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Now time becomes hard to measure. We mark its passage in terms of who has died and who is still alive. Time is distilled and recalled by death. Before Vin died…After Pa was executed…This is how we talk. Before Yiey Srem’s death, I’m able to walk and see her briefly. Such visits are rare, even though our extended family members live close to each other. We have to weigh our desire for such contact against the risk of being punished for exhibiting “family intimacy”—a connection the Khmer Rouge frowns upon. Even while working, we are not permitted to talk with family members. Harder still, we have to sneak visits when we are supposed to be working. And we have to decide whether the energy consumed by walking half a mile should be used instead to find food, for we are all starving.

Angka doesn’t care. It no longer gives us anything. No salt, no meat, and no rice. Every day I search for edible leaves, anything to survive. One day I find weeds beneath a tree, duck leaves Mak calls them. Only a few months ago, these were weeds that were mixed with rice and fed to pigs. Today, they are a welcome food. “Now we are worse than pigs,” Mak mutters, boiling the leafy greens.

This is our routine. During the day we clear weeds from fields of yucca and yams, stacking the weeds in piles. Early the next morning, we scatter the debris, tearing through the piles in search of the small black crickets that scurry from beneath their dark hiding place.

“Koon, koon, help me catch crickets. I can’t run,” Grandma Two Kilo begs. “Just two crickets a day, I can survive.”

Tadpoles. Crickets. Toads. Centipedes. Mice. Rats and scorpions. We eat anything. As we till the earth, we look upon bugs as buried treasure. Our eyes scan the soil, tucking any edible treat in a waistband, a pocket, tied into a scarf. Later the prize is retrieved, skewered on a stick, and stuffed into the fire. Those who haven’t caught anything watch, their begging eyes following each move. We must ignore them, and also ignore what we eat. There is no revulsion. Food is food. Anything, everything tastes good—even the smell of roasting crickets makes stomachs rumble with desire. Yet even the smallest creatures, the rodents, the insects, are becoming scarce. Some days, our meals for the entire day consist of boiled leaves.

Our lives are reduced to a tight circle. Each day revolves around what we can find to eat for the following day. And until it comes, we think about food.

All day. All night.

Hunger owns us.

7

Remnants of Ghosts

The Economist

April 16, 1996

“The Real Toll”

A handwritten note is scrawled at the bottom of a document signed by two of Pol Pot’s men at Tuol Sleng, the former Phnom Penh school that became the most notorious prison of the Khmer Rouges. It reads, “Also killed 168 children today for a total of 178 enemies exterminated.”

The year is 1976. Hunger is constantly on our minds, an inner voice that will not be stilled. Yet the Khmer Rouge lecture us about sacrifice. In a mandatory meeting they tell us that we need to sacrifice for the mobile brigades that are working on the “battlefield.” These mobile brigades, they stress, are building padewat (the revolution). We, here in the village, are not worth much since we don’t work on the battlefield. We’ve planted rice, yams, and yucca, yet we get to eat little or nothing of the harvest. Most of the food is sent to the brigades. Later, I learn exactly what “battlefield” means—a place where the only fight is to survive the revolution itself.

Mak’s swollen body somehow improves, so she can walk short distances now. Like a vulture sensing a corpse nearby, an informant begins circling our hut. He orders Mak to a meeting. Mak pleads that she’s not well yet. But he pounces on her slight improvement. As long as Mak can walk, she must go, he demands. Mak is angry and murmurs to herself, “When I was sick and hungry and couldn’t walk, why didn’t it [that creature] stick its head in here? Ar’khmaoch yor [The-ghost-take-you-away]!