Survival in the Killing Fields

by Haing Ngor

  Next, the regime gave an order to all the teachers in the country. Huoy heard about it in her teacher training and became very upset. The teachers were supposed to tell their pupils that Sihanouk was a corrupt traitor. The pupils were supposed to repeat this to their parents. And this was where the backlash began.

  All across Cambodia that week, parents scolded and beat their children. It was not just because the parents were loyal to Sihanouk, though they were. It was because Cambodian society was like a family on a big scale. Just like a father who was the head of the family, Sihanouk was the head of Cambodia, the Royal Father. For little children to say that he was bad was disrespectful. Indirectly, it criticized their own fathers.

  Anti-Lon Nol demonstrations began. This time the demonstrators were not students but dark-skinned, tattooed farmers and villagers, wearing shorts and kramas and Buddha charms. Sihanouk was their god-king. Even if he could not be restored to power, they wanted his statues restored. They held signs, and some of them had knives and hatchets and machetes, but they didn’t have guns. They marched from Samrong Yong to Chambak, and in Chambak Lon Nol’s army opened fire on them with machine guns. The dead were carried away in hammocks tied at either end to thick bamboo poles. It was the same in the rest of the country. Near Phnom Penh, the soldiers opened fire on other demonstrators who were waiting next to a bridge. Up the Mekong River in the town of Kompong Cham, an angry mob seized one of Lon Nol’s brothers. They killed him, cut his liver out and forced a restaurant owner to fry the liver and feed the slices to the crowd.

  Surely the country had run amok. Surely peaceful, sleepy Cambodia was being overwhelmed by the forces of kum. But in a few weeks a kind of peace returned. Most Cambodians didn’t dislike the new regime enough to fight it. And practically speaking, there was little to be done. Lon Nol, the former commander of the armed forces, used his military to enforce his rule.

  Unlike Sihanouk, Lon Nol was on friendly terms with the US government. He let it do whatever it wanted. In late April 1970, without even notifying Lon Nol first, American and the South Vietnamese forces invaded an area along the Cambodian-South Vietnamese border to try to destroy the communist sanctuaries.

  At first the invasion was tremendously popular in Phnom Penh; we thought the Americans were strong enough to kick the North Vietnamese out. But we were wrong. After the Americans and South Vietnamese pulled back to South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese remained. A few tall, red-faced, long-nosed American advisers became a daily sight around the central government buildings and in the major hotels, and American equipment began arriving for the Cambodian military in larger and larger quantities.

  For me, not knowing what was to come, the greatest worry was not my country but my family. I wanted my parents to accept Huoy. In the past few years my father had built up his business so much that he bought a second lumber mill. He was exporting lumber to Japan by the shipload. With the new American money in Cambodia there was a huge surge in construction, and that meant more orders too. He started a gasoline-delivery service and bought a fleet of trucks. My father was rich. He chose a girl from another rich Phnom Penh family to marry me.

  I told my father that I had already met a girl I liked. Afraid what he might think, I brought photographs of Huoy to my sister Chhay Thao and asked her to show the pictures to my parents, to test their reactions.

  My parents glanced at the pictures, but they really didn’t care what Huoy looked like or what kind of person she was. They questioned Chhay Thao closely and forced her to admit that Huoy’s family was poor. After that, their minds were closed. They felt they would lose ground socially if I didn’t marry someone from another wealthy family.

  My parents didn’t forbid me to marry Huoy. Then again, they didn’t give their consent, which was necessary by tradition. And even though I was unhappy I didn’t want to argue with them, any more than they wanted to argue with me. This was too important for losing our tempers. The government had left the middle way for the extremes of war, but we would keep the peace in my family. I would negotiate patiently, like Sihanouk used to do before he was deposed.

  By the time of the coup I was fairly sure I wanted to marry Huoy. That my parents didn’t approve of her made me want her even more. Only I didn’t know which was worse: not being married to her already, which would have taken care of some of my frustrations, or that small, nagging doubt. I didn’t know what to do. So I devised another test.

  Huoy and I were alone in her apartment. We hadn’t argued in months. Everything was fine. I told her to sit down. She sat. I paced brusquely back and forth, the way I used to when I was her tutor.

