised the hoe and hit the back of the man’s head hard. He fell to the ground. Then a second hit was made until he was motionless. His wife fainted. Then Puk Krak turned to the adulterous woman. When the soldiers untied her, her legs were unable to support her. Tears ran down her face like water. Maybe her soul had left her. She was told to lie on her knees, say she would not do it again and then hit several times until she died. Perhaps she had two lives because she took more hits before she died. Each of us, including old and new people, was terrorized and shocked since the punishment was too much for such a crime.”
Unknowingly my tears dropped. Me Tou continued, “The bodies were buried together. Later the place was said to have ghosts. The sound of the couple playing and laughing was heard. The bamboo tree kept swaying, although there was no breeze. Puk Krak ordered the living husband and wife to get married as a show of revenge. I don’t know if they did so.”
This was a tragedy that no one forgot. After that if there were love affairs, people warned the couple by calling them by the name of the tree, ampil tik barang.
Pou Barang’s Palm Juice! “Kiss” Meant a Lighter
One morning I left to the field early with Kalyan. Seeing a few palm trees, Kalyan told me, “Sister, we should ask Pou Barang for some palm juice.” Although he was a base person, Pou Barang had a white complexion and was tall and stocky. He liked joking with women. His old wife observed him closely. Some bamboo containers were hung on the trunks as Pou Barang was climbing halfway up the tree. Kalyan called out, “Pou Barang, may I have some juice?” Without looking down, he replied, “Yes, but what will you give me in return?” Kalyan said, “A ‘Kiss!’” “Ok, a lighter is good.” Pou Barang did not understand.
After drinking to our fill, we ran straight to the field. From then on whenever we met him, Pou Barang asked for the lighter. Kalyan liked to joke and was not afraid. Returning from the field, she bathed and dressed in an open-necked and sleeveless shirt, as though she had never been warned. At the dinning hall, there was a long table with two rows of chairs. A bowl of soup was for four people. The soup had no meat, except some vegetables and oil floating on top.
At dinner time, we would not wait for husband or wife to be ready to dine together. Those who arrived first ate first. My son, Pheak, went with other boys. A chef put the porridge into each bowl. Before harvest season we ate porridge. The chef would give us an unwelcome look if we brought our bowls to him many times. If one was good at flattering like Kalyan, one or two small fish could be found in the bowl.
I ate with Che Mom for two days. She always used a ladle, which almost drained the soup in a single dip. The three of us looked at her. Embarrassed, she said, “My spoon was broken, so I use this instead….” The next day, I used a ladle (one had to be clever to survive the regime!). Puk Krak always uttered a proverb: better make the line droop than snap.
One morning Angkar assigned women to build a dam near the village. In the afternoon, Me Tou’s foot was severely cut with a hoe. We used grass to stop the bleeding, but to no avail. I took her home. On the way we saw a few rows of onions. We asked the owner for one to use to stop the bleeding. The owner said, “I’ve never known anyone to do that before. If you want it to eat, tell the truth.” Me Tou continued to walk and cursed the owner, “What a black-hearted man, I’ll destroy his onions in a few days.”
Ten days later her foot improved. Then she asked me to uproot the onions with her. At first I hesitated, but agreed eventually. We uprooted a row of onions and put them in a cloth bag. We cut the bulbs and put them in fish sauce to make pickles. We buried the leaves in the ash. That night we stayed with Sauda, but could not sleep.
The next day we went to the dam as normal. At noon, Tou the son of Me Tou, dashed to his mother telling her that a few soldiers were searching each house for onions. Me Tou and I ran to the house. We took the onion leaves from the ash and put them into a cloth bag. Then we hung the bag through the window on the wall behind the house. The smell was still hanging in the air; we were nervous. After that, Me Tou told me to massage her as if she were sick, as the reason for not going to the work site at the moment. The soldiers inspected our kitchen where we boiled water. Luckily, they did not notice anything. Maybe god was on our side. We escaped from danger once again.
Oeun, Porter of Human Fertilizer
In this village, people who carried human fertilizer were most reviled by others. People did not want to let them in their houses or sit near them in the dinning hall. But their lives were more secure, since they did not need to join a mobile work unit or work far from home. Oeun, 18, long-faced and light, was a former 1st grade student [12th grade at the present] and the first child of Um Saret. He did not show his knowledge and did not talk much to the base people. He pretended to be deaf and mad sometimes. When away from the base people, he spoke a lot. He said, “I am not crazy enough to carry other people’s shit. I put soil into the toilet and put it back into the basket.” Sometimes he walked back and forth through the village so that Angkar would say he was an active person. In the regime, pretending to be crazy saved your life. Now Oeun is a doctor.
14 Most Deceitful Women
At midnight one night, Me Tou tickled my leg to wake me up. She whispered, “Do you want to listen to a song?” My foolish mind never satisfied itself. I turned one ear to the direction of the sound from a former mess hall for monks where youths were staying. Me Tou and I crept down the stairs toward the source of the sound, feeling excited. It was not one of the typical revolutionary songs I heard every morning. It was a bemoaning sound of Mrs. Mao Saret singing, “…I look into myself in the dark sky…”
Oh, what a wonderful song! What is she thinking about at this time of night? we asked ourselves. I stood putting Me Tou’s hand on my chest, crying, I couldn’t believe I heard such a good song again. Me Tou was equally emotional. In the following nights, we eavesdropped on the singing under the hall. We always heard youths playing and laughing with each other. That night Me Tou and I floated away with the song “20 years in prison because of a woman” by the famous singer Sun Sisamut. I leaned against some sacks. I asked Me Touk what was in them. She said it was rice. Then I realized that this was where rice was processed during the day. Returning home we thought about stealing some rice.
Thinking for a few nights, I remembered a Hong Kong film screened in Kirirum Cinema entitled The 14 Brave Women. In the story, the women’s husbands who were commanders of the army were arrested and killed by the enemy. The 14 women requested permission from the king to go to battle to avenge the deaths of their husbands. The king agreed. In the march to the battlefield, the 14 women’s food was destroyed by the enemy. “Farm with water, fight with food” as a saying goes, and so the troop could not fight without something to eat. A few soldiers volunteered to take on a suicidal mission of stealing the enemy’s food. Each of them carried a small bag and a sharpened bamboo tube to break through the rice bags. They crawled into the stock room. They stabbed the bamboo into the sack and the rice flew into the bags they hung on their waists. Only two returned, while the third soldier was killed by the enemy on the road. However, when the rice was mixed with wild leaves, it helped the troops to fight on.
I told the story to Me Tou, who agreed with me. At midnight we carried out our mission. When leaving I felt like I was going to a big battlefield. My heart was a bit harder. As we put the rice into the cloth bags that we had sewn out of shirts, we listened to the song and other sounds. We did not take much, just a few kilograms. Besides, the bag could be torn. Back at home, we nervously opened the bags. It was unpolished rice. What an unexpected outcome! Me Tou cooked the rice right away into eliminate any trace of our crime. There was nothing better than having rice to eat. I sat on the stairs guarding the entrance. Luckily not a sign of soldiers was seen that night. We served the cooked rice with the onion pickle.
One morning we were assigned to harvest cassava. We were happy because we would have some cassava back home to boil or steam. On the road to the field, I met a thin, old woman, who was carrying water. She hugged me as if she missed me. She pointed to her house so that I would visit her the next time I passed by. She whispered to me, asking if I had some tobacco to exchange for her fish or sugar. I said no, but there was a tobacco field behind my house which I would go into and pick some leaves for her. She told me to bring it to her house to dry since it was isolated. As we talked, ther water drained from her rusty buckets.
Returning from the field in the afternoon, the base people walked in groups, carrying baskets on their heads. They did so without keeping a hand busy like us. Four or five of us walked at a distance behind them, so that we could talk. Kalyan said, “Look, we should learn to carry a basket on the head like those base people. Now see, I’ll do it first.” She tripped in front of Puk Krak’s house as he was arriving on a bicycle. Nervous, she hurriedly picked up the scattering cassava. We helped her. Puk Krak put on a face and said, “You all are good at stealing. If just one person did this much, I should smash one or two to give you a lesson.” In fact, he had no intention to hurt us, otherwise no one would live.
A few days later, I asked Me Tou to steal some tobacco leaves with me. There were no stars and it was pitch dark. We sensed our way to the tobacco field. If soldiers came from the opposite direction, we would collide with them. As a non-smoker, I thought when we ate vegetables we chose the shoots, so we picked the tobacco shoots.
Early the next morning, I took the tobacco shoots to the old woman. She told me to take her salted fish the following day. In the evening, people talked about a stupid thief who stole the shoots of the tobacco plants. I felt ashamed of myself to be that foolish.
The Death of Thy, the Medical Man
Now the rice was ripe. Angkar assigned us to harvest the rice around the village. At noon men and women walked back to the village to dine. After the meal, we had to go back to where we worked and rest for half an hour. Under the hot sun, we piled up rice bundles, then sat close to each other and talked only about Sangkum Reastr Niyum. Kalyan, who was good at talking, said that when she was a student, boys followed her and that she always found a letter or a rose in her drawer in the class. The quieter, younger Samphoas had been a first-year medical student. Her husband was called Det; he was a very skillful fisherman. Angkar assigned Det to fish for the cooperative. Every day when he returned from fishing, Det visited his sister and cooked a big fish, before handing the small ones to the cooperative kitchen. He never brought the fish to his wife because too many relatives were living with her. Samphoas knew it too, but she did not say anything. She uttered in tears that some nights when she rejected having sex with Det, he informed the village chief. The village chief punished her by forcing her to sit outside all night for the mosquitoes to bite her. She said if the country was changed she would divorce her husband who she did not love and continue studying medicine.
Samlei talked about her husband named Thy, who had not completed medical school when they were married. She said she and her husband went through thick and thin together. At school she waited for her husband to complete his studies until midnight. Sometimes, they burnt sausages with alcohol to eat with left-over rice. At this point, she said, “I’m hungry for sausage; I don’t want to talk anymore!” We were always reprimanded for talking about good food and happy times in the Sangkum Reastr Niyum.
Rice near the village was harvested. Angkar began assigning us to harvest further and further away, but husband and wife could not go together. We had to sleep in the field and a chef came with us to cook food for the workers.
Thy, who was big and tall, wore short, spiky hair and had a smiling face. Angkar sent him with us. One night in the open field, I sat and thought of my husband and son at home.
In the harvest season, we ate solid rice and the soup consisted of some fish. As the morning sun cast its rays on the top of the trees and the cottages, I was still lying lazily. Then I heard a voice: “Help, help, Thy is dead!”
Everyone dashed to his cottage. His pale face and body were cold like ice. An old man named Duong who slept with him did not know when he died. Duong said Thy had a headache in the evening. A soldier ran back to the village to inform Thy’s wife and he told the other soldiers to wait for her to arrive before burying him. Perhaps he died of cold and humidity, since we all slept on the ground using just a thin leaf mat. After waiting too long for his wife to arrive, the people did not work, so the soldiers decided to bury Thy on a small hill. Just as that was done, Samley arrived. She knelt down, crying and digging the tomb. But we prevented her from doing so. She told her story about her life with her husband in Khmer, English, and French, as she wished, ignoring the soldiers. We wept, “Farewell Thy, may you rest in peace.” The soldiers looked sorrowful, since Thy had cured many people when he was alive.
Region 3
Starvation forced April 17 people to flee to region 3, because it was heard that the region had plenty of food. I was in region 5. Some people returned after a few days to tell others to go with them. My husband, who always wanted to travel, tried to persuade me to join them because he also wanted to look for his mother. I agreed. That night we discussed it. Me Tou and Sauda said a farewell to us. Sauda, who spoke little, but possessed a heart of steel said, “Huot and Nang, will we meet in Phnom Penh again one day?” I nodded as tears began to drop. We talked until dawn. Before sunrise, my family set off. Me Tou hugged me and my son, Pheak, saying, “We will meet again, won’t we?” I hugged her and did not want to leave. My husband put his beloved hoe on one shoulder; I put a basket with some old clothes inside on mine. We left amidst other people walking to the dam. (In 1982 I met Me Tou when she worked in a government ministry with me. Her two sons had grown up. They looked much healthier than in the black-shirted regime. She joked to me, “A lot of men wanted to marry me, but these two husbands of mine (her sons), did not want it.” She sang “A Letter under the Pillow” to me. I have never seen her since. She may have migrated to another country.)
My family arrived at a shallow river after walking 2 kilometers from the village. We crossed it. Soon, we arrived in region 3. Here the landscape was green, even the grass was green. I dared not walk across the grass field, because it contained much water spinach and other edible herbs. I decided to go to the dinning hall and ask for food. I was given a bowl of rice with some soup. Each of us ate a spoonful of food; the rest we gave to our son.
We sought shelter with the villagers, but they rejected us saying they had already adopted many families. We were advised to move on. My family continued to other villages, which did not accept us. We arrived at the fifth village in the evening. The village chief looked us up and down for a while before he accepted us and told us to work hard.
In the village, they gave us a small leaf cottage. The next day we were assigned to build a dam. The villagers looked healthy. They looked at us with compassion because we were bony thin and pale. The newly arrived people worked very hard. We had adequate food and the neighbors were kind-hearted. A friendly, tall and thin woman whispered to me, “Don’t worry, here they don’t hurt people. They educate us, if we are lazy or we complain too much.” I still felt bad, though, when hearing the word “educate.”
