The day begins with another rooster wake-up. Contrary to what a lot of people think, these cocky birds don't just crow at daybreak, but let out those rise-and-shine chicken calls in the middle of the night, or whenever else they feel like it. Earlier this morning, I got an earful of crow around 1 a.m.
I roll over on the thin straw-filled mat surrounded by bright pink mosquito netting. This section of the one-room farmhouse is the girls' bedroom. Two usually share the homemade bed here, a third sleeps out on the porch. Western guests like me have never visited this little farm before; the whole family, seven people who share this house, insisted we take the beds. The first few nights here, I tried to sleep out by the pond in my hammock; I got one night in before they took down my hammock while I was out for the day and persisted in offering the bed. So, I obliged, while they all slept out on the porch, cuddled together under thick blankets to fend off the chilly breeze that sweeps in at night from the hills.
I sit up slowly in the bed. My throat is sore. I've been sick for the past couple days; nothing too unexpected, especially since I've been tromping around the Cambodian countryside and downing whatever food was put in front of me with impunity for the past three weeks. My fatigue at the end of every day out interviewing also drove the ever-hospitable farmers to insist that I take the bed. I open the plastic bottle of aspirin I have left over from when I hit my face on the bottom of a swimming pool in Florida this summer. I chew the last two tablets, push aside the sheet that separates the girls' area from the main house, and step into the room. The space would be large -- if it were just a bedroom. But it also takes the place of a playroom, living room, and the parents' bedroom. The tiny color television is connected to a little cluster of exposed wires strung through the roof and down the long dirt driveway to the main road. Tucked into the corner is the parents' bed, shrouded in mosquito netting. Even with the wooden shutters closed, bugs permeate this stilted house. The windows are simply squares cut out from the untreated clapboards, with no glass. The corrugated steel roof sends skittering sounds into the house at night, as mice and foot-long geckos scurry and squeak between the beams and dark spaces.
Shirtless, I step outside through the open doorway. It's still cold here, by subtropical standards. I tense my body as the chill hits. The noises of the morning greet me. The faraway thrum of rice trucks and motorcycles. Chickens clucking and rooting. Cows penned up and mooing to be let out to eat. I descend the rickety wooden steps. I can feel my weight shake the whole house. I look now across the area under the house's stilts, which doubles as a garage and dining room. The mom is busy in the kitchen, preparing breakfast. Rice porridge, with some vegetables. I hurry to the bathroom. I open the rough wooden door and step inside the small shack. A waist-high concrete basin is filled with water. A ladle floats inside. This is the shower. I am in no mood for a chilly shower today. In the middle of the tiled floor, next to the basin, is a porcelain-coated hole in the ground. This is the toilet. Since I've been sick, an ailment that includes unpredictable diarrhea, I'd stashed a roll of toilet paper in here. Most Cambodians just ladle themselves clean. I wasn't looking forward to the squatting, but I got down to business. People take their bathroom thrones for granted.
I step out to eat breakfast. But before I can make my way to the table, one of the young sons approaches me holding up a large black kettle. He made a fire and boiled water for me. Out here, this was a hot shower. They don't often take hot showers. He didn't need to push this bit of hospitality on me one bit. Au kun. I take the kettle back to the shed and ladle myself a steamy bath.
After breakfast, plain porridge from chipped old bowls, we head out for an interview with an old mechanic who was my uncle's teacher during the Khmer Rouge days -- before they sent everyone from the city to the farms. After an hour in his greasy living room, where old van benches are the furniture, we drive a half hour across scrambly dirt roads to get an Internet connection. At the Internet place, I meet a Peace Corps. volunteer. He's been here for 7 months. He'll soon be taking his first vacation -- to Thailand -- and is wondering how he'll manage another year working here in this backwater province. He's a brave soul. I am already having cheeseburger dreams.
Little did I know, they would soon come true.
My uncle was growing increasingly frustrated with the computer in front of him. He has a business back in the U.S. to run, but no way to run it from here. The manager of his business in California had just been stricken with a bad stroke. The other employees don't know how to handle everything alone. And my uncle can't access his accounts remotely. Out here, even an American bank's Web site takes 20 minutes just to load its main page. Forget getting through a secure login and funds transfer.
It is a tough call, but have had to do it. We will cut the first jaunt into Cambodia short by three days. We need to go to civilization. We need the Internet.
***
Through the canyon of seedy casinos, across the garbage-choked stream, through the throngs of rag-clothed beggar children, and we are away from Poi Pet and into Aranyaprathet. It is like stepping from one world into the next. The differences between a Thai and Cambodian border town are striking. The roads are paved. The police aren't sneering so eagerly for bribes. Air conditioned banks, with rows of ATMs, greet you on the way in. The chaos of even the border market seems more ordered.
We walk to the storefront of a relative, Jek U. He's made a fortune wholeselling pharmacy products and cosmetics. His business is basically the CVS for this half of the province. There is still no Tesco in Aran. In his office, which has no fewer than three computers, we are able to get online in an instant. High-speed internet. My god. After weeks in Cambodia, where even sending an e-mail is a labor in its demand of patience and a test in its prodding of frustrating, the big LCD monitor and instantly displaying GMail screen causes a wave of serenity to wash over me. It's like getting high after way too long being dry. The Internet is truly a precious resource. I go on a binge of e-mailing and facebooking, partaking in an orgy of message replies and news catch-up.
