Survival in the Killing Fields

by Haing Ngor

  ‘In Democratic Kampuchea, under the glorious rule of Angka,’ he said, ‘we need to think about the future. We don’t need to think about the past. You “new” people must forget about the prerevolutionary times. Forget about cognac, forget about fashionable clothes and hairstyles. Forget about Mercedes. Those things are useless now. What can you do with a Mercedes now? You cannot barter for anything with it! You cannot keep rice in a Mercedes, but you can keep rice in a box you make yourself out of palm tree leaf!

  ‘We don’t need the technology of the capitalists,’ he went on. ‘We don’t need any of it at all. Under our new system, we don’t need to send our young people to school. Our school is the farm. The land is our paper. The plough is our pen. We will ‘write’ by ploughing. We don’t need to give exams or award certificates. Knowing how to farm and knowing how to dig canals – those are our certificates,’ he said.

  ‘We don’t need doctors anymore. They are not necessary. If someone needs to have their intestines removed, I will do it.’ He made a cutting motion with an imaginary knife across his stomach. ‘It is easy. There is no need to learn how to do it by going to school.

  ‘We don’t need any of the capitalist professions! We don’t need doctors or engineers. We don’t need professors telling us what to do. They were all corrupted. We just need people who want to work hard on the farm!

  ‘And yet, comrades,’ he said, looking around at our faces, ‘there are some naysayers and troublemakers who do not show the proper willingness to work hard and sacrifice! Such people do not have the proper revolutionary mentality! Such people are our enemies! And comrades, some of them are right here in our midst!’

  There was an uneasy shifting in the audience. Each of us hoped the speaker was talking about somebody else.

  ‘These people cling to the old capitalist ways of thinking,’ he said. ‘They cling to the old capitalist fashions! We have some people among us who still wear eyeglasses. And why do they use eyeglasses? Can’t they see me? If I move to slap your face’ – he swung his open hand – ‘and you flinch, then you can see well enough. So you don’t need glasses. People wear them to be handsome in the capitalistic style. They wear them because they are vain. We don’t need people like that anymore! People who think they are handsome are lazy! They are leeches sucking energy from others!’

  I took off my glasses and put them in my pocket. Around me, others with glasses did the same. My eyesight wasn’t too bad, just a little nearsighted and astigmatic. I could still recognize people at a distance, but missed some of the details.

  The speaker retreated from the microphone and stepped back into the line of cadre dressed like him, with the red kramas around their waists and the red headbands. A hiss in the loudspeaker system gave way to tape-recorded music, a strange march with chimes and gongs finishing out the phrases, the same kind of music I had heard in the exodus from Phnom Penh. Definitely music from Peking, I decided. The cadre began a stylized dance to it, raising their hands and dropping them in unison, as if using hoes. When the second stanza of the music began they changed position and mimed pulling on the handles of giant wrenches, as if tightening bolts on industrial machinery.

  I watched in surprise. I had never seen a dance that glorified farm work and factory labour.

  Another speech began, about the development of the economy and how we were all going to have to work hard for Angka and how laziness was our enemy. ‘Angka says, if you work you eat. If you cannot work you cannot eat. No one can help you.’ The country was going to be self-sufficient in filling all its needs. It was not going to rely on the outside world for anything.

  Then the second dance began, with the same sort of alien music. This time the female comrades danced in unison, moving with masculine vigour instead of feminine grace, mimicking rice harvesters slashing rice stalks with their knives. Then came another propaganda speech, and after that came another dance, one after the next.

  At the end of the last dance all the costumed cadre, male and female, formed a single line and shouted ‘BLOOD AVENGES BLOOD!’ at the top of their lungs. Both times when they said the word ‘blood’ they pounded their chests with their clenched fists, and when they shouted ‘avenges’ they brought their arms out straight like a Nazi salute, except with a closed fist instead of an open hand.

  ‘BLOOD AVENGES BLOOD! BLOOD AVENGES BLOOD! BLOOD AVENGES BLOOD!’ the cadre repeated with fierce, determined faces, thumping their fists on their hearts and raising their fists. They shouted other revolutionary slogans and gave the salutes and finally ended with ‘Long live the Cambodian revolution!’

