Survival in the Killing Fields

by Haing Ngor

  I went out every day, all day, searching for food but finding only a handful. There was nothing left of Hok’s gardens or any of the common gardens. Every plant had been plucked.

  I took gold out of my waistband pocket and tried to buy rice, but there was no more for sale, at any price, anywhere. There was only rice flour. For a damleung, more than an ounce of gold, I bought two small cans of rice flour weighing less than half a pound. I gave it all to Huoy but it wasn’t enough. I went to the railroad workers for help but they said sorry, they were not allowed to talk to me because of the purges.

  I went back to foraging for wild foods. The forests were barren. No bamboo shoots, red ant nests, tokay lizards, water convolvulus patches or field mice. Nothing, because of the drought and because of all the other foragers. From foraging I went back to trying the black market, and from the black market I went back to foraging. I tried everything, many times over. There was no more food.

  Huoy was seven months’ pregnant when she felt a pain like a menstrual cramp. It went away and then a few hours later she had another one. I gave her another obstetrical exam. It was just what I feared: a softening of the cervix, and the beginning of dilation.

  ‘You’re going into labour,’ I told her.

  Huoy looked at me with her great round eyes, and she saw into my thoughts but said nothing. She turned her head to the wall. After a while I heard her whisper, ‘Help me, Mother. Please protect me.’

  Yes, please protect her, I thought. A premature birth. No intensive-care unit, no operating room. No food for Huoy or the child. And chhlop hanging around, looking for trouble.

  Under the Khmer Rouge’s puritanical rules, it was forbidden for a man to deliver his wife’s baby. If I delivered it myself the neighbours would know and the chhlop would find out and that would be the end of me. Or if I did anything that suggested I was a doctor, that would be the end.

  Luckily a midwife named Seng Orn lived in a village nearby. I knew her from Phnom Penh, where she had worked as a midwife at a hospital. Between Seng Orn and me was friendship and respect.

  If the birth was normal, Seng Orn and I could handle it easily. If there were complications, maybe we could handle it but maybe not. For one thing, I didn’t have surgical instruments, antibiotics, anaesthesia or any of the standard equipment of an operating theatre. For another, I was out of practice in performing obstetrical surgery. For the last year I had been a fertilizer maker, and before that a house builder, and before that a rice farmer and canal digger. I still had my doctor’s skills, but I was rusty. The worst problem, though, was the presence of the chhlop.

  In the back of my mind there was one last option to try in a true emergency. Not the front-lines clinic for war slaves. Not the local hospital in Phum Phnom for soldiers and ‘old’ people. There was only one place: the old government hospital in Battambang City. I had heard that a former professor of mine, one of the most eminent doctors in the nation, was teaching at the hospital. The Khmer Rouge were said to tolerate his brand of Western medicine. But I knew there was only a small chance that he was really in Battambang or that Huoy and I could get permission to go there.

  Huoy’s contractions were irregular and far apart, which is common for preliminary or ‘false’ labour, before the first stage of true labour begins. I held her hand as the contractions took her, and looked around our tiny house. It was so primitive. The thatched roof, the dirt floor. No running water or electricity. I would have given anything to be back in Phnom Penh.

  Between contractions, Huoy asked me to help her bathe. I walked her out the back door to the minicanal and washed her tenderly. We went inside again and she lay down on the bed, clutching her small blue kapok-filled pillow to her chest. I built a fire in the lean-to kitchen and made sure we had plenty of wood and lots of water. Later that afternoon, when the labour pains were forty minutes apart, I summoned a neighbour of ours, an old woman, to watch over Huoy. I went to get Seng Orn.

  I ran to the village at the base of the mountain where Seng Orn lived. She said she was ready to go but needed permission. We went to see her village leader, who refused to let her go at first, and gave in only after prolonged pleading and arguments. When we got to Phum Ra, we had to report to Uncle Phan, my village leader. His adopted son Yoeung, the chhlop, eyed us closely as we left and then followed us out into the yard.

  By the time we returned to the house, it was nearly sunset. I took my watch out and timed the labour pains, which were half an hour apart.

