April 17, 1975, not many hours after the takeover, from our radio in Battambang, we’d heard that all city dwellers were driven out of their homes in Phnom Penh (Cambodia). They were told that Phnom Penh would be bombed by the Americans. Who were they to second guess the sources of the bombing? They all were aware of bombs exploding in places such as markets and theaters every day, leading up to the takeover. They witnessed the catastrophes; they experienced pieces of shrapnel embedded in their bodies. Our two younger aunts were hospitalized for a number of days after an explosion in a market in Phnom Penh. And, we had acquaintances that lost their lives. Therefore, most inhabitants embraced the scare. Then quickly, they bundled up their belongings and braved the heat. Ones who questioned were then driven out at gun point. And, ones who refused were quickly gunned down. However, in Battambang, our family was allowed to stay behind a bit longer (4-5 days from when Pa-pa left, on 19th of April) than others because our mother was kind to the Khmer Rouge soldiers. We did not leave right away because we did not want to leave without our father. Then eventually, we were told to leave; and at the beginning, we were told that the new authority/government wanted to reestablish the city without people being there. Then, the city would be bombed.
To Leave
“Bong Pyead, Bong Pyead,*
please come help me down.” I waited for that pair
of Doberman Pinschers to race out of the house and clamor
onto the fencing wall, like they usually did.
But they did not. No barking.
No bare teeth. Nobody’s
coming over to get me down.
None of the usual
hysteria. Just the urgent sound of my calling
for help from one of my brothers.
After I was helped down
into our yard again, I was afraid
of being more bored now. I decided
that I should give the monks
a visit. After I moved the stool
to where the first window was,
I peeked into their classroom.
No monks. I moved
down 1, 2, 3 windows. No monks today
either. Everyone’s gone. Or is it their day off?
I’ll ask Muuc*. And, I was told about the silence.
Beyond our concrete fence,
a couple days earlier, the neighbors
had been ushered out of their homes,
by the rifle barrels
of the black-outfitted insurgents,
leaving behind echoes –
my call for play atop the fencing wall.
The monks of Wat Dom Rei Sar* were disbanded.
The evening chanting
of French and English phrases resounded
only in memories. Upcoming test dates still held their places
at the top corner of the chalkboard.
Forgotten un-tucked-in chairs remained forgotten.
Their morning lines of yellow robes vanished.
The whole wat’s compound stood, emptied
of enlightenments –
leaving only the fluttering
of wings on roof beams.
Yotear* came to our door more than twice.
This time I stood beside Muuc.
He was the oldest of the bunch. He smiled at me.
Quietly, he stood shifting, looking down at his feet.
I wanted to tell him I know the feeling.
Muuc can make you feel guilty
with her kindness. Muuc greeted him.
He spoke and I caught
another day twice and then father.
He shook his head side to side
and told Muuc that’s the order, not mine.
Pack light –
for one week at most. Go to the countryside
because the city will be bombed.
After he left, Muuc did not look at me. She told me to go play.
Later, Muuc gathered us all. She said we have to leave our home.
We can no longer wait for Pa-pa’s return.
I knew she wanted to cry, but she didn’t. She had to be strong
because she was our mother.
After telling us what to do, she left
pretending to be busy. She wanted to be alone,
but my baby sister didn’t know that, so she cried to be held.
*Bong Pyead – elder Pyead (our neighbor’s teenage brother’s name) who usually calmed the dogs and helped me off the fencing wall. I’d gotten attacked by those dogs early on, not too badly just scratches. Ever since, they told me to call for help if I wanted to come over, instead of jumping right into their yard.
*Muuc - mother
*Wat Dom Rei Sar – temple/pagoda named white elephants.
*Yotear – rebel soldier
Mango
You shrugged off your black outer shirt,
too many sizes larger than your now-thin frame;
collar bones protruded and ribs of the breast plate
jutted out, gleaming sickly, in the flickered flame
of the wick. Your eyes spaced-out
passed the orange flame, trailed by gray smoke.
The first time, you sat stunned with fear;
quietly, you watched the leaves parted
in our thatched wall; you caught a glimpse of the
eye that pried into our life. Quickly, you blew out
the flame and told us, it’s time to sleep.
What I did not get that night was later told,
we can no longer talk when it is dark outside.