  It was a dramatic performance, and it left us scared. In our language, ‘blood’ has its ordinary meaning, the red liquid in the body, and another meaning of kinship or family. Blood avenges blood. You kill us, we kill you. We ‘new’ people had been on the other side of the Khmer Rouge in the civil war. Soldiers of the Lon Nol regime, with the help of American weapons and planes, had killed many tens of thousands of Khmer Rouge in battle. Symbolically, the Khmer Rouge had just announced that they were going to take revenge.

  Tonle Batí was my father’s birthplace, and the place where five of his brothers and sisters returned after the fall of Phnom Penh. Papa had been very generous to them during the Lon Nol years, loaning them large amounts of money that they weren’t really expected to repay. He had given the most to his younger half sister Ngor Pheck Kim, the one who had opened the business of selling American military supplies. I had helped Aunt Kim too, by giving her children and her tubercular husband free medical treatment and by allowing her to take my government-subsidized rice supply and sell it for a much higher price on the black market. I had regretted giving her the rice ever since, because I had come to think of her as a grasping, greedy and unpleasant woman.

  In Phnom Penh, Aunt Kim had played up to us and flattered us. In Tonle Batí she played up to a man named Neang, an ‘old’ person who acted as village chief for the Khmer Rouge regime. True, her friendship with him helped us at first. She got him to give my family a house to stay in until we could build houses of our own.

  But Kim made me uneasy. The extended Ngor clan held a meeting with all my uncles, aunts and cousins present, many of whom I didn’t really know. Kim’s husband sat apart from the rest, sickly and skinny, with his long, drawn-out tubercular cough, the phlegm never clearing from his throat. One of my cousins asked the question that was on all our minds, whether it was possible to escape from Khmer Rouge rule and go to another country. Almost all of us wanted to leave Cambodia. ‘Oh no, you can’t go,’ Aunt Kim said, pointing right at me. ‘Ngor Haing here tried to escape, and they caught him. He wanted to sail to Thailand, but he never even got to the seacoast. If they caught him, it is impossible for us.’

  Curious faces turned to me. I kept my own expression blank, but inside I was angry. Foolish woman! I didn’t want anyone but my parents and my brothers to know that I had tried to leave the country. Now all of Tonle Batí would know. And if I couldn’t trust Aunt Kim to keep quiet about my escape attempt, I certainly couldn’t trust her to keep quiet about my being a doctor. If the Khmer Rouge found out about that, it was the end.

  Thinking back on it, it seems likely that Aunt Kim resented the favours my father and I had done for her, because accepting the favours put her in a lower position. In her mind she thought she had repaid the favours, or more than repaid them, by arranging for us to stay in a house on stilts. The new house was similar to our house in Wat Kien Svay Krao, airy and large, with springy floorboards. My family crowded into it and under it as we had before. Next to it, in a neat row, were plots of empty land that had been assigned to each married couple to build on. Aunt Kim and her sons had plots in the same row as my father, my brothers and me. A few days a week, we all got time off from our regular work for the Khmer Rouge to build our own houses. We went off into the forests, my brothers and some of Aunt Kim’s sons and I, chopping down trees and carrying the poles back to Tonle Batí. Each of us made piles of the po
les we had cut.

  One morning Aunt Kim’s pile of poles was missing. Her son Haing Seng, whom I had befriended in Phnom Penh, came up to the house on stilts and pointed his finger rudely at me. Haing Seng was furious. He asked if I knew where the poles were. His tone made his question seem like an accusation.

  ‘Haing Seng,’ I said quietly, ‘do you know who I am? I am the man you used to call “brother.” ’

  ‘No more “brother” business now,’ said Haing Seng. ‘I want to find out who stole the fucking wood.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘no more “brother” business. No problem. But Haing Seng, don’t cuss at me. Go look at my woodpile if you like.’

