Survival in the Killing Fields

by Haing Ngor

  The orderly left by the front door.

  The operating room was quiet. We heard the sounds of gunfire coming from the outside in several directions. Pok Saradath, a longtime friend and colleague, worked beside me, dressed as I was in gown and mask. He made the long incision for the laparotomy and we began talking in the cheerfully obscene language that had always been part of the operating room protocol.

  ‘. . . son-of-a-bitch Lon Nol government,’ Saradath said. ‘If Lon Nol is incapable, why doesn’t he just step down to make life easier for us . . ?’

  I glanced up from cleaning the exterior puncture wounds. I raised my right arm and shook it uncontrollably in my imitation of Lon Nol, and Saradath understood, his eyes glinting with humour above his gauze mask. ‘Because if he steps anyplace he falls,’ I said.

  ‘And why do you think he is going to fall, medically speaking? You know, I heard he has tertiary syphilis,’ said Saradath.

  ‘No, he fucks too much. Damaged his spinal cord.’

  ‘That corrupt son-of-a-bitch. He holds on to power and everybody else suffers. All the families separated because of the war and nobody making a living.’

  ‘Not true. It is very easy to make a living if you don’t mind threatening innocent people and demanding their money. There are some very good jobs to be had around Phnom Penh. If you are a policeman or an army officer you can get rich very quickly.’

  The orderly poked his head between the swinging doors. ‘I have news: the soldiers near the bridge have surrendered. Everybody is waving white flags. On the streets, on the buildings, everywhere,’ he said. He withdrew.

  We kept on working. The room was quiet. Through the walls we could still hear the boom of artillery.

  The orderly stuck his head in the room again. ‘The Khmer Rouge are now in Phnom Penh!’

  I had removed the shrapnel from the patient, and Saradath and I sewed up the wounds in the intestinal walls. I tied off a suture and got a different-size needle from the nurse and then bent back over the patient.

  ‘Well,’ said Saradath, ‘let the Khmer Rouge come in and get it over with, so we can reunite with our families.’

  ‘Anything would be better than this,’ I said. ‘Anything at all.’

  The orderly came in and said he had seen two young Khmer Rouge jump over the fence and run into the hospital compound, one with an M-16, the other with an AK-47.

  There were perhaps a dozen people in the operating room. I told them, ‘If the Khmer Rouge come in, just be quiet and be careful. We don’t know what they’re going to do.’

  Footsteps sounded out in the hall and the doors slammed open.

  ‘Don’t move!’ an angry, high-pitched voice yelled. ‘Don’t move! Raise your hands!’

  I was facing the wall, standing over the patient. I put my needle down and slowly turned around with my hands raised. There was blood on my gloves, but everyone else had their hands above their heads and there was blood on some of their gloves too.

  The guerrilla wore a ragged black shirt, black trousers and black rubber sandals made from automobile tyres. He was dark-skinned, a racially pure Khmer holding a US-made M-16 rifle. The doors slammed open again and another guerrilla came in dressed the same but with a Chinese-made AK-47. He pressed the barrel of the AK-47 to my temple.

  ‘You the doctor?’ he demanded. ‘You the doctor?’

  ‘No, the doctor left by the back door a minute ago,’ I said. ‘You just missed him.’

  ‘Liar!’ He had fiercely bulging eyes and a high voice.

  He was, at most, twelve years old.

  I didn’t move a muscle.

  He pushed the string of my green operating cap with the barrel of his rifle. The words came out in a burst. ‘You liar! If I don’t find the doctor I’ll come back and kill you!’

  I stayed calm on the outside. All my instincts told me that this was a time to stay absolutely still and show no fear.

  The fierce look in his eyes changed to something like uncertainty.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said to the other guerrilla. The two of them left by the back door.

  We lowered our hands. The nurses were crying.

  ‘Boss, we have to leave,’ one of the nurses said to me. ‘If they don’t find a doctor outside they’ll kill us.’

  I thought for a second. The patient was lying on the table behind me, unconscious. His intestines were back in place, but we hadn’t finished sewing him up.