Jek U's wife, a sweet old woman who treats me like a grandson, comes over with a tray. She set it down. There are chips and chocolates, and a tin filled with those Pepperage Farm Pirouette cookies. I ate half the tin. I'd probably lost a pound or two eating only fish and rice and noodles with little slivers of chicken and pork during my time in Cambodia. I probably gained them all back on the spot.
It was time to go. We would stay at Jek U's son's house for the night. Tee is a nice guy, with a penchant for travel and the nicities of western life. He pulls up in his brand-new Mercedes Benz C200. I bet it's the only one like it in the province. German imports with suspension tuned taught as that little 'Benz aren't too common outside the big cities in Thailand. We get in. The leather seat cups my body. Tee turns up the stereo. Linkin Park blasts from a glorious surround system. He's been a fan ever since the Road to Revolution tour stopped by Bangkok. Despite a yearly wage of only a couple thousand bucks for millions of Thais, plenty urbanites have the cash to pay full price to see the A-list of American pop artists. Last time I was in Thailand, the Black Eyed Peas were performing here to sold-out crowds.
We arrive at the building -- the whole building -- the family owns. It's 5 stories tall, and on every floor, lushly appointed. The ground level sports fine wood cabinets and a floor that looks like some kind of polished marble. And then, for four floors all the way up to the roof, every bit of underfoot space is clad in planks of rare wood brought down from the mountains of Chiang Mai. The sumptuous floors feel solid underfoot, each step I take on them resonating with a satisfying thump. This was indeed fine wood. Its reddish-brown warmth rises up, making the walls -- papered with thick dressings with real flowers pressed into the sheets -- seem even more inviting. After the second floor, a clear dragon motif begins to materialize. Tiny glass dragons, with associations to ducks and water in their color and form, are hung up, a flock of them skimming a far wall. Another wall sports a long painting of a similar dragon rising over a lake. There is a second kitchen, with granite counter tops and a balcony, on the fourth floor.
I am shown my bedroom. The maid had just straightened up. Other than the extra rooms for nephews and guests' kids to play in, there are two guest rooms with beds so big and soft, they'd be at home in any hotel. The custom cabinets inside, though, are empty. The lavishly patterned bedsheets are still stiff and crisp. Nobody has ever slept in this bed before.
After I put my luggage down, I set up my laptop. My god. Linksys. I am getting a signal from across the street.
Then, I go to the bathroom. Hot water. And a tall, flushable throne -- with one of those rounded comfort seats. As much as I love getting nuzzled by cows, breathing in road dust and roughing it in the woods, in the recovering state I am in, the sight is as lovely as the last sunset I'd seen over the rice fields.
Dinner was delivered from a nearby restaurant. The dirty dishes were taken away just the same.
I fall asleep to the cool rush of an air conditioning unit.
But I dream not of fast cars and computers, big houses and spotless bathrooms.
I wake up remembering the smell of wet clay and boiling noodles. Visions of cow herds and farm girls still swirl in my head.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Three Sisters from Sa Keo
The first of the three sisters was born 65 years ago. The other two, not long after. And for all the time these women have been alive, they've woken up and fallen asleep in the same place almost every day. They've grown up and grown old, seen their friends and family live, die and move away, all from the same boxy lot in the little town of Sa Keo.
And during all this time, fate, luck and love have not smiled very brightly on any of the three. An emptiness is clear on their faces in wrinkles and wear, more pronounced with each woman up the gradient of years. As much as the sisters try to carry on without questioning themselves and their station, their state surrounds them, worn like a defect no forced smile or perfume can hide.
We've never married. Never moved. Never been desired. But always, alone together.
The weariness and disappointment hanging heavily around their necks, hunching the eldest, thinning the second, and plumping the third, has seemingly dripped and stained, the hollowness absorbed into their surround, making their world as lonely on the outside as it is on the inside.
The walls that surround them bear witness.
When their brother became wealthy, he knocked down the old wooden house and built his sisters a fine new home. The house they were born in was not destined to be the one where they will die. But that didn't change much.The roof may be covered in strong ceramic, the walls may be glass and granite and brick, but the land beneath the newly poured slab is the same. The towering china cupboard in the tall dining room is stuffed with enough plates and teacups for any feast or wedding. But most have never been used. The big halls and living rooms are all spotless, the floors covered with ornate tile and deep red hardwoods. But most of the space is empty, the little furniture there pushed against the walls, with boxes piled high atop the benches and tables; the wealthy brother, seeing how the old women simply left all the space alone, uses the empty rooms as storage. The ceilings, too, are grand and high. But the walls draping down from the rafters are mostly bare. Nobody lives in these living rooms. Most of the bedrooms, too, are barren; fully furnished affairs with tall teak beds that have never once taken someone to sleep.
A mud hut or mansion, a spinster's home is still a spinster's home.