The Khmer Rouge spies peeked in,
looking for reasons to put us to death.
Night after night, we pretended,
carrying on with our fake life
as if they weren’t among us.
Later, too starved to pretend much longer,
you stared back harder,
as if daring them to conjure up reasons to take us all.
Your eyes sunk deeper
into your skull; and, in the dark,
the whiteness of your eyes grew wider,
more ghostly,
as your empty stomach roared and grinded
with no shame.
I made a promise to you. Remember.
Tomorrow, find something special for your mother.
Maybe a big snail, a fat frog, a male crab, or a coconut.
A rooster’s crowing scattered up sleep
before light. After you’d already left for the fields,
I headed towards the coconut grove.
I mimicked the fishing for snails,
but to shove the bopping coconut into my bucket
full of water lilies. Then, snails and more lilies to cover.
I stewed in the muddy pond, waiting
for the two black guards to tire out from standing
at the checkpoint. Just as their legs bent to sit,
I scrammed up the edge of the pond
and towards them. But I failed
in my skill of thievery.
So, under a tall mango tree, I pretended to make my home.
Snatched with a hand of a stealing monkey, my bony fingers gripped around
a mango on the ground, while my eyes feasted
on the guards. Its passage secured, tucked under my shirt.
Then, snatched again, I smuggled another to its mate,
as I trudged and feigned a slow jog. My heart fluttered,
when I saw under moonlight, a shadow walked straight up
to the thatched walls. A knife in one hand and two
mangoes in the other, I presented myself to you.
You peeled and you sliced
slivers into my younger sisters’ mouths first.
When the third sliver arrived at mine, I uttered,
“You take it, Muuc.”
But, you shook your head.
At last, you slipped one slice into yours.
Today, when I taste the sweetness of mangoes,
my head utters, my mother would have loved to
have eaten this one.
Escapes we made for
our families. In the obscured blackness,
night after night, we hid
ourselves away and met
at locations prior agreed,
while we worked in the fields.
Older brothers and sisters crouched
in the brush to help us home.
Children whispered, clinging on –
hooks and loops realigned.
Bravery bestowed to its rank;
strong to care and lead, and weak to follow.
Who could see led the way in the dark.
They became our eyes. Our night vision
in the black world. We gripped
shirttails,
long sticks,
or chained hands.
One night, a plan was called off.
Earlier in the day, a child was caught,
beaten and confessed.
So, new words were mouthed and signals
were secreted out by eyes and fingers,
from our child-leader
to take turns at the water urns.
At the water urns, sequentially,
one came to meet and to receive,
as one whispered then took leave,
leaving behind
the new hearer
to be the next
child-messenger.
The decision was made
and few agreed. Through the graveyard
behind the sick ward.
As Khmer children,
raised to respect and fear
ghosts and the spirited world,
we were shaken,
visibly stirred.
Each one of us crying and screaming.
But, the brave ones shushed the fearful
and explained,
since everyone, the good and the bad, fears ghosts.
This will be the best path home. Because this
would be the last place
they’d stand their guards. They’d never dare
to tread on sacred yards.
Besides, we know most of the people buried here.
They’d understand.
But, what about the ones we don’t know was asked.
To walk on their graves.
The brave ones sighed deeply, then offered,
This is what we’ll do. We’ll say . . .
‘Oh ghosts, pity
us children.
Forgive us for trudging
on you. Show mercy.
We miss our homes and our families.’
So, our mouths hung onto these phrases
and our hands the shirttails
of the ones in front. Linked like chains, we ran
over the dead. Visions of rotting flesh,
gray bony hands, elbows up, blindly grappling
ankles later shackled in dreams.
When morning was still black,
when dreams were left to be caught,
mother’s hands stirred and pried open our tired eyes
before Angka’s* spies woke up. One by one,
all the children took leave of their mothers and fathers,
who stood mesmerized by life’s
cruelty to the children.
Children tried to make their way back to the group:
some snuck into those still sleeping;
some blended in among those already up;
in the bushes, some waited to tag onto the line
as it made its way to the fields;
and, some did not make it back at all.
The next night, it would be another path
and another agreed location, until there was no more
means to go to.
Then, it was just an escape,
an escape
from the punishing labors.
It was just an escape,
an escape to rummage for food
for that ceaseless hunger.
