When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Read online

  Another day, another interview, another horrific reality. This time it’s an account of the massacre of Cambodian refugees pushed over a mountain precipice. Thai soldiers gathered up hundreds of Cambodian refugees in 1979 and told them that they would be taken to a camp and given aid. Yet the Thai were devils in disguise. At gunpoint, they forced refugees to run down the precipice facing Cambodia. Run they did. There before their eyes rolled their children, wives, husbands, and the elderly. A carpet of bodies tumbled down the precipice as they ran, like pebbles in a rock slide. They had been shot, the subject recounts. The story paralleled a Cambodian parable: “In water one faces a crocodile, and when on land, one faces a tiger.” People were caught between two devils: the Khmer Rouge and the Thai soldiers.

  I dutifully record the carnage, yet my mind doesn’t want to accept it. But this same inhumanity was also documented by a journalist in the Washington Post. I had never heard of it. How strange, I thought, to find a history lesson about my own homeland here in America. Stranger still to realize what might have been in my own life.

  In the end, I know only that war is inevitable in the world as long as leaders such as Pol Pot are empowered by their kind—and as long as those who can make a difference by doing good deeds choose to look the other way. Under those conditions, more human lives will be lost, and many more children will be parentless. The cost of war is a lifelong legacy borne by children.

  And I know this: As a survivor, I want to be worthy of the suffering that I endured as a child. I don’t want to let that pain count for nothing, nor do I want others to endure it. This may be our greatest test: to recognize the weight of war on children. If thousands upon thousands of children will suffer and are suffering right now in the world, we must be prepared to help them. But it’s folly to look at the future without an eye to the past.

  The little girl within me often cries out to the adult to help and make a difference. I feel obligated to help my boss, Dr. Sack, and our colleagues understand the Cambodian children who have suffered war trauma. It’s my hope that our research will make significant contributions to knowledge about the clinical and social needs of Cambodian refugees and perhaps the needs of other refugees who have suffered or will suffer a similar fate.

  I also like to think that telling my story and assisting the PTSD studies are my way of avenging the Khmer Rouge. It is also my way of opposing governments that have inflicted pain and suffering on innocent children, whose trust has been exploited time and time again throughout history: during the Khmer Rouge era, the Nazi era, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and, more recently, amid the ethnic aggression and bloodshed in Bosnia and Rwanda.

  Throughout a childhood dominated by war, I learned to survive. In a country faced with drastic changes, the core of my soul was determined to never let the horrific situations take away the better part of me. I mentally resisted forces I could only recognize as evil by being a human recorder, quietly observing my surroundings, making mental notes of the things around me. There would come a day to share them, giving my voice to children who can’t speak for themselves. Giving voice, as well, to my deceased parents, sisters, brothers, and extended family members, and to those whose remains are in unmarked mass graves scattered throughout Cambodia, the once-gentle land.

  As a child, I believed in the power of magic. I remember sitting enthralled in our living room watching a Cambodian movie set in the Himalayas. The hero was journeying to find a wise, bearded man who knew an incantation that could save the innocents from the murderous villains of the jungle. Simple, powerful words would make robbers disappear, abolish evil forces. Palms pressed together and raised in front of the chest with eyes closed, the characters murmured in soft recitation. Immediately things were set right. So easy, I thought. I just have to make it to the Himalayas. It was obviously a place where magic dwelled.

  My father knew magic. I was convinced of this. I felt him work his magic when the heavy fingers of asthma clutched my lungs. I would sit up and gasp for air, but everything was stuck. Quickly my father would open his drawer of French medicine, grab a vial and a syringe. Then the magic worked, as it always did. It was as amazing to me as the wise man of the Himalayas—one minute I was taking my last breath, the next minute I was running off to play.

