Pran is listening to the government radio, which is playing martial music and gives no hint of the collapse. The day before, the prime minister, Long Boret, had sent a virtual surrender offer, via Red Cross radio, to the Khmer Rouge side; it asked only for assurances of no reprisals against people and organizations who had worked on the government side. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, as titular head of the Khmer Rouge, immediately rejected the offer from his exile in Peking. The government radio went off the air last night without mentioning the truce offer; it said only that the military situation “is boiling hotter and hotter” and quoted government leaders as “determined to fight to the last drop of our blood.”
Now, as Pran glues his ear to the radio, I decide that, not having bathed in two days, I shall shower and change clothes. “If we’re going to meet the new rulers of Phnom Penh today,” I tell him jokingly, “I’d better look my best.” He laughs, amused at another irrational act by the man whose first thought on the day the Americans left was that he didn’t have time to pack. I emerge from my shave and shower feeling halfway recycled. At 7:20 a.m., the Khmer Rouge break in on the radio to announce: “We are ready to welcome you.”
It is the apprehensive population of Phnom Penh that does the welcoming—hanging white flags, fashioned from bed sheets, from windows and rooftops and on government gun-boats on the Tonle Sap River and the Mekong. The crews of the armored personnel carriers in the streets outside the hotel stick bouquets of yellow allamanda flowers in their headlights.
The first units of Communist troops seem friendly and celebratory. They are wearing clean black pajama uniforms and look remarkably uncalloused and unscarred. It soon becomes clear that they are not the real Khmer Rouge—we never did learn who they were, maybe misguided students trying to share in the “revolution,” maybe part of a desperate plot by the government to confuse and subvert the Khmer Rouge—but within hours they and their leader are disarmed and under arrest and the genuine Khmer Rouge take over and begin ruthlessly driving the people of the city into the countryside. Most of the soldiers are teenagers, which is startling. They are universally grim, robotlike, brutal. Weapons drip from them like fruit from trees—grenades, pistols, rifles, rockets.
During the first confused hours of the Communist victory, when it looks as if our belief in reconciliation is a possibility, Pran and I and Jon Swain of The Sunday Times of London, who has been traveling with us, decide to chance a walk to the cable office. The transmitter is still out of order, so we can send no copy, but a beaming Teletype operator chortles at us, “C’est la paix! C’est la paix!”
Outside, at 10:40 a.m., we have our first conversation with an insurgent soldier. He says he is twenty-five years old, has been five years in the “movement” and has had ten years of schooling. He is traveling on a bicycle and is wearing green government fatigues over his black pajamas. The government-unit patches have been torn off. He has a Mao cap and shower sandals, and around his neck he wears a cheap, small pair of field glasses. Like all the others we meet later, he refuses to give his name or rank. We guess he is an officer or sergeant.
Will the Khmer take revenge and kill a lot of people? I ask Pran to ask him in Khmer. “Those who have done corrupt things will definitely have to be punished,” he says.
Pran tries to get him to relax and at one point does evoke a small smile from this man from another planet. It is one of the few smiles I will see on a Khmer Rouge face for the two weeks I am to be under their control. I offer him cigarettes and oranges. He refuses, saying that he is not allowed to accept gifts. I ask him if he can give gifts: what about his Mao cap, would he give it to me as a souvenir? He refuses coldly. The smile is gone. He pedals off.
After a breakfast of Pepsi-Cola at a restaurant whose French proprietor is glad for company but who has no other food, we walk back to the hotel and decide it is still safe to move around. So we drive to the biggest civilian hospital—Preah Keth Mealea—to get some idea of casualties. Al Rockoff, an American freelance photographer, has joined us. Only a handful of doctors have reported for duty. People are bleeding to death on the corridor floors. A Khmer Rouge soldier, caked with blood, is getting plasma from one of the few nurses who have showed up, but he is nevertheless dying of severe head and stomach wounds. All he can manage to whisper, over and over, is, “Water, water.” A few yards away, hospital aides are trying to mop some of the blood off the floor. They mop carefully around three stiffening corpses.