My beloved husband and son were also healthy. My son played and laughed loudly with other kids, which I had never seen before. We were happy. During a dinner, a woman comrade, about 30, told us, “Brothers new people, after dinner, go to a meeting near the village chief’s house.” After dinner, we walked to the chief’s house, which was not too far from the dining hall. My husband had been sick for several days, so he did not join the meal with us; I brought food to him. We sat on the ground in front of the chief’s house. The chief was named comrade Kan. He had dark skin, curly hair, and large eyes. First he thanked the new people who had come to help his village. We felt there could be bad news, so we listened on. He continued, “Comrades in your old villages have come here to ask me to take you back to the villages, because those villages are quiet now.” We listened as sweat dropped down our bodies in the cold night. The chief said, “Therefore, please pack up, tomorrow trucks will arrive to take you.”
I told the bad news to my husband. He said they would not bring us to the same place. The next day, we said goodbye to the base people and I carried our belongings on my shoulders. My husband could barely support his own body. He carried his hoe. After walking for half a kilometer with many other families, we saw 10 Camions awaiting us. I walked faster to take the claim the best spot, while my husband staggered slowly. Comrade Phal, my group chief, blamed me, “Why are you in such a hurry? Don’t you see comrade Huot is sick? Just wait in the model houses for the trucks to return.” Then I waited in the model house, which looked the same as others. My husband collapsed in the house and complained, “Don’t hurry, my head is splitting open!” I took out medicine for him, but it was nothing beside “rabbit dung” tablets.
We waited until 2 p.m. when the truck returned. All were hungry. Two soldiers standing on the trucks told us, “You know comrades, the people in the morning were used as fertilizer.” I did not understand right away. They were killed, I learned later. At about 5 p.m. the truck took us to Serey Sophorn district. Many houses were abandoned there. They told us to rest in any house and wait for dinner. Some wondered what Angkar would do to us for running away from home like that. A moment later, a few comrades called us to eat. In the tin-roofed dinning hall, a kerosene lamp was hung on the roof to light up the night. The rice was as white as cotton. The sour soup with banana trunk was delicious. It was the first meal of the day and everyone ate their fill. We were even told to pack up the remaining rice for tomorrow’s journey. We began to think our lives could be better than in the village we had just left in the morning.
The Flood
As light began to fill the horizon and dew fell, we were ordered to get up and go to the truck quickly. The truck took the main road; we did not know the name. A man called out, his village was there, but the truck kept going. Goodbye Cheung Wat village (my old village); I did not where we were going this time. At noon the truck stopped at a small road. Then the young soldiers told us to get off. We walked with our belongings banging around to a village a hundred meters away. My son carried the rice pan and I carried the rest. I cried when it was too heavy. My husband was frustrated to see me crying. He said, “Don’t cry, we are not separated.” I cried louder as though there was something bad going to happen to us. This was the only time when he yelled at me. We stayed in a large hall, when half an hour later a few comrades arrived. One comrade was the oldest, had gray hair, large eyes, and a cigarette in his mouth. We squatted and were quiet, awaiting his words.
He spoke with a stern look, “You have been assigned to live here. This village is called Tik Chaur. You have to change yourselves and work hard to impress Angkar, because you committed a serious crime of running away from home. If you refuse to change yourselves and run for the second time, the nearby mountain will be your resting place.” A chill rushed through my spine. The mountain was called Phnom Chunh Cheang. It was where criminals were detained, tortured and given little food to eat. They were also chained.
A few hours later a female comrade arrived to call us to eat porridge. I had fled from porridge, now I met porridge again. My husband did not go and asked me to bring some food to him if possible. Then I pulled out two spoons from our luggage. I walked toward river to clean the spoons. Just as I put them into the water, the spoons fell from my hand as though they were attracted by a magnet. I thought this was a bad sign; perhaps two of us could go away like the spoons. I prayed for my family’s happiness.
Angkar let us stay in a storehouse. We arrived in the village when the rain came. So it was time to farm. One morning, a female comrade arrived to tell us to transplant rice in a field about a kilometer from the village. She told us to bring plates and spoons along. I asked for my husband’s permission not to work. They gave him permission, but only after a lot of reproach. The village chief accused my husband, “You all are unconscious people. Sick all the time. I should not let you eat.” In the field, we could hardly work, since the base people kept staring at us.
Sour Soup with Cow Skin
Half a month had passed. My beloved husband recovered, maybe because of “rabbit droppings” medicine or something else. He was assigned to plow with other men, who were in the strongest group. About ten Cham families lived in this village. On rare occasions when there was pork, the Cham people were forced to eat it. A woman named Brahim, in her mid-20s, secretly told me in tears that the Cham families had arrived in the village nearly a year ago and were given only porridge. Once in a while there was pork soup with no meat, but fat floating on top. Her mother was forced to eat the soup, although she only asked for a few grains of salt to eat instead. A few months later, her mother died of an unknown cause.
A Cham family lived close to our room. Saleh, the father and husband of the family, was a considerate person. He pitied my family and also plowed with my husband. He told my husband many times not to speak too much and not to behave improperly, since the soldiers in the village were young, but cruel.
This village had very few resources. I could hardly find firewood. There was some bamboo which we had to pull out from pricking thorns. One of my shirts was torn because of this. Eating porridge, the base people still had some rice from an unknown source to make dessert. They ground the rice into powder, then mixed it with water and palm sugar. The liquid was poured into a hot pan. Sometimes they made a kind of cake with fish inside. If they saw us walking by, they would invite us to join, just to be polite.
No edible vegetables were found to supplement our diet. Guava trees had only old, dark green leaves. Newly arrived people were not permitted to own rice or to cook rice or soup. The base people joked that the feces in the bush looked like that of a pig, but the footprint was that of a human. There was nothing strange about this. We had little to eat, so our feces looked like those of a pig. That was the great leap forward regime of “Brother” Pot.
After evening porridge, Saleh asked me, “Comrade Nang, do you have a spoonful of salt? I’m making a sour beef soup. I’ll give you some when the flesh becomes tender.” I was glad to hear that. So I quickly handed him the salt. We waited and waited for the soup to be cooked until we fell asleep. Then I heard a call from the door, “Nang, take the soup, it’s ready.” All houses had no doors, so that the Angkar could see inside. I woke my husband and son up to serve the soup. I gulped the first spoonful. It was delicious and its sour taste came from the leaves of a tamarind tree. I fished out a piece of beef and put it into my mouth. It was so tough, my tooth almost broke. I turned at Saleh and asked, “Saleh, what is this, it’s so tough? Is it a buffalo meat?” He answered, “Just eat it, it’s a rope made of cow skin, which I stole from an ox-cart. Don’t talk, I would be in big trouble.” I knew that a rope was made of skin. All ox-cart riders kept an eye on their rope. They were responsible for its loss. In this period of extreme hardship, our lives were like a drop of water on a lotus leaf in the wind, waiting for the final day. We barely walked to work. Some people tripped when walking in the rain and died. Perhaps they were too undernourished.
From one day to the next, the number of people shrank. Some families when called out at night were never seen again.
Teacher Say Was Wanted
My husband knew a lot of April 17 people working with him in the same field. Some came from the same village, some from nearby villages. At rest period, they talked and shared cigarettes wrapped with tree leaves. One of them was Say, a former teacher. Say was about 30 years old. His protruding cheekbones were covered with pale, wrinkled skin. He had blurred eyes and long saggy hair. He looked like a 50-year-old man. Say complained to my husband that he might not live long, because he was suspected as a former civil servant. The day he feared arrived. One night Say ran to my house in a ragged black shirt and a scarf surrounding his neck. As he arrived he sat near the wall, and asked my husband, “Huot, flee with me?” He added as he gasped for breath, “They are looking for me. Last night two of my neighbors were taken away. Tonight it could be my turn.” Puzzled and shocked, my husband looked at me and our son, not knowing what to do. He then said he would not leave me and our son. We pitied him. So we boiled the rice we had for him. We ate together, but we gave him a large portion. I also fried some rice for him to eat on the run. My husband and Say talked throughout the night. When the first rooster crowed, he put the fried rice in his scarf and said, “I’ll never forget this sympathy. If I survive for the next three days, I’ll repay your help.” We wept and wished him good luck. He left. We did not know what happened to him next.
Becoming a Miserable Woman Unconsciously
Our legs swelled. This was torture. It was a prison without walls. The name of the village Tik Chaur means high tide, because water could flood the field overnight. One morning my husband and I went to the field. Comrade Kan [the village chief] sent a few soldiers with us. With his face set, Comrade Kan talked to my husband, “I’d like to ask you to plow in another village for a few days and stay there.” My husband hurriedly wrapped a scarf around his neck and left with him. Walking a few steps, he reached into his shirt pocket, took out a lighter, and gave it to me in case I needed it to make a fire at night. I rejected his offer, saying, “You keep it. Maybe you’ll need it to light your cigarette.” It took a while until he put it back into his pocket.
The same morning a soldier who was transplanting rice near me asked, “How old are you?” I answered, “I’m 27.” The soldier laughed, “What a pitiful young widow.” I quickly clarified, “Are you confused, Comrade? My husband is still alive!” He laughed and left. I do not remember the date, but I know it was a full moon day. At night I was restless. I sat and looked at the moon on the door until I fell asleep there. I dreamt I broke one of the two knives I had tried to preserve since we’d been evacuated from Phnom Penh. My body shook like a chick when I woke up. Thinking about my husband and the soldier, I cried. I prayed to God to look after my husband. I unconsciously pleaded: “Husband, may you be free from all troubles. Please don’t leave your wife and son in this sea of blood.”
Saleh heard what I said and advised me, “Nang, don’t speak to loud.” Our lives seemed to be the most fragile thing of all. We loved each other through good and bad times. When we had food we thought about each other. When we stole food, we hurried home so that we could share.
High-Nosed Visitor
One day, two days, three days passed…. One morning I saw comrade Kan with about 10 young soldiers carrying rifles; they were walking toward my house. Comrade Kan said to me, “Comrade Nang, if you want your husband to come home, give us all that you have.” I was shocked and bewildered, as I tried to think what my husband had possibly done wrong. “He went to plow, why is he accused of a crime now?” I asked. Comrade Kan advised me, “You don’t need to wonder. Angkar knows what your husband did; Angkar has the eyes of a pineapple.” As Comrade Kan spoke, the soldiers were ransacking my few belongings. They checked the salt jar, squeezed the pillows, spilled the kitchen ash…. They found nothing. I began to realize that my husband must be in danger. Without hesitation, I reached into the chicken’s nest to take a few pieces of gold. Then I handed them to comrade Kan without saying a word. As the soldiers walked away, I took out US $200, which was wrapped in many layers of plastic; I had hidden the bundle in a silk reel for a long time, saving it for a bribe. Kan did not know what it was, so he asked as he held it, “What money is this?” I dared not say it was American money, fearing I could be accused of being an imperialist, CIA or KGB. “You can use this money anywhere you go. I don’t want to keep it any longer. Please take it and help my husband.”
He did not answer. His grabbed the money and walked away. I waited for my husband day by day. One morning I was assigned to transplant rice near the main road (I later learned that it was on the border with Siem Reap province). On the road, comrade Kan inspected us. He seemed to be serious, as though there were problems. Kan told us, “Today there are many French and foreign people coming through our village. Therefore, if you see cars, just keep working, don’t stand idle.”
Before noon, we saw three white Mercedes on the road. The cars stopped about 50 meters from us. Several foreigners got down, aiming their cameras at us transplanting rice. A woman close to me and I stood up, forgetting comrade Kan’s prohibition. We were tempted to appeal to those foreigners to help us because we were suffering. Then comrade Kan yelled behind us, “Do you want to die?” We turned our faces down. I shook because had I disobeyed his order. Later I learned that they did not want us to stand because the foreigners could see our thin and pale bodies.
That afternoon when I returned home I saw my son lying on the bed, looking exhausted. I was no longer able to trade fish or other food, because I did not have any valuables left. Saleh told me to boil the leaves of a star-apple tree for my son to drink, so that he would urinate more and the swelling of his body would stop. But he did not drink or eat. Three days later he died.
I could not cry nor do anything, except hug his body. “You have been with me through difficult times, now you go away from me. Your father is nowhere to be seen,” I spoke alone. I felt cold in an unfamiliar place. Saleh and other men wrapped the body of my son in a torn sleeping mat. Saleh asked, “You have better clothes for him?” I replied, “That’s all I have.” We had no incense, candles, monks to chant, relatives, nothing except a few men in his funeral. My son died, he’s happy now, leaving me in this field of death.
I stood in grief at the front door. I was alone in this world. I cried then and I am now crying again. My tears have been dried up for 23 years now, the tears of separation, horror and shock, which the world had never experienced.
After my son’s death, I did not think about eating. I had no strength to work or talk to others. Saleh and his wife tried to comfort me, telling me I was not alone, that millions of people suffered in just the same way, and that we had to survive to meet our remaining relatives, who we had not seen for more than three years.
Harvest season arrived once again. I remembered that several days after the death of my son, it was the Pchum Ben days, because two group chiefs rationed us sticky rice to make offerings. They did that at night so that the base people could not see and become jealous. Each person received two cans of rice. I kept it in the room, but it was stolen. The thief kept stealing my clothes, spoons and plates until the only thing was left was the clothes on my body.
Every morning, Saleh’s wife pushed me to go to the field so I would not be criticized. My soul was not in my body. I fell off the narrow bridge many times when the strong and cold winter air blew at me. People pulled me out of the water. My body shook like a chick. I had nothing.
Sometimes I did not work or eat. I was not afraid of the village chief and the soldiers. I did not remember my name. I was becoming mad.
Saleh’s wife tried to keep me in good spirit. She told me, “I heard the sound of fighting in the distance in the past few days. The soldiers are not very strict now. Be strong, Nang.”
One morning we saw the wives of the group chiefs and soldiers, in panic, running to the field telling their husbands to go home. Because we had no supervision, we were able to stop working and talk, oblivious to the situation. At noon, some April 17 kids came to tell their mothers, “Mom, our country is liberated!”
