When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [4]
Another day, another interview, another horrific reality. This time it’s an account of the massacre of Cambodian refugees pushed over a mountain precipice. Thai soldiers gathered up hundreds of Cambodian refugees in 1979 and told them that they would be taken to a camp and given aid. Yet the Thai were devils in disguise. At gunpoint, they forced refugees to run down the precipice facing Cambodia. Run they did. There before their eyes rolled their children, wives, husbands, and the elderly. A carpet of bodies tumbled down the precipice as they ran, like pebbles in a rock slide. They had been shot, the subject recounts. The story paralleled a Cambodian parable: “In water one faces a crocodile, and when on land, one faces a tiger.” People were caught between two devils: the Khmer Rouge and the Thai soldiers.
I dutifully record the carnage, yet my mind doesn’t want to accept it. But this same inhumanity was also documented by a journalist in the Washington Post. I had never heard of it. How strange, I thought, to find a history lesson about my own homeland here in America. Stranger still to realize what might have been in my own life.
In the end, I know only that war is inevitable in the world as long as leaders such as Pol Pot are empowered by their kind—and as long as those who can make a difference by doing good deeds choose to look the other way. Under those conditions, more human lives will be lost, and many more children will be parentless. The cost of war is a lifelong legacy borne by children.
And I know this: As a survivor, I want to be worthy of the suffering that I endured as a child. I don’t want to let that pain count for nothing, nor do I want others to endure it. This may be our greatest test: to recognize the weight of war on children. If thousands upon thousands of children will suffer and are suffering right now in the world, we must be prepared to help them. But it’s folly to look at the future without an eye to the past.
The little girl within me often cries out to the adult to help and make a difference. I feel obligated to help my boss, Dr. Sack, and our colleagues understand the Cambodian children who have suffered war trauma. It’s my hope that our research will make significant contributions to knowledge about the clinical and social needs of Cambodian refugees and perhaps the needs of other refugees who have suffered or will suffer a similar fate.
I also like to think that telling my story and assisting the PTSD studies are my way of avenging the Khmer Rouge. It is also my way of opposing governments that have inflicted pain and suffering on innocent children, whose trust has been exploited time and time again throughout history: during the Khmer Rouge era, the Nazi era, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and, more recently, amid the ethnic aggression and bloodshed in Bosnia and Rwanda.
Throughout a childhood dominated by war, I learned to survive. In a country faced with drastic changes, the core of my soul was determined to never let the horrific situations take away the better part of me. I mentally resisted forces I could only recognize as evil by being a human recorder, quietly observing my surroundings, making mental notes of the things around me. There would come a day to share them, giving my voice to children who can’t speak for themselves. Giving voice, as well, to my deceased parents, sisters, brothers, and extended family members, and to those whose remains are in unmarked mass graves scattered throughout Cambodia, the once-gentle land.
As a child, I believed in the power of magic. I remember sitting enthralled in our living room watching a Cambodian movie set in the Himalayas. The hero was journeying to find a wise, bearded man who knew