  Cautiously, I looked out the door. In the twilight stood the figure of a boy, facing us as he leaned against a tree, smoking a cigarette.

  Huoy lay on the bed, a small oil lamp beside her and another borrowed lamp at her feet. I massaged her limbs, smoothed her hair, wiped her face with a damp cloth.

  When she went into contractions she looked at me and then her attention turned inward. Frowning, contorting her face, she clenched my arms very, very tightly, so tightly I thought my bones were going to break. The contractions peaked and then sometimes went on to a second or third peak before going down. Finally, as the pain eased, Huoy relaxed her hold on my arm. She became aware of her own tiredness, and then me sitting next to her. Her face was wet with perspiration, and I smoothed the wet strands of hair away from her forehead and tried to encourage her.

  At eleven o’clock her water broke, the sac containing the amniotic fluid. That was normal. Seng Orn reported that the cervix was dilated to three centimetres.

  The next interval was ten minutes.

  Then fifteen minutes.

  Then as the hands of my watch swept past eleven-thirty and the next contraction didn’t come, and by eleven forty-five it still hadn’t come, we knew there was trouble. The intervals should have gotten closer together, not farther apart.

  I had one ampule of an antispasmodic medication. I drew it into a syringe and injected Huoy twice, first in the buttocks, then through the stomach wall into the fundus, or dome, a large, smooth muscle on top of the uterus, to help her relax and to make it easier for the cervix to widen so the child could descend from the womb. I had one capsule of vitamins, and I gave it to Huoy as a placebo – to make her feel as if she were getting medicine, to put her in a better frame of mind.

  At midnight, her blood pressure was at the low end of the normal range. Her heartbeat was slower than before.

  ‘Her cervix is still at three centimetres,’ Seng Orn told me quietly.

  I scraped some kernels of corn and cooked them with sugar and fed them to Huoy to give her energy.

  Her contractions were strong but irregular. Her cervix was like a bottleneck facing downward from her womb, and it did not widen. She had the pains, but her labour did not advance. One part of her was trying to expel the child and another part was fighting to retain it. A war was going on, with her body as the battlefield. When the contractions came, she felt no urge to push. It was too early for that, but she tried anyway. She wept. ‘It hurts, sweet, it hurts,’ she said. I stood by her head and pressed her belly downward, trying to force the baby along, while Seng Orn attended the birth canal. Seng Orn could see the top of the child’s head but she didn’t even have forceps. We lacked the most basic tools.

  I rubbed Huoy’s limbs again. She was wet from perspiration and from clenching. Even when she didn’t have labour pains, she was crying.

  The unthinkable was happening.

  Seng Orn pulled me aside for a conference.

  ‘Caesarean?’ she whispered.

  ‘Cannot!’ I hissed. ‘The chhlop’s outside. Do you want to die too? We will all die! Huoy and the baby too! We have no instruments! We have no equipment!’

  ‘Craniotomy?’ she suggested.

  I took a deep breath and shook my head, then took another deep breath. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Cannot.’

  ‘I’m hungry, sweet,’ Huoy said feebly from the bed, and I turned back toward her.

  It was 4.00 a.m. I had saved one can of rice for this; it was all the food we had left. I cooked it in t
he kitchen and tried to feed it to Huoy, spoonful by spoonful, but she could not eat much of it. She was in too much pain.

  At first light Hok came to the door. For all the coolness between us, he was still my brother and I trusted him. We went together to try against the odds to get Huoy on a train to Battambang.

  We ran to the Khmer Rouge headquarters in Phum Phnom. To the centre of enemy operations. And the cadre laughed at me. I was barefoot, in torn clothes, and they could not comprehend why I was so upset and why I frantically asked permission to do what few war slaves did – to ride the train to Battambang. They sent me to the boss of the railroad station, who said he didn’t have the authority, and sent me back to Khmer Rouge headquarters. I ran both ways, panicking as the hours slipped past, my universe falling apart. They could not understand why I insisted my wife have a Caesarean section. They did not know what it was.