  ‘Today is the last day of our relationship,’ I told her. ‘Today we cut things off. But please’ – Huoy looked startled and scared – ‘just answer my questions carefully. This time you must tell me the truth. Just sit there, stay calm and answer my questions.’

  I was hurting her; I knew that. I loved her very much but didn’t know how to say it. Somehow it was easier to pretend to be angry at her for something she hadn’t done than to come out with the truth.

  ‘Today you were sitting on the lap of a man in a cyclo,’ I said. A cyclo was a bicycle-driven taxi, with the driver pedalling in back and the passengers on a seat in front. ‘He had his hand on your shoulder, and you were talking with him sweetly and laughing. I saw you with my own eyes. It was the same guy you were with before.’

  Huoy’s shoulders were already shaking, and her hand had risen to wipe her eyes.

  I persisted. ‘So now you must tell me the truth. Do you have a boyfriend or not? I don’t care one way or the other. I just want to know the truth. After all, I never said I loved you. And you never said you loved me. If you love someone else, no problem. You are free to love whoever you want.’

  Huoy got up without saying anything and went to the bathroom. When she came back, her head was bowed and she was dabbing at her eyes with tissues. She said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you that I have no boyfriend! Why do you have to keep doing this to me?’

  I kept my face set and my voice angry. ‘You’re playing games! You have somebody else, and you want me to be number two!’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more! It’s too painful.’

  I paced the room back and forth. Then I took a deep breath and let it out. The time had come.

  I moved close to her until my face was next to hers.

  ‘Sweet, I’m sorry,’ I said in a soft voice. ‘Really I am. I promise. I just want to ask you one thing. Just tell me yes or no.’ I moved even closer and murmured in her ear, ‘I’ll tell my parents we want to get married. What do you say, yes or no? Just one word, yes or no.’

  For a few seconds she disbelieved me. Then when I told her I loved her, she took my ear and twisted it, fiercely. And hugged me. She didn’t say yes with words, but she meant yes, and she was laughing even as the tears streamed down her cheeks.

  We embraced. Now I was 100 per cent sure that this was the woman I wanted to marry. If she could stand up to my tricks, she would stay with me through any troubles that might come our way.

  We heard her mother’s footsteps in the hallway. I gave Huoy a last hug and told her to go take a shower so her mother wouldn’t suspect. When Huoy’s mother came in she and I had a polite conversation about unimportant matters. I asked her to accompany Huoy and me to a restaurant, but as always she decided to stay at home.

  At the restaurant I asked Huoy what we were going to do about her mother. Huoy put her glass down and tried not to smile.

  ‘I already told her that you love me,’ said Huoy.

  ‘But . . . I hadn’t told you yet.’

  ‘I just knew,’ said Huoy lightly. ‘And she knew even before I told her.’

  How embarrassing. How very embarrassing. They understood how I felt even before I did.

  What a fool I had been!

  I slapped my forehead with my palm.

  Huoy and I went for a walk along the river. It was the dry season, and the water had droppe
d far down the sloping concrete embankment. We could see big cargo boats and ferries and the huge modern span of the bridge built with Japanese foreign aid, and dozens of sampans plying the water. We saw all those things, but we didn’t really see them. They existed as a backdrop for our conversation.

  ‘You and I,’ I said as we strolled along, ‘we must build honneur and bonheur together. We have a big responsibility, to take care of each another and create happiness in our families. We have a responsibility for tomorrow.’ Huoy didn’t say yes to this but she was smiling. In Khmer, ‘tomorrow’ also means ‘the future.’ We walked on thinking about our tomorrows together.

  ‘Please understand about my family,’ I went on. ‘I have always had problems with them. It is like a war that never stops. They are rich now. They are upset because you are not rich. Tomorrow, someday, we will be married, but at least we already know what is in our hearts.’

  Huoy nodded, smiling again.

  ‘I know my parents very well,’ I said. ‘We must work on them gradually to earn their trust. So if I ask you to do something for my parents, whatever it is, please do it. Do it for us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Huoy said. ‘Yes, I will.’ She understood this, that we could be happy only if we made our families happy. In our culture, the family as a whole is more important than the individual family member.