*Angka – the power/doctrine of the Khmer Rouge. At the beginning, we had no idea
who represented this Angka. I thought he was like the great Buddha sitting high on his pedestal.
The next two weeks passed by
in silence. Then, a man was called upon – escorted
by another in black – for a nightly meeting*.
A meeting. A reeducation of no coming back
to his wife and young son.
Then, Black seeped his clingy fingers through the village.
Snatched up an elderly woman in the midst of her sleep -
took her but not her feeble man.
Left alone to string trors,* his increased tremors broke
the fibers. And, all his will gathered
to steady his old hands,
to make his new bow sing
a song that pinched the heart with sorrow.
His bow sang; his eyes dropped
tears onto his bare folding leg. I wept
for his loss and my new found sadness.
I kept company with him.
In life’s promises,
he too, was taken by Black.
Gone to his wife’s arms . . . as meant to be?
Then, our cousins’ two grandparents passed on
together, just before the first rooster parted the night,
as seen by Maire* in her dream of them
all in white calling her home.
Sometimes, dreams were all she had
as pre-warnings to life’s crises. They had been sick
with stomach pains, which they had made known
a couple days prior, when they asked me for one more bucket
of water to douse the stench
off the floor. A hard rap on their door by my aunt
brought her six-year-old son, rubbing away sleep
from his eyes and over his head, lay
two still bodies, side by side, on the floor.
Then, a pregnant woman, attended by a mid-wife, screeched
for the birth of her child,
her first. Through the parting of the leafy wall,
the mother held her baby girl a little tighter
to her chest, wishing to impart to her daughter
all of her love and much more of life, knowing
that it would a life without a father.
The newborn cried, whimpered for mother’s milk,
only to discover her mother’s breasts were infected.
Without antibodies, her mother died –
even with Maire’s caring. Her baby girl was passed on
to a stranger – a bachelor
because he was the only one willing.
O Maire,
you covered my tender eyes with half-truths,
oh, daughter . . .
they moved away. They died because of old age.
But, through the cracks of your fingers, I saw lives struggled
and strangled by uncaring hands and blackened hearts.
I saw lives urged quickly on . . .
Huts were made empty,
one by one. Refilled with the spirits
of their past occupants.
*In the evening, the Khmer Rouge comrades usually came by the huts to collect people for the(livelihood/reeducation) meetings. Most times, these people never made it back from these
evening meetings. They were usually put to death later that night.
*trors – a one-string musical instrument made out of an empty coconut shell. It’s played like a violin, but the sound it produces can be quite haunting.
*Maire was the preferred Khmer word for mother, under the Khmer Rouge Regime.
Many of the city words were converted to rural ones.
Devadas (angels)
Each day before night left
as we’re herded into the fields, we prayed
to last,
to endure Angka’s lashes,
in the course of his rage.
When night’s darkness arrived, again we prayed
to last,
to be spared
to breathe and to see the sun-
rise again.
Then, countless times, we gave in.
Our wretched souls asked to leave,
to be taken away to the world beyond,
where pain ceased to exist.
So much within
my core rattled. So much noise
jammed inside my head. My thoughts quarreled.
My heart drummed. A rhythm beat so loud;
its bass strumming on my temples.
Then, outside it was just a blur. My sisters’ talking gurgled
like mouths full of water. The drone of the cicadas
pulled like voices through tubing
reminded me of a graveyard at night.
I tried to blur passed the clutter. I concentrated
hard on the importance.
But, the more I focused on the outside, the more
the spirits kept inside
my head wanted out. With each new shriek,
they leaked out. A circle of death above my head.
As time wore, my twitchy nerves made attempts to leap
out of my throat. I wanted to scream for her to come back.
So loud that my own voice shocked my head to silence.
But, I couldn’t say what was in my head, afraid that it would jinx
all thoughts into real events.
I kept silence as a show of strength,
for us three (aged 9, 7, and 3). A stir in the dark followed
by a stir inside.
Our talks were small. Then, things converged on my middle sister’s reply,
maybe they killed her.
It was like a static shock caught unaware. Sparks popped
in my head. Nerves snapped. And, heat radiated
through my body. Again, she pushed,
maybe they killed her.
“Don’t say that,” I chided her, adding strength to each word
to ward off any truth of death
of those words. My voice was hoarse – a stranger at my ears,
a boy’s voice at puberty.