  By the time I came back to the house, it was midmorning. The chhlop loitered nearby, pretending not to notice.

  I had accomplished nothing.

  I had failed.

  Huoy lay sunken and tired on the bench. She clutched the kapok pillow to her chest. Her arms and legs were thin as sticks. Her belly was still round, the child still inside.

  She spoke in weak voice.

  ‘Why were you gone so long? I’ve been waiting for you. Do you have some medicine for me?’

  ‘No more, sweet,’ I said. ‘I have no more.’

  ‘Do we have food to eat?’ she asked.

  ‘No more. We have no more food,’ I said. ‘You’re going to be all right, sweet. Wait for a little while, and maybe I’ll bring you to Battambang, to a big hospital for an operation.’

  ‘How long? I’m tired now. I’m very tired.’

  I took up the stethoscope and the blood-pressure cuff. Her blood pressure had dropped. Her heartbeat was slow and very, very feeble.

  ‘Do we have anything to eat?’ said Huoy. She spoke in a whisper, like a child.

  ‘The neighbours are looking for food for you,’ I said.

  ‘I need food! I need food. I need medicine. Sweet, save my life. Please save my life. I’m too tired. I just need a spoonful of rice.’

  Before she died, she asked me to cradle her. I swung her onto my lap, held her in my arms. She asked me to let her kiss me. I kissed her, and she kissed me. She looked up at me with her great round eyes, and they were full of sorrow. She didn’t want to leave.

  ‘Take care of yourself, sweet,’ she said to me.

  Then the room was full of people.

  30

  Grief

  People say I went crazy after Huoy died. They are probably right. I did not feel like myself, and there were long periods that I do not even remember.

  I remember crying and crying and pounding my fists on the floor and beating my head against the wall, and the people in the house restraining me.

  I remember insisting that I help bathe Huoy’s body and prepare it for burial, a ritual normally performed by women. I took one of my own blue shirts, one that she had particularly liked, and put it on her next to her skin, to remind her of me. Then I took a pale green silk blouse and a silk dress and put those on her, and then another blouse and another dress on top of that, so she would have a change of clothes in paradise; then put her everyday mismatched shower sandals on her feet, because those were the only shoes she had; and put the kapok pillow she liked so much on her chest for her to hold on to; and tenderly brushed her hair; and put on her finger the gold ring she used to wear. And when the old ladies in the house tried to interfere, I wouldn’t let them.

  They tried to stop me from going to the burial because I was out of my mind, but I followed my brother Hok and a neighbour as they carried the body on a plank, with a sheet of corrugated metal from the house wrapped around her as a coffin. I showed them where to dig, beneath the big leaning sdao tree on the hillock in the middle of the rice fields. And when they dug the hole deep in the ground and put her in, I knelt and prayed to the gods and wept, while the onlookers talked about how hard it was for a woman to cross the sea.

  The next thing I remember, the sun was setting and I was back in the house shaving my head, and people were looking at me and shaking their heads in disapproval. In Cambodia, it is traditional for widows to shave their heads to demonstrate grief and respect when their husbands die. No man had ever shaved his head for his wife, but I had, and people told me I was crazy, and I shouted at them to mind their own business.

  It is said, though I do not remember, that in the days following the burial I went to the common kitchen and asked the staff, ‘Where’s my wife? She’s supposed to be waiting for me here.’ The kitchen staff did not know what to say.

  And when the kitchen served meals, as it did sometimes, now that it was too late, I took my bowl and went home and sat by the back door of the house without eating, watching the sun go down. I looked at the leaning sdao tree and the ruined pagoda on the mountainside beyond, and I thought about how I had been unable to save her.

  A doctor, specially trained in delivering children, unable to save his own wife in childbirth.

  There was an emergency procedure, a craniotomy, that I could have tried that might have saved Huoy, if I had done it early enough. But I didn’t have the right equipment for a craniotomy. And even if it worked, it would have sacrificed the child.

  If I had sacrificed the child I might have saved the mother. But even if I saved the mother, the chhlop would have found out about the operation, and the soldiers would have taken all of us away.