  ‘Be quiet,’ I told them. ‘Nobody move.’

  We heard the slapping of the guerrillas’ sandals recede along the hallway. Thoughts occurred to me faster than I could put them into words. It was like being surrounded in a gang fight as a boy. All of my illusions were gone. They had broken into the sanctuary of the operating room. They were stronger, and we could only try to outwit them. Or evade them.

  Half a minute passed. No more footsteps.

  ‘Okay,’ I told the room, ‘everybody has to leave right now. Go now and don’t wait. The patient stays.’

  Saradath whirled on me. ‘You son-of-a-bitch!’ he said. ‘We have to finish the patient first!’

  ‘Finish what, mother-fuck? We have to leave now. Get out of here!’ And though Saradath and I had the same rank, he gave in because I sounded as though I knew what I was doing. Everybody scurried out of the room except for Saradath and me. We took a last look at the poor young soldier on the table with pale, waxen skin and the long, open incision in his belly. He was going to die. Saradath and I left the room by the front doors and walked rapidly down the corridor together. The corridor was the same as always, yet it looked different, and I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I had my arm around my friend’s shoulder and I slapped the back of his head and he slapped mine. We got back to the scrub room and my trousers were hanging there but my shirt was missing. Somebody had stolen it. Pok Saradath’s clothes were there. There was a woman’s blouse on another hook with short tails and three-quarter-length sleeves.

  ‘You don’t want this, do you?’ I said. He shook his head and I put it on. We dressed quickly.

  I went to my office in another wing of the hospital. Everybody there had gone. I grabbed my briefcase and went outside. My Vespa was parked there on its kickstand with the red cross taped on the back of the seat. I put my key in the ignition.

  Guerrillas in ragged black uniforms swarmed over the hospital grounds. Most of them held AK-47s, the communist assault rifle with its ammunition clip unmistakably curving out from the underside of the stock in the shape of a banana. They had the same fierce, angry expressions as the two in the operating room. I paused to look at them. There was something excessive about their anger. Something had happened to these people in their years in the forests. They had been transformed. They were not like the Cambodians I had known, shy and a bit lazy and polite.

  ‘Get out!’ they shouted. ‘Get out! Everybody has to move! Now!’

  I started the Vespa and rode it several hundred yards to the gate. The security guard was gone and the gate was closed. I turned off the engine, opened the gate myself and walked through.

  7

  The Wheel of History

  Thousands and thousands and thousands of people filled the street, plodding south, where the Khmer Rouge told them to go. Thousands more stood in windows and doorways, unwilling to leave, or else came out from their houses offering flowers or bowls of rice, which some of the guerrillas accepted with shy country smiles and others coldly ignored. Car horns blared. From distant parts of the city came the chattering of assault rifles and the occasional boom of artillery. The fighting wasn’t over, but white bedsheets hung from the buildings as signs of truce and surrender.

  The Khmer Rouge strode through the boulevard, tired and bad-tempered, armed with AK-47 rifles and clusters of round, Chinese-made grenades on their belts. Their black uniforms were dusty and muddy. They had been fighting all night; some had waded through ditches. A few specialists carried the big tubular rocket-propelled grenade launchers on their shoulders
, accompanied by soldiers carrying the elongated grenades in backpacks. Here and there were mit neary, the female comrades, firing pistols in the air and shouting harshly at the civilians to hurry up and leave. They were young, the Khmer Rouge, most of them in their teens. Their skins were very dark. Racially they were pure Khmers, children of the countryside. To them Phnom Penh was a strange, foreign place.

  Directly in front of me a guerrilla, with the wide-eyed smile of a boy with a new plaything, tried to take a motorcycle for a joyride. He revved the throttle to maximum rpm. As he released the clutch, the front wheel skitted left and right and then the machine lurched forward from under him and into the crowd. He picked himself up from the pavement and walked off scowling, leaving the bike on its side and pedestrians holding their legs in pain.

  I put my Vespa in neutral and walked it into the street. No sense starting the engine and wasting gasoline. The crowd was shoulder to shoulder. There was no chance of getting through.