Some would say being old and lonely is a matter of deficient character, or some held bitterness that a person has gripped onto, pride forbidding any slack in grip. But when three women wind up in the same way, one following the next, the youngest with a look at her own future through the eyes of the oldest, more is at play than their own decisions.
The sisters grew up educated and rich in a town that was mostly scrappy and poor. No boy in such a static little place would want to give a girl like that a try, especially since none of the three was exceptionally beautiful. Maybe then, if they were three forbidden beauties with long raven hair and pouty little lips and porcelain skin and eyes that beamed and beckoned, a boy would have been tempted enough to risk all he had for a kiss.
But we all know that Juliet was beautiful, and no stories are told about ugly girls.
And so, for 60 years, the town grew little, save for older. Houses stand and wait. The market has grown fatter along with the highway that runs through the place, but off that strip, neighborhoods of quiet sameness age with their residents. No big parties here. No department stores or even supermarkets. Just a once promising border town, pushed to the middle of nowhere by growth and progress elsewhere.
Just as time has crept up and left Sa Keo just a blip on the map, it has also taken whatever hopes the sisters had and turned them into dreams, the kind that will never come true. Birthdays pass and are forgotten, Chinese New Years come and go. They eat the duck. The light the incense. It's always the same.
The photographic records they keep of the epochs in their lives also mirror the last new thing left for them to experience.
The sisters' photo albums are filled with funerals. Elaborate ceremonies of white robes and long processions, burning candles and incense, prayers and coffins and urns.
Six albums, and not a wedding in the bunch.
The oldest sister, the most faraway and bitter, will probably go first. Her bowed legs, gaunt frame and hanging clothes make her seem like a skeleton. The circles under her eyes make her pupils seem far away, as if her gaze is tucked away someplace else, or buried by resignation.
But maybe, her death will mean new life for the younger two; he middle one, a yappy shopping fiend, and the youngest, a departure from her rail-thin older sisters, a round woman with a warm smile and big appetite.
Maybe when the oldest sister's frail and wrinkled form withers a bit more and the life simply fades out of her, the younger sisters will find life outside their lonely home. Maybe then, they will move to the mountains. Maybe then, they'll see a sunrise from a different vantage point, and let the sun set behind a verdant rise, not the shed outside their back door that's been staring back for a half-century. Maybe then, they'll fill an album with wedding pictures, a new one for every day in the springtime, as the promise of love and life fills the temples here the whole season long.
Maybe then they'll postpone their own funerals by forgetting how long they've been waiting for them.
And during all this time, fate, luck and love have not smiled very brightly on any of the three. An emptiness is clear on their faces in wrinkles and wear, more pronounced with each woman up the gradient of years. As much as the sisters try to carry on without questioning themselves and their station, their state surrounds them, worn like a defect no forced smile or perfume can hide.
We've never married. Never moved. Never been desired. But always, alone together.
The weariness and disappointment hanging heavily around their necks, hunching the eldest, thinning the second, and plumping the third, has seemingly dripped and stained, the hollowness absorbed into their surround, making their world as lonely on the outside as it is on the inside.
The walls that surround them bear witness.
When their brother became wealthy, he knocked down the old wooden house and built his sisters a fine new home. The house they were born in was not destined to be the one where they will die. But that didn't change much.The roof may be covered in strong ceramic, the walls may be glass and granite and brick, but the land beneath the newly poured slab is the same. The towering china cupboard in the tall dining room is stuffed with enough plates and teacups for any feast or wedding. But most have never been used. The big halls and living rooms are all spotless, the floors covered with ornate tile and deep red hardwoods. But most of the space is empty, the little furniture there pushed against the walls, with boxes piled high atop the benches and tables; the wealthy brother, seeing how the old women simply left all the space alone, uses the empty rooms as storage. The ceilings, too, are grand and high. But the walls draping down from the rafters are mostly bare. Nobody lives in these living rooms. Most of the bedrooms, too, are barren; fully furnished affairs with tall teak beds that have never once taken someone to sleep.
A mud hut or mansion, a spinster's home is still a spinster's home.
Some would say being old and lonely is a matter of deficient character, or some held bitterness that a person has gripped onto, pride forbidding any slack in grip. But when three women wind up in the same way, one following the next, the youngest with a look at her own future through the eyes of the oldest, more is at play than their own decisions.
The sisters grew up educated and rich in a town that was mostly scrappy and poor. No boy in such a static little place would want to give a girl like that a try, especially since none of the three was exceptionally beautiful. Maybe then, if they were three forbidden beauties with long raven hair and pouty little lips and porcelain skin and eyes that beamed and beckoned, a boy would have been tempted enough to risk all he had for a kiss.
But we all know that Juliet was beautiful, and no stories are told about ugly girls.
And so, for 60 years, the town grew little, save for older. Houses stand and wait. The market has grown fatter along with the highway that runs through the place, but off that strip, neighborhoods of quiet sameness age with their residents. No big parties here. No department stores or even supermarkets. Just a once promising border town, pushed to the middle of nowhere by growth and progress elsewhere.