  Sitting before my computer, I feel the long-ago magic of my childhood, now memory’s shadow. The war crushed my innocent belief in magic as neatly and efficiently as you might smash a cricket beneath your heel. At first I tried to hide inside the magic. It was a refuge against the surreal realities of war. My friends and I would pretend we had the power to raise the dead. I would talk to imaginary friends in the orchard behind our house. The guava, katot, and teap barang trees and the pond behind my home became the jungle I would have to pass through to get to the Himalayas.

  For a time I thought the growing fears of the Viet Cong invasion into Cambodia in the late sixties were an abstraction, an illusion.

  Time would tell me otherwise.

  Time would take away the magic. And time would give it back.

  Tonight the light from my computer screen reflects dull blue on my face. I feel my body and soul recovering from stress, from weeks of intense studies leading up to the MCAT, the all-day Medical College Admissions Test. Yet I feel a gnawing need to resume my writing. At first I felt it was my responsibility as a survivor. But now writing has also become my trek to the Himalayas, my search to recapture the long-lost magic in my life. This time I’m trying to use the power of words to caution the world, and in the process to heal myself. And even with an intellectual hangover from the toughest academic test I’ve ever taken, I’m searching for the words, the incantation, to make things right in my soul.

  My heart keeps me writing despite the hour. Pushing hard has become my addiction. At first it was a lesson of necessity, my only means of surviving the Khmer Rouge regime, of outrunning the wheel of history. Being raised by educated and open-minded parents, I had advantages. I was never forced to live up to the sexist expectations of traditional Cambodian culture—a fact that would become important to my survival.

  As a child trying to endure the Khmer Rouge regime, I had many questions about the strange world that had overtaken my homeland. At twelve years of age, during the Khmer Rouge regime, I asked my oldest sister, Chea, a question in the hope of understanding our pain and the loss of those I loved. Her answer became the seed of my survival, planted by a sister whom I idolized.

  “Chea, how come good doesn’t win over evil? Why did the Khmer Rouge win if they are bad people?”

  Chea answered: “—jchan baan chea preah chnae baan chea mea,” which means “Loss will be God’s, victory will be the devil’s.” When good appears to lose, it is an opportunity for one to be patient, and become like God. “But not very long, p’yoon srey [younger sister],” she explained, and referred to a Cambodian proverb about what happens when good and evil are thrown together into the river of life. Good is symbolized by klok, a type of squash, and evil by armbaeg, shards of broken glass. “The good will win over the evil. Now, klok sinks, and broken glass floats. But armbaeg will not float long. Soon klok will float instead, and then the good will prevail.” Chea’s eyes pierced me with an expression that reinforced her words. “P’yoon, wait and see. It will happen.”

  At age twenty-two, in 1978, Chea died of a prolonged fever and deprivation, three months before the Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia that drove the Khmer Rouge to the border. At thirteen, unable to help save her, I was angry at myself for not having Pa’s medical knowledge, for not having learned from him. As if talking to Chea’s spirit—as her wrapped-up body was being carried away to be buried in the woods—I said in my mind: Chea, if I survive I will study medicine. I want to help people because I couldn’t help you. If I die, I will learn medicine in my next life. That vow helped me cope with my own helplessness and pain, but I never knew how it would later affect my own life in America.

  In 1982, when I began high school in Portland, Oregon, m
y desire to study medicine was rekindled. After finishing my undergraduate studies at the University of Oregon in 1991, I was determined to become a medical doctor. It has been thirteen years since Chea’s death, and I wanted to fulfill my promise to her spirit and to take up where Pa had left off.

  In preparing for the MCAT, I had tried to shelve my memories, deliberately shoving them aside to make room for chemistry and physiology. Yet they had a way of sneaking back. Studying how the body uses carbohydrates, fat, and protein for energy would remind me of the edema that was rampant in wartime villages. The lack of salt in our diets became lethal, robbing our bodies of the ability to produce energy. In Cambodia we had a term for vitamin A deficiencies—a condition we called “blind chicken.” At night, my eyes wouldn’t work. With no real medicine available, the cure was a folk remedy: catch water in a banana leaf or lotus leaf and throw it into the eyes of the afflicted. Listening in the classroom and looking back, these weren’t abstract lessons.