We can stand to look at these scenes no longer, so we depart. But as we get into our car and start to leave the compound, some heavily armed Khmer Rouge soldiers charge in through the main gate. Shouting and angry, they wave us out of the car, put guns to our heads and stomachs, and order us to put our hands over our heads. I instinctively look at Pran for guidance. We have been in difficult situations before, but this is the first time I have ever seen raw fear on his face. He tells me, stammering, to do everything they say. I am shaking. I think we’re going to be killed right there. But Pran, having somehow composed himself, starts pleading with them. His hands still over his head, he tries to convince them we are not their enemy, merely foreign newsmen covering their victory.
They take everything—our car, cameras, typewriters, radio, knapsacks—and push us into an armored personnel carrier, a kind of light tank that carries troops in its belly, which they have captured from the government army.
We all get in—three journalists and our driver, Sarun—except for Pran. We hear him continuing his entreaties in Khmer outside. We naturally think he is trying to get away, arguing against getting into this vehicle. Most of my thoughts are jumbled and incoherent, but I remember thinking, For God’s sake, Pran, get inside. Maybe there’s some chance this way, but if you go on arguing, they’ll shoot you down in the street.
Finally, he climbs in, the rear door and top hatch are slammed shut, and the armored car starts to rumble forward. After a few minutes of chilled silence, Sarun turns to me and in French asks me if I know what Pran was doing outside the vehicle. I say no, since the talk was in Khmer. Sarun tells me that Pran, far from trying to get away, was doing the opposite—trying to talk his way into the armored car. The Khmer Rouge had told him to leave, they didn’t want him, only the Americans and “the big people.” He knew we had no chance without him, so he argued not to be separated from us, offering, in effect, to forfeit his own life on the chance that he might save ours.
As the armored car moves through the city, it becomes an oven. Sweat starts pouring off us as we stare at one another’s frightened countenances. The vehicle suddenly stops. Two Cambodian men are pushed inside. They are dressed in civilian clothes, but Pran recognizes them as military men who have taken off their uniforms to try to escape detection. One of them, a burly man with a narrow mustache, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, reaches over and tries to shove his wallet into my back pocket. He explains in whispered French that he is an officer and must hide his identity. I tell him it is useless to hide anything on me because we are all in the same predicament. Pran takes the wallet and stuffs it under some burlap sacks we are sitting on. The officer’s companion, a shorter, leaner man with a crew cut, dressed in a flowered shirt and brown trousers, has a small ivory Buddha on a gold chain around his neck. He puts the Buddha in his mouth and begins to pray—a Cambodian Buddhist ritual to summon good fortune against imminent danger. His behavior is contagious. I take from my pocket a yellow silk rose that my daughter Jessica had given me two weeks earlier when I had taken a five-day breather in Bangkok with my family, knowing the fall of Phnom Penh was near. I had cut off the wire stem and carried it in my pocket ever since, as my personal amulet. Sweat has turned it into a sodden and scruffy lump. I clutch it hard in my right fist for luck.
Looking across at Jon Swain, I see in his eyes what must also be in mine—a certainty that we are to be executed. Trying to preserve my dignity and to get that terrible look off his face, I hold out the rose and say: “Look, Jon, I’ve got Jessica’s good-luck rose with me. Noth
ing can really happen to us.” He forces a wan grimace; I know he thinks I am crazy.
Meanwhile, Pran is keeping up his pleading with the driver of the armored car, telling him that we are not soldiers or politicians or anyone hostile to the Khmer Rouge. No one here is American, he insists, they are all French, they are only newsmen. Whatever meager words we exchange among ourselves are in French. Rockoff speaks no French, so we run our hands across our lips in a sealing motion to let him know he should keep his mouth shut.
Suddenly, after a forty-minute ride, the vehicle stops and the rear door clangs open. We are ordered to get out. As we move, crouching through the door, we see two Khmer Rouge soldiers, their rifles on their hips pointing directly at us. Behind them is a sandy riverbank that slopes down to the Tonle Sap River. Rockoff and I exchange the briefest of fear-struck glances. We are thinking the same thing—they’re going to do it here and roll us down the bank into the river.
