Alive in the Killing Fields Read online

  Sometimes my mother would ask me to go with her to the rice field; “Mop, do you think you can walk all the way to the field with me? I want to re-seed a few sections.”

  “Yes, please, please, please!” I’d say.

  What an adventure those special days were. For me, it was a rare treat to walk that far away from the house and to spend a whole day outside with my mother. I especially remember the fun I had on one of those trips during the rainy season. If I close my eyes, I can re-live the scene. I smelled the fresh moist air of the fields. The humidity made my skin feel extra soft. While Mom did the planting, I played in the mud nearby. I thought she would scold me for getting dirty, but she didn’t. With my fingers and toes, I made patterns in the wet dirt. Then I collected rocks and arranged them in three piles, targets for clods of mud that I tossed at them. I backed farther and farther away, trying to improve my accuracy. Lots of times I flung the mud balls so hard that they fell apart even before they landed. When I hit the farthest target, I laughed. I’m good! When I felt too hot to stay in the sun any longer, I moved to the shade and wondered what to do. Then a bright green bird swooped in front of me. It was a bee-eater, a common sight in Salatrave. I wondered, “What would it be like to eat a bee? Wouldn’t it sting you? And what would it be like to fly?” I pretended I could fly. I stretched out my arms and squawked at every bug I saw. Then I decided I’d eat some insects—but no bees—just to see what they tasted like. I caught a silver-colored insect with my hands, but its sparkly wings looked pretty and delicate. I didn’t want to destroy them, so I opened my hand and let it go.

  Mom said, “Mop, I’m done for the day. Let’s walk back.”

  As we walked, I noticed tall wading birds in a rice field. They had red faces and long yellow legs. “What are those?,” I asked.

  “They’re called lapwings,” she said. “Some people say those birds sleep on their backs at night and stretch their long legs out straight to hold up the sky.”

  “Do you think that’s true?” I asked.

  “No,” she said and laughed. “It’s just a superstition.”

  “I don’t believe it either,” I said.

  It seemed to me we walked a long ways. By the time we reached our house, I felt very worldly and important. When I got into bed that night, I raised my legs up toward the ceiling. I was glad I didn’t have to do that all night long.

  My mother was kind, but she made me behave, too. She scolded me when I got mad at my brothers. I hated their teasing me whenever our neighboor Deenah and her family stopped by to visit. I chased after them when they yelled, “Mop, here comes your wife!” Of course Deenah was not really my wife, but our marriage had been arranged. Nobody else in my family had an arranged marriage, but our mothers decided to arrange a marriage between Deenah and me because of a strange dream they each had. Just before Deenah and I were born, a couple that lived nearby passed away. Deenah’s mother and my mother had an identical dream that the couple wanted to live with them. The mothers were so surprised by this that they decided their babies must have a special connection. This led to my mother’s decision to name me “Bunpah.” She thought the name seemed very grownup, in anticipation of my marriage. I never liked that name because the last thing I wanted to think about was getting married. Like most kids, I wanted to think about playing and having fun. Deenah was nice, but I was too young to care about girls.

  My older brother Bunna and I often got scolded for arguing. I remember one time I knew I was going to be in trouble. To get away from my mother, I scrambled up a coconut palm as high as I could go. My mother came looking for me, and when she saw me up there, she was scared I would fall down and be killed. She went away so that I would come down before I got so tired that I would fall out of the tree. When I came down unhurt she was so relieved that she did not even punish me.

  My friends and I made up simple games. We played with rubber bands and marbles. Any piece of litter on the street could become a toy. We did not have organized teams or ball games. My good friend, Whee, lived next door. Sometimes he would come sleep over at my house, and sometimes I would go to his. We laughed a lot. He was older than me. In the Cambodian language, younger people usually speak more politely to older people. But we agreed to treat each other as equals. After the Khmer Rouge came, everything changed. I don’t know what happened to Whee’s family.