  We walked to my woodpile about fifty yards away. My pile was bigger than the others because I had cut more trees. He looked at my pile and shoved it over with his foot.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ I demanded.

  ‘Ingrate. Stealing after all we’ve done for you.’

  Tonle Batí was Haing Seng’s home territory. He thought we should behave as if we were obligated to him, because his mother had found us the house. He thought I should show him special respect. But it was too late for that. I shouted that he had no ‘race,’ which means that he didn’t know who his mother and father were – that he was a bastard. In Cambodia this is a deadly accusation.

  He stalked back angrily to tell his mother.

  I restacked the woodpile. My father had heard the argument from the upper storey of the house and was coming down the steps to see what had happened. But my father was old and slow, and my aunt got to me first.

  She slapped my face twice, hard. ‘Why do you tell my child he has no race? I have race! And I am related to you! So why do you say that?’

  I turned to call out to my father, who was huffing and puffing toward us. ‘Papa, you see by your own eyes that she slapped me. I forgive her the first slap because she is your sister. I forgive her the second slap because she is older than me. So I’ll let her get away with it. But’ – I turned to Aunt Kim – ‘don’t do it again.’

  She pointed her finger at me. ‘You came as a stranger to this village!’ she screamed shrilly. ‘If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have land here. You have totally forgotten the good things I did for you.’ She spat at my feet and quoted an old Cambodian proverb: ‘ “The crocodile has lost its lake!” ’

  She meant that I had forgotten the place that had nourished me, and now I was in trouble, like a crocodile far away from the water.

  ‘Are you finished?’ I said. ‘Are you finished cussing me?’

  ‘What is it to you if I’m finished or not?’

  ‘You filthy cunt!’ I roared. ‘What is this about a crocodile that has lost its lake? When you came to Phnom Penh my family fed you. We gave you money. I treated your children. I gave medicine to that miserable husband of yours. I know which crocodile lost her lake!’

  My father finally came up to us, breathing hard. ‘Kim, Kim, my whole family is in your hands,’ he pleaded. ‘We are in your world. If you feel you must do something against my son or my family, we cannot stop you. We are powerless. But do not forget all the good things we did for you.’

  Haing Seng returned with three or four of his brothers, and they were all holding sticks and knives. ‘Come on, motherfucker,’ he said, motioning me toward him, ‘let’s fight.’ I told him to go away. He stood a few yards away, biting his lower lip, his eyes flashing, waving a stick in his hand.

  Where were my own brothers when I needed them? They were nowhere in sight.

  There was a tug on my arm. It was Huoy. ‘Come on, sweet, come on,’ she said, trying to pull me away.

  Her mother took me by the other arm. ‘Don’t fight them,’ she said. ‘If your cousins want the wood, let them take it. No fighting, please.’

  Aunt Kim looked contemptuously at Huoy and said something about a ‘taxi girl.’ I lunged forward, but my father blocked my way, and Huoy and her mother grabbed my arms more tightly and I allowed myself to be restrained. There was a long standoff by my woodpile, trading insults back and forth, until finally Aunt Kim and her sons went away.

  By the time the anger had drained out of me, the sun had risen high. It was another hot, humid day, and I was late for work.

  ‘That’s your sister for you, Papa,’ I said. ‘Feed her, give her money and what does she do? This is her repayment for all your good deeds.’

  My father heaved a deep sigh and said, ‘Son, let it pass. Forget about it.’ But there was worry written on his heavy, intelligent face. He was upset at his sister for being two-faced. Upset at me for endangering the safety of the family. It was bad enough that the Khmer Rouge were threatening to avenge blood with blood. Here were relatives, members of the same clan, on the edge of shedding each other’s blood.

  My father turned away and walked slowly back to the house.

  The local Khmer Rouge administration divided Tonle Batí into sections of ‘old’ and ‘new’ people. They put us in a subsection of two hundred ‘new’ people who were ethnic Chinese, even though my family was a mixture of Chinese and Khmer.

