Survival in the Killing Fields

by Haing Ngor

  A cadre banged on the metal car wheel with a stick, and everyone rose to their feet to bring the rusted bowls to the common kitchen and reform the lines.

  DING . . . DING . . . DING . . . Everyone in the cooperative was standing near the common kitchen. We could all hear him perfectly well. Why he couldn’t just ring the bell once I do not know, unless it was to punish us.

  DING . . . DING . . . DING . . . DING . . . ding, ding, ding, ding, dingdingdingding . . .

  The afternoon was the same as the morning, only longer. There was no breeze in the bottom of the canal. I swung the hoe, but it seemed heavier than before. The group didn’t make much progress. We hadn’t dug as far as the wooden stake. They gave us a tobacco break, and then they played music again to make us work faster. I would have done anything they asked if they had only played different music. But they didn’t. The cooperative had only one tape.

  Bright red blood . . .

  The worst part of the day was late afternoon. That was when the soldiers came to take prisoners. We never knew ahead of time whether they would come, or who they would choose, or how many. The uncertainty made the waiting worse.

  As one side of the canal fell into shadow, and then the bottom and part of the other side, and I set down my hoe to carry a basket of clay to the top of the dyke for the thousandth time that day – that was when I saw them. Three soldiers, walking across the fields directly toward me. I climbed down to the bottom of the canal with the empty basket, my heart pounding. Maybe it’s my turn, I thought. Maybe the time has finally come. I came up with another load, but by then the soldiers had veered off to a spot farther along. When they walked away from the canal, there were two ‘new’ people in front of them, with their heads bent in utter sorrow and their arms tied tightly behind their backs.

  What had the prisoners done wrong? We knew not to ask. Asking wouldn’t bring them back. It only endangered those who dared to question. There were no laws under the Khmer Rouge except the law of silence. There were no courts except Angka Leu. Maybe the prisoners hadn’t worked hard enough. Or they stole food. Or a chhlop, a spy, overheard them making remarks about Angka. People disappeared. That’s all we knew. And I knew that someday I would be one of them.

  It was after sunset, the orange light fading quickly from the western sky, that the bell rang next. I climbed out of the canal, walked briskly to a minicanal with water in the bottom, and jumped in fully clothed for my bath. Dripping wet, I rejoined the line as we walked back to the common kitchen.

  At dinner it was too dark to see the rice at the bottom of the bowls, and there were fewer quarrels. The food was also better: in addition to the watery rice and salt we were given water convolvulus, the Cambodian equivalent of spinach, gathered from the wild by the kitchen’s food-foraging team. Huoy and I ate together. We hoped to go back to our hillock, make a quick fire, put the tea kettle on and cook some more sdao leaves and a few snails Huoy had found during work. But we didn’t get the chance. The bell rang right after dinner.

  At that hour the bells were a summons to a political meeting. They were like the bonns that we had been to earlier, but on the front lines they were called by the English word ‘meeting,’ pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable: meeTING. We had three or four a week.

  The entire collective assembled in a field next to the common kitchen. The first speaker was Chev, the leader of the cooperative. He had a soft, mild voice, and he paused often to smile at the audience. Everybody was afraid of him. Chev said the digging of the canal was going much too slowly. We would all have to sacrifice and work much harder to get it finished in time for the rainy season.

  ‘Some people here are very lazy,’ said Chev. ‘They do not want to participate in the revolutionary activities because their minds are in the past, on capitalist times. They slow the project down. They would like to stop the wheel of history. But we don’t need these people. We don’t want them. They are counterrevolutionaries and CIA agents. Am I wrong or right?’

  ‘Right! Yes, right!’ we answered, and applauded to show our approval.

  Chev said that such people were our enemies and we must hunt them down and eliminate them, and asked if this was wrong or right. We clapped and said yes, he was right. He told us how lucky we were to be living under Angka. The Cambodian people had been waiting thousands of years for such an opportunity, and was this wrong or right?

