When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [118]
Ra’s anxious face wants to tell her story. Everyone else’s is a mirror of the person who is sharing his or her story. Suddenly everyone’s head turns toward the woods where I spotted the Khmer Rouge. I’m startled to see men marching toward us, wearing black uniforms with checked scarves around their necks. Fastened to their shoulders are rifles, bazookas, and rocket-propelled grenades; their waists are decorated with rounds of ammunition.
Walking by, they study us. I watch them, bracing for the moment when they will shoot us. Everyone else begs for their lives. I don’t. I’m too petrified.
“We are not going to kill you!” a tall Khmer Rouge declares sternly.
“Thanks, loks, very much, thanks, loks, very much…” a neighboring woman says in tears, her hands pressed together, which she raises to her forehead many times.
Shortly after they disappear into the community of shelters, gunfire starts up again. Everyone cries as before. The Khmer Rouge are clashing with the PARA soldiers somewhere in the camp. Everyone climbs out of the trench, runs, and hunches down alongside the trench into the woods. For a second I don’t know where my sisters and brothers are. All I know is that I am running for my life. Suddenly a bullet whizzes by; I jolt forward, avoiding it, and when I look ahead, there’s Ry, holding Map’s hand, and Ra with Savorng. I pray to the spirits of Mak and Pa to protect me.
In a grove of trees, we rest. Other families do the same. On the second day Than, bang Vantha, and other men venture through the forest near Thailand. When they come back, they are excited. They say they’ve seen “Americans.” And these Americans told them that we will be picked up and taken inside Thailand.
A few days later, before we can even see anything, the sound of a truck shifting gears approaches. It emerges from tall trees along the road in a cloud of dust. Then another truck, and another. A total of three trucks, bow-roofed and covered with thick cloth. Everybody moves near the trucks. Women and children are helped into a truck in front of us. Men climb into it on their own. Quickly, the truck is filled. Fortunately, we are in it.
Leaning against the tailgate, I gaze at the disappearing landscape on the side of the Cambodian border through a cloud of dust. Then it hits me—I’m leaving my homeland. I silently bid good-bye to the spirits of my family. Good-bye, Mak. Good-bye, Pa…Chea…. We have to go….
18
Khao I Dang Camp
The truck caravan has been traveling on unpaved, dusty roads studded with trees and open fields, turning from one winding road to another. Then the trucks pull into a charred field with a dark, ashen ground containing blackened stumps as small as my thumb and as big as my wrist. They look like burned matchsticks.
The trucks pull out, driving away one after the other. A man informs us that the trucks are going back to get the rest of the people, and that food and water will be brought to us.
There is no shade to be found, so we stand barefoot on the hot ground, and my feet become darkened by the ash. Little children cry for water and none of us have any. Map and Savorng, too, are thirsty and hungry, their faces sad and sour, their brows knitted. More Cambodians are brought in those trucks, and later in the evening food and water are finally brought to us. At night we sleep on the ground, the sky our roof.
The next day the trucks bring us bamboo rods, thatches, and strings. Every man, woman, and child helps out in the building of huts, handling tasks ranging from carrying bamboo rods to bringing strings to the Cambodian men who are doing the construction work. Within days long-thatched huts with ten compartments for ten families are erected side by side, separated by an alley. To each one, a leader is assigned to represent the families,