  A Khmer Rouge shouted, ‘You have to leave the city for at least three hours. You must leave for three hours. You must leave for your own safety, because we cannot trust the Americans. The Americans will drop bombs on us very soon. Go now, and do not bother to bring anything with you!’

  Was I supposed to believe him? I wondered. After what had happened in the hospital? My instincts told me no. The guerrillas on the street had the same fierce expressions as those who had burst into the operating room. They looked totally unlike normal Cambodians, except for their dark, round faces. And yet a part of me wanted to believe that they were telling the truth.

  The harsh voice yelled again, ‘If you have weapons, put them on the sidewalk. Let Angka collect them. The war is over now and there is no more need for weapons. The weapons are the property of Angka!’

  I glanced to the side of the street. Sure enough, a few trusting civilians came out of their houses and put their AK-47s, their M-16s, their pistols on the sidewalk. I wondered: Who is Angka? Or what is Angka?

  In the Khmer language, angka means ‘organization’. Angka was the Organization-logically, I supposed, the Khmer Rouge command group. What did that imply? That the guerrillas were going to try to organize the Cambodians? That wasn’t likely. If there was ever a disorganized people, it was us. Peasants who farmed when and where they wanted, employees who were casual about showing up for work, a society so laissez-faire that nothing ever got done. Even Sihanouk hadn’t been able to organize us when he was our ruler, and he had tried. Where was Sihanouk now? I wondered. Was he part of Angka? Wasn’t he the leader of the Khmer Rouge? When was he going to come back to Phnom Penh? Why hadn’t they mentioned his name?

  All around, people muttered, ‘Why evacuate the city? We don’t want to go. The war is over. The Americans are not going to bomb us. We don’t want to leave.’ They walked and stopped, took two steps and stopped again. Those with motorcycles pushed them by the handlebars, as I did. Those with cars pushed them with the help of friends or relatives. Nobody started their engines. There was no room on the road to drive. There was no gasoline to spare. When could we buy gasoline again? What would become of my gasoline delivery company?

  I trudged south with the flow of the traffic, in the general direction of my clinic. A contingent of Khmer Rouge approached from the opposite direction. In front of them walked a frightened-looking man whose hands were tied behind his back. Shoving him forward was a mit neary with a pistol. She was a large-breasted woman who had done everything possible to appear unfeminine. She wore her blouse buttoned to her neck and her sleeves rolled up to the forearms and a checkered krama wrapped around her head. She was as dusty and angry as any of her male comrades. As she neared me, she waved the pistol in the air and addressed the crowd:

  ‘The wheel of history is turning,’ she declared. ‘The wheel of history rolls on. If you use your hands to try to stop the wheel, they will be caught in the spokes. If you use your feet to try to stop it, you will lose them too. There is no turning back. World history will not wait. The revolution is here. You must make your choice, to follow Angka or not. If you choose not to follow Angka, we will not be responsible for your safety.’

  She gave the man in front of her another contemptuous shove. He staggered, the whites of his eyes showing his fear. As they went past me, she waved her pistol again and shouted, ‘Everybody is equal now! Everybody is the same! No more sompeahing! No more masters and no more servants! The wheel of history is turning! You must follow Angka’s rules!’

  I pushed on with the Vespa. Whatever hopes I had for the Khmer Rouge were fading fast. They were supposed to liberate us, not tie us up and make threats about obeying Angka’s rules. Whoever Angka was.

  The air was stifling. The streets were filled from one side to the other. We were no longer residents of Phnom Penh. We were refugees, carrying whatever we could. The wealthy pushed cars or flatbottomed handcarts, with sacks of rice, suitcases, pots and pans, televisions and electric fans. The poor carried nothing but their rice pots. Grocers carried groceries, booksellers pulled carts with piles of books. It was strange, I thought, the things people treasured. Televisions and fans wouldn’t be much use outside of Phnom Penh, where there was no electricity.