  Now that I was living in Battambang with Chantha, I missed Salatrave, and especially my father. The Khmer Rouge had burned down most of our village, but every weekend I still liked to go there. Chantha and my brothers stayed in Battambang, and I took a taxi to see Dad. A taxi was a trailer pulled behind a motorcycle. The ride was scary, and even though Bunna was older than me, he was too timid to make the trip. I was scared, too, but I went anyway. I felt less nervous after my father arranged to have the same taxi take me each week. Even though the Khmer Rouge had blown up half of our house, Dad still lived there. He raised chickens, grew rice, and kept a big vegetable garden.

  At the end of one of my visits to see Dad he said, “You’re a good boy, Mop. Take this rice and these eggs, and vegetables. If there is any left over, tell Chantha to give the extra to anyone who needs it.” Then he loaded the food next to me in the taxi trailer. As the taxi pulled away, I looked back and saw him standing alone in front of our ruined house. I tried to smile at him, but I couldn’t. He had told me I was a good boy. He usually did not talk much, and I was not accustomed to being praised. I wasn’t sure if I was good or not. I was sure that I hated to leave him, but I had learned not to cry.

  Back in Battambang, Chantha, my brothers, and I ate what Dad had supplied for us, and we shared it with the homeless children who begged on the streets. The Khmer Rouge had killed their parents and burned their houses, so many orphans in the city struggled to get enough to eat.

  One weekend when I was at the farm with Dad, he said, “I have heard that the Khmer Rouge are gaining power. They are moving closer to the cities. Help me hitch the trailer to the tractor, and we’ll drive it to Battambang.”

  As we rode along, my father said little. But I told him about Van Lan, who spent a lot of time with Chantha even when they weren’t studying. He was starting to feel almost like a big brother to me, and a smart one at that. He had read a lot of books, and I liked hearing him talk.

  I was used to riding in the tractor in Salatrave, but when we got to Battambang, it felt funny to be driving a farm vehicle into the city. People glanced at us, but no one stared. I think many of them wished they had any kind of transportation at all. We were lucky.

  “Chantha and Bunna,” Dad said, “if the Khmer Rouge come and you need to leave the city, load up as many of your belongings as you can fit into the trailer and return to Salatrave. You and your brothers can ride on the tractor.”

  Chantha looked down and then asked quietly, “What about Van Lan?”

  My father said, “Chantha, what about Van Lan?”

  “We want to get married,” she said.

  “I thought so,” he said. “Of course you should all be safe together.”

  Chantha smiled slightly. This was not the way an engagement announcement was supposed to be made. Like most Cambodian girls, she had always looked forward to planning her wedding with the help of our mom, and savoring her beautiful day as a bride. As for my arranged marriage to Deenah, that idea was a thing of the past. Most of her family had been killed by the Khmer Rouge. Deenah survived, but I had no idea where she was. After the Khmer Rouge came, sorrow and uncertainty had taken over our lives. Our world had fallen apart, and we didn’t know what our new world would be like.

  “Thank you for understanding,” she said to Dad.

  Dad left the tractor and trailer with us, and he took a taxi back to the farm. Soon his prediction proved true.

  We heard rumors that Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, thought city folk were too privileged and couldn’t be trusted. Pol Pot said farming was the only right way for everyone to live. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge streamed in
to Battambang and Phnom Penh. They didn’t talk about their philosophy. Instead, at gunpoint, they yelled, “Get out of here, or we’ll shoot! Now!” They were deadly serious. We could hear gunshots, and terrified children screaming. Van Lan said, “Mop, help me carry all the bags of rice that we have. Then choose any clothes you want to take.”

  Chantha said, “I’ll get our clothes and help Hackly and Chanty with theirs.”

  Van Lan said calmly, “We can do this. Bring everything to the tractor, and I’ll load it all up.”

  Van Lan and I each carried two bags of rice out to the tractor. At age ten, I still wasn’t very strong, but fear gives you muscle power you didn’t know you had. The street was jammed with people lugging as much as they could manage on their backs and in their arms. A few had bicycles or taxis, but most people walked. I heard a little girl cry, “Mommy, where are we going?” I ran back into the house and grabbed a couple of shirts, a pair of shorts, and my pajamas. I put them in a sack and took them to Van Lan. Chantha brought out a larger sack, and Hackly and Chanty, looking scared, trailed behind her. Van Lan organized everything in the tractor, and we piled in.

