Alive in the Killing Fields (3 page)

My father, still hiding out in the jungle, was desperate to see any of his children. My younger brothers were not strong enough to walk a long way, but I was. I think Dad asked his two friends who worked for him to get permission from the local Khmer Rouge boss to let them bring me with them. Maybe the Khmer Rouge
were so glad to get the extra food supplied by my father that they didn’t mind if I, just one little kid, was away from the fields for a while. I don’t know what the Khmer Rouge thought. For me it was simple: I liked to be with Dad, and if the Khmer Rouge would let me join him, I would go.

Dad rarely spoke
. Instead, he showed me things.

He showed me how to catch wild chickens in the jungle, and any other birds we could get. We used fishing line. It was hard to find, and we used only as much as we needed to trap the birds. To make the trap, we laid a branch across a trail. We trimmed its leaves so that wandering chickens would notice only one easy route to follow as they walked along pecking for food on the ground. When they were channeled into the narrow spot we selected, they would step into a noose we had made. The string tightened around their feet, and at that moment, the tree branch we tied it to would swing up, pulling the bird with it. Every day I checked the traps. How I loved it when we had snared a bird!

Dad was a genius at finding turtle eggs. I would search and search for them, and then I’d say, “None here.” Dad would shake his head, point to soft ground, dig a tiny bit, and pull up a handful of eggs. They were the most delicious food we had in the jungle.

He also showed me how to make popcorn. He dug a small hole and made a fire in it. The fire heated the dirt
until it hardened. Then he put corn into the hole, and it popped, one kernel at a time. We caught each popping kernel. It was so much fun.

I spent many months with Dad in the jungle. We stayed in an abandoned hut next to a small pond. We ate fish from the pond, but Dad thought the water was not safe to drink, so we boiled it first. We lived so deep in the jungle, only his two helpers knew where we were. We saw nobody else.

In the morning, the birds made our only company. I loved to watch the colorful bee-eaters sail through the air, darting and swooping as they grabbed bees, wasps, and other insects. Larger birds soared gracefully above the pond and then dove down to grab fish for their breakfast. Woodpeckers high in the trees tapped the trunks in their search for insects. I could hear the calls of birds that I could not see because of the dense jungle. Their beautiful songs welcomed each dawn. I agreed with them that dawn was worth welcoming. Instead of the terrible sadness I felt when I slaved in the rice fields every day, I liked being with my father in a place that seemed far away from the Khmer Rouge.

Even though we spent all our time there together, Dad never told me any stories about my mother or about his life before the Khmer Rouge came. I will never know the reason. Maybe he thought I was too young to understand. He might have been too miserable himself to be able to talk with me about all that he had lost. He sat quietly and smoked cigarettes. Cambodian children
are very respectful toward their parents. I understood that I should not ask him “why?”

Even though we seldom spoke, my mind was always working. I imagined us back at home, enjoying our normal life before the Khmer Rouge came. Dad was a kind, gentle person. He never yelled at me or spanked me. I remember him showing me his collection of antique rifles. I loved to stare at them and picture him using them. He told me that when he was a boy, one of his jobs was to herd cattle and to protect them from lions and other animals that used to be in the jungle. He carried a gun then, but the gun couldn’t protect him from everything. One day a wild boar attacked him, and on his leg he still had the scar made by the boar’s tusk. On the wall of our house, he displayed the stuffed head of a wild boar he had killed.

Dad told me the biggest rifle in his collection was an elephant gun. It was huge! He did not use it to shoot elephants. Instead, he aimed it toward the sky. The loud noise would scare the elephants away. I smiled at the memory of how I used that gun once, but not to scare an elephant. Most of the kids in my village were my friends, but a few were jealous of our family because we were the richest in town. One time some bullies threw rocks at my younger brother and me. We were so mad, we ran to the house and took my Dad’s old elephant gun down from the wall. We knew it did not work anymore, but we carried it outside so the bullies could see it. Boy, did we laugh when they ran away, dropping their stones as they went. We felt as strong as elephants that day!