But we climb out, like zombies, and no shots are yet fired. Pran resumes his pleas, searching out a soldier who looks like an officer. For a solid hour he keeps this up—appealing, cajoling, begging for our lives. The officer sends a courier on a motorbike to some headquarters in the center of the city. We wait, still frozen but trying to hope, as Pran continues talking. Finally, the courier returns, more talk—and then, miraculously, the rifles are lowered. We are permitted to have a drink of water. I look at Pran and he allows himself a cautious smile. He’s done it, I think, he’s pulled it off.
Strangely, in the surge of relief, my first thought is of my notebooks, which were in my airline bag, confiscated when we were seized. I feel more than a little silly to be thinking now of pieces of paper. But my sense of loss is overwhelming—the notebooks hold all my thoughts, everything I had observed, for the last several months.
We are still under guard, but everything has relaxed. They now let us move into the shade of a concrete approach to a bridge blown up by sappers early in the war. We watch jubilant Communist soldiers rolling by in trucks loaded with looted cloth, wine, liquor, cigarettes, and soft drinks. They scatter some of the booty to the soldiers at the bridge. We also watch civilian refugees leaving Phnom Penh in a steady stream—our first solid evidence that they are driving the city’s entire population of more than two million into the countryside to join their “peasant revolution.” As the refugees plod along, the soldiers take watches and radios from them.
Our captors offer us soft drinks. One of them toys with me. He holds out a bottle of orange soda, and when I reach for it, he pulls it back. Finally I say, “Thank you very much,” in Khmer. Having made his point, that I am his subject, in his control, he hands me the bottle, grinning.
At 3:30 p.m. we are released. Suddenly a jeep drives up, and many of our belongings are in it—including the airline bag. Sheepishly, I ask Pran if he thinks he can get it back. He sees nothing unusual in the request and immediately begins bargaining. A few minutes later, a Khmer Rouge soldier, after haphazardly groping through its insides, hands me the bag. In it, with the notebooks, is a money belt holding nine thousand dollars and my American passport, which, if they had bothered to look at it, could have given me away. Our hired 1967 Mercedes-Benz and my camera, among other valuables, were kept as booty.
As we move off, I look back. The two men who shared the armored car with us are still under guard. The smaller man still has the Buddha in his mouth, having never stopped praying. There is no doubt in our minds that they are marked for execution.
Much later, I ask Pran about the extraordinary thing he had done, about why he had argued his way into that armored car when he could have run away. He explains in a quiet voice: “You don’t speak Khmer, and I cannot let you go off and get killed without someone talking to them and trying to get them to understand. Even if I get killed, I have to first try to say something to them. Because you and I are together. I was very scared, yes, because in the beginning I thought they were going to kill us, but my heart said I had to try this. I understand you and know your heart well. You would do the same thing for me.”
The rest of that day is an adrenaline blur, a lifetime crammed into a few hours. We see friends going off to certain death, families pleading with us to save them as we professed our helplessness, roads awash with people being swept out of the city like human flotsam. Some are the severely wounded from the hospitals, who are being pushed in their beds, serum bottles still attached to their bodies.
After our release, we head for the Information Ministry because earlier Khmer Rouge radio broadcasts have called on all high officials of the defeated government to report there. We find about fifty prisoners standing outside the building, guarded by wary Khmer Rouge troops. They also begin to guard us as we approach the men who appear to be their leaders and seek to interview them. Among the prisoners are cabinet ministers and generals, including Brigadier General Lon Non, younger brother of Marshal Lon Nol, who went into exile some weeks before. Lon Non, considered one of the most corrupt men in Cambodia, is smoking a pipe and trying to look untroubled. He says calmly to us, “I don’t know what will happen to me.”
A Khmer Rouge official, probably a general, though like all the others his uniform bears no markings of rank, addresses the group with a bullhorn, telling them that they will be dealt with fairly. He asks for their cooperation, saying, “There will be no reprisals.” The prisoners’ strained faces suggest they do not believe him. (Whether this entire group was killed is not known, but Lon Non’s execution is confirmed a short time later.)