  Huoy and I sat at the rear of the crowd with our backs against a tree trunk. It was truly dark. I pulled the brim of my hat low over my forehead and shut my eyes. The state of rest that I allowed myself was not sleep. It was more like a controlled doze, since part of my mind stayed alert, like a soldier on sentry duty.

  ‘. . . or right?’ Chev demanded.

  ‘Yes, right!’ I answered, clapping my hands together without opening my eyes. I had been to enough meetings not to have to pay any more attention than that.

  After Chev, lower-ranking cadre took turns speaking. Out of their mouths came words that their brains didn’t understand: ‘. . . waging a continuous offensive to launch a struggle to achieve a very spectacular great leap forward for mastery of the elements. . . .’ Their real purpose was not to say anything new but to demonstrate their orthodoxy. In a regime where individuality was discouraged, they showed their enthusiasm by imitating their leaders. They talked and Huoy and I leaned against the tree trunk, gathering strength for what was still to come.

  The bell rang again.

  Wearily, we lined up in the darkness and stumbled off again to the canal.

  We worked by the light of the moon and the stars. Or a few of us worked, in slow motion, just enough to keep the guards away. We dug a few basketsful of earth and no more. The rest napped on the ground. We could have used the time better to sleep in our hammocks and then be refreshed for the next day, but there was no telling this to the Khmer Rouge.

  At midnight the bell rang for the last time, a welcome signal travelling through the chirping of crickets and the hooting of owls far across the fields. We trudged back to our hillocks, navigating by the silhouettes of trees. Huoy and I fell into our hammock. Four hours later, the bell woke us up again.

  Food and sleep were all we cared about. If we could only get enough sleep, if we could only fill our bellies, if the soldiers would only stop taking people away – then we could have thought about other things. Like setting off along the unknown routes toward Thailand. Or joining the freedom fighters, called the Khmer Serei or Free Khmer, who were said to live along the Thai border. But escape seemed infinitely unlikely. The Khmer Rouge posted guards around the cooperative at night, and no one that I knew tried it.

  Sleep was more important than escaping. I was so tired I wanted to sleep for a week. Food was even more important than sleeping. All the weight I had gained in Youen’s village had dropped off. Once again I was down to about a hundred pounds.

  The sdao leaves, the snails and the other food we found on the job helped but weren’t enough. So in those evenings when no meetings were held, I went out foraging again, in the rest period between dinner and night work on the canal. I tried to gather the wild food in the evening and hide it in the bushes of the hillock where we were staying. At lunch on the following day, Huoy and I would get our usual bowls of watery rice, bring them back to the hillock and start a quick fire with straw and twigs. We would put the rice and our wild food in the teapot, so we could pretend to be making tea if the authorities came around. Tea, particularly medicinal tea, was still permitted.

  But it was hard to gather wild foods at night. I began foraging in the early mornings, which was easier. By the time I returned to our hillock, after the first bell, the sky was beginning to grow light. It didn’t seem like much of a risk. There were other foragers too. One morning about a month after we got to the front lines, I filled a broken mud basket with arrowroot, hid it in the bushes near our hammock and went off to work with the hoe over my shoulder as usual. When Huoy and I came back to the hillock at lunch, the basket was missi
ng. We asked the other couples who were camped with us on that hillock, but they knew nothing about it. So Huoy and I ate our watery gruel and then lay down in our double hammock.

  The next thing we knew, two boys were standing next to the hammock and looking down at us. They were both smoking cigarettes rolled from banana leaves. They twirled the cigarettes in their fingertips in an identical manner, perhaps copying the style of some older smoker they admired.

  They frowned over the hammock at me.

  ‘Comrade!’ they shouted in their high voices. ‘Angka wants to see you! Hurry!’

  I sat up.

  Now I knew who they were. They weren’t just ordinary boys. They were spies. Chh/op.