Then, I screeched like a girl again,
“it’s a bad omen.”
In Shock
my head pleaded with the all-mighty,
the devada of the devadas
that it would not be so.
So much to take and process, I felt
myself leaving my own body
to stand and watch
myself reaching out for logic. All reasons
that once had solidified hope and faith in life
had now lay lifeless in my grip.
My mother’s death lifted up my empty body.
I felt weightless. The only weight to ground
me would be the answer from my aunts.
I floated the usual thirty paces to their door.
My hard fist pounded their sheet-tin door.
No sound of undone latches,
no voices of theirs. It was just me
and the sound of my let-out sighs.
My head so full. So much air.
A hollow ball, I filled with countless
they had gone to bed early, they’d gone to sleep.
Floating back with me were incidents of four or five days prior,
which could have caused that phrase, maybe they killed her to be uttered.
There were no black crows roosting on our roof.
I’d asked permission to climb those mango trees.
I’ve not walked over others’ graves, lately.
And, I remembered asking for forgiveness from
that crab I threw into the fire yesterday.
My mother cannot be dead. I’ll wait . . .
To be close
The monks chanted sarmma sarmput* . . .
and doused water on the last bit of flames
which burned my Jeedone.
We went home, ate lunch and I played. Then, we came back.
After the fire died and the ashes cooled down, Pa-pa taught me to
look for her bones. Our family picked through the warm wet ashes for our grandmother. What we found we put into an urn.
The gathered bones were consecrated by monks
and placed in the family’s stupa* at a wat my paternal
grandfather helped build.
(Pursat, Cambodia, early 1970’s)
From the edge of the trees, the dirt path opened
to white stupas, with spires needled into night;
I was a little less scared now because there was
some light in the area. I was tired though; my legs
just wanted to collapse. But still, we had to walk
some more. We walked the aisle of the houses of the dead;
four houses down we stopped. They bent down to undo the lock.
They opened the metal door and told me get in.
I shrieked no and flailed my arms and legs
out so I would not fit through. But it didn’t take the
two soldiers long to fold me up to fit the mouth of the stupa.
Before the rouge soldiers tossed me in, I told them,
please don’t be so cruel to me. But, they tossed me in anyway.
They said this should be your lesson to stop stealing.
I didn’t think it was a funny game, when they walked off laughing
after I shook the tiny door and cried out please, please,
don’t leave me in here among the dead.
When they burst out laughing again, I stopped.
I looked out through the iron door and, what I saw was not much,
concrete wall towered up to a pagoda (I assumed), concrete path,
and blackness. I could not see
inside the small box I was in; everything was dark.
I sent my hands to find out
what’s what. Very close walls and short ceiling.
So short that I could not even stand up.
I picked up a small something, smooth and long,
like a small branch ridden of its bark.
Then I shrieked. Another voice came through,
just above a whisper and said to me
it’s okay, the dead are not going to harm you.
I quieted down and listened for more.
I am in the next one from you. It’s okay, little one,
he reassured. Such sweet words I had not heard for so long
pricked my body and made me feel small again.
A stranger’s kindness in time of desperation was just too
much for me. I wept, remembered my Jeedone. Chanted
sarmma sarmput . . .
Then, I fell asleep.
Before morning came, my door was rattled and they
let me out. We walked. Then, they threw me in a cage
with the other children. When they let me out again,
they came with my younger sister. I did not blame her for what she’d told them.
They marched us up to a platform of a guard-post.
They told us lie on your backs and dangle your heads off the edge.
I felt a hand gliding up and down my throat – visions
of a pig’s throat before the slit was made jerked my head up.
And, I tried to see my sister. Lie still he told me, and he tightened his hand
over my throat. Then, I felt cool thin metal at the base of my throat. They asked
who told you to steal so many coconuts. No one, I told them. I was just so hungry.
I don’t believe you. Your sister said your brother told you to steal.
Again, I told them no, I did it on my own.
Is that him, they asked me and pointed him out from
among the small distanced crowd.
My sister answered yes. He’s a coward they told me.
And I tried to nod my head. Then, they let us go.
When we went back he beat us. You little liars, you told on me.
*sarmma sarmput – Buddhist chant.