  A few blocks from the hospital I came to a private medical clinic similar to mine. An exodus of the sick and crippled had begun. All the patients were leaving by order of the Khmer Rouge. A one-legged soldier hobbled on crutches, holding his spoon and mess kit in his fingers. Behind him another man with a bandage over his eyes and amputated legs was being wheeled along the sidewalk on a hospital bed, the IV bag still hanging from the bed rack. Slowest of all was an elderly woman who clutched the front of her sarong with one hand, to keep it from becoming unfastened, and kept her other hand on the shoulder of a female companion for support. The old woman was saying in a feeble voice, ‘I’m very tired. Please stay here, I’m very tired. I can’t go on.’ Her companion, who was holding the old woman’s IV bag, said, ‘Try your best, dear. Keep walking. Come on now, walk as best as you can. I know you’re tired, but you can make it.’

  I asked the old woman what kind of illness she had. She said she didn’t know, she hadn’t brought her medical papers with her. Her friend explained that she had a pain in her stomach.

  ‘Let her rest first,’ I said to the second woman. ‘Don’t rush her. Let her take a few steps at a time, if that’s all she can do. But if you can, take her to the Sokchea clinic, next to Tuol Tumpoung market. I’ll be there.’

  Standing in a doorway, I reached for the woman’s wrist, to take her pulse. It was faint and slow. Then I pulled her eyelid down to check on her blood supply. The tissue was pale and anaemic; if she had been healthy it would have been red. A short young Khmer Rouge with fierce eyes and muddy black clothes came up to us. He shouted, ‘Go! Don’t stay here!’ in a high-pitched child’s voice. He was not much taller than his rifle.

  I said politely, ‘Yes, we’re leaving.’ The child-soldier walked on, yelling, ‘You have to leave! Go now!’ in his high voice to people in other doorways. He was a few steps away when he raised his AK-47 and fired a burst of ammunition in the air. The old woman trembled and I had to steady her. He walked farther down the sidewalk, yelling and firing in the air.

  I gave the two women the directions to my clinic and wished them luck. When I walked on, I was in a terrible mood. Why were the Khmer Rouge making patients leave the hospitals and clinics? What was the advantage of that? Maybe the Khmer Rouge had some reason for emptying the city, but they didn’t have to hurry the weak and sick. A picture flashed into my mind of the operating room in the hospital. Of a patient on the table, with a long incision in his abdomen. Of the young soldier I had left to die.

  I turned west and then south onto Monivong Boulevard, one of the main avenues of the city. Here traffic was even slower. The mass of people shuffled onward, but it was difficult to move. Around me on all sides were feet and shoulders and heads. Khmer Rouge stood on every street corner, urging us on, and more Khmer Rouge rod
e scowling past in jeeps and open trucks, waving pieces of red cloth and red handkerchiefs tied to their bayonets. The civilians in the street wore white armbands and headbands and white towels around their waists. There were white handkerchiefs tied to the radio antennas of their cars, and white sheets hung from the windows of the houses. But already the earlier joy, that the war was over, had disappeared, and its place was taken by the smell of fear. On the sidewalk, a man changed from his Lon Nol army uniform into black pajamas.

  Something beyond understanding was happening. Between our hopes of liberation and the scowls on the guerrillas’ faces, between their order to leave the city ‘for three hours’ and knowing that it took three hours to move three blocks was a chasm that our minds could not cross. We could only sense that some enormous event was unfolding and that we were part of it, and our fates were no longer ours to choose.

  I saw an opening in the crowd, ducked into a side street and parked the Vespa, locking both the steering and the ignition. The clinic could wait. I had to look for Huoy and my parents.

  I walked on side streets, then north on Monivong. Without the scooter it was easier to manoeuvre, walking against the flow, dodging the Khmer Rouge, staying out of their sight. But the same bobbing heads and shoulders that hid me made it harder to see. I kept scanning the thousands and thousands of faces. No Huoy. No father and mother either.

  I saw families going around blocks on all four sides, walking around and around to give the appearance of moving, hoping that the ‘three hours’ of evacuation would soon end. The women wept, searching for lost children. The men darted back into their houses, remembering another pile of clothing, another sack of rice, another hidden cache of gold. They piled suitcases in the trunks of their cars, ran from their cars back to their houses and back to the cars again and shouted at each other to hurry along.