Just as time has crept up and left Sa Keo just a blip on the map, it has also taken whatever hopes the sisters had and turned them into dreams, the kind that will never come true. Birthdays pass and are forgotten, Chinese New Years come and go. They eat the duck. The light the incense. It's always the same.
The photographic records they keep of the epochs in their lives also mirror the last new thing left for them to experience.
The sisters' photo albums are filled with funerals. Elaborate ceremonies of white robes and long processions, burning candles and incense, prayers and coffins and urns.
Six albums, and not a wedding in the bunch.
The oldest sister, the most faraway and bitter, will probably go first. Her bowed legs, gaunt frame and hanging clothes make her seem like a skeleton. The circles under her eyes make her pupils seem far away, as if her gaze is tucked away someplace else, or buried by resignation.
But maybe, her death will mean new life for the younger two; he middle one, a yappy shopping fiend, and the youngest, a departure from her rail-thin older sisters, a round woman with a warm smile and big appetite.
Maybe when the oldest sister's frail and wrinkled form withers a bit more and the life simply fades out of her, the younger sisters will find life outside their lonely home. Maybe then, they will move to the mountains. Maybe then, they'll see a sunrise from a different vantage point, and let the sun set behind a verdant rise, not the shed outside their back door that's been staring back for a half-century. Maybe then, they'll fill an album with wedding pictures, a new one for every day in the springtime, as the promise of love and life fills the temples here the whole season long.
Maybe then they'll postpone their own funerals by forgetting how long they've been waiting for them.
Friday, January 23, 2009
On the road, danger lurks, but a reward beckons
All we had to go on were 30-year-old memories and a new map. As time changes all places, as wars re-draw boundaries and as cities grow and are re-named, the task ahead would not be an easy one. We were going to find the spot where my uncle crossed into Thailand from Cambodia in 1979 with his parents and brothers after a night scrambling through the jungle. Then we were going to locate the old refugee camp where Thai authorities corralled the illegal immigrants, sorting out the ones with family here -- who could stay -- and the ones who had simply charged across the border, hoping anyplace would be better than the place where they'd just been. Those immigrants were turned around and sent back into Cambodia, which was still in the throes of conflict -- remnant Khmer Rouge forces were still waging a guerrilla war against the conquering Vietnamese.
We sat at the back desk of Jek-U's cosmetics wholesale business in Aran, a border town in Thailand where my grandfather did a lot of trading back in the '60s and early '70s. We had a Thai road atlas spread out, and on the computer screen, I'd pulled up a Google map of the region. Comparing both sources, one thing became clear: Cambodia is a blank when it comes to maps. The town where my uncle departed from, according to both maps, didn't exist. And another problem; according to the satellite imagery from Google, the whole borderland, which used to be thickly forested, had been cleared; miles and miles of patchwork rice fields had replaced the trees. Like the orange groves back in my home town in Florida, revisiting them 10-years later, the location was the same, but its character was irrevocably different. Instead of acres of fruit trees, there were characterless rows of cookie-cutter subdivisions. But still, I'd be able to tell you exactly which screed-in swimming pool took the place of my little fort built from scrap construction-site lumber. From the existing towns on the Thai side, we were able to narrow down the crossing zone to a pretty narrow swath of land between Ta Phraya and Thap Sadet, two towns about 60 kilometers to the north of Aran. The refugee camp was likely a little ways further north from there.
We borrowed one motorcycle and rented another and set off along highway 348. We probably could have been smarter about this, but making due with what we had, we zipped up the highway at up to 100 KPH, helmetless, clad in just jeans, t-shirts and sandals. Riding that fast and so exposed to the elements isn't pleasant, but if the locals ride this way, why couldn't we?
Hair flying, aviator glasses glinting in the morning sun, I embraced the freedom of two wheels and the open road. A little flick of the wrist, and vroooom! Every chance to pass a slow-moving truck or ox cart, I took it, dodging potholes, kids on bicycles and taking the pelting from the little beetles and dragonflies ricocheting and splattering on my shirt and shades.
As can be expected from a guy like me enamored with speed driving on a road with a speed limit hardly ever enforced, it was about 30 minutes into the ride that I nearly died.
Drivers here, like in most of Southeast Asia, don't wait for openings when they merge into traffic. They simply make them. And in Thailand, like in the U.K., traffic goes the other way. Cars are all right-hand-drive. That can be very dangerous if you've driven on the right side of the road your entire life. And so, when a young man suddenly pulled his moto out in front of me, trying to cross the undivided highway and make a long right-hand turn, I acted on instinct. I leaned left. My my little 150cc Honda responded perfectly. And so did the young man who'd pulled out in front of me -- according to the rules of the road here. He went right.
Oh. Shit.
The distance between us was being gobbled up by speed. A collision course was set. I was going too fast to veer off to the right. I could feel it; if I tried to go that way, I'd wobble, flip and get scattered all over the pavement. The distance between us grew even closer. The young man came to a stop. He was staring at me like a goat in the headlights of a tractor. Oh boy. I couldn't brake in time. I had only one option. Go left as far as I could go. Problem was, there was no more road that way. There was no time, either. Decision made.
Off I went into the ditch.