In the summer in Cambodia, it does not rain at all. Everything dries out, and the dirt cakes to a hard, cracked surface. The opposite happens in the winter. Then, there is too much water. When I was a little boy in Salatrave, I liked the flooding. My family’s house was on high ground, so it never got wet. But across the road, some of the backyards flooded. The other kids and I waded in the water that made the familiar yards seem like strange lagoons. We pointed at fish swimming in ditches where only a few weeks before we had played hide-and-seek. We laughed to see fish swimming above low tree branches where we hung out on lazy afternoons in the dry season.

Now, living in the jungle, I didn’t consider flooding to be a source of fun. Because the water covered almost everything, we could not find turtle eggs. It covered the grass and came up above our knees. To fish, we stretched a very thin vine just above the water’s surface. Every few feet, we hung fishhooks from it, baited with worms or little frogs. After a couple of hours, we left the higher ground where the hut stood, and we waded through the water to see if we had had any luck. The line sagged a little bit if a fish had been caught. We could tell if we had caught a snake or eel because they made a whirlpool from swirling around in the flooded grasses. We ate whatever we caught.

Dad showed me how to make a monkey trap. Using the only tool he had, his machete, he cut a branch into four pieces, each about two feet long. He whittled the
end of each one into a point. We pushed those into the ground to be the four corners of our trap. Then we twisted vines and sticks together to be the walls and top of our primitive cage. It had a little door that we pulled open with a vine attached to a twig we lay at an angle on the bottom of the trap. One end of the twig was on the ground, but the other end was lifted about an inch by the vine tied to the trap door. We baited the trap with a few grains of rice. We hoped that a monkey would climb through the door to get the rice. Then, when the monkey stepped on the twig held up by the vine, the vine would slip off the end of the twig, and the door would close with the monkey caught inside.

We set three traps, each one on a different trail, not far from our camp. The jungle is so thick, nobody can walk through it unless there’s a trail.

The first time I trapped a monkey, I was scared. I yelled for Dad to come. My yelling scared the monkey, too. He panicked and managed to squeeze between the sticks and scramble out of the trap. My father said to me, “Next time you find a trapped monkey, you have to be silent. You have to be brave. Can you do that?”

I looked down, ashamed of myself for letting the monkey get away. “I can do it,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if I really could.

The next time we trapped a monkey, I did not yell. I just ran to tell Dad. He came and showed me how to grab the monkey without letting it bite me. I learned how to tie the monkey up and take it back to our camp. But
I always felt scared of monkeys, because some of them are really big, and they’re very smart. I carried a knife to protect myself.

Before the Khmer Rouge took over, our family always ate normal food like beef, chicken, and fish. But in the jungle during the rainy season, we had the choice of starving to death, or eating any food that was available. Monkey meat could keep us alive. Eating monkeys was disgusting. But if we did not eat them, we would die.

Besides the monkeys, we lived on crickets, rats, snakes, and frogs. I killed snakes by beating on them with a stick. The water snakes were not poisonous, but many of the ones on land were, like the cobra. But the most deadly was the one we called an inside-out snake. We gave it that name because of its coloring. Its back had a simple pattern of black scales, and its belly had the same pattern, in reverse, of white scales. One bite would kill a person.

In Cambodia, we believe that a snake that sees a pregnant woman cannot move. Only its head can move. A few years before, I saw a pregnant woman I knew step on an inside-out snake. The snake moved its head just enough to bite her. When I saw the snake, I recognized what kind it was. It was too late to help the woman. She turned blue and died.

In the jungle, I did not spend much time worrying about poisonous snakes. The Khmer Rouge seemed far more dangerous to me. I think Dad felt the same. When the dry season came, he sent me out of the jungle. I will
never know for sure, but I think he was afraid the Khmer Rouge were going to come after him, and he wanted me to be safe.

I left with his two workers. I walked out of the jungle carrying a long stick on my shoulder. At both ends, I had tied big turtles we had caught. Cambodians love to eat turtle meat, so I had a valuable contribution to give the people. Maybe my father thought that if the Khmer Rouge liked the turtle meat, they would be nice to me. But one of the turtles, swinging as I walked, stretched its neck and bit my arm. Cambodians have a saying that if a turtle bites you, it will not let go until it hears thunder. “Oh, no!” I screamed. It was the dry season. Would that turtle hold onto my arm all summer until the thunder came? I was so scared, I flung the pole down to the ground as hard as I could. The force of my throw made the turtle let go of my arm. I breathed a sigh of relief and rubbed my sore arm. Then I picked up the pole again. Both turtles were still tied on. After that, I walked more carefully so they did not swing close to me. I stayed safe from the turtles, but other dangers awaited me.