There were no happier words than those. We rushed to the village to pack up. I walked behind, feeling empty. Some people went to the collective kitchen to take food for their long journey home. I did nothing. I stood on the riverbank like a lifeless statue. “Oh river, please tell me where my husband is. Please tell him that the war is over, that he and I could go home. Please come back, husband! We will rebuild our lives. Come and help your wife, just as you did for the past three years. Nothing in life is sadder than family separation and happier than reuniting.”
As I was deep in thought, Saleh’s wife pulled my hand to go with her. I had one basket, two cans of rice, a long-sleeved shirt and a skirt, pieced together with a hundred stitches. My legs were swelling and I could barely hold a thing. For the last time I looked at the river, the cottage and tamarind tree from which I used to pick dark green leaves. I said goodbye to the bloody field, the merciless eyes of the young soldiers, the watery porridge, everything that we did together during these times, my three children, and the river.
As I walked I seemed to hear my husband calling me from behind. I looked back many times in case he had returned. Three days turned into forever. I walked with hundreds of others on the road. Other families were happy because they were together. Some lost a few children, but they were better, since they still had relatives with them. I walked alone amidst unknown faces. How could this happen to us like this when we were almost through? We walked about 2 kilometers a day.
We crossed a bridge and arrived in Kra Lanh district, Siem Reap province. The people there were much healthier than us from Battambang province. They came out to look at us as if we were aliens. They pitied us because our knees were larger than our heads, our faces were bloodless, our bodies had protruding bones, and our clothes were ragged. I squatted under a shed. Wondering why I did not prepare food like the others, a few villagers came to me.
An old man asked, “What is your name? Where is your home village? Why are you alone?” I answered, “I…” I did not know what to say. I did not know who I was. I shook my head, could not think of what to say. The man said, “You can stay here with me for a while. When you feel better you can leave.” I did not respond. His child pulled me up by the hands. Some others carried my things. His home was 50 meters away. He told me three of his children died; only one remained. Another man named Sok, 60, had been a monk in the Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime. He used a monk’s garment to make curtains and a pillowcase for me. He tied each of my wrists with white thread and blessed me with his holy water, so that my soul would return to my body. Three days later, I felt bright, remembering my name, but not my birth name, my job or my home village.
A Heart-Breaking Wedding Song
I left the family of elders, Sok and Yoeun, and their neighbors who were always sympathetic to me. With them food was plentiful. The villagers loved me and wished for me to meet my relatives. So my adventurous journey began again. Even at this time, many April 17 people were still on the road. I walked after them, from one village to the next, but I could not remember their names. I met a few people living in my home village. I met a woman who was crossing a river. She spent nights under a villager’s house. She had a newly-born chubby son. The house owner was kind, giving her food during her stay. As a woman, there is no more difficult moment than during the period of birth, especially when the husband is not there. I asked where her husband was. She cried immediately, barely able to speak, “He was lost at the [KR] village; they said he was assigned to build the dining hall for a short time, but he never returned.”
She cried and cried, hugging her son, as if he was the symbol of her husband. I continued my journey with a small bag containing a few clothes, a small pan, a mosquito net and a blanket.
I traveled from one village to another, like a backpacker (except I was very dirty). I always stopped at places where funerals and ceremonies were held, guided in by the songs of famous singers like Sin Sisamot, Ruos Sereysothea and Huy Meas. I was not a special guest. I usually sat in a corner under a tree. Sometimes, as my feeling drifted away with the songs, a hand touched my shoulder and a bowl of hot rice with soup was given to me. I am now very grateful to those compassionate people during that period of misery. A month later, I arrived in Siem Reap provincial town, where returnees were told to stay in one place in the suburbs. The place stank of human feces; everyone closed their noses.
Every morning, several GMC trucks arrived to take the returnees home. The trucks were tall, I could not climb quickly enough to find a space, but nobody helped. They cared for their relatives. Thus I had to live in this province longer and longer. I had to ask people for food. One morning I determined to climb up on the truck without holding any belongings. I had given all my belongings to a woman. But I couldn’t. The truck was leaving, but I was still on the ground, sweating like water. Then an old man who was about to put his bicycle onto the truck saw me and said, “You want to get on the truck? It is leaving now.” I told him, “I can’t get on uncle.” The man helped me up. At noon, the truck stopped at Stung district for the travelers to cook food. I sat in one place because I had nothing to cook. Then a rather old woman, wearing a silk skirt and nylon shirt, and who had a healthy looking 10-yearold daughter, walked up to me. She said, “Why don’t you cook like the others, sister?” I replied, “I don’t have pan or rice to cook.” She went to a nearby house and brought me a bowl of rice and sour soup. I thanked her and gorged on the food. She told me that if I didn’t have any relatives, I could stay with her.
I did not know how to answer. When the truck blew its horn, I said goodbye to her and climbed up with the help of other travelers. In the afternoon, we arrived in Skun district. My pants were torn. The travelers stayed under a large rain tree. In the morning, some of them prepared to get on the truck. But those with old relatives stayed until the next day. I stayed longer. Some people gave me rice, a pan, plates, a mosquito net and a blanket. So I had something to own now. After a week, a man of my age with a 5-year-old daughter asked me to marry him and showed me his jewelry. He said he pitied me and promised to take good care of me. I had no words to say. I was not excited. Since my loved ones had died only recently, I told him, “I’m not thinking about marrying.”
In the morning, the man and his daughter left for Phnom Penh. A few days later I also went there. It took me half a month. When I crossed the Mekong River on a ferry, I saw the Chroy Changva bridge falling into the river. It was a sorrowful sight. When I arrived on the other side, people were selling food and snacks. It made me hungry. Then I met my old friend,Arun, from the Sangkum Reastr Niyum. We hugged for a long time. She was with her husband and children. I went to see my house at Sileb market, but it was not in sight. Then I continued to the place where my husband had buried some jewelry, but I could not find it because the marking was lost. Nothing left, parents, grandparents, four siblings gone. Later I met my fourth sibling, Heng Sokmala. He helped proofread the manuscript of this memoir.
Half a month later we applied for jobs at the Ministry of Health. We got them and were assigned to work at Monk Hospital, whose name is now Preah Kosomeak Hospital. I met many friends. Some male friends asked me to marry them, but I rejected them.
In 1980 I married a man and we had a daughter together. She is now 16. Sadly we could not live together until death. In this last chapter, because life seems to have no meaning, I will end my story here. My life is like a scene in a play. Now I am 52. As I am lost in the past, my youngest son sought comfort in me, as he always did when he returned home. He wiped off tears from my wrinkled face.
Author’s Notes: I look forward to criticism and I apologize to those poor friends of mine who I described inappropriately. I miss you all. I wish you happiness in your lives. I would like to thank the family of Lach Samraong who has helped me spiritually in the recollection of “The Shadow of My Husband.”
Extracted from:
-Searching for the Trust Magazine, Special English Edition, Second Quarter 2004, Page 37: "The Shadow of My Husband"
Between 1970 and 1975, I was married to Huot. We had a three-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. I was then a military nurse at Preah Monivong hospital. The medical personnel at the hospital were Dr. Thaong Boran, chief of the hospital; Dr. Tea Kimhy in charge of the x-ray department; Dr. Tim Mam, who specialized in the respiratory system; and my team leader Dr. Ing Poleng, who specialized in the digestive system and general illnesses. I forgot the names of several other doctors. I do not know where they are now.
April 17, 1975 was a black day in Cambodia. Young black-clothed comrades with ruthless faces forced people to leave Phnom Penh at gunpoint and go to the countryside. We were told to leave quickly without taking along too many belongings, because we would return home in the next three days. My husband, my son Pheak, my daughter Srey Sros, and I also went out of the city with many people. We brought along with us pans, ice cans and a few clothes. I also took along four or five sacks of my mother-in-law’s clothes which she had left with us.
Before the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, my father-in-law visited us for ten days. He said that our country would be peaceful and we should no longer be worried; then he went to his farm as usual. We were waiting for his return. But we could not see him, even his shadow. We decided to leave without him. Before our departure, my husband went into our house to take his gun license and jewelry to bury behind our house. My children and I looked at him while he was burying them and telling us, “A-Barang (he always addressed me like this), please remember the place of our belongings. I measured 10 steps from the fence.” “Please remember by yourself,” I responded, and added that we would come back to take them in the next three days. Oh, God! I did not expect he would never return!
My family drove a Volkswagen slowly along the Trasak Pha-em to Kbal Thnal road. We could not cross Monivong Bridge to continue our journey because it was already crowded. Many people who were evacuated from their homes stopped at Kbla Thnal. I saw then that a lady delivered a baby on the Monivong Bridge. We stopped near a rice warehouse. Some people went into this warehouse to take rice at will; some died when rice sacks fell on them and others took four or five sacks. My husband also took one sack and put it in the car.
[We spent a night there] and were able to pass the bridge in the morning with difficulty. Many people did not know where to go. Some children lost their parents, some old people were carried on the back of their son or grandson, and others were put on carts or threewheeled trolleys. We were able to walk just about one kilometer in a day. At night, we reached Niroth Rangsy pagoda. My husband said that we needed to sleep in the car on the edge of the street. At midnight, a few A2 Jeeps drove from the east to the west honking loudly, which indicated there was an emergency. A group of young Khmer Rouge soldiers stood on a truck and screamed with savage faces, ordering people to get off the streets quickly. In the meantime, the young soldiers shot and killed four or five people when they stood blocking the way. We were very fearful after seeing such a scene that we had never seen before.
Three days later, we stopped at a sapodilla farm in Kien Svay district [Kandal province]. I stared at the April 17 people who were staying in huts or making cottages. [People who were evacuated from cities to the countryside were called April 17 people. They were also classified as parasites]. Some people looked sad, some seemed happy, some had meals with the hope that they would return home after three days. In the evening, some ladies wearing sarongs and holding shampoo went down to the river. Young men and women looked carefree. After staying there for ten days, four or five young soldiers with rifles, black caps and clothes, and shoes made from car tires announced, “Brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts who used to work for the Lon Nol regime, please list your names. Angkar would send you to work as you had done in the Lon Nol regime.”
About two weeks later most people in that area disappeared. Only three or four families were left. An uncle who was staying next to us told us that he was waiting for his relatives to go to his birthplace the next day. He added that they [the Khmer Rouge] would not allow us to enter the city so we could avoid the B-52 bombing by the US air force.
My family decided to go to my husband’s birthplace, Tani district, Kampot province to return my mother-in-law’s luggage which she kept with us. The next morning we backtracked to the river, but we could not cross the bridge. We decided to negotiate with a man to exchange our car for a boat. I also took some rice to exchange for fish for making a meal.
After we reached the other side of the river, our family walked on the dusty road without knowing the direction. We often asked people for directions to Tani district. They only told us it was several kilometers away. We got the same answer ten times, but we still did not reach the district. On the way to Tani, we met young soldiers who slept in hammocks under the trees. They checked our belongings. While checking, they saw some canned fish. However, they did not dare take the cans because they thought they were grenades. We thought they wanted only a watch. I kept some medicines and a syringe in a sack of rice, so they didn’t find them and take them from us.
We continued our journey as directed by the villagers. The road we traveled on was abandoned because of the war and was filled with holes. Our car could only inch forward. At noon, we reached a village called Kram Yov. This village was very quiet and the fences in front of each house were painted with ghost pictures. My husband said that “even though it was too quiet, we need to cook rice. We are too hungry to go on.” Before the rice was cooked, I saw people carrying four or five corpses to bury behind the village. A villager told us, “Don’t stay here any longer. Many people here are dying every day because of cholera.”We rushed to leave without having our meal.
At the beginning of our journey, we felt happy. I imagined that it would be like a vacation trip around the world. But at that moment, we were exhausted. Both of my both children looked sad and had become feverish, but they said nothing.
In the morning I met two young women; the elder sister was light black and a bit short. I am sorry for not remembering her name. The younger sister had white skin and was friendlier. Her name was A Da (she is known today as Ma Chhorda, a presenter on Television of Kampuchea). The two sisters asked if they could join us on our journey because they had lost their parents. We were pleased to have them with us. Of course, we needed more teammates.
At five o’clock, we arrived at Angseang pagoda in Takeo province. Four or five soldiers with rifles and savage faces appeared and accused us: “Why do you walk freely while most people are working hard in the rice fields? Stop moving around; you must stay in this pagoda tonight! We will take you to the village to work with other villagers tomorrow morning.” That night, my son got a fever and became delirious. I gave him medicine. A neighbor asked me to pray to the Buddha as if I had done something wrong.
Early the next morning, I saw three trucks parked in the pagoda waiting for us. A soldier with a rifle shouted, telling us to prepare our belongings and get on the trucks. Another soldier told us that “all friends had to live here for a year to farm with the villagers here, and you will be allowed to return to your birth place afterward.” I was very happy to hear this; at least I had a chance to learn about this village. But actually, the soldiers were lying to us.
My car, a Lambreta, was abandoned at this village. Everyone carried their packages and got on the truck. I stood happily on a new Mercedes ten-wheel truck because I could get fresh air, although the road was a bit bumpy. At that time, I wondered about our future.
Prey Koam Village
The truck took us to a village called Prey Koam. The soldiers told us to live in a wooden house with four other families. The families included A Da’s brothers and sisters. A Da and her siblings lost their parents because they were at school when the Khmer Rouge soldiers moved into Phnom Penh. Three families of my husband’s relatives were also living with us in this house.
We loved and took care of each other. A Da, especially, liked children very much, and she helped look after our children when I was busy. This is a sweet remembrance that is still in my heart and I will never forget.