Call it reflex from hours on the mountain biking trail, call it luck, call it a blessing. Somehow, I didn't flip when I went off the pavement and into the shallow ditch off the shoulder. I heard the grass and sticks and little rocks nick and pummel the tires and body of my moto. And then, a second later, it was over. I careened up a smooth side of the ditch, and launched back onto the road.
Holy. Shit.
The little Honda hummed on like nothing had happened.
The rest of the ride to Ta Phraya, I took things a bit slower. I admired the eucalyptus groves, the farms, the little flowers in the fields.
After about 45 minutes, we pulled into town. Me and my uncle got iced coffees, and we talked about how a Thai farmer on citizen's watch had spotted his little group of refugees and told them to stop just minutes after emerging from the forest into Thailand. He drew a map of the Thai Army outpost they were taken immediately after and questioned for two days before being sent to the refugee camp after it was established they had family here.
"How did you make it across?" an officer then had asked my uncle through a Khmer translator. "We have hundreds of troops patrolling the border."
Just a teenager, my uncle responded: "We just kept walking."
After the coffee, we found the house of a distant relative who lives here in Ta Phraya. It seems I have family everywhere I go here. She confirmed that we were close, very close, to the road we were looking for. We set off East toward Cambodia. In five minutes of riding, we'd left the city behind and the landscape of roads and gas stations and shops changed into potholes and rugged countryside. We zipped passed a police checkpoint, and continued on past groups of wandering water buffalo and farm girls shuttling bags of vegetables on bicycles. We were getting closer. Just a few miles further down this road, my grandfather and his wife and sons emerged from the woods 30 years ago, setting foot in a free country after four years living in fear.
Then we saw the long ribbons of razor wire. Indeed, political lines had shifted over time. A "temporary border checkpoint" had been set up. National police officers were manning the the little structure and guardhouse ahead. Everywhere I looked, there were razor-sharp slinkies of steel concertina wire. We asked if we could continue on.
"For your safety, you cannot cross here," said one of the officers. "You need to go through Aran if you want to cross."
This access point was mainly used for agricultural purposes, locals with day passes. The road beyond, apparently, was just a narrow dirt strip, just 10 years removing it from the last time machine gun shells clinked to the ground nearby, their bullets flying of hostility. Civil war was still a very recent memory in Cambodia.
While not the exact spot, I'd come close enough to get a feel for the terrain, to have a sense of place. I was able be able to see the same trees (albeit a lot taller), smell the same country smells, and feel the same midday heat in this isolated borderland.
After a few minutes poking around the border stop, we turned around and headed back to the city. We needed some gas before continuing on to find the refugee camp. We passed the farms and girls on bicycles, and then when the Ta Phraya was in sight, I saw something new. A black vehicle just barely poking out into view, mostly hidden behind a little wooden building near the road. This might be a different country, and the vehicle was far from any Crown Vic' I've ever seen, but the posture was unmistakable. I know a cop when I see one. I felt a little ill.
And sure enough, the engine under the hood roared to life, and a black police pickup truck shot into the road, heading slowly in our lane straight toward us. The driver stuck an open palm out the window. The universal signal: Halt.
I definitely wasn't speeding just then.
In an instant, three guys jumped out of the back of the little pickup. Two more emerged from the cab. They were bulky for people from this part of the world, and a little taller. They approached slowly. Only one wore his gun visibly outside his clothing, but as they walked toward us on our stopped bikes, it was quite clear the other four had guns tucked into their waistbands, concealed under long T-shirts. One would lift his shirt up a bit, revealing a silver revolver. The kind that doesn't just put a man down when it hits, but throws him to the floor.
Are we going to get shaken down? Why are we getting stopped? Thai police are pretty good to foreigners; did I have anything to worry about? It didn't matter. They'd seen a couple people on motorcycles, people who didn't look like they belonged around these parts, zip around a police checkpoint from a border crossing hardly anyone uses.
I could feel the adrenaline begin to flow. They had surrounded us. Two were behind me. You don't surround innocent people for a routine traffic stop. My uncle, luckily, speaks both Thai and Khmer. They asked him in Thai first, then Khmer, what we were doing? He explained.
"Are these motorcycles yours? What are you doing with them?" one of the policemen asked.
Apparently, people smuggle bikes all the time from Cambodia and sell them for a profit in Thailand. Tax-free vehicle transport. Very illegal here.
I looked around. I smiled. I shrugged. Just a dumb American checking out the countryside here!
They nodded and said we could go. My uncle is a good talker. They still stayed circled around us, though, and kept staring. I gunned the throttle, and left the ring of scowling cops behind.
We got some gas. Only about 17B ($0.50) per liter. Then we set off again in search of history. The way there was dusty and bumpy as it was hot.
After leaving Ta Phraya, the road quickly degenerates from well-maintained blacktop to a patchwork of dirt and old asphalt, with as many cows to dodge as potholes. The 18 kilometers north to the dam where my uncle suspects the refugee camp used to be took longer than expected. And by this time of day, the sun was glaring down hard, and the country here is surprisingly dry this time of year.
