Survival in the Killing Fields

by Haing Ngor

  But when I looked more closely, the illusion fell apart. The people working in the canal were tired and malnourished and their clothes were torn. Just like me. Their hoes rose and fell slowly, without energy, and their faces expressed a terrible futility and sorrow.

  That’s all it took, a moment’s glance, to know that the country had turned in the wrong direction.

  The Khmer Rouge pushed their own beliefs to extremes, and in doing so turned them into lies. They wanted us to work – then they worked us so hard that we produced less and less, because we were weak. They wanted to purify the country of everything that was not Khmer. Buddha was an outsider, from India, so they destroyed the Buddhist temples. The cities were too tainted with Western imperialist ways, so they made us leave. They wanted to eliminate everything that was not Cambodian. But they were hypocrites. Except for their dark skins, everything about the Khmer Rouge was alien, from China. They borrowed their ideology from Mao Tse-tung, like the concept of the great leap forward. Sending the intellectuals to the countryside to learn from the peasants was an idea of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Their AK-47s and their olive green caps and their trucks were Chinese. Even the music they played from the loudspeakers was Chinese, with Khmer words.

  The Khmer Rouge’s greatest strength was propaganda. They knew that a small lie can be caught and that a big lie is easier to get away with. Their system was so different from anything we had known before, and so complete, that we gave in without really knowing how to resist. Even if we had been allowed to speak out publicly, which we weren’t – and if we did, they tied us up and marched us away – there was something inadequate about trying to counter their words with arguments of our own. It just didn’t help. For example, I could say to Huoy, in a whisper, that any government that oppressed as many of its people as the Khmer Rouge would eventually weaken itself. I could say that to her, and believe it, and she could agree with me, but it wouldn’t do us any good. When the whispering was over the regime was still there and we were still digging with hoes and feeling tired and hungry and not even able to remember the last time we felt any different. There was no way out of the situation. We were only left knowing in our bones that we were being abused.

  There was a medical clinic on the front lines. The nurses there used dirty needles and didn’t care one way or another if their patients died. At mealtime during a visit there, I heard one nurse calling out to another, ‘Have you fed the war slaves yet?’ It was a chance remark, but it stuck in my ears because it explained the Khmer Rouge better than anything else. All the talk about being comrades in a classless society, building the nation with our bare hands and struggling to achieve independence-sovereignty didn’t mean anything. The Khmer Rouge had beaten us in the civil war. We were their war slaves. That was all there was to it. They were taking revenge. And on the front lines, day and night, they ran our lives with bells.

  18

  Bells

  They rang the first bell at four o’clock in the morning.

  Still exhausted from the day before, Huoy and I rose out of our hempen hammock, got to our feet, rubbed our eyes, groped for the water jar and washed our faces.

  Around us other couples, seen as silhouettes moving against the starry sky, did the same, or else tried to steal another few minutes of sleep. But there was no escaping the bell. It was a penetrating, relentless noise. A command to be obeyed.

  After the bell fell silent, a hiss came out of the loudspeakers by the common kitchen, followed by the music of the national anthem. A chorus of men’s, women’s and children’s voices sang:

  Bright red blood that covers towns and plains

  Of Kampuchea, our motherland,

  Sublime blood of workers and peasants,

  Sublime blood of revolutionary men and women fighters!

  The blood, changing into unrelenting hatred

  And resolute struggle

  On April Seventeenth, under the flag of the revolution,

  Frees us from slavery!

  Long live, long live, Glorious April Seventeenth!

  Glorious victory with greater significance

  Than the age of Angkor Wat . . .

  Another day on the front lines had begun.

  At four thirty they rang the bell again. Slow, separate beats to start with, then gradually faster until the notes ran together: DING . . . DING . . . DING . . . ding, ding, ding, ding, ding . . . ding-dingding-dingdingdingdingding!!! Then a pause, and they rang it again. Another pause, and they rang it a third time: DING . . . DING . . . DING . . . ding, ding, ding, ding . . . ding-ding-ding-ding-dingdingdingdingding!