  We had it easier than most people, because we had transportation. When we recognized other families going to Salatrave, we added their belongings to ours on the tractor, and they walked alongside. We were all nervous. I was glad Van Lan was with us. He spoke slowly and acted confident in spite of the chaos in the street. He was barely 20 years old, but to me, he seemed like an adult.

  The Khmer Rouge walked in the streets, yelling and waving their guns. “Thanks to our great leader Pol Pot, we have a new Cambodia! Call us ‘Angka.’” “Angka” meant “savior,” but we needed saving from these hoodlums.

  “City ways are evil,” yelled another Khmer Rouge. “In the new Cambodia, everyone works for the common good. They don’t sit around in fancy offices. They grow rice. If you don’t like the new way, then you are the enemy. The enemy will not live!”

  While throngs of people trudged out of the city, the Khmer Rouge started killing “the enemy.” They shot educated people, advanced students, civic and military leaders, old people, and anyone with money. The Khmer Rouge had no laws. There were no courts. If they did not like somebody, they killed him. If a bystander complained, he got shot too. We watched in horror, silently. Fortunately, the Khmer Rouge did not know Van Lan was a teacher. They simply did not notice him. We got out of the city safely, but we had no idea what awaited us.

  We returned to our village, Salatrave. But nobody was allowed to move into their old houses, or what was left of them. We had to build huts made of leaves, grass, and poles. Each family had a hut. The Khmer Rouge made us build them side by side, in long rows. Ours was at the end.

  One day right after we got to Salatrave, my father said, “Chantha and Van Lan, you should have a beautiful wedding, full of celebration and joy. But it’s obvious that is not possible in these times.”

  “I want to marry your daughter properly,” said Van Lan.

  “I know,” said Dad, “that’s what we all want. I have a friend who can perform the ceremony. I’ll invite whatever family is able to come.”

  The ceremony was simple and short. In our village, people usually celebrated a wedding by playing music on a battery-powered record player with a speaker so large that everyone in town could enjoy the music. Someone still had one of those players, and after the ceremony, hearing the traditional music made me feel good. Chantha and Van Lan grinned, and I did too.

  “Mop, I am now your brother,” said Van Lan with a wink. That gave me the biggest reason to smile that I’d had in a long time. But I could tell the grown-ups were not as happy as you would expect at a wedding. We didn’t know what the future would bring.

  Only a few days later, the Khmer Rouge brought their guns again and yelled, “Move, now!”

  They made all of us leave the huts we had just built. In the next weeks, a pattern developed. Over and over again, they forced us to work in a field for a few days, and then set up a camp nearby to sleep in. Then they would make us move to another area and do the same thing again. I never asked why. I just did what I was told.

  My father heard that the Khmer Rouge near Salatrave did not like him, and he understood what that meant—his murder. So he left us and hid in the jungle where the trees, shrubs, and vines grew so close together that it was easy to become lost. But he was really smart, and he quickly learned his way around. He brought two friends to the area where he was living, and together they fished and gathered honey at beehives he had found. Then the men took the fish and honey to people in Salatrave. Some of the Khmer Rouge were glad to have the food added to their supplies, so they accepted what my father’s friends brought them, and they did not go after my father in the jungle. I missed him so much!

  The Khmer Rouge made us work in the fields every day. We did not get paid, and there were no days off. I had never worked in the fields before, but I did what the Khmer Rouge told me to do. I was just a kid, but that didn’t matter. I was a slave.

  Everybody in Cambodia, even people who had never been farmers, knew that rice grows in shallow water. We built levees to keep the fields flooded. Sometimes we weeded the rice paddies. We made fertilizer out of tree bark and spread it in the fields. The other kids and I scared away birds that tried to eat the rice. At the end of the day, the Khmer Rouge made us set up our sleeping shacks.