  The sight of someone dressed entirely in black would also trigger a memory—the uniforms of the Khmer Rouge. And for a moment it could paralyze me as if I was under a spell. Watching a documentary on Ethiopia showing children lining up for rations would jolt me back to the muddy fields, to a time when I was as frail and exhausted as those African waifs, existing only for food. Memories seep back to me in ways I hadn’t imagined. A stay in Hawaii stirred a sensory memory—moist, green smells, blossoming mango trees, dangling clusters of coconuts, the dance of palm trees at the airport, the humid breeze. The senses awakened the long-forgotten.

  There are times when I’ve denied my own memories, when I’ve neglected the little girl in me. There would always be time to grieve, I told myself. I pushed down memories in pursuit of important things. Education. Medical school. I wanted to make a difference in the world, to do good deeds, fulfill a child’s wish. There would be a time for memories, but I never anticipated it, never sought it out. There would be a time.

  As I sit in the eerie glow of my computer screen summoning up the past, I know that it is time. I invite the memories back in, apprehensive but hungry for them. In trying to understand my drive to tell others what was scorched in my mind, I recognize my fortitude and ambition, which are rooted in the people who gave me life—my parents.

  1

  A Heavenly Comet Foreshadows War

  The New York Times

  Phnom Penh, Cambodia—March 28, 1969

  (AGENCE FRANCE PRESS)

  The head of state, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, charged today that “Vietnamese Communists were increasingly infiltrating into Cambodia.” The prince showed newsmen here a detailed map drawn up by his general staff showing Communist implantation in Cambodia.

  My parents’ future marriage had already been decided when they were children. Both their parents told them that someday they would marry each other. Both came from well-to-do families, which caused wide speculation about the marriage. Some thought that they were paired up because the brothers Kong Houng and Kong Lorng didn’t want their wealth dispersed. This way, the family wealth was centralized. And in Cambodian culture, it’s common for cousins to marry.

  Fortunately, my father’s feelings were in harmony with the ideas of his elders. When Pa turned seventeen, he fell in love with Mak. She was a bright girl, and strong in her ideas. As a child, she would sneak away to the Buddhist temple to learn to read and write in Khmer, and to read Pali, the language of the Cambodian bible. In time, she picked up French as well, a skill that was forbidden for women. Parents didn’t want a daughter to have education for fear that she would write love letters before they had had a chance to arrange a suitable marriage. Denying education was but one way to cloister her. In many ways, Mak defied that, secretly studying on her own.

  This was the girl Pa fell in love with—a bright, headstrong young woman who spoke her mind. Hardly the demure, traditional Cambodian bride. But Pa, too, knew his own mind. He waited patiently for his parents to fulfill their promise, to make the arrangements for him to marry Mak. Tradition required them to approach Mak’s family for a formal engagement. Investigations would follow, including interviews with others about the class and behavior of the groom and his family. But they took too long. Pa couldn’t wait. He went to his favorite aunt, Yiey Om, in Srey Va village. He begged her to serve as his guardian, to ask Yiey Srem and Kong Lorng for Mak’s hand. Understanding the depth of both her nephew’s love and his fear—that any man could come at any time to claim Mak’s hand—she took a boat to Prey Ronn village. She was an unlikely messenger of love, but effective.

  Mak’s parents agreed to speed up the marriage. But Cambodian tradition still must be followed. His parents, Kong Houng and Yiey Khmeng, were required to formally seek the approval of Mak’s parents. Permission was granted. At seventeen, Pa finally got his wish, marrying Mak, a slightly confused fourteen-year-old bride.

  Pa brought her to Year Piar to live with his parents. Either from fear or simply because she was too young to adjust to married life, Mak immediately ran away, scurrying back to her parents. To her surprise, her mother shipped her right back. Later, Mak laughed about it. But she remembered, too, the heavy expectations of her new mother-in-law.