There was a big rice warehouse near our house. No one cared about the rice, though, because we had enough to eat. Prey Koam village consisted of about 30 families of base, or old, people, and 10 families of April 17 people. The old people wore clothes with patches and they had joined the revolution a long time ago. When we first came to their village, they stared at our clothes. Some people had whispered to me, asking if I had another sarong. We exchanged my parent-in-law’s clothes for food like chickens, fish, wax melons and pumpkins. They sometimes also asked me to exchange malaria tablets and other medicines for food.
The Friendly Leech
We lived in the village for three months. Every morning, I went to the field to transplant rice seedlings. Before we reached the field, I slipped several times. When I became covered with mud, everyone always made fun of me. The base people laughed, saying, “Hey comrade Nang! How can you do business in Phnom Penh if you cannot walk steadily?” I could not plant seedlings as fast as the old people; and they often helped me.
One day, I caught a small leech that was biting my ankle. A lady said, “Why aren’t you afraid of it?” “I was in the rice field since my feet were pink [since I was a kid],” I gently replied. But I had never known it was a leech; that’s why I wasn’t afraid of it. Indeed, it made me tremble after I knew what it was. However, after a while, those small leeches became my friends. Some other women were bitten by them and sought my help. I used seedlings to pull the leeches from their ankles. Most base people here were not an eye-for-aneye, a tooth-for-a-tooth types. They were helpful and kind.
Angkar’s Hospital
For many days, my daughter vomited and no longer had an appetite for rice or water. I asked the group chief for permission to take care of her. I was allowed to stay at home rather than work in the field. But after ten days, my daughter had not recovered, so the village chief suggested that I take her to the commune hospital about two kilometers from the village. It had no medicines, only wooden beds, and some patients died because of the bedbugs.
That night, my daughter cried until morning. Due to the lack of medicine, a young medical man at this hospital told me to ask for permission to take my child to the district hospital instead. He knew that the district hospital had enough medicine. I asked permission from a kind hospital chief. She told me she would ask a young man to bring us to the hospital by oxcart. My husband asked if he could accompany us as well. Early the next morning, we left for the hospital. The oxcart ride was bumpy and we felt sorry for our daughter, so we decided get off the oxcart. We put our daughter into a hammock and carried her. We did not know where the hospital was, but dared not ask anyone. We just knew that we had passed several villages. We reached the district hospital when the sun had almost set. It was a pagoda that had been converted into a hospital. We were too hungry to continue walking. The oxcart owner and my husband were allowed to have meal in a special kitchen. It had nice foods for people who accompanied patients. I was given watery rice with salt. However, I found it delicious because I had not eaten since morning. After dinner, my husband left for his work site with the oxcart owner after kissing our daughter’s forehead.
My daughter and I were in a hospital room with other patients and slept in a bamboo bed. In the morning, two medical women came in with trays of tablets for the patients. One asked me “what kind of illness does your daughter have?” and then gave us tablets without checking anything. The young medical women acted as if they were very good at treatment. They sometimes fought with each other to inject the patients. Some ran out of the kitchen with their hands dirty with lard and said, “Let me inject this patient!” For four and five days later, my daughter felt better, although they sometimes gave us the wrong tablets. They were made in China so I couldn’t tell what was in them. I sometimes saw the traditional drug known as “rabbit dropping medicine.” Our lives there almost like hell. We always heard patients groaning and crying, while the medical staff used curse words.
On the day we were allowed to return home, I felt nervous because I did not know the way or with whom I would go. At noon, I saw an old man riding on his oxcart, taking his wife and child home, and asked him for a ride. But, at an intersection, he asked me to get off because he needed to go a different way. He told me to walk fast because we still had about 10 kilometers more. Oh God! I had to carry both my daughter and our package, and it was getting darker and darker. Fortunately, I saw another oxcart and asked him for a ride to the commune hospital. The medical staff there who knew me were happy when they saw me return with my daughter. They asked me to spend the night there, but I was worried about bedbugs. I left my package with them and held my daughter as we walked on a new dam. I saw several graves to my left in the brush. In the moonlight, I saw some torture instruments. This gave me gooseflesh and I walked faster and faster. I felt that someone was following me. I told myself “don’t be afraid!” I sometimes sang to occupy my mind. I reached a village, but it was flooded. I walked very carefully because I knew there were deep holes. I arrived my house at about 2 p.m. Members of our family were waiting for me. We were very happy.
Day by day, the rice supplies dwindled and we almost ran out. We received less food than before. The village chief warned us that “we need to save rice.”We now began to think of rice in our house. Every day, we took rice to cook secretly until it ran out. One morning, we were told to prepare our belongings and then left for Battambang province. Everyone felt happy because we knew that this province had a lot of rice. Some spoke in secret, saying “in fact they are allowing us to go to Phnom Penh, but they told us a lie because they are afraid the base people will mingle in and go with us.” And some just looked sad and mysterious.
That morning, we said farewell to the base people; some cried because they said they would miss us. We got on the train. Every carriage was full of people. My friends and the relatives of my husband were lost after that. After the train had been traveling for a while, I got a stomach ache. One of Angkar’s old medical personnel with a big bag walked around through the crowds of passengers. He looked at me but did not give me any medicine. One hour later, this medical cadre came again and saw that my face looked pale. “You are really sick, I know that you are not pretending,” he said and gave me a tablet. Oh, my God, I was so sick I almost died. On the train, we were given two small breads with a little sugar or soy sauce for each. It did not matter how many children we had, we had to share this with them.
I could not eat or swallow anything; I just pressed my stomach. My husband took a lighter and exchanged it for oil of turpentine. I got better after I applied it on my stomach for a while. At 5:15 p.m., the train stopped at a station. I did not know where it was, but some said the train was about to arrive in Phnom Penh. Some went to the field to defecate or urinate, and some took their clothes or mosquito nets and went into the village to exchange them for a few pieces of potato. This was because they were starving. Others said, “We will rebuy clothes soon after we arrive in Phnom Penh.” As dusk fell, the train blew its horn to warn us to get on quickly. The train went through the city; there were a few lights in some parts. Our teardrops fell; some cried and some said farewell to Phnom Penh city, the houses, friends and everything. We never expected to come here again.
Svay Sisophon
After two days, the train took us to Svay Sisophon. We stepped off with stiff limbs. The houses were not occupied and the owners were nowhere to be seen. They let us stay in any house we preferred. Two or three families stayed in the same house. We could also dismantle the furniture to use its wood as firewood for cooking.
Each person received two cans of rice a day. We looked for other supplements ourselves. We exchanged rice or salt for prahok [a condiment made from fermented fish], fresh fish or dried fish in nearby villages. After one week, Angkar announced that Vietnamese people would be allowed to return to Vietnam if they had clear biographies. My husband and I discussed whether we should lie and say we were Vietnamese because it was better to be in a place where money was used. We asked an old Vietnamese woman to be our mother by giving her some clothes.
A few days later, Angkar summoned us for questioning again. They asked my fake mother why I spoke fluent Khmer and my face did not resemble hers. She replied that I was born in Cambodia and I took after my father. But it seemed they did not believe her. The rest of the people who did not list their names as Vietnamese had already been brought to villages. About 30 to 40 Vietnamese families remained. We continued to stay there for two months and they questioned us once every half month. The rice ration was the same, except that other food was not plentiful. One night I dreamt that I walked to a village near a mountain; it was scattered with tall palm trees and the breeze was warm. I was relaxed.
Sres Village, Preah Net Preah District, Battambang Province
Early one morning when I was still in bed, the Khmer Rouge announced on a loudspeaker: “Everybody, pack up, the trucks have arrived, hurry.”We were happy. We packed up our belongings in a hurry, taking some and leaving some, as long as we could leave. A few trailer trucks took us across the endless golden rice fields. On the truck, we sang. The real Vietnamese sang Vietnamese songs aloud in joy. The trucks drove up a dirt road from the rice field until we reached a mountain. They dropped us one family at a time from the beginning of the village to the end. My family was among 10 others to be dropped at the end of the village. A few comrades stood welcoming us. A rather old comrade, who perhaps held the highest rank, told me, “All Vietnamese brothers have to stay here and help the people farm for a year. Later you’re sure to be brought to your home country; don’t worry you’ll meet your relatives!” Our faces changed colors. Some wanted to cry, some were unable to speak.
The village where I stayed was called Sres Khang Cheung. Its scenery was like that in my dream the night before. The village was in Preah Net Preah district, Battambang province. In the old regime, the villagers earned their living by breaking off large chunks of rock from the mountain to make hand-powered mortar and grinding equipment. We stayed in a pagoda near the mountain, as we were not allowed to go into the village right away. We were told to be patient and stay there several days before they found accommodation for us. We stole a look at the large Buddha statues in the pagoda and prayed with our eyes wide open.
That morning two or three comrades, wearing black pajamas, cotton scarves and rubber-tire sandals, walked up to where we were staying. Each of them held a bag. I recognized one of them as a Lon Nol first lieutenant. He used to receive medical treatment at my hospital. His name was Ly. Just as he saw me, he winked at me, to let me know I should not indicate that I knew him. He brought us some traditional medicine to prevent us from being sick because we were unable to adapt to the new forest environment. Mr. Ly came close to me, explained how the medicine should be used, and whispered, “Don’t say you know me.” I nodded in appreciation. A week later, Angkar gave each of the families a piece of land on which to build a cottage. We helped each other building the cottages. They were not easy to build.
Go to Study or Nirvana?
Angkar had not yet ordered the Vietnamese families to work. Perhaps they wanted us to regain our strength. In fact, only a few families were Vietnamese; the rest were of Chinese origin.
One morning, several young comrades walked about holding a book to record the names of young people who wanted to be educated. My younger sister, who was digging soil behind the cottage, enrolled with joy. After she enrolled, she prepared her clothes. I secretly said to her, “Don’t go sister, stay here with me.” She declined: “No, I want to study. You see, they don’t close down schools.” She handed me a piece of soap and said, “Keep it for Pheak and Sros, goodbye, sister.” She boarded the Camion waiting outside, already filled with about ten youths. She never returned; I don’t know where she went.
Because we were free, my husband prepared soil behind the cottage to grow potatoes and some mint, which we had asked from the villagers. I was asked by a female chief to screen rice. I was yelled at for spilling rice on the ground and they ordered me to pick up all the grains before I could have a meal. Although they blamed me, I did not complain. Later they had compassion on me. At dusk my husband and children bathed in a pond near the pagoda. My husband borrowed a bucket from the neighbors to carry water for use at home. One day we were summoned to a meeting. The village chief assigned us to work and said we would have enough to eat. After talking about work, he began talking about morality. He said, “Some did not abandon imperialist culture. They gathered together to bathe in groups, as though it was very joyful, but our youths are still fighting ferociously with the American imperialists.” At this point, eyes turned on my family. After that, we bathed one at a time.
One morning, the group chief called the Vietnamese families to work at a dam site about one kilometer from the village. The Vietnamese families arrived just two months after the other families, but those who arrived earlier acted like base people. We were still April 17 people. They laughed at us when we carried water, chopped wood or dug the soil, because we looked a bit awkward. Each person who returned from the dam site carried a bunch of firewood on their heads. I carried palm leaves. The leaves filled the road and banged against other people.
They told us to dine in a collective hall with base people. We ate our fill, but after they ate a few spoonfuls of food, the base people took their plates and walked home because they had special dishes there. I met Mr. Ly occasionally. He whispered to me all the time and his eyes kept looking around. Two months later, I worked in a field near the mountain. It was rumored that Mr. Ly had been taken away the night before. I did not know or believe that they took people to be killed. I pitied Mr. Ly’s wife who was five months pregnant and his six-year-old daughter. Mr. Ly’s wife was assigned to clear grass with my group, but no one dared to talk to her.
A month passed. I did not see Mr. Ly’s wife. I heard that she was sick. When I returned from the field one evening, I walked near her cottage, but dared not climb up to see her. I heard a groaning sound from inside the cottage. My tears dropped, but I had no idea how to provide help. The next day she died. A few combatants buried her in the forest. They told us that before burying her, the baby was taken out from her womb to be buried separately in order to prevent bad luck to the village. That was the tradition of the village. Mr. Ly’s daughter lived with a base family. After that, Ly’s family disappeared.
I met an old man who had been a Lon Nol soldier at the field. He had been a colonel, but now he was a dirty, gray-haired man. One day he whispered to me that he had a big jackfruit he wanted to give to my family. My husband dug a hole and buried the jackfruit to make it ripe. Two days later, when we woke up the smell of the ripening fruit spread to the road. My husband hurriedly dug it out and took a few pieces to the old man. We did not think that jackfruit could be smelled that far.
Fake Couple
The Khmer Rouge observed a young couple who did not seem to be couple. In fact, they were not a real husband and wife. They were cousins, but when they arrived in the village they told Angkar that they were husband and wife to avoid being assigned to a mobile unit. Ty, the husband, whispered to me that he could not relax at night because there were combatants eavesdropping on them below the house. My husband, who was a joker told him, “Why don’t you do something to make them believe you?” Ty said, “If I do so I would die.” So they tried to keep their secret. Even when they had an argument, they hid it. Today, Kea, the wife, is a rich woman in Phnom Penh with two children, but her husband is not Ty.
Flea Comb, a Valuable
In the black-clothed regime, apart from rice, dried fish and prahok, a comb was a most valuable belonging. In the regime, we could not get rid of fleas no matter how short our hair was, because we had no shampoo. Thus, having a comb was like having a fishing rod. Eng was a careful person; she brought along a few combs. Everyone borrowed hers. Sometimes she lent happily; other times in discomfort. Soon she had an idea. The borrower had to give her some food before taking her comb. If base people tried to borrow from her, she did not lend her comb. One day Angkar brought her away to be educated; they said her brain was filled with capitalism.