Whenever a truck lumbered past, its trailer overburdened and sagging from the tons of bagged rice piled high above the cab, the dust kicked up was miserable. I wanted to close my eyes while driving so many times. I had to take off my glasses several times to wipe away the tears from the irritation, and wipe the lenses clean with my shirt. There would be dirt smears there on the white cotton.
After a half hour of dodging cow shit in the middle of the road, we found what we thought was the spot. But all around, there was nothing signaling that we were in the right spot. Just desolation. Just a towering dam behind relatively new gravel-braced ramparts, just watering holes with buffalo wallowing in the mud, just more rice fields and the occasional car or motorcycle traveling alone down the bumpy road. It seems they built a dam atop the old refugee camp, and the traders who had sold overpriced food and amenities so many years ago to the thousand or more Cambodians who sought refuge here had disappeared along with the tents and appetites eager to devour real food for the first time in years.
But when my uncle told me they put the refugees far away from anything, I had no idea it was this far; maybe not in actual distance, but certainly in feeling.
We jumped back on our motorcycles, and sped off back toward Aran. We were sunburnt and dust-battered. We'd rambled through rough country, been stopped by men with guns, nearly crashed, and were sore from hours in the saddle. But when we returned, as we were eating dinner at a long banquet table in the private section of a restaurant with great aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces, their new Toyotas and Mercedes parked outside, I felt a sense of gratitude I hadn't felt in a long while. I'd put in some blood (my foot got caught between a big rock and the motorcycle earlier), sweat and dust-induced tears today. I put myself out there to give the past more definition and meaning. But what I'd squeezed from the miles of road wasn't just a taste of my past, but a sweetener for this day, and likely many more to come.
We sat at the back desk of Jek-U's cosmetics wholesale business in Aran, a border town in Thailand where my grandfather did a lot of trading back in the '60s and early '70s. We had a Thai road atlas spread out, and on the computer screen, I'd pulled up a Google map of the region. Comparing both sources, one thing became clear: Cambodia is a blank when it comes to maps. The town where my uncle departed from, according to both maps, didn't exist. And another problem; according to the satellite imagery from Google, the whole borderland, which used to be thickly forested, had been cleared; miles and miles of patchwork rice fields had replaced the trees. Like the orange groves back in my home town in Florida, revisiting them 10-years later, the location was the same, but its character was irrevocably different. Instead of acres of fruit trees, there were characterless rows of cookie-cutter subdivisions. But still, I'd be able to tell you exactly which screed-in swimming pool took the place of my little fort built from scrap construction-site lumber. From the existing towns on the Thai side, we were able to narrow down the crossing zone to a pretty narrow swath of land between Ta Phraya and Thap Sadet, two towns about 60 kilometers to the north of Aran. The refugee camp was likely a little ways further north from there.
We borrowed one motorcycle and rented another and set off along highway 348. We probably could have been smarter about this, but making due with what we had, we zipped up the highway at up to 100 KPH, helmetless, clad in just jeans, t-shirts and sandals. Riding that fast and so exposed to the elements isn't pleasant, but if the locals ride this way, why couldn't we?
Hair flying, aviator glasses glinting in the morning sun, I embraced the freedom of two wheels and the open road. A little flick of the wrist, and vroooom! Every chance to pass a slow-moving truck or ox cart, I took it, dodging potholes, kids on bicycles and taking the pelting from the little beetles and dragonflies ricocheting and splattering on my shirt and shades.
As can be expected from a guy like me enamored with speed driving on a road with a speed limit hardly ever enforced, it was about 30 minutes into the ride that I nearly died.
Drivers here, like in most of Southeast Asia, don't wait for openings when they merge into traffic. They simply make them. And in Thailand, like in the U.K., traffic goes the other way. Cars are all right-hand-drive. That can be very dangerous if you've driven on the right side of the road your entire life. And so, when a young man suddenly pulled his moto out in front of me, trying to cross the undivided highway and make a long right-hand turn, I acted on instinct. I leaned left. My my little 150cc Honda responded perfectly. And so did the young man who'd pulled out in front of me -- according to the rules of the road here. He went right.
Oh. Shit.
The distance between us was being gobbled up by speed. A collision course was set. I was going too fast to veer off to the right. I could feel it; if I tried to go that way, I'd wobble, flip and get scattered all over the pavement. The distance between us grew even closer. The young man came to a stop. He was staring at me like a goat in the headlights of a tractor. Oh boy. I couldn't brake in time. I had only one option. Go left as far as I could go. Problem was, there was no more road that way. There was no time, either. Decision made.
Off I went into the ditch.
Call it reflex from hours on the mountain biking trail, call it luck, call it a blessing. Somehow, I didn't flip when I went off the pavement and into the shallow ditch off the shoulder. I heard the grass and sticks and little rocks nick and pummel the tires and body of my moto. And then, a second later, it was over. I careened up a smooth side of the ditch, and launched back onto the road.
Holy. Shit.
The little Honda hummed on like nothing had happened.
The rest of the ride to Ta Phraya, I took things a bit slower. I admired the eucalyptus groves, the farms, the little flowers in the fields.
