When Broken Glass Floats_ Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge - Chanrithy Him [9]
Pa runs over to comfort me, snatches me down from the peak of my hysteria. He carries me to the open bunker, a hole in the sticky clay soil ringed with sandbags. Safe at the bunker, he can’t rest. He needs to go back to the house for Yiey Tot, his grandmother, who is blind and frail. He takes Chea and Tha with him to help carry her. Above the noise I can hear my great-grandmother’s groans.
“Hunch, koon!” I hear Pa cry. “Don’t you hear the flying bullets? Don’t worry, Yiey, we won’t drop you.”
I’m relieved when everyone in my family, including Aunt Cheng, Pa’s younger sister, finally hides by the pond. Lying beside my mother in the cold night, I wonder if everyone is as scared as I am as the bullets whiz over us—a fierce hiss and invisible whisper, so quick you wonder if you really heard it. Flares erupt like lightning, illuminating the dark sky.
So this is war. Will it ever stop?
Finally the gunfire belches its last round. Silence and relief. Now we can go back home, I think to myself, ready to be freed from worries about war. I look forward to the morning. I want to forget the adult world that pulled me from my dreams and into a nightmare.
What I don’t know is that there is a world outside Cambodia—a world that will affect me, my family, and Cambodia as a nation. I do not know who owned the guns that night—only that they were aimed at me. It will be years before I begin to understand the causes and effects of war, the political gamesmanship. But by then my family will have become flotsam caught in the heave and thrust of its tide.
I look back now as a survivor educated in America. I’ve sought out answers to questions I raised as a little girl. Trying to make sense of what happened. Trying to understand the players in the Vietnam conflict and those who took advantage of the situation, pulling Cambodia—the pawn, they called it—into the whirlpool of destruction.
The heavenly comet that we saw so long ago had more than one tail. My mother, my siblings, and I could only see the long, bright one—the one that pointed to Vietnam. The other tiny tails were blurred by the glare of the night sky. One of them invisibly pointed to the United States.
On April 20, 1970—in an attempt to incapacitate the Viet Cong troops operating in the border sanctuaries of Cambodia—forces from the United States and South Vietnam launched a massive drive into Cambodia, making Cambodia a stage for war. Early on, U.S. leaders denied involvement, until finally the American public demanded the truth. This Vietnamese conflict violated Cambodia’s borders, disregarding the precarious neutrality Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk had sought to preserve for years. On March 18, 1970, Prince Sihanouk was ousted by his premier, Lon Nol, and his cousin, Prince Sisowath Serik Matak, in a bloodless coup backed by the United States. China welcomed Sihanouk with open arms, eager to help save Cambodia from “American imperialists.” Later, Chinese leaders encouraged him to form a government in exile consisting primarily of his enemies, the Khmer Rouge, a band of guerrillas who had exploited the upheaval of the Vietnamese conflict. Thus, another invisible tail of the comet emerged. This one pointed to China, which had helped create the Khmer Rouge—a lethal virus that would years later destroy most of its former host, Cambodia, and so many of its own people.
When gunfire breaks out, my family only senses a dangerous presence, and I wish for things to return to normal. The next morning things seem quiet. We are hostages of our own thoughts, especially my father. While eating breakfast, Pa turns on the radio. A man’s voice tells something about the Viet Cong coming into Cambodia. People died, houses burned, and the Viet Cong came close to Takeo City, he says, talking rapidly. I hear a reference to rotcross (tanks) entering Takeo City. Pa says that the Viet Cong have invaded srok Khmer (Cambodia).
At school I have seen posters of the Viet