*stupa – a building structure of a pyramidal shape used for keeping ancestral bones after the cremation.
Brother
Once, Pa-pa told me, elephants were used to build Angkor Wat. They bore the weight of what our ancestors could not haul to build our magic kingdom. And I asked Pa-pa, if they were so strong, then how come they remained shackled to those thin chains? Then, Pa-pa told me, they learned when they were young that they could not break free from those chains and that they were too strong for them. They learned to live with them; they grew huge but the chains remained the same. Acceptance was easy when you did not know any other ways.
I accepted my burden and, I moved on.
I told myself that I was happy
because my good brother was there.
I was fed; and the beating ceased. I felt brave,
strong enough to take on the next day.
So when I found him packing, once again,
I was gripped with fear.
Whatever security I thought I had
built up while he was there had again disappeared.
I knew that without my brother
I would be beaten to death.
I asked him why he was packing, and could I help
because he seemed rushed. He said he could not talk right now
and looked over his shoulders at the windows often.
But he told me that he had to leave quickly. Where, I asked.
Away from here, he answered.
I begged him, take me with. And, he told me that he could not
because he had to travel fast.
“Please Bong, take me with you,” I begged.
“Don’t leave me here. He only beats me more.”
He did not seem surprised to hear this, but he still held firm.
Where he stepped, I trailed; I could not lose him.
Then, he nodded yes and told me to go back and grab some clothes
while he hid in the shrubs. True to his words he did not ditch me.
When I knew that he was the only good thing I had left,
reasons and consequences did not matter much.
When there’s nothing left to bind, except for, the hunger and the beating,
leaving was easy.
I was so out of breath that I couldn’t even ask
my brother why we were running and hiding
so often. We blended in with the shrubs
so much that I felt it was my job to look for them along the way.
Then, we arrived at a house, closed to a paved road.
So Little Left
Underneath the raised house, many faces just stared ahead.
They didn’t even bother to look at us.
They bathed in their pools of paradise. Lost
in that black depth. They did not blink much;
their starved eyes bat once or twice when the flies gathered.
And, some did not even trouble themselves at all.
Such absence of nerves did not match my fast beating heart,
though I was grateful that they didn’t care
that we were there. They’re so peaceful.
Empty.
When enough was enough,
when life was so saturated with torture,
surrendering was all we could do.
Anything else would just trickle off.
Then the dump trucks arrived, three, perhaps four.
As names were called out, skeletal bodies strung
into a line to be booted-up into the trucks’ beds.
Name after name was called
but, ours never came up. I listened and told myself
to listen harder. Two trucks were filled. And, on the ground, we were still standing.
Hoping and doubting along the way, I looked up, pulled on my brother’s hand and whispered, when? I asked when so often that he tightened his grip
to let me know that he was annoyed. After that I quieted down.
When a lady’s name was called, she grabbed her two kids’ hands –
one in each of hers – and pulled them towards the waiting truck.
Brother grabbed mine tight then pulled.
And, we walked into the group.
Then, I understood.
They’re family now.
Standing on my toes, I tried to look out.
Such exhilaration,
such freedom,
to be finally on the truck’s bed. I smiled up to Brother.
He returned my happiness. I thought I saw our
Pa-pa standing before me,
though I knew better. It’s only my brother
with our Pa-pa’s smile.
Many years had since gone by; my brother revealed
the reason for our hasty leaving.
A newly dug-out pit sent us scurrying off.
A grave,
A grave waited for his murdered body
later that evening.
An alert from a friend saved my brother from death.
Reunion
After the deliverance*, we did a head count,
tallying up who were left.
Zero for birth during the Khmer Rouge Regime; minuses for
- cousins, - aunts, - uncles, - grandmother, and
- my parents.
What was left was not much after the reunion.
In all of our family,
there were twenty-one survivors,
who’d sustained the ordeals. Of nine aunts and uncles,
my mother’s brothers and sisters,
four sisters escaped
the starvation
and the execution.
Twenty-one alive. More than half
of my aunts, uncles, and first cousins were killed.
Whatever rose from three generations was almost wiped-out.
What hope was left was very small
while our country was still in turmoil.
Every day,
We lived in fear
That the Khmer Rouge would return to finish us off.
Every day,
We lived with hunger.
Day to day, we plotted ways to get food.