  Always, they rang the bell in series of three. Before the revolution the monks had beat their drums in the same pattern, dull, single booms at first and then faster and faster into a drum roll, then a pause and then starting over again, in threes. With that signal, the monks had called the faithful to prayer. Unconsciously, perhaps, the cadre banging his stick against the metal car wheel hanging near the common kitchen was replaying a rhythm of his youth. Or perhaps, in the new ‘religion’ of Angka, work had come to mean something like prayer, as a way of purifying ourselves and showing our devotion.

  By the second series of bells, Huoy and I had joined our separate groups, ten people in each. Different groups joined together, depending on their work sites, and set off across the landscape in long, single-file lines.

  I carried a hoe on my right shoulder. From the right side of my belt hung my hatchet; from the left side hung a small metal US-made field cooking pot, curved to fit against my hip, with a tightly fitting lid on top and boiled water inside. From a cord around my neck hung my spoon. Hidden in tiny pockets inside my waistband were a Swiss watch, several pieces of gold and a worn Zippo lighter with an extra supply of flints. I was barefoot. My long-sleeved shirt was ripped and unbuttoned. I wore a brimmed palm-leaf hat to protect against the sun, but the sun hadn’t risen yet. There was a greyish light above the eastern horizon, just enough to see by.

  When we reached the canal my group split off and went to its site, marked with wooden stakes. The canal was a dry trench deeper than I was tall and twice as far across, with sloping sides. Along the top but set back from it were dykes made from the clay we had dug, giving the canal a height of several feet above the surrounding land, to contain floodwaters. I climbed down to the bottom of the canal, sighed and swung my hoe. I didn’t swing it hard; my muscles were stiff. I swung again. The trick was to warm up gradually, then work at a steady pace without straining.

  I swung again, putting fractionally more into it. With the edge of the hoe, I scooped the loose earth into a mud basket; the others picked it up and handed it in relays to the top of the canal.

  In the grey light the canals stretched in a straight line as far as the eye could see. Elsewhere, crews dug other canals to meet at right angles with ours, plus smaller ditches or minicanals to tie the entire network together. The canals, the Khmer Rouge assured us, would collect the runoff water in the rainy season and hold it until the dry season, when the water would be used to irrigate the fields. Yes, I thought bitterly, the Khmer Rouge had great faith in their canals. ‘We will grow three rice crops a year!’ an enthusiastic cadre told us at a political meeting. ‘Nobody will ever go hungry again! And if the Americans attack us again we will dig a canal across the Pacific Ocean and invade their territory!’

  The band of orange above the horizon thickened and turned to pink as the sun rose. Next to me in the bottom of the canal a skinny man gave off deep, unconscious sighs as he worked. I knew what he was thinking. No days off, no gaiety, no incentive to work hard except to stay alive. Or half alive, which is what we were.

  Don’t think about it, I told myself. Just swing the hoe and let it fall. Don’t wear yourself out but get the job done. Look at that wooden stake. When we dig that far we will finish and they will send us somewhere else. But where will they send us? To flat ground or to a hillock? Flat ground is easier to dig, but hillocks are better. So much life in the hil
locks’ soil. Last week that snake slithering into its hole and all of us tearing the hillock apart and finally killing it with our hoes. How Huoy smiled when I brought my share to her. First time she’s smiled that I can remember.

  Chop. Chop. In either direction, the sound of hoes chopping into clay. Another hot, cloudless day. Working steadily, the sweat running down from my armpits.

  When the sun shone across one wall of the canal and into the edge of the bottom, a shout rang out: ‘Comrades, take a break!’ Everyone dropped tools and climbed out of the canal. Huoy waited for me in the shade of a sdao tree nearby. I reached above her and snapped off a branch, then stripped off the leaves, putting them in my pockets, before sitting down. We shared water from my canteen. She sat with her back against the tree trunk. I sat with my back against her shins, rubbing the red, itchy sores that were spreading up my ankles and onto my legs.

  Breaks were for smoking. The common kitchen distributed locally grown tobacco to the group leaders, who distributed it to workers like us. I took a wad of tobacco from my pocket and rolled a cigarette with a piece of banana leaf, lighting it with the Zippo. I took a few puffs without inhaling, then let it die out and put the rest in my pocket. There. Anybody watching would see I had smoked, and I would continue getting the ration. And I would trade most of my tobacco ration for food, because there were some tobacco addicts on the front lines who would rather smoke than eat.