  One day when I was working in a rice field, I saw Zhen, the drunken employee my father had fired. Now, like the other Khmer Rouge men, he wore black. I pretended not to see him. When he got really close to me, he said in a mean voice, “Where is your father?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Yes you do,” he said. “Tell me.” He grabbed my arm and yanked me closer to him.

  “I don’t know. I really don’t.” I looked down, the polite way for children to talk with adults.

  “I’ll find him, you nasty brat,” he said. He shoved me away and strode off, sneering at us in the field.

  Before the Khmer Rouge took over, he never would have been so mean to me. He worked for my father and was courteous to my whole family. Now Zhen was the boss with his rifle, black clothes, and show-off swagger.

  Once when the Khmer Rouge made us walk to new fields, we marched past our old village. We saw that our house and all our neighbors’ houses had been flattened. Even if the Khmer Rouge decided to let us go home, I saw that I no longer had a home to go to.

  After my father left for the jungle, the rest of my family still stayed together—Bunna, Chantha, Van Lan, my younger brothers and I. Lee was still living by himself in Pursat, and Chanya was still there, too, with her family. We cooked and ate our own food, away from other people. That arrangement lasted for only a few months. Then the Khmer Rouge took our little grill, cooking supplies, and food away from us. We were ordered to eat one meal a day with the group, but there was not enough food to go around. The Khmer Rouge said, “Now there may not be much food, but in the future there will be. If you work hard enough, you will have three full meals a day.”

  To have three full meals a day became my dream.

  When people do not have enough to eat, they get weak, they get sick, and they die. A lot of people died. We did not know what was going to happen to us. Would we be strong enough to survive? Would the Khmer Rouge decide to shoot us? Would our lives ever return to normal, or would we always be slaves who did nothing but grow rice, and hope for almost enough food to eat in return for our endless labor?

  At night when I tried to fall asleep, my stomach growled with hunger. I tried to remember what it was like to have plenty to eat. I thought about the Cambodian Thanksgiving when Mom prepared delicious, traditional food that I loved. I could picture her soaking the rice in water overnight. Then she put bacon or bananas on it, and wrapped it all in a banana leaf. The next day, she boiled it for a long time, until it cooked through. Sometimes we ate it with a fork, and sometimes we just peeled back the banana leaf and ate it with our
hands. We did not have electricity or a refrigerator (nobody did), so we did not store food for long. I loved these rice pockets, and sometimes I hid some, hoping to save them for later. But the bugs, rats, or birds would always eat the food before I got back to it. How I wished I had that food now.

  Cambodians do not celebrate birthdays, but we do love holidays, and food is always part of them. At our New Year’s celebration, the family always got together for a big meal. I especially liked the fruit we would have for the party. It came from other regions of Cambodia, so we did not normally eat it. But for New Year’s we would splurge and buy it. To get to the reunion, some relatives from far away came on motorcycles. Others came in taxis. People who lived fairly close came by cyclo, a kind of sofa on a bicycle. On the back, a man pedals a bicycle, and the “sofa” sits on his handlebars, which are supported by two wheels. I was scared whenever I rode in a cyclo, because if the rider ran into anything, I—sitting in front—would have been the human bumper! But now, we never rode in any vehicle at all. We just walked and worked. The Khmer Rouge even took our clothes. They left me with only one pair of shorts and a shirt, which soon became nothing but rags.

  During the rainy season, the Khmer Rouge sent my brother Bunna, then 15 years old, far away to work with a chalat (zhaLOT). It was a group of boys and girls about his age or a few years older that would make small earthen dams for irrigation or build huts for the Khmer Rouge. They worked on each project for three or four months at a time, all day long. Like the other teenagers with him, Bunna always longed for his family. One time he ran away to see us. He traveled by day through the jungle. He stayed away from the main trails or roads where he might be seen. He crawled through the murky marshes where almost nobody went during the rainy season. He also traveled by night. He knew that if the Khmer Rouge saw him, they would not bother to ask questions. They would consider him the enemy, and probably shoot him.