By midmorning, his illness was definitely diagnosed as malaria. Prescriptions were written for chloroquine and primaquine, and we took him home.
Later he told me: “When we were in the hospital that night, you were exhausted, but still you take care of me. I look at your face and I think, you and I, it seems like we are born from the same mother. I kept talking about everything else,” he explained, “because it was very difficult to tell you these things.”
***
A few days later it is time for another difficult parting, for I must return to New York, while he recovers his health.
Even though the leave-taking is only temporary, it is disquieting nonetheless for both of us. It is my turn now to manufacture diverting conversation, choosing a tone of avuncular guidance, as I tell him to follow the doctor’s orders, open a checking account, take long walks, eat well, et cetera.
Then, in a futile attempt to hide my feelings and lighten the moment, I tease him about our old argument in Phnom Penh on that day when I pushed him hard to tell me “the whole truth,” an argument that had since become a kind of special folklore between us. That argument had ended with Pran saying he could not tell me the entire truth, only eighty percent of it because “twenty percent I have to keep for myself.”
“Is it still only eighty percent?” I ask now, gibing at him fondly.
“No, not anymore,” he says, in a tone as solemn as mine was airy. “There is nothing to hide. No more secrets. No more camouflage. We both have the same blood.”
Pran interviewing a government soldier about the intensive American bombing as Schanberg takes notes, early August 1973 (the bombing ended by order of Congress on August 15). The soldier, like most members of the Cambodian army, including its highest generals, wears a scarf filled with good-luck amulets.
Schanberg crossing the Mekong with government troops and civilians to get to Neak Luong, 1973. (Sarah Webb Barrell)
Keo Chan, a government soldier, weeps for his wife and ten of his eleven children, killed in Neak Luong by American bombs while he was on sentry duty a few miles away, early August 1973. (Sydney H. Schanberg)
Schanberg watching a folk play performed on a flatbed truck in the heart of the city during a Buddhist religious holiday, October 1973. (Sarah Webb Barrell)
Man with child at Oudong, twenty miles northwest of Phnom Penh, before a gilt Buddha in the historic temple there, partially destroyed during the war, July 1974. (Sydney H. Schanberg)
A boy soldier in the government army—many children joined up, and lied about their ages—in November 1974. (Sydney H. Schanberg)
A farmer’s wife holds plasma for her husband while they await helicopter evacuation from Neak Luong, under heavy bombardment and surrounded by the Khmer Rouge, early 1975. (Sydney H. Schanberg)
At the city limits of Phnom Penh, a woman with her pig and other belongings flees the advancing Khmer Rouge and its rockets and mortar attacks; a rubber-sandal factory burns in the background. (Sydney H. Schanberg)
Acting Ambassador Thomas Enders greets Prime Minister Long Boret at an official ceremony.
Children watch the evacuation of Americans from Phnom Penh at the Marines’ improvised helicopter pad, April 12, 1975. (Dith Pran)
Ambassador John Gunther Dean, in a dark suit and carrying the American Embassy flag, with Deputy Chief of Mission Robert Keeley behind him, and with bodyguards and Marines, leaving Phnom Penh in the helicopter evacuation, April 12, 1975. (Ennio Iacobucci)
As the Khmer Rouge break through the capital’s final defenses, villagers and country people flood to the Red Cross’s improvised “protected international zone” at the Hotel Le Phnom; they were taken in and sheltered there after being disarmed, April 16, 1975. (Ennio Iacobucci)
A jeep loaded with civilians, including monks, one of them seated on the windshield waving a white flag of surrender, moves down a Phnom Penh street to welcome Khmer Rouge troops, April 17, 1975. (Ennio Iacobucci)
Pran talking to a smiling Khmer Rouge soldier—the only cordial encounter he or Schanberg had with the Khmer Rouge—in front of the post office, April 17, 1975. (Sydney H. Schanberg)
A Khmer Rouge soldier in Phnom Penh, in front of the Ministry of Information, April 17, 1975. (Sydney H. Schanberg)
French-Cambodian mixed families living on the grounds of the French Embassy after April 17, 1975. (Ennio Iacobucci)
Western journalists and relief officials listen to BBC World Service radio news at the French Embassy after April 17, 1975. (Ennio Iacobucci)
Schanberg and other journalists who had witnessed the surrender of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge cross into Thailand; Sylvain Julienne, a French freelance photographer, carries his adopted Cambodian daughter, May 3, 1975. (AP Radio)
Detail of mass grave at Cheung Ek, in Kandal Province, where more than 8,000 bodies were discovered, 1981. (David Hawk)
The two photographs of Pran that Schanberg circulated by the dozen to relief officials along the Thai-Cambodian border and in refugee camps: (here) Pran wearing a krama, the traditional Cambodian scarf, at Kompong Som, a tourist center and Cambodia’s only deep-water port, late 1973 (Sarah Webb Barrell).
A portrait photo taken at the My Ho photo shop in Phnom Penh, 1974.
Im Prem, Pran’s paternal uncle (left), and Dith Proeung, his father (right), in front of his parents’ house in Siem Reap, early 1974.
Lieutenant Colonel Dith Prun, Pran’s oldest brother, early 1975.
Meak Ep, Pran’s mother, sixty-seven, on the verandah of the family home in Siem Reap, early 1984.
Pran and Schanberg as they leave the Surin refugee camp, where they had been reunited the day before, October 10, 1979.
Pran reunited with his family in San Francisco, October 19, 1979.
Pran and his family in Brooklyn, December 1984: (left to right) Pran, Ser Moeun, Titonel, Titonath, Hemkary, and Titony.
Pran and Schanberg, January 8, 1985. (John McDonnell, The Washington Post)
Louis Schanberg with his son and Pran at the premiere of The Killing Fields, October 30, 1984.
The Death and Life of Dith Pran Page 8