“Nothing has changed,”
said Van Lan when I rejoined him, Chantha, and my younger brothers. The Khmer Rouge made them work in the rice fields from sunup to sundown, seven days a week. Once again, I had to do the same. There was no such thing as a holiday or a day off. We had no games, no toys, no fun. We barely had enough food. We were not even allowed to eat the very same rice that we grew. Anyone caught “stealing” rice was “the enemy.”

The Khmer Rouge destroyed all the motorcycles, trucks, cars, and even tractors. Everyone lived in temporary shacks, and at gunpoint the Khmer Rouge herded people from field to field to clear land or harvest rice. The guards constantly changed, so no friendships developed between them and us. The Khmer Rouge had families, but I kept away from them. They got all the food, and if I went near any of their food, the guards might have said I was trying to steal it. It was safest to never have anything to do with Khmer Rouge families. They looked different from us only because they were not skinny and hungry. The men wore black clothes and always carried guns.

I would have run away if there had been a place to go. Anyone found off by himself was suspected of being a runaway. He would probably be shot, and as punishment, his family would be killed, too. Cambodians really love their families, and they don’t want to risk their family’s lives. Anyone who complained would be shot or beaten to death with a hammer or hoe. The Khmer Rouge were known to kill anyone who had a scar from a bullet. They figured that if the person had been shot before, then that person must have been the enemy. I did my best to hide the scars from my bullet wounds, but I think the Khmer Rouge didn’t pay much attention to me. As far as they were concerned, I was just an unimportant kid.

Almost all handicapped people were killed. It didn’t matter to the Khmer Rouge why somebody was disabled. Maybe they’d been hurt on their farm, or maybe a Khmer Rouge grenade had hit them. The Khmer Rouge would look at a handicapped person and say, “You’re the enemy.” That meant he would have to die. The Khmer Rouge gave people no opportunity for an explanation. One day I heard a Khmer Rouge yell at a man standing awkwardly in a rice field. “Straighten up and get to work, you lazy old man!” he yelled.

The man slowly lifted his shoulders, but he stood unevenly.

“You can’t work,” said the Khmer Rouge. “What good are you?”

“I am a man, that is all,” he answered with his head bowed.

“In a bowl of rice, nobody misses one grain. Nobody will miss you. Come with me,” said the Khmer Rouge.

“I have a wife and two children,” he said quietly. “They need me.”

The Khmer Rouge screamed at him, “Nobody needs you. Get going!” He pointed his gun toward the edge of the field. The man limped in front of him, with the Khmer Rouge shoving and pushing from behind. After they went into the dense forest and I couldn’t see them any more, I heard a gun shot. The Khmer Rouge came back alone.

There was no justice.

The Khmer Rouge killed anybody who seemed especially smart. I was smart enough to keep quiet.

People who did not know how to get food on their own starved to death if they depended only on the small amount of food the Khmer Rouge allowed us to have. One such group of people were the Chinese living in Cambodia. Although there were not many, most of them ran businesses in the cities. When the Khmer Rouge kicked everybody out of the cities, the Chinese had no idea how to survive in the country. Almost all of them died. Whenever I could, I caught crabs and gave them to the Chinese people.

I had no sense of a future that might be different from the present. Nobody did. Our existence was so awful, some people did not want to live. They felt no hope, and they committed suicide.

I wanted to live because of my family. We no longer had a mother, and our father was away. We had only
ourselves, and we had to take care of each other. Every morning when I woke up and saw the faces of Chantha and Van Lan, and my younger brothers, Hackly and Chanty, I said to myself, “This family is all I have. I am lucky to be alive.”

One afternoon a Khmer Rouge boss walked up to my sister. He told Chantha, “Take this two-wheeled cart. This pair of cattle will pull it. You and your family can return to your village.”

I was full of questions, but I knew not to ask.