Elderly Woman of the “Absolute Group”
One day, my husband told me that he found a place a kilometer from the village where people made sugar from palm juice. The place was occupied with people from Takeo province. The houses were surrounded with thorny sticks, and about twenty families lived there. It was like a fortress. They ate separately, not with base or new people. They were called the “absolute group.” My husband said they had plenty of medicine and were looking for a physician to them.
The next morning, under the glaring sun, I walked along the dam behind the house to the “absolute group.” The elderly woman who was the chief of the group had a hard-looking face, gray hair and was in good physical condition, which indicated that she had enough to eat. She brought out a few large bottles of medicine to show me and asked what the medicine was for. The bottles contained medicine for malaria, building strength, healing wounds, etc. The group members wanted me to inject them with colorful ampoules. I had only a glass syringe and a few needles. The other medical equipment I brought from Phnom Penh was confiscated by Angkar after I left the train. I boiled the syringe and needles in a metal pan and used hot water instead of alcohol to clean them. After I gave the injections, the chief woman ordered the younger people to prepare a meal for me. The rice, processed in factory, was as white as coconut flesh. I brought the rice close to my eyes because I had not seen it for a long time. They made a fish and vegetable soup. The fish was large, and perhaps was brought from Tonle Sap lake. How delicious it was. I ate until my stomach almost burst, although I had eaten something before I came. The chief did not permit me to bring rice home, fearing Angkar might learn about it. But I still kept dried fish and a few lumps of rice and hid them in my cotton scarf for my children and husband at home. I kept coming to the “absolute” place and the chief liked me. She gave me food and dessert, but not to take home. I did this anyway.
Field Rats, Special Food
Rats were a delicious food for all in the district. During the noon break, each of us shouldered a hoe to the middle of a harvested field to look for rat holes. The holes were large enough for the children to put their hands in. First we had to check if the hole was occupied. Then we needed to locate nearby escape holes. When a rat ran out, we had to be quick to catch it. I could not catch one, but the children wanted me to go with them. A grilled rat was better than roast pork by far. My husband was punished and made to work overtime because he searched for rats instead of going to work. Some people disappeared because of this kind of crime.
Elderly Say was an April 17 person. She knew a lot of stories because her husband was an ox-cart driver who traveled a lot. One morning when uprooting grass in the field, she whispered to me, “Last night my husband told me that when he was loading rice onto the cart, he heard people talking about a person named Seung Phoeuk Thar, the editor of Meatophoum newspaper. At first he was a very prestigious person in the village. He even had a bicycle (having a bicycle was a luxury). He and his family were taken away on a truck.”
Nightfall Reminding of Love in Youth
Night was a good time for me and my husband, because we could recall our old memories together. Under the moonlight and a palm-leafed roof put up unskillfully by my beloved husband, I leaned on his shoulders and he recollected our first meeting. It was when we were playing a traditional game, called angkugn, at the end of the school year. My husband was very brave. He rode his bike back and forth in front of my house. It was three years before we lived together. My husband complained that my father was too mean. Then I talked about eating nice food. I told him I was hungry for the coconut cake sold behind the Royal Palace, which he bought for me. If the cake was not nice, I would throw it away; if it was otherwise then I ate. I told him, “I repent throwing those cakes away, husband.” He stroked my hair and said, “Tomorrow I’ll collect ripe palm fruit to make a cake for you.” He always spoke as though everything was easy to do. But with only that, I felt satisfied. Only at night could we speak caressing words to each other. My husband put palm leaves around the house as an alarm bell when someone came to eavesdrop on us.
The Death of My Daughter
Half a year later, my daughter fell seriously ill. She vomited every time she ate. In one unforgettable night, my daughter died as thunder and lightning were striking outside. I cried aloud to win over the sound of the rain. “O my beloved daughter, if it was at our house, I would not let you die,” I murmured. I husband covered my mouth and cried as well. He felt equal sorrow, but he controlled himself better. The next day, the neighbors helped us to bury her. When the ritual was complete, we had to look for a chicken to make food for them to express our gratitude. Three months after my daughter died I was pregnant. Oh god, my beloved daughter, how could you come to his hell again? Day by day my belly grew larger. The group chief forbade me from going to work. They said I was nine months pregnant, but I knew it was just eight. Having nothing to do, I went with the children to collect water spinach in the ponds. In the evening I carried home a large bunch of the vegetable on my head, but I was careful not to trip. I complained to my husband that he gave too many vegetables to other people. He told me we should be kind to our neighbors because in the future if I was a widow, they would help me. I never realized his words would come true.
Giving Birth without a Midwife
One night I felt a little pain after dusk. By midnight the pain peaked. My husband quickly went out to look for a midwife. Luckily an elderly woman was staying in my house after she returned from the field. She gently massaged my belly. My son sat nearby, not knowing what to do. Another woman living close to my house made a fire to boil water. A while later my husband returned alone. He said, almost wanting to cry, that the midwife had gone to the village chief’s home to look after the chief’s wife. When she returned she said my husband invited her with bare hands. It was the midwife’s norm to receive something; otherwise the delivery would not be successful. The neighbor cursed at them in anger. She boiled a scissors and comforted me, “Don’t worry neighbor, neighbor, I will deliver for you. I also know how to be a midwife.” At dawn I gave birth to a baby son. He was heavy. Perhaps I had eaten a lot of water spinach. The next morning my husband slaughtered a chicken for the two women to eat. I am very grateful to them, although I do not know where they are. My house was filled with smoke from the fire under my bed. The eyes of my husband and children reddened. My husband was able to obtain a three-day leave from work. I did not understand why I was hungry for coffee. I told my husband I wanted to drink coffee. He went out not knowing where to look for it. When he returned he was happy.
He began to make fire and fried a few spoonful of dried rice until it became rather overcooked. Then he poured water in and boiled it with the rice. Last he put some palm sugar and some kind of medicinal grass. He then poured the solution into a coconut shell and told me, “Wife, this is my most delicious coffee, drink it up.” After drinking I was energetic. I did not know how he came up with such an idea. My son drank some. At that moment we seemed to forget that we were in hell.
The next day rain water flowed into my fire pit, putting out all burning embers. That was great because I had been on fire for a long time. My husband boiled tree roots for me to drink. Three months later my newborn son died because I had no milk for him.
Tire Sandal Soup
Soon I had to return to the field. I felt a little better when meeting and talking with other people. I met Sauy once again. We secretly called him C.I.A. One morning when uprooting grass, he whispered to me: “Last night my friend secretly turned a radio on and he heard Samdech Ouv [King Sihanouk] speaking.” Then he turned his eyes up and down to recall what he heard. A few elderly women moved close to me to listen. Then a woman walked to me and gave me a hoe, and reprimanded us, “Everybody, why don’t you work, or do you want to eat nothing this evening?” We walked away and continued our work.
In the evening, we tried to walk close to Sauy, asking him about what was said on the radio. “How could I hear anything since the bad radio shut itself off as the King said ‘My beloved people…’”
We were disappointed to know nothing. I headed into the cottage. On the fire pit, a pan was boiling with water and in the water there were a few black objects which I could not see clearly. My husband might have some cow bones to make a soup, I thought. Delighted, I sat down and added more wood into the fire to speed up the cooking. A while later my husband returned from the pond. I did not ask him at first, waiting for him to give the buckets back to the neighbor. Then I asked, “What’s in the pan?” “What do you think?” he asked. I answered, “It’s buffalo meat, because it’s black.” My husband burst out laughing. He said, “It’s a rubber tire. I’m boiling it to make shoes for you and our children. It’s hard to find.” He boiled the tire for many hours to make it more supple and made shoes for me and our children. It was better than being barefoot.
Bakkprea Village
One day the village chief summoned all peopleold and newto a meeting. He wanted to choose two families in a village to do work in the fish business in Bakkprea. They chose families with few children and who had a mosquito net, since Bakkprea was said to be infested with mosquitoes. My husband was the first to volunteer. The chief asked him, “Can you use a fishing net, Comrade Huot?” “Yes I can,” he answered. I signaled him that I didn’t want to go, since the newly grown mints at the back of our house would die if they were left unattended. “Don’t care about such unimportant things,” he replied.
That night, the village chief allowed my family and the other one assigned to Bakkprea to kill our chickens as food for the journey. We had only two chickens, but we slaughtered almost twenty of our neighbors’ chickens.
That night it was like we were having a party almost until daybreak. I dreamt that we were allowed to go home. The next day, after saying farewell to the other villagers, we left on an oxcart track with a combatant escorting us. We did not know how far Bakkprea was. We stopped on the road to have a meal. We turned left on a road along the river. In the evening we arrived at Bakkprea, where long boat-houses were made for fishermen to come and rest. These houses could be moved at will as the water rose and fell. The village was magnificent. It was warm; the scenery was nice. A famous classical singer, named Ruos Serey Sothea, composed a song about Bakkprea village: “Oh, Brakkprea in the twilight….”
In Bakkprea, men went fishing in 10 or 20 boats. My husband left with others, though I did not know if he could handle the fishing. When the boats returned, a ring was struck to signal the women to go down to the river with large pans and knives for scaling and cleaning the catch. Whenever the boats arrived, at one or two in the morning at times, women had to clean the fish.
This place was full of mosquitoes. People made many fires to produce smoke to drive them away, but they came in swarms. I scaled the fish with one hand and slapped the mosquitoes with the other. When the work was complete, my skin was full of rashes. I was not good at scaling fish. I could fill only half the bucket with fish, while others could fill it to the rim. We ate so many fish eggs that we had diarrhea.
Malaria
My family had lived in the village for half a month. One day I had a high fever. A week later my condition did not improve. I suspected it was malaria. I lost my appetite, was very thirsty and wanted to eat sour fruits. My husband decided to go the collective kitchen to ask for some fruit and a few grains of salt for me. For me it was like a fruit from god.
My illness did not improve. I had no medicine, even tree roots, and there were no doctors here. One morning, my husband brought me to meet the group chief, and asked him to go to the village where we came from. I was so thin and weak that my skirt barely stayed on my waist. We were reprimanded for not being as hardy as others. They granted us permission to leave, but kept our mosquito net and blanket for others to use. Huot did not care about that, as long as we were allowed to go back. The chief assigned a person to bring us by boat to the road and left us to figure out our way home. They told us to beg for food in villages on the way, that the villagers would not be selfish. In fact, no one was kind to us. They gave us nothing, even leftovers. They said it was just enough for them. When we reached the main road, the sky darkened and a light shower began to fall. We sought shelter in a small isolated house. My beloved son, Pheak, became pale from having nothing to eat, but he did not complain. I pitied him, because through these times he was tortured to become tough. (At this point I dropped my pen and cried.)
The house we sought shelter in belonged to the military. A young comrade soldier of about 20 to 25 came to us and asked about us. He went back and returned with a big bowl of rice mixed with water spinach. He handed it to my husband and said, “That’s all I have.” My husband received it in delight and gratitude. He fed me first, but I shook my head; my mouth had a bitter sensation and I could not eat. The soldier asked me, “What happened to you?” I said, “I’ve had a fever for almost two weeks now.” He went in again and returned with a yellow tablet. He said, “You can stay here tonight. Tomorrow if there is a military truck, I’ll ask him to give you a ride.”
I took the medicine and collapsed on a bed. I woke up at midnight, looking for water. It was dark so I sensed my way to the water jar and quenched my thirst. I might have drunk half the jar that night. It was rain water, sweet and cold. In my mind I was drinking a Pepsi Cola.
In the morning, we hitched a ride on a military truck. The truck dropped us at Cheung Wat village, Preah Net Preah district, 4 or 5 kilometers from Sres village, where we had lived. The soldiers told me to seek treatment there before going to the village. The hospital was in the pagoda and people lived close to it. I rested in the hospital for 2 or 3 days. I was given large, round, black tablets, like rabbit droppings. I noticed they gave the same medicine for all illnesses. Those who could recover lived, and those couldn’t died. A few days later, I felt better and wanted something to eat. That morning I told my husband that I wanted to eat cassava. He went to Sres village and returned in the afternoon with a small piece of cooked cassava. We ate together. My husband whispered to me, his lips shaking, “My wife, Vietnamese families in Sres, 20 families in all, were taken away. The village is quiet. It was done just a week after we left. First they summoned the men to a meeting.” He took a big breath. “Some wore only short pants. Then they called the women and children to pack up and load onto oxcarts, because, as they said, the men were waiting outside the village. Y Kea, our neighbor, had been rich during the Lon Nol regime. She hid her gold in the ground, but as the order to leave was abrupt, she could not find the gold. So she told the village chief about it. Her cottage is now in ruins, but no gold was found.”
I got goose bumps as a chill rushed through my spine. We were lucky. No one knew what happened to those men, women and children. I heard rumors that those Vietnamese families were drowned when the boats they were on were sunk in the river. After that we said we were a Khmer family. I was called Neang Nang or Me Pheak, while my husband was called Huot as usual. A few days later, we met Um Ry, one of my husband’s relatives. He was living in the village. He was delighted to meet us. He wanted us to live in the village and we agreed after we got permission from the village chief.
Puk Krak, the Cooperative Chief
The village we were living in was nicknamed “the widow village” because the men who were technicians and doctors had been taken away. I met my old friend Saophea, who had worked with me at Preah Monivong hospital in Phnom Penh. Saophea specialized in illnesses relating to organs from the neck up. Her husband Tork Kan, who was also a doctor, had been taken away. Saophea now lived with her five-year-old son. In the village, only three men had returned home. First was Mr. Dina who was an electrical technician. Second was Dr. Chy, who was able to convince Angkar to let him return. His wife was Bang Samlei who was very polite and had been a teacher in the Sangkum Reastr Niyum. Third was Um Saret who had worked in the railway station. He returned after two days. He advised his three children that “If you are asked to give an opinion, tell them you don’t have any and call them politely ‘Comrade Brothers.’ If you request that a school, market or pagoda be built, you won’t live to return home from the meeting. You understand?”