After about 45 minutes, we pulled into town. Me and my uncle got iced coffees, and we talked about how a Thai farmer on citizen's watch had spotted his little group of refugees and told them to stop just minutes after emerging from the forest into Thailand. He drew a map of the Thai Army outpost they were taken immediately after and questioned for two days before being sent to the refugee camp after it was established they had family here.
"How did you make it across?" an officer then had asked my uncle through a Khmer translator. "We have hundreds of troops patrolling the border."
Just a teenager, my uncle responded: "We just kept walking."
After the coffee, we found the house of a distant relative who lives here in Ta Phraya. It seems I have family everywhere I go here. She confirmed that we were close, very close, to the road we were looking for. We set off East toward Cambodia. In five minutes of riding, we'd left the city behind and the landscape of roads and gas stations and shops changed into potholes and rugged countryside. We zipped passed a police checkpoint, and continued on past groups of wandering water buffalo and farm girls shuttling bags of vegetables on bicycles. We were getting closer. Just a few miles further down this road, my grandfather and his wife and sons emerged from the woods 30 years ago, setting foot in a free country after four years living in fear.
Then we saw the long ribbons of razor wire. Indeed, political lines had shifted over time. A "temporary border checkpoint" had been set up. National police officers were manning the the little structure and guardhouse ahead. Everywhere I looked, there were razor-sharp slinkies of steel concertina wire. We asked if we could continue on.
"For your safety, you cannot cross here," said one of the officers. "You need to go through Aran if you want to cross."
This access point was mainly used for agricultural purposes, locals with day passes. The road beyond, apparently, was just a narrow dirt strip, just 10 years removing it from the last time machine gun shells clinked to the ground nearby, their bullets flying of hostility. Civil war was still a very recent memory in Cambodia.
While not the exact spot, I'd come close enough to get a feel for the terrain, to have a sense of place. I was able be able to see the same trees (albeit a lot taller), smell the same country smells, and feel the same midday heat in this isolated borderland.
After a few minutes poking around the border stop, we turned around and headed back to the city. We needed some gas before continuing on to find the refugee camp. We passed the farms and girls on bicycles, and then when the Ta Phraya was in sight, I saw something new. A black vehicle just barely poking out into view, mostly hidden behind a little wooden building near the road. This might be a different country, and the vehicle was far from any Crown Vic' I've ever seen, but the posture was unmistakable. I know a cop when I see one. I felt a little ill.
And sure enough, the engine under the hood roared to life, and a black police pickup truck shot into the road, heading slowly in our lane straight toward us. The driver stuck an open palm out the window. The universal signal: Halt.
I definitely wasn't speeding just then.
In an instant, three guys jumped out of the back of the little pickup. Two more emerged from the cab. They were bulky for people from this part of the world, and a little taller. They approached slowly. Only one wore his gun visibly outside his clothing, but as they walked toward us on our stopped bikes, it was quite clear the other four had guns tucked into their waistbands, concealed under long T-shirts. One would lift his shirt up a bit, revealing a silver revolver. The kind that doesn't just put a man down when it hits, but throws him to the floor.
Are we going to get shaken down? Why are we getting stopped? Thai police are pretty good to foreigners; did I have anything to worry about? It didn't matter. They'd seen a couple people on motorcycles, people who didn't look like they belonged around these parts, zip around a police checkpoint from a border crossing hardly anyone uses.
I could feel the adrenaline begin to flow. They had surrounded us. Two were behind me. You don't surround innocent people for a routine traffic stop. My uncle, luckily, speaks both Thai and Khmer. They asked him in Thai first, then Khmer, what we were doing? He explained.
"Are these motorcycles yours? What are you doing with them?" one of the policemen asked.
Apparently, people smuggle bikes all the time from Cambodia and sell them for a profit in Thailand. Tax-free vehicle transport. Very illegal here.
I looked around. I smiled. I shrugged. Just a dumb American checking out the countryside here!
They nodded and said we could go. My uncle is a good talker. They still stayed circled around us, though, and kept staring. I gunned the throttle, and left the ring of scowling cops behind.
We got some gas. Only about 17B ($0.50) per liter. Then we set off again in search of history. The way there was dusty and bumpy as it was hot.
After leaving Ta Phraya, the road quickly degenerates from well-maintained blacktop to a patchwork of dirt and old asphalt, with as many cows to dodge as potholes. The 18 kilometers north to the dam where my uncle suspects the refugee camp used to be took longer than expected. And by this time of day, the sun was glaring down hard, and the country here is surprisingly dry this time of year.
Whenever a truck lumbered past, its trailer overburdened and sagging from the tons of bagged rice piled high above the cab, the dust kicked up was miserable. I wanted to close my eyes while driving so many times. I had to take off my glasses several times to wipe away the tears from the irritation, and wipe the lenses clean with my shirt. There would be dirt smears there on the white cotton.