  19

  Angka Leu

  They were a little old for spies. About twelve, I guessed. They wore baggy black culottes, nothing else. In our part of Battambang many boys their age wore Khmer Rouge uniforms and carried rifles. Maybe the parents of these two were cadre nearby and had used their influence to delay their sons’ departure from home. Yes, maybe that was what had happened.

  It was strange, I thought, in that long moment when the chhlop were peering over the hammock at me and I had not yet gotten up: nowadays you became a spy when you were a young boy, and then when you were half grown you became a soldier. There was no such thing as childhood anymore. Before the revolution these boys would have been learning rice farming from their fathers, or going to school, or making themselves useful to the monks in the temples. They would have learned to respect their elders.

  ‘Hurry up, comrade!’ That shrill, high, irritating voice. If they had been my sons, I would have beaten them for their rudeness.

  ‘Please,’ I said, getting up out of the double hammock, ‘I’m just putting a shirt on. I’ll be right there.’

  ‘My husband is going,’ said Huoy in an exasperated voice. As a schoolteacher she had scolded many children that age. ‘Why are you accusing him? He’s just putting on a shirt. He is going now.’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ I told Huoy.

  I walked off at a relaxed pace, the two boys behind me. I wasn’t worried. If I had done anything seriously wrong, Angka would have sent soldiers to get me, in the late afternoon. The chhlop were too young to be trusted with anything important.

  The ‘Angka’ the chhlop were taking me to turned out to be Chev, the cooperative’s leader. Chev was sitting in a black hammock in a Khmer Rouge-style house, which was just a thatched roof on poles, without sides, near the common kitchen. He sat upright with his feet on the ground, barechested, now and again puffing on a cigarette that he rotated slowly in his fingers. He was a skinny, dark-skinned man with soft, straight hair, big fleshy lips and a wide mouth. His eyes were not cruel. He was smiling.

  ‘Comrade . . . ?’ he said tentatively.

  ‘“Samnang,” ’ ‘I said, supplying him with the name I used.

  ‘Very well. Comrade Samnang, you have to tell Angka the truth. This morning our chhlop went to look at the hillocks to see who had food. They checked. They found you had a big basket of arrowroot. My question is this: if you had the food, why didn’t you bring it to Angka for the collective meal? Why didn’t you give it to the community? Why did you plan to eat it by yourself?’

  So. The spies had stolen the food. I should have guessed.

  ‘Comrade Chev,’ I said, ‘last night I went to find some food, but it was only a small quantity. It wasn’t enough for the community.’

  ‘You just wanted private property,’ he said in his gentle, chiding voice. ‘And that is forbidden.’

  I didn’t answer. No point getting into an argument with him.

  ‘And another thing,’ Chev said, still smiling. ‘The chhlop say that you call your wife “sweet”. We have no “sweethearts” here. That is forbidden.’

  Two soldiers hurried toward us, as if late for a meeting they wanted to attend. Chev sat calmly in his hammock, smiling at me with his big lips and wide mouth. He had pointed out that I had broken some minor rules. I was getting ready to tell him I wouldn’t break them again.

  The soldiers’ voices rang out in a deep, authoritative baritone. ‘Who gave the comrade permission to go out to find something to eat? Comrade, who allowed you?’

  ‘Nobody allowed me, comrade,’ I answered. ‘I did it without permission. I did wrong. I’m sorry.’

  One of the soldiers said contemptuously to me, ‘You see? You have too much liberty. You think you are as free as a bird, but you are a reactionary.’

  ‘Comrades, I had no such thoughts in my mind. I always respect Angka’s rules. If Angka says that I am wrong I accept it, and I will not do those things again.’

  From his hammock, Chev said mildly, ‘Yes, you recognize yourself that you did something wrong, but this is not enough.’

  ‘Comrade Chev, send him to Angka Leu!’ urged the soldier who had been doing the talking. ‘Send him to Angka Leu! To Chhleav!’

  Huoy had been watching from a distance. She ran up when she saw Chev nod and the soldiers begin to tie my elbows tightly behind my back. Huoy asked Chev what was happening, and Chev replied, ‘Your husband betrayed Angka. Now we are sending him to higher authorities for judgement.’