His three children nodded in wonder. Angkar let me live in a large house with widows Me Tou (who had two children) and Soda (who had three). Me Tou liked the company of my family. Her children liked my children as well.
Me Tou had a very pleasant accent. Almost every night we sat on the front stairs listening to her singing songs from the Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime, like “Letter under the Pillow” and “Night Window,” which was sung by the famous female singer Huoy Meas. Me Tou was a good singer. My husband rested his head on my shoulders and I felt like I was in a restaurant. I laughed and cried with her, but we knew that a few unidentified people were watching us.
One afternoon, an older woman in her 40s, with no front teeth, announced roughly in the dining hall, “We will have a meeting on the pagoda terrace after dinner.” After everyone was there, the meeting began. First the chief who presided over the meeting saluted fathers, mothers and brothers. Then he talked about working hard to achieve the yield of five tons of rice per hectare, so that everyone would not be hungry, have electricity and adequate clothes without the need to use money. The participants applauded. After the glorious vision, he turned to education and morality issues. He threatened and terrorized his listeners. He mentioned, “A few woman comrades do not forget feudal and capitalist culture. They still find time at night to sing and discuss movies and plays which are bad (at this point Me Tou signaled me). Some woman comrades wore improper clothes while dining. Some wore open-necked shirts to seduce the chefs. No, don’t ever think about that. Our comrades won’t be fooled by your beauty. Work hard to change yourself and dress properly.”
On the way home, Me Tou joked with me, “They’re good with their mouths, but base men always peek at us women….”
I asked her who wore open-necked shirts to dinner. She said, “It’s no one beside Kalyan. She’s a widow with one child. Um Ry who lives with her looks after her child. Kalyan was a student from Decartes high school. The base men were fooled because of her many times.
Early one morning, we took a meal with us to the potato field. The field was on a mountain and about 2 kilometers away from the village where we lived. My husband was assigned to build a dam with the men. On the road to the field I met a lot of new friends, including Kalyan. We got together very quickly. We talked and joked around about the Sangkum Reastr Niyum. That’s why they criticized us in the meeting! On the mountain my work was slow and I was reproved by others. But I did not reply, keeping in mind my husband’s advice of “struggling is living.” In the afternoon we returned home with some potatoes that we hid under the leaves in the basket. We talked as we walked.
Arriving at a nice wooden house, I asked others who the house belonged to. An older woman answered that it belonged to Puk Krak, our cooperative chief. A week passed. One morning a man, about 48 to 50 years old, smiled as he walked steadily into the potato field under the midday sun. Me Tou told me this was Pouk Krak. “He looks gentle,” I said. A woman sitting close to me replied, “He might be so, but he kills people like animals.” My hair stood on end.
A Love Tragedy
This evening after dinner, Me Tou and Sauda sat close to me. After Me Tou looked around, she told me about Puk Krak. She said, “Seeing him smiling, don’t think he’s gentle. A few months ago there was a tragic love story. The man was a base person, while the woman was an April 17 person, and both already had families. They fell in love, had sex, and the woman became pregnant. During a work assignment, they tried to meet each other again, but their husband and wife saw it. They reported them to the village chief. The next day, the two were tied up to the trunks of two rain trees on the pagoda terrace (Me Tou pointed to the trees). Then people from all around were gathered to witness.
Sauda cut in, “We thought we were called to prepare our clothes to go back to Phnom Penh. Instead, they called us to judge the crime of the adulterous couple. Puk Krak stood on a high platform, asking how he should punish the two. Everyone was silent, except for a few base men who yelled, ‘Smash them, smash them!’ Puk Krak cried out the same words with a fierce-looking face and asked us to raise our hands in support. Those who did not raise their hands would be accused of conspiracy. All had to force themselves to raise their hands. So the death sentence was given to the couple. Puk Krak jumped down from the platform and walked toward the two criminals with a hoe in his hand. He asked, ‘Do you have any words to say, comrades?’ With his face darkening because he knew that he was going to die, the man looked at his wife, the woman who he had an affair with, and the crowd, as if he was begging for help. But no one dared speak a word. Puk Krak ordered soldiers to untie him from the tree and told him to lie down on his knees and say ‘I will not do that again.’ Puk Prak raised the hoe and hit the back of the man’s head hard. He fell to the ground. Then a second hit was made until he was motionless. His wife fainted. Then Puk Krak turned to the adulterous woman. When the soldiers untied her, her legs were unable to support her. Tears ran down her face like water. Maybe her soul had left her. She was told to lie on her knees, say she would not do it again and then hit several times until she died. Perhaps she had two lives because she took more hits before she died. Each of us, including old and new people, was terrorized and shocked since the punishment was too much for such a crime.”
Unknowingly my tears dropped. Me Tou continued, “The bodies were buried together. Later the place was said to have ghosts. The sound of the couple playing and laughing was heard. The bamboo tree kept swaying, although there was no breeze. Puk Krak ordered the living husband and wife to get married as a show of revenge. I don’t know if they did so.”
This was a tragedy that no one forgot. After that if there were love affairs, people warned the couple by calling them by the name of the tree, ampil tik barang.
Pou Barang’s Palm Juice! “Kiss” Meant a Lighter
One morning I left to the field early with Kalyan. Seeing a few palm trees, Kalyan told me, “Sister, we should ask Pou Barang for some palm juice.” Although he was a base person, Pou Barang had a white complexion and was tall and stocky. He liked joking with women. His old wife observed him closely. Some bamboo containers were hung on the trunks as Pou Barang was climbing halfway up the tree. Kalyan called out, “Pou Barang, may I have some juice?” Without looking down, he replied, “Yes, but what will you give me in return?” Kalyan said, “A ‘Kiss!’” “Ok, a lighter is good.” Pou Barang did not understand.
After drinking to our fill, we ran straight to the field. From then on whenever we met him, Pou Barang asked for the lighter. Kalyan liked to joke and was not afraid. Returning from the field, she bathed and dressed in an open-necked and sleeveless shirt, as though she had never been warned. At the dinning hall, there was a long table with two rows of chairs. A bowl of soup was for four people. The soup had no meat, except some vegetables and oil floating on top.
At dinner time, we would not wait for husband or wife to be ready to dine together. Those who arrived first ate first. My son, Pheak, went with other boys. A chef put the porridge into each bowl. Before harvest season we ate porridge. The chef would give us an unwelcome look if we brought our bowls to him many times. If one was good at flattering like Kalyan, one or two small fish could be found in the bowl.
I ate with Che Mom for two days. She always used a ladle, which almost drained the soup in a single dip. The three of us looked at her. Embarrassed, she said, “My spoon was broken, so I use this instead….” The next day, I used a ladle (one had to be clever to survive the regime!). Puk Krak always uttered a proverb: better make the line droop than snap.
One morning Angkar assigned women to build a dam near the village. In the afternoon, Me Tou’s foot was severely cut with a hoe. We used grass to stop the bleeding, but to no avail. I took her home. On the way we saw a few rows of onions. We asked the owner for one to use to stop the bleeding. The owner said, “I’ve never known anyone to do that before. If you want it to eat, tell the truth.” Me Tou continued to walk and cursed the owner, “What a black-hearted man, I’ll destroy his onions in a few days.”
Ten days later her foot improved. Then she asked me to uproot the onions with her. At first I hesitated, but agreed eventually. We uprooted a row of onions and put them in a cloth bag. We cut the bulbs and put them in fish sauce to make pickles. We buried the leaves in the ash. That night we stayed with Sauda, but could not sleep.
The next day we went to the dam as normal. At noon, Tou the son of Me Tou, dashed to his mother telling her that a few soldiers were searching each house for onions. Me Tou and I ran to the house. We took the onion leaves from the ash and put them into a cloth bag. Then we hung the bag through the window on the wall behind the house. The smell was still hanging in the air; we were nervous. After that, Me Tou told me to massage her as if she were sick, as the reason for not going to the work site at the moment. The soldiers inspected our kitchen where we boiled water. Luckily, they did not notice anything. Maybe god was on our side. We escaped from danger once again.
Oeun, Porter of Human Fertilizer
In this village, people who carried human fertilizer were most reviled by others. People did not want to let them in their houses or sit near them in the dinning hall. But their lives were more secure, since they did not need to join a mobile work unit or work far from home. Oeun, 18, long-faced and light, was a former 1st grade student [12th grade at the present] and the first child of Um Saret. He did not show his knowledge and did not talk much to the base people. He pretended to be deaf and mad sometimes. When away from the base people, he spoke a lot. He said, “I am not crazy enough to carry other people’s shit. I put soil into the toilet and put it back into the basket.” Sometimes he walked back and forth through the village so that Angkar would say he was an active person. In the regime, pretending to be crazy saved your life. Now Oeun is a doctor.
14 Most Deceitful Women
At midnight one night, Me Tou tickled my leg to wake me up. She whispered, “Do you want to listen to a song?” My foolish mind never satisfied itself. I turned one ear to the direction of the sound from a former mess hall for monks where youths were staying. Me Tou and I crept down the stairs toward the source of the sound, feeling excited. It was not one of the typical revolutionary songs I heard every morning. It was a bemoaning sound of Mrs. Mao Saret singing, “…I look into myself in the dark sky…”
Oh, what a wonderful song! What is she thinking about at this time of night? we asked ourselves. I stood putting Me Tou’s hand on my chest, crying, I couldn’t believe I heard such a good song again. Me Tou was equally emotional. In the following nights, we eavesdropped on the singing under the hall. We always heard youths playing and laughing with each other. That night Me Tou and I floated away with the song “20 years in prison because of a woman” by the famous singer Sun Sisamut. I leaned against some sacks. I asked Me Touk what was in them. She said it was rice. Then I realized that this was where rice was processed during the day. Returning home we thought about stealing some rice.
Thinking for a few nights, I remembered a Hong Kong film screened in Kirirum Cinema entitled The 14 Brave Women. In the story, the women’s husbands who were commanders of the army were arrested and killed by the enemy. The 14 women requested permission from the king to go to battle to avenge the deaths of their husbands. The king agreed. In the march to the battlefield, the 14 women’s food was destroyed by the enemy. “Farm with water, fight with food” as a saying goes, and so the troop could not fight without something to eat. A few soldiers volunteered to take on a suicidal mission of stealing the enemy’s food. Each of them carried a small bag and a sharpened bamboo tube to break through the rice bags. They crawled into the stock room. They stabbed the bamboo into the sack and the rice flew into the bags they hung on their waists. Only two returned, while the third soldier was killed by the enemy on the road. However, when the rice was mixed with wild leaves, it helped the troops to fight on.
I told the story to Me Tou, who agreed with me. At midnight we carried out our mission. When leaving I felt like I was going to a big battlefield. My heart was a bit harder. As we put the rice into the cloth bags that we had sewn out of shirts, we listened to the song and other sounds. We did not take much, just a few kilograms. Besides, the bag could be torn. Back at home, we nervously opened the bags. It was unpolished rice. What an unexpected outcome! Me Tou cooked the rice right away into eliminate any trace of our crime. There was nothing better than having rice to eat. I sat on the stairs guarding the entrance. Luckily not a sign of soldiers was seen that night. We served the cooked rice with the onion pickle.
One morning we were assigned to harvest cassava. We were happy because we would have some cassava back home to boil or steam. On the road to the field, I met a thin, old woman, who was carrying water. She hugged me as if she missed me. She pointed to her house so that I would visit her the next time I passed by. She whispered to me, asking if I had some tobacco to exchange for her fish or sugar. I said no, but there was a tobacco field behind my house which I would go into and pick some leaves for her. She told me to bring it to her house to dry since it was isolated. As we talked, ther water drained from her rusty buckets.
Returning from the field in the afternoon, the base people walked in groups, carrying baskets on their heads. They did so without keeping a hand busy like us. Four or five of us walked at a distance behind them, so that we could talk. Kalyan said, “Look, we should learn to carry a basket on the head like those base people. Now see, I’ll do it first.” She tripped in front of Puk Krak’s house as he was arriving on a bicycle. Nervous, she hurriedly picked up the scattering cassava. We helped her. Puk Krak put on a face and said, “You all are good at stealing. If just one person did this much, I should smash one or two to give you a lesson.” In fact, he had no intention to hurt us, otherwise no one would live.
A few days later, I asked Me Tou to steal some tobacco leaves with me. There were no stars and it was pitch dark. We sensed our way to the tobacco field. If soldiers came from the opposite direction, we would collide with them. As a non-smoker, I thought when we ate vegetables we chose the shoots, so we picked the tobacco shoots.
Early the next morning, I took the tobacco shoots to the old woman. She told me to take her salted fish the following day. In the evening, people talked about a stupid thief who stole the shoots of the tobacco plants. I felt ashamed of myself to be that foolish.
The Death of Thy, the Medical Man
Now the rice was ripe. Angkar assigned us to harvest the rice around the village. At noon men and women walked back to the village to dine. After the meal, we had to go back to where we worked and rest for half an hour. Under the hot sun, we piled up rice bundles, then sat close to each other and talked only about Sangkum Reastr Niyum. Kalyan, who was good at talking, said that when she was a student, boys followed her and that she always found a letter or a rose in her drawer in the class. The quieter, younger Samphoas had been a first-year medical student. Her husband was called Det; he was a very skillful fisherman. Angkar assigned Det to fish for the cooperative. Every day when he returned from fishing, Det visited his sister and cooked a big fish, before handing the small ones to the cooperative kitchen. He never brought the fish to his wife because too many relatives were living with her. Samphoas knew it too, but she did not say anything. She uttered in tears that some nights when she rejected having sex with Det, he informed the village chief. The village chief punished her by forcing her to sit outside all night for the mosquitoes to bite her. She said if the country was changed she would divorce her husband who she did not love and continue studying medicine.
