When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [11]
For two months this is our life. Then Pa says we’re going home to Takeo. “It’s safe now,” he announces. But it is not the same. Our home has been bombed.
Surprisingly, Akie, a collie, has survived these months alone, unlike our guard dog, Aka Hom, who is gone. Akie endured the war, waiting loyally outside the charred remains of our decimated home. When Pa arrives, Akie runs up to him, licking him again and again. In Cambodia, it is rare to see public displays of affection between adults. But with pets, we feel free to lavish our affections. Pa has always enjoyed pampering Akie, shampooing him, feeding him prime table scraps.
Instead of staying at our home, we go to the house of Kong* Horne, my mother’s uncle. His family has abandoned it and has not returned. But he is one of the lucky ones, whose house is untouched by war. His two-story stucco home overlooks the Bassac River, located near the heart of Takeo City.
Sitting on the scooter, Pa tells Than to go with him to see our home, but I ask to go along too. He looks at me, hesitant, but then says I can come.
Along the streets lie clothes and debris. I look for people, but there’s no one. When Pa says we’re here, I look at our house, but the top part is gone. It looks broken, shorter than before. The gate is broken. The mango, coconut, and papaya trees look dry, burned. The tops of two pine trees have broken off, withered, and turned brown, and now are dangling.
Pa holds my hand as we climb the stairs. When we get to the top, there is no door. Metal spikes stick out of what used to be the walls of the bedrooms and the balcony. The floor of the living room is partially gone, exposing the downstairs room. Pa holds me back from moving any further. The sofa, the glass cases holding crystal and engraved silver chalices, the pictures, and everything else in our house are reduced to ashes. Where the television set, radio, and record player once stood there is nothing but charred debris.
When Pa takes us to the backyard, the pond is dried up, its beautiful water lilies and green lotus and trey pra, the catfish we used to feed, are dead. The trees once bowed with the weight of fruit are wilted and brown. Our house is dead, and I ask my father to take me away.
2
B-cinquante-deux
The New York Times
July 18, 1973
“Secret Raids on Cambodia Before ’70 Totaled 3,500”
BY SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Washington, July 17—United States B-52 bombers made at least 3,500 secret bombing raids over Cambodia in a 14-month period beginning in March, 1969, Defense Department sources disclosed today…. Military sources did confirm, however, that information about the Cambodian raids was directly provided to President Nixon and his top national security advisers, including Henry A. Kissinger.
There is a story about the life of Buddha in which a mother carries her dead son to him draped in her arms. The woman has heard that he is a holy man who can restore life. Weeping, she appeals for mercy. Gently, Buddha tells her that he can help save her son’s life, but that first she has to bring him a mustard seed secured from a family that has never experienced death. Desperately she searches home after home. Many want to help, but everyone has already experienced a loss—a sister, a husband, a child. Finally the woman returns to Buddha. “What have you found?” he asks. “Where is your mustard seed and where is your son? You are not carrying him.”
“I buried him,” she replies.
As a young child, I had never known loss. I never envisioned my family without our home. But the Vietnamese invasion changes that. My brother Tha becomes ill. The mischievous boy who climbs trees like a monkey has come down with a