  Reflexively, Huoy put her palms together and sompeahed to Chev. It was the age-old gesture of respect, but it was out of place, a sure sign of her unrevolutionary background. ‘Don’t kill my husband,’ she pleaded. ‘Please let him come back. You decide what to do with him yourself, but don’t send him to Angka Leu. He didn’t do anything to Angka Leu.’

  ‘No,’ said Chev with that unchanging smile he wore like a mask. ‘I cannot decide. It is up to Angka Leu.’

  Huoy stood next to me. ‘Then if you send him to Angka Leu, send me too. I will stay with him.’

  ‘No. Samnang did wrong, not you. “His hair is on his head. His hair is not on your head.” Anyone who steals is responsible for himself. Nobody else is responsible. You stay here.’

  I had not struggled when they tied me up. I told Huoy to take care of herself, and a tone in my voice caused Huoy to step back, with her hand to her mouth in fear. She understood what I really meant, that there was no use in her getting involved.

  The soldiers led me away.

  We walked on a path through the woods and over the fields in the direction of Phum Chhleav. The soldiers walked behind, holding a long rope attached to me. My arms grew numb from the tight cords around my elbows, which restricted my circulation.

  We neared Phum Chhleav but didn’t get as far as the railroad track, or the cluster of flimsy huts where I had lived a few months before. Instead we stopped at a collection of buildings I had never seen before, in a clearing back in the woods. The prison itself was a long thin structure with a thatch roof and walls made out of split bamboo and thatch and pieces of corrugated metal. The soldiers told me to sit down and wait.

  I sat.

  They left.

  Here I must interrupt my story for a warning: many people find the truth about Khmer Rouge prisons extremely upsetting. Readers with sensitive feelings might want to skip over the next few pages and begin reading again toward the end of the chapter.

  Muffled sounds of human activity came from the prison, and an unpleasant smell drifted toward me in the breeze. Some wrinkled black objects hung from the eaves of the roof but I was too far away to see what they were.

  In about an hour a prison guard came out for me. He led me to a large grove of mango trees. The trees were tall and well formed, spaced at regular intervals. At the base of each tree sat a prisoner, tied to the trunk.

  The guard and I walked down a row of trees. We walked past a middle-aged woman lying face down on a wooden bench with her arms and legs spread apart. Metal clamps secured her wrists and ankles to the corners of the bench. Her sampot or dress was torn, revealing her indecently, and her blouse was ripped with one of her breasts showing. As we went by she turned her head and looked at us with an unfocused stare.

  ‘Please save my life,’ she moaned in a l
ow voice.

  She hadn’t noticed that I had my arms tied behind my back, or that the other man was a guard. Red ants were crawling on her hands and her arms, and her fingertips were bloody.

  The guard took me to the next tree, about thirty feet away. He loosened the rope around my elbows and the circulation returned to my lower arms. He tied a longer rope to my wrists and then around the tree trunk. I sat with my back to the mango tree.

  He left.

  I said my prayers.

  If I have to die, I thought, at least let me die with dignity and composure.

  Something crawled onto the skin on the back of my neck. Then it bit.

  Damn – red ants! I craned my head backward and twisted it from side to side to try to crush the ant. Another ant crawled onto my shoulder. They were coming down the tree. My wrists and elbows were tied behind me but I could still move the rest of my body. A lot of them were on me now. They were on my wrists – I crushed them with my fingers. On my upper chest and shoulders – I swept them aside with my chin. On my calves too – I rubbed my calves together, then brought a foot up to help. They bit my scalp – I rubbed the back of my head against the tree trunk, but more ants came down the trunk to get me. They were in a fighting mood, waving their forelegs in the air and working the sideways pincers in front of their mouths, daring me to attack.

  The more I struggled, the more they swarmed over me. I strained against the confinement of the ropes, scratching and moving my feet in a frenzy, unable to move enough. I imagined them biting even when they hadn’t bitten me.