When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [3]
A memory of this time returns to me. Sitting in Room C in Gaines Hall, I am interviewing a woman, the mother of a subject. In the interest of reliability, I interview her about her daughter’s experience as well as her own. The woman weeps when asked about her family’s separation. She studies the tabletop as if the answers were projected there like a movie. While sitting only a few feet across from me, she is distant. For her, as for many subjects and their parents, this was the first time since leaving Cambodia that she could turn and face the brutality she had left behind.
Were you ever tortured by Khmer Rouge soldiers? Did you ever witness others being killed during this time? Did you ever see corpses during this time? Did you ever lose your mother or father during the Pol Pot time? Did you lose any siblings during this time? Did you ever witness the executions of family members? Did you suffer from not having enough to eat so you looked thin, had swollen legs, or a puffy stomach? Were you ever forced to do things by the Khmer Rouge soldiers against your will?…
These questions are sharp triggers. As soon as they leave my mouth, I too search for answers. I watch as suffering is released through the ragged sounds of sobbing. It is all I can do to offer Kleenex while I fight back my own tears. There is recognition. The woman’s red, flooded eyes look briefly into mine—a directness unusual in Cambodia. She apologizes for interrupting the interview, a mark of Cambodian courtesy that survived the years of brutality. I am always amazed that some bit of humanity outlived Angka and is more powerful than the wheel of history.
Often the subjects meet with me in medical offices, but sometimes I am invited into their homes. I am braced for their reactions when I call them to arrange for interviews or when I’m about to interview them. Sometimes they’re angry or paranoid. I try to fight it with familiarity. “Oh, I’m Sam’s cousin,” I tell them. “You know Sam?” Sometimes they are open, surprised that I’m interested enough to ask, referring me to other families, unwilling to let our conversation end. Sometimes they are suspicious. In 1990 Cambodia still remains home to political unrest. Pockets of the Khmer Rouge still fight. And we refugees were well aware of their deceptions. Orwell’s words aptly describe the Khmer Rouge: “Big Brother is watching you.” Even on the streets of Portland I look over my shoulder. And here I am on these survivors’ doorstep, asking them to reveal difficult memories. The Khmer Rouge are a continent away, and yet they are not. Psychologically, they are parasites, like tapeworms that slumber within you, living passively until something stirs them to life. I was asking these subjects to wake those parasites.
The woman is crying so hard that the interview stops. In the past she had made up stories when her daughter asked “Where’s Pa?” She could never bring herself to say that the child’s father had been executed by the Khmer Rouge. “He went away, he’ll be back soon,” she would say. All that was left of her husband was pain, which was only compounded by the questions posed by her daughter and, now, me. I assure her that in the long run, talking about it will help. Pain was simply reality.
I am reminded of the Buddhist doctrine Mean ruup mean tok, which means “With a body comes suffering.” I heard a monk say these words once and immediately thought them overly grim. But to survive Pol Pot is to accept this doctrine as readily as you might accept the change of the seasons, the death of winter and the rebirth of spring.
After a few hours of interviews, I am exhausted. My fingers work, recording hellish images in exquisite detail. The memory of crude executions—seeing a pregnant woman beaten to death with a metal spade. Makeshift hospitals filled with feces; flies and rats hungry for food, human corpses, anything—everything. The memory of bodies swollen