Every day,
Uncertainties were still there.
*deliverance – the Vietnamese Invasion in late 1978 and early 1979 drove the Khmer Rouge/Pol-Pot’s people from power. It saved us from the starvation and the execution.
A clear look
Our group of five walked by a gathering setting up for a meal.
Mingd* whispered to me that they’re my family.
I looked over and she was right. I was really happy to see them
and I called out EE (for my aunts). Heads turned. Surprised faces
flung over from where they were under shade. My family:
five aunts, four of my mother’s blood and one through marriage;
two uncles, husbands to two of the four; and, seven cousins.
My feelings were a little hurt. I’d thought maybe they had chosen my younger sister
before me. I swept the children’s faces. I did not see my sister’s.
One aunt, a swollen belly
filling out with a baby not much longer to birth,
waddled over to greet me.
To confirm I asked, “Aah-Beau mowl jeermyou EE?*”
She shook her head no. Then, she tossed me that empty invite,
for me to come and travel with them.
I glanced at my other three EE’s, one face down
and two faces up. One was glaring,
shutting me up before I could agree. She shouted,
“Don’t bring her with us.
She’s all trouble.” And, the other with a
smaller pregnant belly snickered
that there’s not enough food to feed me.
What’s there to lose when you had nothing,
but your face? To save face, I roused up courage
to preserve the little pride
I had left after being rejected. I stood firm.
I did not want to be a loser, so I lied,
telling my EE that I would rather go with Mingd
because I would get to the camp faster. I walked passed her.
My eyes teared up. Mingd let me know she knew
by placing her hand on my back. She comforted me
by telling me that sometimes relations were better off not had.
My mother’s words about oranges echoed in my head.
Oranges of one tree,
Never taste the same, as they should be:
Some are bitter;
Some are shinning in peels, but flesh is sour;
Then, some are sweet and soothing. An orange
Is an orange - just as it’s seemed.
*Mingd – aunt. Usually referred to a lady younger than one’s mother. She was my mother’s friend. She took me all the way (from Battambang) to the refugee’s camp on the border with Thailand.
*Aah-Beau mowl jeermyou, EE? – Did Aah-Beau (my younger sister’s name) come with you, EE?
Holding onto hope
Where there were faces, I searched,
hoping for my parents. It’s not unusual
that relatives reunited in refugees’ camps.
I had heard of parents meeting their son again.
Sister finding sister or brother. And, I hoped hard;
when I did that, I usually held my breath
for about ten seconds, putting all my thoughts
on what I was hoping for, my mother’s and father’s
faces to stick out among the crowd.
Sometimes chaos sifted out what’s hidden.
The water trucks were late. Dust around the water
tanks kicked up by children playing hopscotch carried in the air.
I sat out today. My left eye swollen from a butt of a rifle.
My cousins were in the middle of a game of checkers.
I looked out onto the dusty road, caught brown faces
squinting out the sun. The back of a tall head caught me off guard.
Doubts clouded my head.
Miracles still happened, I told myself.
I held my breath to focus on what I wanted.
I dropped my buckets to follow a man,
tall, thin and a head full of black curls. I called him, Pa-pa,
Pa-pa. When he did not turn towards my call, I ran up
but I did not touch him.
He looked down and frowned at me, probably thinking
my bastard of that one night.
His face did not match my memory of my father.
I turned back pretending mistake
that it was not I who had made the call.
I walked back and turned around one last time to let myself know
of how I could have mistaken a stranger’s back for my father’s.
Just then we were face to face, again. The stranger searched his memories;
and I x’ed the list of my father’s features.
The curly hair was off-color.
It should have been grayer and thinner.
I was angry at my own stupidity
for having hope and doubting fate.
Still wondering
Shelves of bleached-white and rusty-brown stained skulls,
arm and thigh bones,
behind the glares of the glass-
enclosed cabinets, drop
my heart off its rhythm. My hands agitate,
fingers wobble, hair rising-
up, saluting
to the souls of the innocent.
Empty why--why’s sneak out
under each breath. What sins
to cause a race to cleanse its own?
Genocide. My inside shrieks,
memories flood my vision, pains reawaken
from the blows of many years ago.
Those knocked-out breaths. The known pains
dulled up by repeated whips
in the same place. Did you resist,
raising your arms to save your head,
your eyes, your ribs, your kidneys, and your stomach?