  There were also a few marijuana smokers. Next to us in the shade of a tree, an old man sucked noisily on a bamboo water pipe and held the aromatic smoke in his lungs as long as he could before exhaling contentedly. Marijuana smoking was an age-old tradition followed by a small percentage of rural men, and by a few others who had started smoking in Lon Nol’s army. The smokers themselves didn’t attach any particular meaning to the drug and neither did the Khmer Rouge, who didn’t bother outlawing it. When the marijuana smokers got up from their breaks they seemed to work even harder than before. I tried smoking it once, hoping it would do the same for me, but instead I felt an almost overpowering urge to lie down and sleep, so I never smoked it again.

  ‘Back to work, comrades!’

  I climbed down to the bottom of the ditch again and picked up the hoe. And I sighed.

  In the late morning, when there was no more shade in the bottom of the canal, they turned on the loudspeaker system at the common kitchen. The music came to us faintly but clearly across the fields. It began with the national anthem:

  Bright red blood that covers towns and plains

  Of Kampuchea, our motherland,

  Sublime blood of workers and peasants

  Sublime blood of revolutionary men and women fighters . . .

  ‘The blood,’ I sung grimly to myself, ‘. . .frees us from slavery!’ I knew every word. The rise and fall of every phrase, the timing of every gong and xylophone flourish.

  . . . We are uniting to build

  Splendid Democratic Kampuchea

  A new society with equality and justice

  Firmly applying the line of independence-sovereignty and self-reliance

  Let us resolutely defend

  Our motherland, our sacred soil

  And our glorious revolution!

  . . . And our terrible revolution, I sang in my mind.

  Long live, long live, long live

  Democratic, prosperous and new Kampuchea

  Let us resolutely raise high

  The red flag of the revolution

  Let us build our motherland!

  Let us advance her with a great leap forward

  So she will be more glorious and marvellous than ever!

  After the national anthem came a song called ‘Hooray for the Courageous, Strong and Marvellous Revolutionary Soldiers’ Group’. After this came ‘New Safety for the Small Town Under the Light of the Glorious Revolution’, and then ‘Our Splendid Fighting Comrades Struggle to Study the Revolutionary Way of Living’. I knew them all, and hated them. They were all so un-Cambodian. I pictured an imaginary loudspeaker on the bottom of the canal, swung the hoe and smashed it. Swung again and smashed it again. And then found that I was swinging the hoe to the rhythm of the music. There was no way to avoid it. Not when I knew every phrase, every beat.

  After ‘Revolutionary Soldiers’ Groups Protect the Safety of Democratic Kampuchea’ the loudspeakers mercifully fell silent. Once again the sighs of the workers and the chittering of birds accompanied the sounds of hoes chopping into clay.

  Then ‘The Glorious Seventeenth of April’ started out of the loudspeakers again.

  Bright red blood that covers towns and plains

  Of Kampuchea . . .

  At lunchtime they rang the bell: DING . . . DING . . . DING . . . Before the first bell had stopped, we fell into a line and trudged off, merging with other lines that converged on the common kitchen.

  This kitchen site, on a large hillock nearly cleared of trees, was only a few days old. The kitchen crew had erected a framework of wood and bamboo over the fire pits and had put the first thatch panels up on the roof. A few soldiers had slung their hammocks between the poles at the far end of the framework. Outside, mounted on top of a bamboo pole, were the loudspeakers, facing four directions, with wires running down the pole to the tape player and a truck battery near the soldiers’ hammocks. From a branch of one of the remaining trees hung a metal car wheel: the bell.

  Nine of us sat on the ground in a circle while the tenth, our group leader, went to the kitchen to get our rations. Toward the others of my group I felt little emotion. No hostility, but no real liking. People were always leaving the group for other work assignments or coming in from the villages of the ‘back lines.’ You never knew them long enough to trust them, to become friends.

