First They Killed My Father_ A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung [26]
We are not the only new people here. Khouy tells us that of the eight hundred people at Anlungthmor, approximately three hundred are new arrivals. But the village population changes every day because the Angkar constantly moves people in and out of the village, which is how we ended up in an empty house. Every day, Pa, Khouy, and Meng wake with the sun to work and when the sun sets come home. They work very hard, some days planting rice and vegetables and cutting lumber, and other days building dams and digging trenches. No matter how hard they work, after the first month there is less and less food to eat. We survive on the fish my brothers catch each day. We can no longer afford to eat plain rice but have to mix it with mushrooms, banana stocks, and other leaves. After a few weeks, even the leaves are becoming scarce. Ma tells us only to pick the old dark green leaves and not the light green ones in our garden. She says that we need the light green leaves to grow, thus giving us more food. When we catch animals, we eat everything—feet, tongue, skin, and the innards.
One day, Kim comes home grinning from ear to ear because he has caught a small wild bird. Ma smiles widely and pats Kim’s head before taking the bird from him. Kim has tied its legs together, but it struggles and tries to peck at Ma’s hand.
“Go fetch a bowl and a knife quickly,” Ma tells Chou. She takes the bird’s wings and crosses them against each other on its back. With its wings secure, Ma instructs Chou to place the bowl under the bird. Holding its body between her knees, Ma takes its head and bends it backward, stretching its neck. As if sensing danger, the bird croaks louder and struggles to get away but to no avail. Ma’s free hand picks up a knife and in one swift moment, the sharp edge slices into the bird’s neck, silencing it. Thick blood spews out from the bird’s open gash and drips into the bowl.
“Catch it all,” Ma says anxiously to Chou. “It’s good blood.” Chou picks up the bowl and brings it close to the wound to catch all the blood. Put it in a cool place in the shade so it will congeal faster; we can make rice soup with it. Tonight we will have a good dinner,” Ma announces, smiling and finally letting go of the bird. Though dead and drained of blood, its body shakes violently in the dirt.
“Poor bird,” I whimper, reaching over to softly pet its feathers. Its blood stains my hands, but I continue to pet it until its trembling body becomes completely still.
Eventually, food becomes so scarce that the village chief sends Meng, Khouy, and the other young men to the top of the mountain to dig for wild potatoes, bamboo shoots, and roots to feed the village. Each week, they leave on Monday and return exhausted on Wednesday or Thursday. On a good week, they come home with many bags of food and the chief rations it out to all the other villagers. There are times when they return with very little and each person is given only one small potato per day.
It is our second month in Anlungthmor and we are amid one of the worst rainfalls ever. It starts every morning and rains throughout the day, stopping briefly only late at night. It rains so hard that my brothers are not able to go up the mountain to dig for potatoes and bamboo. What food we had planted in the garden has been washed away by the rain. To survive, my older siblings shake the trees at night, hoping to find June bugs. The younger kids, because we are closer to the ground, catch frogs and grasshoppers for food. The rain makes the ground soft and muddy. Chou, Kim, and I often slide around in the mud even when we’re not looking for frogs. With brown mud covering our faces, hair, and clothes, we laugh and roll in the sludge like pigs. Within minutes, the rain pours over us, washing away the dirt and mud. We pull the wings and heads off the bugs we catch and roast them with salt and pepper.
Weeks