Did you beg mercy
of hearts which knew no pity?
Mother.
Father,
which one?
Which one is the bone
of your head? your arms? Which piles
I should pick through? The skull pile?
The leg pile.
The arm pile.
Every part of you lies
scattered. I beat my brain
with questions
to seek peace of life.
When it’s too much, I weep
for them, for they’re born
without compassion. For men
still carry no qualms for clubbing their own
mothers and fathers. What world we’d lived in
when babies were beaten
against tree trunks. Every life is now but shattered,
no ways of making amends.
April, again and again, the souls sit
wondering when they would be home. Too long,
their anger
has but dissolved
to pity.
Trees.
O innocent trees
are made to bear
witness
and wear the blood
of our innocence.
O roots. O grass still soaks
with our blood.
O life
no more
life
to dream
and further encounter.
For what purpose?
For what?
§§§
April 17, 1975, I had just turned eight, when the Khmer Rouge turned Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, into hell. My family and I were fortunate to be living in Battambang, which surrendered a day later. Another day later, April 19, 1975, my father and uncle left for a meeting but to never return. Later, we’d learned that they were among the first people to be killed by the Khmer Rouge.
April 17, 2010, will be 35 years since that nightmare. I will be 43 years old, 35 years older. It’s a lifetime ago, but everything is still so fresh, so painful. I started this writing when I was 40 years old. Two years ago, my daughters’ questions about their grandparents prompted me to reflect, to re-walk that childhood path, which I had bypassed, avoided for so long. It hurt to talk about this senseless war and the killing of my parents; writing down the events, hoping to give to them when they’re older, was a little easier. I could grieve in private. So, this reflection is a sketchbook, with pictures painted by words, emotions, for my little ones, their little ones, my parents, and for me.
Many years after that war, we were fortunate to receive two pictures of our parents from relatives. By then, I’d had forgotten what they looked like, especially my mother. Now, I have two duplicated pictures of them (my older brother keeps the originals), and this written story for my children.
So little did I know that this reflection would take two years to breathe. It will be three years this next April. At first, events were sketchy, exact dates and times were a blur. So, to chronicle the various events I decided to write it all down, leaving spaces in between.
About a year and a half ago, I was expecting a third child, when I received Jim Bodeen’s response (around Christmas). Now, our third daughter has just turned one, a month ago. As I get older, I find my need to understand this chapter of my life is such that I need to look at it on paper, instead of just in my head. It is more concrete. More touchable. It is something I can lay to rest for my sanity’s sake.
I was asked (by Jim Bodeen) how I got this far with this writing, with no apparent help or experience as a writer. I have help. My husband read some parts of the first draft. And, his friend checked my grammar (I’m terrible). At the beginning, I could not write. I could only make an outline. Sometimes, it felt so raw that I could only look from the side-line at the different events. (Afraid the nightmares would come back.) It was difficult to gather the right words into sentences. I wrote down phrases. And, I prayed for guidance. Then, moments came; the emotions felt. The words and tears merged into touchable feelings.
It’s unsettling to have learned that a tribunal court was set up. It is hard for me to fathom a result of justice. In the abstract, measuring the weight of genocide is a hard concept. And, in the first person: How do you measure life, without your parents? How much is it worth? How much do my pains cost? And theirs? There’re no justifications in this world that would be enough for my siblings and me. There’re no sure answers for me, at least.
I do not want to see life being exchanged for life or death for death. I just want people to know that wars always torture the little ones the most.
My hope for this story is for it to be read. And, if it becomes a book, all money from its profit will be donated. I want to thank Jim and Karen Bodeen of Blue Begonia Press for enabling part of this story to be made into an online chapbook. Jim, I thank you for your unconditional encouragement; and Karen, for sorting out my messy grammatical errors. Of course, I thank my husband, my daughters (for wanting to know about their grandparents) and Steve Carrey for saying they liked what I wrote. I am indebted to my husband for hearing my anger, feeling my pain, easing me to sleep, and making me wait for the moment. Someone most dear to me once said, “I do not know if I believe in God, but I love Him.” Along those lines, I do not know how to even guess if God is just. But, I do believe that He has helped me with this writing, with finding peace and healing. And, I thank Him – for every part of my life.
