First They Killed My Father_ A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung [113]
We arrive at the water port late in the afternoon, but the sun is still hot and beats down on us. Meng holds the bike for me to jump off and tells me stay where I am as he disappears into a crowd of people with his bike. Vendors yell out their products to people passing by. In the sun, the fish scales on the seafood vendors’ arms and faces sparkle and shimmer, reflecting the sunlight. On the rows of tables, big and small fish alike flap their tails on blocks of ice underneath them. It is October: the end of the rainy season and start of the dry season. Meng says that when it’s hot, the water in the ocean goes down, so the fish move farther out to sea and are harder to catch; therefore, the fish displayed here are more expensive than usual.
Meng returns a few minutes later with a Youn fisherman, and they quickly usher me onto a small boat. Once in the boat, he hands the fisherman the small gold nuggets he received selling his bike and we take off. The boat looks no more than fifteen feet in length and perhaps five feet wide. Its wooden body is worn and old as the small engine chugs slowly along the Mekong River. As far as my eyes can see, there is water covering much of the land. The bright sun transforms the otherwise green lush scenery into a magical land of silvery lakes. In it, long black canoes slither like alligators, navigating themselves gracefully on the water. On the other side of the Mekong River, I see orange and gold pointed temple roofs and towers erected on muddy red topsoil. The fisherman sits beside a small pile of fish, steering the boat. I sit in the middle with my hair whipping about my face in all directions, the wind cooling my skin. My eyes drift toward the port and all its cacophony. I am leaving Cambodia on a Youn boat, with a Youn fisherman, going to Vietnam. Meng forgot to show me our old home. Then suddenly, a picture of Met Bong lunging at the fisherman’s throat with her sickle flashes before my eyes. I quickly shake my head free of the image. I’m leaving all this behind.
Many hours later as we approach Vietnam, the fisherman, in broken Khmer, tells us to lie on the floor and keep our heads down. He unrolls a sheet of blue plastic and covers us with it, leaving a small opening for our heads to stick through, and then piles fish on top of the plastic sheet and motions again for us to keep low. Underneath the plastic sheet, covered with fish, I enter Vietnam. I fight to breathe without choking on the stench of the fish. Once near the port of Chou Doc, the fisherman peels back the sheet and allows us to breathe in fresh sea air. Once we dock, Meng finds a bus station and buys our fares with the Vietnamese money he has saved from his last trip. We are on our way to Saigon!
From the windows of the bus, Saigon is a prosperous and bustling city. The streets are crowded with men and women in straw cone-shaped hats. The women are wearing red lipstick and colorful snug-fitting long dresses that split at the side over loose, flowing pants. In the streets, they talk openly to one another and laugh without covering their mouths. They do not avert their eyes nor do they glance from one side to another. Their shoulders are not slumped and their arms not held close to their sides. Taking long, casual strides, they walk without fear as we did in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge. On every block, there are stores displaying wristwatches with flowered bands, black radios blasting Vietnamese songs, televisions projecting hand puppets talking to happy young children, and