Samlei talked about her husband named Thy, who had not completed medical school when they were married. She said she and her husband went through thick and thin together. At school she waited for her husband to complete his studies until midnight. Sometimes, they burnt sausages with alcohol to eat with left-over rice. At this point, she said, “I’m hungry for sausage; I don’t want to talk anymore!” We were always reprimanded for talking about good food and happy times in the Sangkum Reastr Niyum.
Rice near the village was harvested. Angkar began assigning us to harvest further and further away, but husband and wife could not go together. We had to sleep in the field and a chef came with us to cook food for the workers.
Thy, who was big and tall, wore short, spiky hair and had a smiling face. Angkar sent him with us. One night in the open field, I sat and thought of my husband and son at home.
In the harvest season, we ate solid rice and the soup consisted of some fish. As the morning sun cast its rays on the top of the trees and the cottages, I was still lying lazily. Then I heard a voice: “Help, help, Thy is dead!”
Everyone dashed to his cottage. His pale face and body were cold like ice. An old man named Duong who slept with him did not know when he died. Duong said Thy had a headache in the evening. A soldier ran back to the village to inform Thy’s wife and he told the other soldiers to wait for her to arrive before burying him. Perhaps he died of cold and humidity, since we all slept on the ground using just a thin leaf mat. After waiting too long for his wife to arrive, the people did not work, so the soldiers decided to bury Thy on a small hill. Just as that was done, Samley arrived. She knelt down, crying and digging the tomb. But we prevented her from doing so. She told her story about her life with her husband in Khmer, English, and French, as she wished, ignoring the soldiers. We wept, “Farewell Thy, may you rest in peace.” The soldiers looked sorrowful, since Thy had cured many people when he was alive.
Region 3
Starvation forced April 17 people to flee to region 3, because it was heard that the region had plenty of food. I was in region 5. Some people returned after a few days to tell others to go with them. My husband, who always wanted to travel, tried to persuade me to join them because he also wanted to look for his mother. I agreed. That night we discussed it. Me Tou and Sauda said a farewell to us. Sauda, who spoke little, but possessed a heart of steel said, “Huot and Nang, will we meet in Phnom Penh again one day?” I nodded as tears began to drop. We talked until dawn. Before sunrise, my family set off. Me Tou hugged me and my son, Pheak, saying, “We will meet again, won’t we?” I hugged her and did not want to leave. My husband put his beloved hoe on one shoulder; I put a basket with some old clothes inside on mine. We left amidst other people walking to the dam. (In 1982 I met Me Tou when she worked in a government ministry with me. Her two sons had grown up. They looked much healthier than in the black-shirted regime. She joked to me, “A lot of men wanted to marry me, but these two husbands of mine (her sons), did not want it.” She sang “A Letter under the Pillow” to me. I have never seen her since. She may have migrated to another country.)
My family arrived at a shallow river after walking 2 kilometers from the village. We crossed it. Soon, we arrived in region 3. Here the landscape was green, even the grass was green. I dared not walk across the grass field, because it contained much water spinach and other edible herbs. I decided to go to the dinning hall and ask for food. I was given a bowl of rice with some soup. Each of us ate a spoonful of food; the rest we gave to our son.
We sought shelter with the villagers, but they rejected us saying they had already adopted many families. We were advised to move on. My family continued to other villages, which did not accept us. We arrived at the fifth village in the evening. The village chief looked us up and down for a while before he accepted us and told us to work hard.
In the village, they gave us a small leaf cottage. The next day we were assigned to build a dam. The villagers looked healthy. They looked at us with compassion because we were bony thin and pale. The newly arrived people worked very hard. We had adequate food and the neighbors were kind-hearted. A friendly, tall and thin woman whispered to me, “Don’t worry, here they don’t hurt people. They educate us, if we are lazy or we complain too much.” I still felt bad, though, when hearing the word “educate.”
My beloved husband and son were also healthy. My son played and laughed loudly with other kids, which I had never seen before. We were happy. During a dinner, a woman comrade, about 30, told us, “Brothers new people, after dinner, go to a meeting near the village chief’s house.” After dinner, we walked to the chief’s house, which was not too far from the dining hall. My husband had been sick for several days, so he did not join the meal with us; I brought food to him. We sat on the ground in front of the chief’s house. The chief was named comrade Kan. He had dark skin, curly hair, and large eyes. First he thanked the new people who had come to help his village. We felt there could be bad news, so we listened on. He continued, “Comrades in your old villages have come here to ask me to take you back to the villages, because those villages are quiet now.” We listened as sweat dropped down our bodies in the cold night. The chief said, “Therefore, please pack up, tomorrow trucks will arrive to take you.”
I told the bad news to my husband. He said they would not bring us to the same place. The next day, we said goodbye to the base people and I carried our belongings on my shoulders. My husband could barely support his own body. He carried his hoe. After walking for half a kilometer with many other families, we saw 10 Camions awaiting us. I walked faster to take the claim the best spot, while my husband staggered slowly. Comrade Phal, my group chief, blamed me, “Why are you in such a hurry? Don’t you see comrade Huot is sick? Just wait in the model houses for the trucks to return.” Then I waited in the model house, which looked the same as others. My husband collapsed in the house and complained, “Don’t hurry, my head is splitting open!” I took out medicine for him, but it was nothing beside “rabbit dung” tablets.
We waited until 2 p.m. when the truck returned. All were hungry. Two soldiers standing on the trucks told us, “You know comrades, the people in the morning were used as fertilizer.” I did not understand right away. They were killed, I learned later. At about 5 p.m. the truck took us to Serey Sophorn district. Many houses were abandoned there. They told us to rest in any house and wait for dinner. Some wondered what Angkar would do to us for running away from home like that. A moment later, a few comrades called us to eat. In the tin-roofed dinning hall, a kerosene lamp was hung on the roof to light up the night. The rice was as white as cotton. The sour soup with banana trunk was delicious. It was the first meal of the day and everyone ate their fill. We were even told to pack up the remaining rice for tomorrow’s journey. We began to think our lives could be better than in the village we had just left in the morning.
The Flood
As light began to fill the horizon and dew fell, we were ordered to get up and go to the truck quickly. The truck took the main road; we did not know the name. A man called out, his village was there, but the truck kept going. Goodbye Cheung Wat village (my old village); I did not where we were going this time. At noon the truck stopped at a small road. Then the young soldiers told us to get off. We walked with our belongings banging around to a village a hundred meters away. My son carried the rice pan and I carried the rest. I cried when it was too heavy. My husband was frustrated to see me crying. He said, “Don’t cry, we are not separated.” I cried louder as though there was something bad going to happen to us. This was the only time when he yelled at me. We stayed in a large hall, when half an hour later a few comrades arrived. One comrade was the oldest, had gray hair, large eyes, and a cigarette in his mouth. We squatted and were quiet, awaiting his words.
He spoke with a stern look, “You have been assigned to live here. This village is called Tik Chaur. You have to change yourselves and work hard to impress Angkar, because you committed a serious crime of running away from home. If you refuse to change yourselves and run for the second time, the nearby mountain will be your resting place.” A chill rushed through my spine. The mountain was called Phnom Chunh Cheang. It was where criminals were detained, tortured and given little food to eat. They were also chained.
A few hours later a female comrade arrived to call us to eat porridge. I had fled from porridge, now I met porridge again. My husband did not go and asked me to bring some food to him if possible. Then I pulled out two spoons from our luggage. I walked toward river to clean the spoons. Just as I put them into the water, the spoons fell from my hand as though they were attracted by a magnet. I thought this was a bad sign; perhaps two of us could go away like the spoons. I prayed for my family’s happiness.
Angkar let us stay in a storehouse. We arrived in the village when the rain came. So it was time to farm. One morning, a female comrade arrived to tell us to transplant rice in a field about a kilometer from the village. She told us to bring plates and spoons along. I asked for my husband’s permission not to work. They gave him permission, but only after a lot of reproach. The village chief accused my husband, “You all are unconscious people. Sick all the time. I should not let you eat.” In the field, we could hardly work, since the base people kept staring at us.
Sour Soup with Cow Skin
Half a month had passed. My beloved husband recovered, maybe because of “rabbit droppings” medicine or something else. He was assigned to plow with other men, who were in the strongest group. About ten Cham families lived in this village. On rare occasions when there was pork, the Cham people were forced to eat it. A woman named Brahim, in her mid-20s, secretly told me in tears that the Cham families had arrived in the village nearly a year ago and were given only porridge. Once in a while there was pork soup with no meat, but fat floating on top. Her mother was forced to eat the soup, although she only asked for a few grains of salt to eat instead. A few months later, her mother died of an unknown cause.
A Cham family lived close to our room. Saleh, the father and husband of the family, was a considerate person. He pitied my family and also plowed with my husband. He told my husband many times not to speak too much and not to behave improperly, since the soldiers in the village were young, but cruel.
This village had very few resources. I could hardly find firewood. There was some bamboo which we had to pull out from pricking thorns. One of my shirts was torn because of this. Eating porridge, the base people still had some rice from an unknown source to make dessert. They ground the rice into powder, then mixed it with water and palm sugar. The liquid was poured into a hot pan. Sometimes they made a kind of cake with fish inside. If they saw us walking by, they would invite us to join, just to be polite.
No edible vegetables were found to supplement our diet. Guava trees had only old, dark green leaves. Newly arrived people were not permitted to own rice or to cook rice or soup. The base people joked that the feces in the bush looked like that of a pig, but the footprint was that of a human. There was nothing strange about this. We had little to eat, so our feces looked like those of a pig. That was the great leap forward regime of “Brother” Pot.
After evening porridge, Saleh asked me, “Comrade Nang, do you have a spoonful of salt? I’m making a sour beef soup. I’ll give you some when the flesh becomes tender.” I was glad to hear that. So I quickly handed him the salt. We waited and waited for the soup to be cooked until we fell asleep. Then I heard a call from the door, “Nang, take the soup, it’s ready.” All houses had no doors, so that the Angkar could see inside. I woke my husband and son up to serve the soup. I gulped the first spoonful. It was delicious and its sour taste came from the leaves of a tamarind tree. I fished out a piece of beef and put it into my mouth. It was so tough, my tooth almost broke. I turned at Saleh and asked, “Saleh, what is this, it’s so tough? Is it a buffalo meat?” He answered, “Just eat it, it’s a rope made of cow skin, which I stole from an ox-cart. Don’t talk, I would be in big trouble.” I knew that a rope was made of skin. All ox-cart riders kept an eye on their rope. They were responsible for its loss. In this period of extreme hardship, our lives were like a drop of water on a lotus leaf in the wind, waiting for the final day. We barely walked to work. Some people tripped when walking in the rain and died. Perhaps they were too undernourished.
From one day to the next, the number of people shrank. Some families when called out at night were never seen again.
Teacher Say Was Wanted
My husband knew a lot of April 17 people working with him in the same field. Some came from the same village, some from nearby villages. At rest period, they talked and shared cigarettes wrapped with tree leaves. One of them was Say, a former teacher. Say was about 30 years old. His protruding cheekbones were covered with pale, wrinkled skin. He had blurred eyes and long saggy hair. He looked like a 50-year-old man. Say complained to my husband that he might not live long, because he was suspected as a former civil servant. The day he feared arrived. One night Say ran to my house in a ragged black shirt and a scarf surrounding his neck. As he arrived he sat near the wall, and asked my husband, “Huot, flee with me?” He added as he gasped for breath, “They are looking for me. Last night two of my neighbors were taken away. Tonight it could be my turn.” Puzzled and shocked, my husband looked at me and our son, not knowing what to do. He then said he would not leave me and our son. We pitied him. So we boiled the rice we had for him. We ate together, but we gave him a large portion. I also fried some rice for him to eat on the run. My husband and Say talked throughout the night. When the first rooster crowed, he put the fried rice in his scarf and said, “I’ll never forget this sympathy. If I survive for the next three days, I’ll repay your help.” We wept and wished him good luck. He left. We did not know what happened to him next.
Becoming a Miserable Woman Unconsciously
Our legs swelled. This was torture. It was a prison without walls. The name of the village Tik Chaur means high tide, because water could flood the field overnight. One morning my husband and I went to the field. Comrade Kan [the village chief] sent a few soldiers with us. With his face set, Comrade Kan talked to my husband, “I’d like to ask you to plow in another village for a few days and stay there.” My husband hurriedly wrapped a scarf around his neck and left with him. Walking a few steps, he reached into his shirt pocket, took out a lighter, and gave it to me in case I needed it to make a fire at night. I rejected his offer, saying, “You keep it. Maybe you’ll need it to light your cigarette.” It took a while until he put it back into his pocket.
The same morning a soldier who was transplanting rice near me asked, “How old are you?” I answered, “I’m 27.” The soldier laughed, “What a pitiful young widow.” I quickly clarified, “Are you confused, Comrade? My husband is still alive!” He laughed and left. I do not remember the date, but I know it was a full moon day. At night I was restless. I sat and looked at the moon on the door until I fell asleep there. I dreamt I broke one of the two knives I had tried to preserve since we’d been evacuated from Phnom Penh. My body shook like a chick when I woke up. Thinking about my husband and the soldier, I cried. I prayed to God to look after my husband. I unconsciously pleaded: “Husband, may you be free from all troubles. Please don’t leave your wife and son in this sea of blood.”
Saleh heard what I said and advised me, “Nang, don’t speak to loud.” Our lives seemed to be the most fragile thing of all. We loved each other through good and bad times. When we had food we thought about each other. When we stole food, we hurried home so that we could share.