  We walked along the promenade, not noticing anyone else. I had my hand around her shoulders and then on her waist and then her shoulders again. Her long hair blew across my chest in the breeze. The moon reflected off the river, and boats shuttled here and there, dark shapes on the surface of the water.

  We walked to the Royal Palace and sat on a bench, looking at the river. We talked in low, contented voices about our happy years ahead.

  4

  Civil War

  After the coup, Sihanouk could have chosen to live the rest of his life in his villa in France. It would have been better for Cambodia if he had. But he didn’t. The campaign to denounce him and events like the burial of his statues in pig manure injured his public image, or face.

  Face is the mask of status and dignity that Asians show to others, who are all wearing masks of their own. It is what makes Cambodia such a polite society in normal times: I respect your face, you respect mine, and we keep our real feelings about each other hidden. In our language, to insult someone publicly is, in the literal meaning, to ‘break his face’. Sihanouk was very proud. He refused to be ‘broken’.

  So, not long after the coup, a familiar, high-pitched voice came out of the radio. It was the Royal Father, speaking over Radio Peking. He explained that he had been a victim of a group of ‘arch-reactionaries’. After receiving power and favours from him, he said, they had showed their gratitude by insulting and humiliating him, overthrowing and condemning him as a man who sold out his country. His voice rose even higher as he warmed to his subject. ‘Such accusations by these ungrateful, ambitious, power-hungry, money-hungry cowards, who didn’t hesitate to stab me in the back,’ Sihanouk shouted, ‘are unimportant! My personal indignation cannot be compared with the magnitude of my concern for the sad fate of our country!

  ‘These traitors have thrown the country – which had a good reputation as an island of peace – into the furnace of the Americans’ war! The freedom and solidarity of the nation have been completely destroyed. Millions of our fellow countrymen will rise up to liquidate the reactionary group of Lon Nol and Sirik Matak and their American masters!’ he shouted. ‘And they will build, after their final victory, a new Cambodia with the power vested in the people’s hands!’

  Sihanouk announced he was setting up a government-in-exile:

  ‘I call on all my children, both military and civilian, who cannot stand to remain under the traitors’ power, and who are courageous and determined to liberate the fatherland, to fight our enemy. If the children already have weapons, I will bring the ammunition and even new weapons to strengthen them. If the children have no weapons and want to undergo training, I will take measures to help them leave for the military school, deep in the jungle to avoid enemy detection. For those children who are in Europe and wish to serve, come to Moscow or Peking to see me. Long live Cambodia!’

  Sihanouk had always called the citizens of Cambodia his ‘children’. He had been saying it for so many years that I took it for granted. But the jargon he used now, like ‘reactionary’ and ‘liberate’, rang new and strange to my ears. Sihanouk had always leaned to the left. Now he had joined the left, and not just the powers of Moscow and Peking. Far more remarkable, he had joined forces with his former enemies, the Cambodian communists. For years he had persecuted them relentlessly, throwing them in jail, having them tortured, driving them out into the forests. He had shown them no mercy. He had given them their nickname, the ‘red Khmers’, or in French, les Khmers Rouges.

  Like the coup itself, Sihanouk’s announcement was a sudden about-face and one that could bring no possible good to the country. For him to go over to the communists, even as a figurehead, would give the Khmer Rouge instant credibility. If he said to go to the jungle and join the communists, many Cambodians would obey, particularly the rural people who had worshipped him. They would do anything he asked. Perhaps even more than the coup itself, the date that Sihanouk joined his old enemies marked a turning point for Cambodia. It was the day when the country began its long, ruinous slide into civil war.

  But there were at most a few thousand Khmer Rouge in early 1970. They were nowhere near Phnom Penh, and there weren’t enough of them to be a serious threat to the new Lon Nol regime. The threat came from the North Vietnamese, whose soldiers were as tough as any in the world.

