Survival in the Killing Fields Read Free

hidden from sight until around August, when the rains stopped, and the plants gradually began to turn golden. The
farmers went out and harvested, leaving only dry stubble behind. They threshed the stalks, milled the grains and sold the rice to families like mine.
    We ate the rice gladly, and we always set some aside for the monks, who came to our house every morning with their alms bowls. The monks wore robes, yellow or orange or even brown if they had
made the dyes themselves from tree bark. Their heads and eyebrows were shaved. They were calm and silent, speaking not a word as they walked from one house to the next in a single-file line.
    Those are my first memories, the rice fields changing with the seasons and the monks coming to our house each morning. And that is how I would like to remember Cambodia, quiet and beautiful and
at peace.
    But in fact the first entire incident I remember was not so peaceful. I was about three years old. The year was probably 1950. My mother sent my older brother and me into the rice fields to get
water from a pond. It was the dry season. Soldiers from the village garrison fished at the pond with their shirts and shoes off. We filled the pail. My older brother took one end of a pole on his
shoulder and I took the other on mine and we put the pail between us. We were returning to the house, two little barefoot boys carrying a single pail, when we heard a sharp
bang!
behind us,
near the pond. Then we heard another
bang!
and the soldiers shouting. My mother appeared at the door. I had never seen that expression on her face before.
    ‘
Come here
, children! Put the pail down! Drop it right now!
Hurry!
’ she said. We set the pail down and trotted obediently toward her. She ran out of the house anyway,
grabbed us by the wrists and dragged us in. There was more shooting behind us, and our neighbours were yelling.
    The next thing I knew, my brother and I were in the hole under the big low wooden table that served as my parents’ bed. It was dark and cool in there, with sandbags on the sides – my
parents had known there was going to be trouble. Some of my other brothers and sisters were already under there, and more came tumbling in, a half-dozen wiggling children. Then my mother came in
and finally my father, who had run from the market and was breathing hard, his face wet with perspiration.
    We heard a shot nearby, then more shots right outside our house. Something crashed, and glass broke on the tabletop above us, while my mother clutched us tighter and prayed and my father cursed.
We children tried to make ourselves even smaller in our hole in the floor under the table.
    Then after a while there wasn’t any more shooting. We heard voices outside. Someone called my father by his name. He climbed out. A few minutes later the rest of us got out. There was
broken glass on the floor and holes in the wall above the front door. Outside there was a big crowd, and more people running up to it on the street and everyone was talking at the same time:
    ‘No, the rest got away. Nobody else killed . . .’
    ‘The soldiers got back to the garrison and fired down from the watchtower . . .’
    ‘He used this tree for cover. So many bullet holes in the trunk of the tree, huh? Even in the doorway of the Ngor house . . .’
    I pushed my way through the legs of the crowd. I had to see for myself. By the tree in front of our house, in the centre of the crowd, a man lay face down in blood. Next to him was a single-shot
carbine. Other children had wormed their way in with me, some of them with younger brothers or sisters hoisted on their hips.
    We looked on, wide-eyed.
    The dead guerrilla was sturdily built, with a strong back and thick legs. His bare feet were wide and calloused, like a farmer’s. His skin was dark brown. Tattoos covered his arms and
shoulders. He wore a pair of torn short trousers. Around his waist were a
krama –
the Cambodian all-purpose scarf – and some strings hung with