  Yiey Khmeng must have expected a lot of Mak, forgetting that she was so young. In Cambodian custom, the scalps of newborn babies were traditionally marked with a mashed root called paley, the saffron color of turmeric. This denoted the baby’s “soft spot,” and the root was thought to help harden the skull. You knew an infant was maturing when the powder fell away. When Mak married, you might say her paley had not yet fallen away. But it made little difference. High expectations were common among many mothers-in-law, whose words ruled. A woman isn’t just married to her husband, but to his whole family. But Pa didn’t see it that way; he was a man who had the courage to turn away from cultural expectations with which he disagreed. In time, they had two children, both of whom died. Their third child was a skinny, sickly baby. They held little hope for her survival, but she surprised them, earning the nickname Chea, which means “heal.” With a frail new baby, Pa and Mak left Year Piar.

  They embarked on a journey, abandoning the financial security of their families to seek their own way, to make a life on their own. They went to Phnom Penh. Bitter about his parent’s unyielding expectations, Pa and Mak made a vow on the Preah Monivong Bridge: If they didn’t succeed in life, they would never return to Year Piar to see his parents. They would kill themselves first, jumping into the deep, flowing waters that ran beneath them.

  Now in their early twenties, they were no longer troubled by this vow. Together they built a home in Takeo. Pa was a good husband and father. At twenty-five, he was successfully supporting a growing family. In truth, my father and mother surprised not only his parents but also Mak’s. A home was a status symbol, a measure of making it. Even their parents wondered, Where did they get the money to build a house this big?

  They didn’t know of the vow that burned deeply in Pa and Mak. The home was the temple of their vow. A trophy Pa won for Mak, his bride.

  It was in this home that I first heard the word “war.” The year was 1968, and I was three years old. It was a clear night and the sky was adorned with stars. Mak came into our living room and asked my siblings and me if we wanted to see a comet. Mak said it had a long, bright tail.

  I remember our excitement. I hurried along with five of my brothers and sisters. They were Chea, eleven, whose intelligence and thoughtfulness earned her the respect an oldest child demands; Ra, ten, my shy sister who liked to help Mak cook and clean—her tidy, domestic ways pleased our mother. At nine, Tha was my oldest brother. He was good in math and mischievous. Tha’s way of finding out if the corn was sweet was to take a bite out of every cob on the platter. Ry, seven, was my easily amused sister, who liked to baby-sit me and Avy, our one-year-old sister. Than, five, was the second-oldest brother, whose tree-climbing sense of adventure often invited my own curiosity. He was my rival.

  As we follo
wed our mother, we scurried close behind her like six chicks following a hen. Mak lifted me up and I saw the heavenly body with a starlike nucleus and a long, luminous tail. Its radiance was intensified by the dark sky and the surrounding stars. We were all in awe, crowded near our mother, leaning against the railing.

  A moment later my mother’s joy seemed to fade—even a child could feel it. She told us of an old folk superstition: When the tail of the comet pointed to a particular place, Cambodia would be drawn into war with that country. The word “war” diluted the aura of excitement, even with me, a child who didn’t have the slightest idea what the word meant. I sensed the fear in my mother and older siblings. I wondered what the word “country” meant, and what country the tail of the comet was pointing to.

  In 1969 war comes, and I am only four.

  Loud rumbling noises wake me. I fumble in the dark, trying to open the mosquito netting around my bed. I run in the dark toward the living room, searching for my mother and father. “Mak! Pa!” I scream with all my might, trying to compete with the raucous sounds.

  From the living room, I hear my oldest sister, twelve-year-old Chea, screaming: “Mak! Pa! Yeakong chol srok Khmer! Yeakong chol srok Khmer!” The Viet Cong are invading Cambodia! Her voice is itself a blast of terror.

  Chea’s hysterical warning makes me realize that the raging noise outside could be related to the word I had been wondering about: war. More than anything, I want to see my parents. Suddenly the light flips on, revealing my frightened sisters and brothers running around frantically, randomly—as disoriented as ants whose hill has been plowed under.