  Until the coup, the North Vietnamese had about forty thousand troops in Cambodia, mostly in the eastern part of the country, near the border. Usually they stayed away from the forces of the Cambodian government, so as not to cause trouble. The overthrow and the brief American invasion along the border changed everything. Pushed back from their border sanctuaries by the Americans, the North Vietnamese spread into territory where they had never been before. When they met units of the Phnom Penh government’s military, they attacked. And they almost always won. Within a few months they controlled half the nation.

  Until the coup, Lon Nol had been Sihanouk’s commander-in-chief. Sam Kwil, the newspaper reporter, told me, ‘The only reason Lon Nol was promoted was that Sihanouk knew he was stupid. Sihanouk didn’t see him as a rival. And it really is true that Lon Nol is incompetent. He takes civilians off the streets, gives them twenty-four hours of training, personally sees to it that they’re given Buddha amulets to wear and sends them off to fight the North Vietnamese.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Buddha amulets?’ I said. ‘You’re Buddhist. I’m Buddhist.’

  ‘You work in the hospitals,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Do you see any proof that Buddha amulets can stop bullets from an AK-47?’ Under his fierce glare I dropped my eyes and admitted that badly wounded soldiers with religious tattoos and charms came into the hospital all the time. ‘Lon Nol’s crazy,’ Kwil said earnestly. ‘I know. I’ve followed him around. He’s going to get a lot of innocent people killed, and then he’s going to rely on the Americans for weapons and air strikes to keep the regime from falling. Take my word for it, my friend – he’s stupid. Stupid, I tell you! Stupid! Stupid! He started a war but he will not be able to defend the country!’

  Sam Kwil got carried away sometimes – compared to him, I was as calm and reasonable as a monk – but his observations were almost always right. In Phnom Penh during the first years of the war we saw American planes every day, flying in from their bases in South Vietnam and Thailand. Transports landed at the airport with supplies and advisers. Tactical fighters and bombers roared off toward the horizon. If you didn’t know what the fighters were used for, you would think them beautiful, like little silver darts travelling incredibly fast and making a loud noise out of proportion to their size. At night, sometimes, in Huoy’s apartment, the teacups rattled on
the shelves and a sound came from far away like the ocean’s roar, only much lower in pitch and barely audible – bombs from B-52s, exploding in the countryside. There were other planes. The Americans gave the Cambodians propeller-driven T-28 fighter-bombers and some transports. In January 1971, the North Vietnamese blew up three quarters of the Cambodian air force’s planes at the airport, but the Americans sent in replacements.

  Though the North Vietnamese mounted occasional rocket and mortar attacks on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the war became immediate and real for me on Pchum Ben, the Buddhist day of prayer for the souls of our ancestors, in 1972. Huoy and I were sitting on the floor of a temple, praying with hundreds of people around us, when the explosion came. Everybody ran from the temple in a panic. Out in the street someone told us that the Chhruoy Changwa Bridge had been blown up. This was a huge, ultramodern bridge across the Tonle Sap River at the northern end of the city, built with Japanese aid. We usually called it the Japanese bridge. When we got near the river we could see that the middle spans had fallen down. There was nothing left but immense standing columns and a long stretch of empty water between. Then automatic-rifle fire broke out in another direction, inside Phnom Penh, where guerrillas were attacking a government military position. The government soldiers counterattacked, and the shooting went on for hours.

  The following day, the Lon Nol soldiers laid out the corpses of the North Vietnamese and stood over them like hunting trophies. The soldiers grinned proudly, as if they had successfully defended Phnom Penh from the enemy. And when I saw their false pride I felt I finally understood what war is about. Men fight for glory or ideals, but the result is not glorious or idealistic. The main result, besides the suffering, is that civilization is set back many years. Take the Japanese bridge as a practical example: when it was built, travel between Phnom Penh and north-central Cambodia became much faster and easier than before. It was a great improvement. People like me could drive to the ruins of Angkor within hours instead of days. Merchants prospered from the new commerce. So did farmers, who began to grow new crops for the Phnom Penh markets. Relatives visited one another more often. Everyone benefited. The bridge brought the country closer together. Now the largest bridge in the country had been destroyed. We would have to cross the river slowly, on boats, if we crossed at all. Wars do that – they bring societies back into much more primitive ways of living.