  If I had had the right equipment, I would have done a Caesarean. That was the operation of choice. But I didn’t have the equipment. I didn’t have any equipment! Right? Right? I couldn’t have saved her except in an operating room!

  If I had just tried with a knife I could have gotten the child out. But it would have killed Huoy. No blood supply, no surgical tools, no antibiotics! She was so weak! I just couldn’t do it. ‘All right!’ I shouted, out loud. ‘It’s my fault! I panicked! I admit it!’

  And an echo rang accusingly, ‘My fault! My fault! My fault! My fault!’

  I thought: I shouldn’t be blaming myself like this. The greatest single cause of her death was malnutrition. Without food, her body weakened, and the hormones that start labour were released at the wrong time. But if I had used all my medical skills I wouldn’t have to blame myself like this. Even if I tried and failed it would have been better than this. Even if I tried and they caught me.

  Her whispered words came back to me, like a message from the wind: ‘Why were you gone so long? I’ve been waiting for you.’

  She waited for me to come back before allowing herself to die. And she didn’t even blame me for failing her.

  The wind brought me her last words, again and again: ‘Take care of yourself, sweet.’

  She had taken care of me when I was sick. She had saved my life. But when it was my turn to save her, I failed.

  When the sun set I walked along the canal and over the dykes of the rice fields to the hillock and knelt at the foot of the grave. I offered her the bowl, which was still full, and told her to eat first, and I put the bowl down and began to pray.

  I prayed to the gods. ‘Just let her go to paradise. If my wife has done anything wrong, send me to hell in her place. If she has ever sinned, I will take the responsibility. Release her. Let her go to paradise. And allow us to be together in our next lives.’

  In the fading light the landscape turned to shadows, all but the white ruins of the temple on the hillside above. ‘Huoy, if I survive, I am going to leave Cambodia. I have to get out, but I will come back to you one day. I will have a proper ceremony for you, with many, many monks presiding, and I will build a stupa for you next to the temple and put your remains in it, to honour you.

  ‘I ask your forgiveness. If I did something wrong, don’t be angry at me, sweet. We will be together in the next life. The next life won’t be short like this one. We will live a long, long time together, and we
will be a happy old couple.’

  I prayed to the soul of our unborn child, to this little girl or boy whom we had hoped so much to bring into the world. ‘In this life you were unlucky, because you never had the chance to see your mother’s face. You never had a chance to drink your mother’s milk. But you were lucky not to see the suffering. You were lucky, because now you can see your mother. In the next life we will all have a chance to be together again. In the next life there won’t be so much suffering, and you will grow up to be healthy and strong.’

  To Huoy’s mother I prayed, ‘Ma, live in paradise with Huoy and the child. Take care of them, and let them take care of you. And watch over me. I miss you, Ma.’

  I prayed to my father, and to my own mother, and then to Huoy again. I ate the rice, and before leaving I said, ‘Sweet, I’m going home. I’ll see you again tomorrow.’

  People saw me going out to the grave every evening with food and they said I was crazy. I do not say they are wrong, just that they hadn’t been through what I had. No couple had been as close as Huoy and me. There was a night when I got back home from praying and lay down to sleep, and when I woke up someone was knocking on the door. Huoy’s voice was calling to me. I opened the door and she was there, dressed in white, with a white veil.

  ‘Please come often to visit me,’ she said.

  She turned away from me and began to walk along the canal. It was still dark outside, but I could see her. I called after her to wait, wait, but although I followed her and she was walking very slowly, it was impossible to keep up with her. As she walked, the ends of her long veil floated in the air and bounced gracefully, like wings lifting her up and carrying her along. I ran after her, but she disappeared from sight.

  Huoy had died on June 2, 1978. Not long after that there were unmistakable signs that the regime was breaking up.

  By June the leaders of villages near us were being purged. Their positions were taken by Khmer Rouge from eastern Cambodia. Uncle Phan, the leader of Phum Ra, ran away before it could happen to him. We never saw him again. His wife was demoted to the rank of ordinary labourer, and then Pen Tip pointed her out and the soldiers took her into the woods.