  Our group leader was a ‘new’ person like us, with torn trousers and sweat-matted hair. He stood in a long line that edged slowly close to the ration table. At the table was a mit neary with the blackened teeth of a betel chewer, about forty years old. Her left arm steadied a baby riding on her hip. She had been nursing the baby, and as she moved, the nipples on her enormous breasts were covered and then uncovered again by her unfastened blouse. With her right hand she served portions of watery rice with a coconut shell ladle. As our group leader came near her in the line, she put the ladle down. Using her thumb and forefinger, she wiped the thin red streams of betel nut juice that had dripped from the corners of her mouth. Then she wiped her hand on her buttock and took up the ladle again.

  This particular mit neary was well known in the cooperative for stealing from ‘new’ people’s luggage. At night in her hut, she and her fellow female comrades tried on the mascara and rouge and lipstick and the Western-style bras they had stolen and pranced around in front of mirrors, admiring their looks. In the morning they reverted to the usual mit neary look, hair pulled back of the ears, breasts pushed flat against the body by traditional Cambodian vests, and no makeup. All but this woman, who wore twin circles of bright red lipstick on her cheeks.

  Finally she ladled the portion of watery rice into the pan that our group leader held. By the time he returned to the circle with the pan and a stack of rusted bowls, the rest of us were sitting expectantly on our haunches with our spoons out.

  ‘Stir it well this time,’ growled the skinny man who worked next to me. ‘Be fair.’

  The leader stirred it obediently. Ten pairs of eyes focused on the thin, whitish gruel as he spooned it into the bowls. ‘All right, let’s eat,’ he said when he had served the last drop.

  ‘No!’ barked the skinny man. He went on all fours to examine the bowls from above. ‘You didn’t stir it right. Look! This bowl has much more rice in the bottom than the others! Everybody can see!’

  We all leaned forward, licking our lips. The broth was semi-opaque, with long strands of mucus-like rice matter lying in it, but the white rice grains were visible at the bottom, one layer deep. There was a bit more rice in the bowl he was pointing to than in the rest.

  ‘Not true!’
complained the woman in front of whom the bowl had been placed. She turned toward the skinny man. ‘You’re always saying I get more rice, and I’m tired of it. The portions are fair, and I’m going to eat mine!’

  ‘Hold it! Hold it!’ the rest shouted, and somebody grabbed her wrist so she wouldn’t eat. The woman and the skinny man began arguing, and it lasted until the leader spooned broth and a few grains out of the woman’s bowl, over her protests, and sprinkled the drops around the circle. Then the leader put leaves on the ground next to the bowls and sprinkled salt as equally as he could on top of the leaves, though not equally enough to stop the bickering.

  Without eating, I got up from the circle, carrying my bowl and salt, and went over to Huoy, who rose from her group and joined me. We walked off the common kitchen’s hillock and past other groups sitting in their circles arguing over food and past other crowded hillocks. Finally we found a shady spot where we could be alone.

  I spooned some gruel into her bowl. ‘Eat,’ I told her. ‘Keep your strength up.’ I took the sdao leaves out of my pocket, rinsed them with boiled water from the canteen and put them between us. Huoy spooned gruel from her bowl and put it back into mine.

  ‘Men need more food than women do,’ she said. ‘You work harder than me.’

  The work groups all argued over food. Husbands and wives quarrelled over food, each trying to take more than the other. Huoy and I argued but we were always trying to give each other food instead of taking it away. It was a special closeness in our relationship that began, I think, when she had nursed me through my sickness in Phum Chhleav. I had never forgotten that she had given me the yam, and I was always trying to make it up to her.

  In the end we compromised, as usual, and spooned equal portions of watery rice into our mouths and munched the bitter sdao leaves. Sdao tastes like quinine, which is probably not a coincidence, since sdao is at least a semi-effective substitute for quinine as a malaria medicine. I didn’t mind sdao, but it was the rice I savoured. I swallowed each mouthful slowly, crushing the soft grains against the roof of my mouth. I could feel it giving energy to my body. Even the watery broth was good, because rice had been cooked in it. When I came to the last spoonful I paused, not wanting to eat it, because when I did the meal would be over.