High-Nosed Visitor
One day, two days, three days passed…. One morning I saw comrade Kan with about 10 young soldiers carrying rifles; they were walking toward my house. Comrade Kan said to me, “Comrade Nang, if you want your husband to come home, give us all that you have.” I was shocked and bewildered, as I tried to think what my husband had possibly done wrong. “He went to plow, why is he accused of a crime now?” I asked. Comrade Kan advised me, “You don’t need to wonder. Angkar knows what your husband did; Angkar has the eyes of a pineapple.” As Comrade Kan spoke, the soldiers were ransacking my few belongings. They checked the salt jar, squeezed the pillows, spilled the kitchen ash…. They found nothing. I began to realize that my husband must be in danger. Without hesitation, I reached into the chicken’s nest to take a few pieces of gold. Then I handed them to comrade Kan without saying a word. As the soldiers walked away, I took out US $200, which was wrapped in many layers of plastic; I had hidden the bundle in a silk reel for a long time, saving it for a bribe. Kan did not know what it was, so he asked as he held it, “What money is this?” I dared not say it was American money, fearing I could be accused of being an imperialist, CIA or KGB. “You can use this money anywhere you go. I don’t want to keep it any longer. Please take it and help my husband.”
He did not answer. His grabbed the money and walked away. I waited for my husband day by day. One morning I was assigned to transplant rice near the main road (I later learned that it was on the border with Siem Reap province). On the road, comrade Kan inspected us. He seemed to be serious, as though there were problems. Kan told us, “Today there are many French and foreign people coming through our village. Therefore, if you see cars, just keep working, don’t stand idle.”
Before noon, we saw three white Mercedes on the road. The cars stopped about 50 meters from us. Several foreigners got down, aiming their cameras at us transplanting rice. A woman close to me and I stood up, forgetting comrade Kan’s prohibition. We were tempted to appeal to those foreigners to help us because we were suffering. Then comrade Kan yelled behind us, “Do you want to die?” We turned our faces down. I shook because had I disobeyed his order. Later I learned that they did not want us to stand because the foreigners could see our thin and pale bodies.
That afternoon when I returned home I saw my son lying on the bed, looking exhausted. I was no longer able to trade fish or other food, because I did not have any valuables left. Saleh told me to boil the leaves of a star-apple tree for my son to drink, so that he would urinate more and the swelling of his body would stop. But he did not drink or eat. Three days later he died.
I could not cry nor do anything, except hug his body. “You have been with me through difficult times, now you go away from me. Your father is nowhere to be seen,” I spoke alone. I felt cold in an unfamiliar place. Saleh and other men wrapped the body of my son in a torn sleeping mat. Saleh asked, “You have better clothes for him?” I replied, “That’s all I have.” We had no incense, candles, monks to chant, relatives, nothing except a few men in his funeral. My son died, he’s happy now, leaving me in this field of death.
I stood in grief at the front door. I was alone in this world. I cried then and I am now crying again. My tears have been dried up for 23 years now, the tears of separation, horror and shock, which the world had never experienced.
After my son’s death, I did not think about eating. I had no strength to work or talk to others. Saleh and his wife tried to comfort me, telling me I was not alone, that millions of people suffered in just the same way, and that we had to survive to meet our remaining relatives, who we had not seen for more than three years.
Harvest season arrived once again. I remembered that several days after the death of my son, it was the Pchum Ben days, because two group chiefs rationed us sticky rice to make offerings. They did that at night so that the base people could not see and become jealous. Each person received two cans of rice. I kept it in the room, but it was stolen. The thief kept stealing my clothes, spoons and plates until the only thing was left was the clothes on my body.
Every morning, Saleh’s wife pushed me to go to the field so I would not be criticized. My soul was not in my body. I fell off the narrow bridge many times when the strong and cold winter air blew at me. People pulled me out of the water. My body shook like a chick. I had nothing.
Sometimes I did not work or eat. I was not afraid of the village chief and the soldiers. I did not remember my name. I was becoming mad.
Saleh’s wife tried to keep me in good spirit. She told me, “I heard the sound of fighting in the distance in the past few days. The soldiers are not very strict now. Be strong, Nang.”
One morning we saw the wives of the group chiefs and soldiers, in panic, running to the field telling their husbands to go home. Because we had no supervision, we were able to stop working and talk, oblivious to the situation. At noon, some April 17 kids came to tell their mothers, “Mom, our country is liberated!”
There were no happier words than those. We rushed to the village to pack up. I walked behind, feeling empty. Some people went to the collective kitchen to take food for their long journey home. I did nothing. I stood on the riverbank like a lifeless statue. “Oh river, please tell me where my husband is. Please tell him that the war is over, that he and I could go home. Please come back, husband! We will rebuild our lives. Come and help your wife, just as you did for the past three years. Nothing in life is sadder than family separation and happier than reuniting.”
As I was deep in thought, Saleh’s wife pulled my hand to go with her. I had one basket, two cans of rice, a long-sleeved shirt and a skirt, pieced together with a hundred stitches. My legs were swelling and I could barely hold a thing. For the last time I looked at the river, the cottage and tamarind tree from which I used to pick dark green leaves. I said goodbye to the bloody field, the merciless eyes of the young soldiers, the watery porridge, everything that we did together during these times, my three children, and the river.
As I walked I seemed to hear my husband calling me from behind. I looked back many times in case he had returned. Three days turned into forever. I walked with hundreds of others on the road. Other families were happy because they were together. Some lost a few children, but they were better, since they still had relatives with them. I walked alone amidst unknown faces. How could this happen to us like this when we were almost through? We walked about 2 kilometers a day.
We crossed a bridge and arrived in Kra Lanh district, Siem Reap province. The people there were much healthier than us from Battambang province. They came out to look at us as if we were aliens. They pitied us because our knees were larger than our heads, our faces were bloodless, our bodies had protruding bones, and our clothes were ragged. I squatted under a shed. Wondering why I did not prepare food like the others, a few villagers came to me.
An old man asked, “What is your name? Where is your home village? Why are you alone?” I answered, “I…” I did not know what to say. I did not know who I was. I shook my head, could not think of what to say. The man said, “You can stay here with me for a while. When you feel better you can leave.” I did not respond. His child pulled me up by the hands. Some others carried my things. His home was 50 meters away. He told me three of his children died; only one remained. Another man named Sok, 60, had been a monk in the Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime. He used a monk’s garment to make curtains and a pillowcase for me. He tied each of my wrists with white thread and blessed me with his holy water, so that my soul would return to my body. Three days later, I felt bright, remembering my name, but not my birth name, my job or my home village.
A Heart-Breaking Wedding Song
I left the family of elders, Sok and Yoeun, and their neighbors who were always sympathetic to me. With them food was plentiful. The villagers loved me and wished for me to meet my relatives. So my adventurous journey began again. Even at this time, many April 17 people were still on the road. I walked after them, from one village to the next, but I could not remember their names. I met a few people living in my home village. I met a woman who was crossing a river. She spent nights under a villager’s house. She had a newly-born chubby son. The house owner was kind, giving her food during her stay. As a woman, there is no more difficult moment than during the period of birth, especially when the husband is not there. I asked where her husband was. She cried immediately, barely able to speak, “He was lost at the [KR] village; they said he was assigned to build the dining hall for a short time, but he never returned.”
She cried and cried, hugging her son, as if he was the symbol of her husband. I continued my journey with a small bag containing a few clothes, a small pan, a mosquito net and a blanket.
I traveled from one village to another, like a backpacker (except I was very dirty). I always stopped at places where funerals and ceremonies were held, guided in by the songs of famous singers like Sin Sisamot, Ruos Sereysothea and Huy Meas. I was not a special guest. I usually sat in a corner under a tree. Sometimes, as my feeling drifted away with the songs, a hand touched my shoulder and a bowl of hot rice with soup was given to me. I am now very grateful to those compassionate people during that period of misery. A month later, I arrived in Siem Reap provincial town, where returnees were told to stay in one place in the suburbs. The place stank of human feces; everyone closed their noses.
Every morning, several GMC trucks arrived to take the returnees home. The trucks were tall, I could not climb quickly enough to find a space, but nobody helped. They cared for their relatives. Thus I had to live in this province longer and longer. I had to ask people for food. One morning I determined to climb up on the truck without holding any belongings. I had given all my belongings to a woman. But I couldn’t. The truck was leaving, but I was still on the ground, sweating like water. Then an old man who was about to put his bicycle onto the truck saw me and said, “You want to get on the truck? It is leaving now.” I told him, “I can’t get on uncle.” The man helped me up. At noon, the truck stopped at Stung district for the travelers to cook food. I sat in one place because I had nothing to cook. Then a rather old woman, wearing a silk skirt and nylon shirt, and who had a healthy looking 10-yearold daughter, walked up to me. She said, “Why don’t you cook like the others, sister?” I replied, “I don’t have pan or rice to cook.” She went to a nearby house and brought me a bowl of rice and sour soup. I thanked her and gorged on the food. She told me that if I didn’t have any relatives, I could stay with her.
I did not know how to answer. When the truck blew its horn, I said goodbye to her and climbed up with the help of other travelers. In the afternoon, we arrived in Skun district. My pants were torn. The travelers stayed under a large rain tree. In the morning, some of them prepared to get on the truck. But those with old relatives stayed until the next day. I stayed longer. Some people gave me rice, a pan, plates, a mosquito net and a blanket. So I had something to own now. After a week, a man of my age with a 5-year-old daughter asked me to marry him and showed me his jewelry. He said he pitied me and promised to take good care of me. I had no words to say. I was not excited. Since my loved ones had died only recently, I told him, “I’m not thinking about marrying.”
In the morning, the man and his daughter left for Phnom Penh. A few days later I also went there. It took me half a month. When I crossed the Mekong River on a ferry, I saw the Chroy Changva bridge falling into the river. It was a sorrowful sight. When I arrived on the other side, people were selling food and snacks. It made me hungry. Then I met my old friend,Arun, from the Sangkum Reastr Niyum. We hugged for a long time. She was with her husband and children. I went to see my house at Sileb market, but it was not in sight. Then I continued to the place where my husband had buried some jewelry, but I could not find it because the marking was lost. Nothing left, parents, grandparents, four siblings gone. Later I met my fourth sibling, Heng Sokmala. He helped proofread the manuscript of this memoir.
Half a month later we applied for jobs at the Ministry of Health. We got them and were assigned to work at Monk Hospital, whose name is now Preah Kosomeak Hospital. I met many friends. Some male friends asked me to marry them, but I rejected them.
In 1980 I married a man and we had a daughter together. She is now 16. Sadly we could not live together until death. In this last chapter, because life seems to have no meaning, I will end my story here. My life is like a scene in a play. Now I am 52. As I am lost in the past, my youngest son sought comfort in me, as he always did when he returned home. He wiped off tears from my wrinkled face.
Author’s Notes: I look forward to criticism and I apologize to those poor friends of mine who I described inappropriately. I miss you all. I wish you happiness in your lives. I would like to thank the family of Lach Samraong who has helped me spiritually in the recollection of “The Shadow of My Husband.”
Extracted from:
-Searching for the Trust Magazine, Special English Edition, Second Quarter 2004, Page 37: "The Shadow of My Husband"
7 comments:
Our 17 April 1975 tragedy has yet again confirmed what the French people's had discovered and affirmed in the preamble of their Declaration of the Rights of Man of 26 August 1789, which fellow Cambodians who had studied in France and returned to rule our country overlooked: "the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments".
Nowadays, there is also a tendency to even forget what our current rulers had agreed upon when they signed the peace agreements in Paris, France, on 23 october 1991 to end the war in our country: "Cambodia’s tragic recent history requires special measures to assure protection of human rights, and the non-return to the policies and practices of the past."
Let's not forget the souls of our fellow countrymen, victims of " the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man". Let's protect human rights. Let our common tragedy unite us. Then our fellow countrymen did not die in vain.
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
I don't feel I am missing any
freedom or right, Dr Lao. Would
you mind point out to me what
am I missing specifically?
Let's take a moment of silence for those lives that were lost.
CC, California
Mr/Ms.2:15 PM
I'm very sorry I cannot point out what you might specially miss. If you don't miss anything, you're a lucky fellow. Congratulations!
In human history, sometimes slaves, because they were made not to feel they were no longer human beings, did not miss freedom at all. A remark by Baron de Montesquieu is a testimony: “A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century.”
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
Very emotional and sensational story. Although I myself went through this darkest man-made tragedy, I love to read people's story.
Scattered pieces of life, nightmares and bad dreams, emotional disregulation, isolation, and numbness, disgusting, mistrust, angry, depression, deny, empathy, anxiety,and shut off. These are the symptoms that many Cambodians are currently been experiencing.
Cambodian people can successfully build the war-torn country from scratches but the emotional scars of each of them last forever.
YES GOD BLESS YOU WHO NEVER HAVE YOUR RIGHT TAKEN AWAY! AND MAY GOD HELP WHO MISS IT!
SO WE ALL CAN LIVE IN A PEACEFULL LIFE TOGETDER.
CHEY YO KAMPUCHEA!
True, people can be brainwashed.
And no doubt, I too have been
brainswashed, that is why you must
tell us specifically what we have
been missing if you have not been
brainwashed by any entity, people,
or culture.
Truly, my concept is this, if you
can afford it, you are entitle to
it, but not beyond. Fashion, for
example, is considered freedom of
expressions, but if we were to
allow women to walk on the street
in bikini, and we don't have the
mean to handle its side-effect,
then suppressing bikini from the street is not a crime. If you want
to do that, pay more tax. We need
it to bust the added rapists. The
more tax you pay, the more freedom
you can have. Government does not
grow its revenues on trees, you
know? hehehe. Therefore, I would
appreciated if you can be more
specific as to which right or
freedom that we have been denied.
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