In the morning, my younger brothers and I got in the cart, and Chantha and Van Lan walked alongside. We started off for Salatrave. My heart pounded. For once, I was not working in the rice fields. I was just sitting in a cart, and we were traveling a familiar road toward my home. We recognized another family from our village who also had a cart loaded up with their children. “So two families were going. Were the Khmer Rouge going to let people return to their old way of living?” I wondered. That seemed too good to be true, but I hoped it would be true. I kept my mouth shut, but my eyes wide open.

On the way to Salatrave, we passed through several villages. In one of them, Van Lan knew someone. He had been his adopted brother. In Cambodia, if a child was orphaned, it was common for a generous family to take him in until he grew up. This man had lived with Van Lan’s family. He invited us to have a meal and stay overnight with him. In fact, he warned Van Lan that we
would be foolish to continue to Salatrave that day. Van Lan listened carefully.

Van Lan told Chantha, “Let’s stay here tonight. If the Khmer Rouge ask why we didn’t travel straight through, I will say ‘the cart’s wheel is broken,’ or ‘one of the cattle started limping.’” So we stopped. The other family continued on the road. When we got to Salatrave the next day, people there greeted us with surprise. They told us the other family had been killed in an ambush.

No official organization ruled the Khmer Rouge, but I guess the local leader had been told by another leader to kill two families traveling with their children in carts that day. Van Lan’s foster brother knew about this plot. The Khmer Rouge killed the only family they saw, and then they left the area. I suppose the Khmer Rouge who wanted us to be killed did not find out we survived. Why did the Khmer Rouge want to destroy my family? Maybe Zhen, the worker we fired, had tried to set it up. I will never know.

For a few months, we stayed together in Salatrave and worked for the Khmer Rouge there. But then they sent my younger brothers and me away to live and work with other children. We felt so lonely without Chantha and Van Lan. I tried to set a brave example for them, but I was still young, too. As usual during the rainy season, the Khmer Rouge slept on the high ground so they could stay dry and comfortable. In the area where we were working, there was only one other high spot. It was the site of a Buddhist temple, now partly destroyed. The
Khmer Rouge boss yelled at me, “You and your brothers will sleep next to the temple. Over there. Go!”

I was horrified to step onto that ground because that’s where cremations occurred. Human bones and ashes covered the soil. We walked really slowly, and the Khmer Rouge yelled again, “Hurry up, you spoiled kids. I’m not going to wait around here forever while you take your own sweet time.”

I knew we had no choice. We lay down on our backs, side by side. I made sure not to look around much because it’s hard to fall asleep when skulls are staring at you. My brothers were really scared. I told them, “There’s an old story that lapwings, those tall wading birds, have a special way of sleeping.”

“What is it?” asked Hackly.

“They lie on their backs and stick their legs straight up. It’s important that they do that.”

“Why?”

“People say that their legs hold the sky up all night long. The sky hasn’t fallen, so they must be nearby, keeping us safe. Let’s dream about lapwings.”

When we were moved to work in other fields, there was even less high, dry ground. The Khmer Rouge slept there, and they made us sleep where everything was wet. Tender skin develops a rash when it is exposed to water every day and every night, never having a chance to dry. My thighs and shins turned red, and the skin felt as if it was burning up. We didn’t have towels, cream, or anything that could help. If I touched my legs, the skin
seemed to burn even more. There was no relief until the wet season ended.

The Khmer Rouge never let us stay in one spot for long. We had no place that felt like a home. Every now and then we were moved to fields near where Chantha and Van Lan were working. We stayed together at night, sleeping in small huts we made of tall grass. It felt good to be with my family—we were all we had. Everybody’s huts were close together, so it was impossible for us to have a private conversation. Two old men talked late one night about how they could resist the Khmer Rouge. Somebody overheard them. The next day, they were taken away from the camp. They were killed. After that, nobody dared to talk about anything with anybody. We kept quiet and tried not to be noticed. We avoided talking about our past because if a Khmer Rouge overheard us and happened to know and dislike one of our old friends, he might decide he didn’t like us, either. I did not try to make friends with other boys my age. What if one of them, for whatever reason, said something bad about me to the Khmer Rouge?

I could barely remember when I used to play games with my friends, laughing at fish swimming in flooded back yards, running just for the fun of it, or joking with my schoolmates. My old childhood seemed to be part of another life—someone else’s, not mine.