  Our neighbours were former shopkeepers from Phnom Penh. They had pale skins and straight hair, and like most Chinese they privately looked down on those with darker skins, including the Khmer Rouge. Twice a day, at lunch and dinner, we stood in line at a common kitchen built near the temple. We each got a bowl full of salted rice porridge, sometimes with bits of vegetables inside. After eating the meals with a bowl and spoon in Khmer Rouge style, our neighbours went back to their houses and discreetly cooked meals of their own with supplies they had brought from Phnom Penh. They had real rice – steamed rice – and sometimes salted pork or salted fish. They ate with chopsticks, lifting the bowls to their mouths and shovelling the rice in while making a sucking noise, and burping afterward to show their appreciation, in traditional Chinese style.

  The two hundred of us made up one large work crew. Sometimes we went out in the fields, planting a rice crop, but most days we worked on a canal that was supposed to bring irrigation water to the fields. We began digging near the lake, hacking rather lazily at the reddish clay with our hoes, filling baskets with dirt and passing them leisurely from the bottom of the canal to the top. We didn’t work very hard. When there were no soldiers in sight, we didn’t work at all. We just sat down, in the shade if possible, and talked. Our civilian overseer, an ‘old’ person whose way of thinking hadn’t changed with the revolution, sat down and talked with us. He saw no reason why we should work hard in the hot sun, and neither did we. Nobody had, in traditional Cambodia. During break time, which sometimes lasted half the morning, the Chinese shopkeepers complained, ‘Why should we exert ourselves? There is no reason. They give us the same amount of food every day, whether we work hard or relax.’ Our foreman shrugged and said he didn’t understand what was going on any more than we did.

  The regime’s controls were very loose in this period, when the Khmer Rouge were still consolidating their rule and making their plans for reshaping society. In Tonle Batí, only one person of each household had to report for work each day. Huoy could work in my place if I needed to do something else, like cut poles for our house. Furthermore, it was easy to fake being sick. On some days nobody from our household went to work at all.

  I used part of my free time to barter in nearby villages of ‘old’ people. It was exactly what I had done as a child. I walked through the same paths through the forest and found that many of the villagers remembered me, even though it was my first visit to them in almost twenty years. I brought them odds and ends to trade, like the stack of cotton sarongs from my clinic in Phnom Penh, and the silver betel boxes I had taken later from my apartment. The villagers had rice, vegetables and other goods. In the village where I had gotten drunk on palm beer as a child, I traded for a sturdy white plastic tarp, knowing that it would be especially useful during the rains.

  When I wasn’t trading or gathering wild foods, I worked on building my house. I nailed the pole
s together for a clumsy frame. My father, the ex-lumber tycoon, made rectangular panels for the roof and walls by folding palm tree leaf pieces over long slivers of bamboo and sewing the sides together. Papa’s craftsmanship was so much better than mine that it made me feel ashamed. For all my education in the city, for all my training to be a doctor, there were many practical skills I had never learned.

  The finished house was no more than a one-room hut. I made a low platform with a top surface of split bamboo, and laid the white plastic mat on the bamboo for Huoy, her mother and I to sleep on. The three of us got along very well. Huoy and I treated her mother with respect because she was old, and Ma made herself useful around the house with small chores. Once a week or so, Ma went to the evening bonn in my place, so Huoy and I could have privacy. It was the only good thing about these bonns, that because of them Huoy and I could occasionally behave like husband and wife.

  One night when we were all under our large mosquito net together, Huoy between her mother and me, a faint creaking noise came from the pathway outside. Immediately I was wide awake. It was a bicycle, I decided. Then the creaking stopped and there was a soft knock at the door. I got up to peer through the cracks. It was Neang, the chief of the village.

  ‘Yes, what do you want?’ I said.

  ‘Ngor Haing, I know you are a doctor,’ he said. ‘Please help me save my child.’

  I was silent. And afraid.

  ‘I am not a doctor,’ I said at last.

  ‘Your aunt told me you were a doctor. She said you were a doctor in the military, with the rank of captain. I don’t care what you did before, but now my child has a fever. He’s very sick. So come save my baby boy. He’s only eleven months old.’