Three Cambodian women suddenly walk into this tense scene. They go straight to the leader and tell him they wish to offer their help. They are officials of the Cambodian Red Cross—middle-aged patrician ladies dedicated to good works. They do not seem to understand what is happening. The leader smiles and thanks them for coming. They depart as incongruously as they came.
The Khmer Rouge leader, who seems no older than thirty-five, then turns to talk to us and a few French newsmen who have joined our group. He is polite but says very little. Pran serves as interpreter. When we ask if we will be allowed to cable stories to our publications, he says, “We will resolve all problems in their proper order.” He also volunteers “our thanks to the American people, who have helped us from the beginning.”
He suggests to Pran that the foreign newsmen stay at the Information Ministry to be registered. Pran, sensing trouble, declines politely and motions discreetly to us to leave. We slip away, smiling as broadly as we can.
Just then, the prime minister of the old government, Long Boret, arrives in a car driven by his wife. He is a courageous man who could have left with the Americans but stayed behind to try to work out a peaceful transition of power. He has failed and he looks wretched. His eyes are puffed. He stares at the ground. He is one of the seven “traitors” specifically marked by the Khmer Rouge for execution, and he knows what faces him now. I want to get away, but I feel I must say something to him, and Pran understands. I take Long Boret’s hands and tell him what a brave thing he has done for his country and that I admire him for it.
Pran takes his hands, too. I feel dehumanized at not being able to do anything but offer a few words. Long Boret tries to respond but cannot. Finally he mumbles, “Thank you.” And we must leave him.
As we head back to the hotel on foot, a gray Mercedes approaches us and stops. The driver jumps out and comes toward me, haggard and stuttering, holding some pieces of paper. It is Ang Kheao, a gentle middle-aged man who used to teach at the university and sometimes did translations of documents for me. For the past week, I have had him monitoring government radio broadcasts. His large family is jammed into the car; like everyone else, they are leaving the city under the Khmer Rouge orders of evacuation. It is hard to believe, but in the midst of chaos, with his family in jeopardy, Ang Kheao has kept on working to complete his assignment.
I look at the papers he hands me—it is his translation of the final broadcast of the defeated government, transmitted around noontime. Th
e government announcer had started reading a message saying that talks between the two sides had begun, when a Khmer Rouge official in the booth with him interrupted to say, harshly: “We did not come here to talk. We enter Phnom Penh not for negotiation, but as conquerors.”
Ang Kheao and I say goodbye as if in a ritual. I pay him for his services and offer him my meaningless wishes for good luck. He wishes me good health in return and drives off toward the northwest, up Highway 5. Another friend I shall probably never see again.
It is exactly 5:20 p.m. when we reach the Hotel Le Phnom. It is deserted. Insurgent troops sit in a truck outside the gate, their rocket launchers trained ominously on the building. I run up to the only foreigner in sight, a Swedish Red Cross official standing on the front steps. “What’s going on?” I ask. Peering at me through his monocle, he says calmly: “They gave us half an hour to empty the hotel. They gave no reason.” “When did they give you that half hour?” I ask nervously. “Twenty-five minutes ago,” he replies.
So the overflowing hotel, which the Red Cross had tried to turn into a protected international zone, is no longer a sanctuary, and we must fall back on the contingency plan that has been worked out among the foreigners remaining in Phnom Penh, which is to seek refuge in the French Embassy about a half-mile away.
I have five minutes to collect the loose clothes I left behind as dispensable. Jon Swain, his hotel key confiscated by the Khmer Rouge with his other belongings, will now need them. Also in my room—and more important—is a cupboard full of survival rations, collected judiciously for just such an event: canned meat, tins of fruit and juice, sardines. While I’m in the bedroom throwing the clothes into a suitcase, I yell at Rockoff to empty the cupboard. He packs up a few things—a can of Dinty Moore beef stew, a jar of Lipton’s powdered iced tea, and a tin of wafers—but he completely ignores everything else, including a fruitcake and a large jar of chunky peanut butter. In the days ahead, when we are often hungry, we rag him good-naturedly—but continually—about this lapse.
The Death and Life of Dith Pran Page 3