After a half hour of dodging cow shit in the middle of the road, we found what we thought was the spot. But all around, there was nothing signaling that we were in the right spot. Just desolation. Just a towering dam behind relatively new gravel-braced ramparts, just watering holes with buffalo wallowing in the mud, just more rice fields and the occasional car or motorcycle traveling alone down the bumpy road. It seems they built a dam atop the old refugee camp, and the traders who had sold overpriced food and amenities so many years ago to the thousand or more Cambodians who sought refuge here had disappeared along with the tents and appetites eager to devour real food for the first time in years.
But when my uncle told me they put the refugees far away from anything, I had no idea it was this far; maybe not in actual distance, but certainly in feeling.
We jumped back on our motorcycles, and sped off back toward Aran. We were sunburnt and dust-battered. We'd rambled through rough country, been stopped by men with guns, nearly crashed, and were sore from hours in the saddle. But when we returned, as we were eating dinner at a long banquet table in the private section of a restaurant with great aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces, their new Toyotas and Mercedes parked outside, I felt a sense of gratitude I hadn't felt in a long while. I'd put in some blood (my foot got caught between a big rock and the motorcycle earlier), sweat and dust-induced tears today. I put myself out there to give the past more definition and meaning. But what I'd squeezed from the miles of road wasn't just a taste of my past, but a sweetener for this day, and likely many more to come.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Of fireflies and lotus flowers
Walking the road toward the gate, I can feel the earth squish under my bare feet. Red clay between my toes. Nothing that won't wash off later.
There's a gentle wind blowing. As the breeze passes over me in the darkness, I can feel a coolness take away the stale heat of daytime and in its place leave a crisp calm that will settle and stay until morning. After such a sun-stroked day, I'm sure even the mosquitoes welcome the chill.
The path ahead is lined with towering shoots of bamboo. Their leafy tops disappear into the night, with emerald boughs hanging down, swaying, rustling in the wind. Bamboo has always felt safe and familiar -- like some hidden dragon is moving with me just beyond the thicket, silently watching over me.
I arrive at the gate. It's open. The serpentine guardian lanterns are silhouetted by the moonlight. Their lights are off. Before I go any further, I turn around and lift my head. The night sky here isn't a black expanse. It's a brilliant tapestry of lights and colors. My imagination is spun and strung between the stars. I could stay tangled here for hours. The blackness is almost an afterthought.
I am snapped back to earth by perhaps the only other subtle kind of fire in the night more wonderful. Fireflies. Among the stalks of bamboo, in the clearing around the gate, all around me, the little bugs flicker and glow. These tiny embers of organic magic ignite and blink away so fleetingly, they seem almost imagined.
Some minutes trickle away into forever, and then I leave the nightfires behind and pass through the gate. The little house rises up from the clay just beyond. It's raised on stilts, with hammocks strung between the supports below. In a few months, come the rain season, anyone walking here would be walking on water. The hand-built clapboard house is just one room, but home to some of the kindest, most generous seven people I know.
I continue forward underneath the house. The earthenware cisterns and tiny concrete bathroom and kitchen are dark off to my left. I move on deeper into the farm. As I near the wooden chicken coop, I see the shapes of a dozen birds tucked warmly into their feathers, settled all around in their evening roost.
When I near the pond, a strange fragrance causes me to stop. It smells like jasmine, but fainter, more ethereal. I hadn't seen any jasmine vines here during the day, so the soft tendrils of contentment carried to me on the nighttime air are something of mystery. Then I look more closely to the water. The moon is out, but there is no reflection. Only pale shapes hovering over the surface. Lotus blossoms. The lilies cover the pond. The flowers are just beginning to bloom.
This is where I will sleep. Between two trees on the water's edge, I string my hammock. The rice fields beyond are cast in white moonlight. I lay down, and let the fabric wrap around me. I breathe deep. The night is silent when your mind is alight and moving, but when you are still, it rises into a symphony. The sound of ten thousand crickets pour into my ears.
As I begin to fade from one dreamland into the next, I am startled by footsteps coming toward me from the brush beyond. Alone and zipped-in, I feel vulnerable. I start up and rustle in my sleeping bag. The noise should scare any deer or rodent away. The footsteps come nearer. I fumble for my little lantern. I am afraid. The farmer's children didn't want me to come out here to sleep. Above the door frame in the stilt house, they have a prayer scribbled across in white chalk. A warning to spirits not to pass the threshold. They were afraid that out here, the ghosts of the night would get to me.
I told them, "I'm not afraid. If I see any ghosts, I will become their friend."
And here they were.
I shine my light toward the forms just feet from my prostrate body. Here are the ghosts. Their noses are wet, and their tongues dangling. Waggly tailed, two farm dogs smile at me. I shake my head. "Pups, hey," I say.
The dogs don't move. I lay down again. Then, I feel them come nearer. I hear them beneath me. They curl up beneath the hammock.
Not quite dragons, but they suit me just fine.
Nighttime on the farm is as close to a dream as I've ever been.
There's a gentle wind blowing. As the breeze passes over me in the darkness, I can feel a coolness take away the stale heat of daytime and in its place leave a crisp calm that will settle and stay until morning. After such a sun-stroked day, I'm sure even the mosquitoes welcome the chill.
The path ahead is lined with towering shoots of bamboo. Their leafy tops disappear into the night, with emerald boughs hanging down, swaying, rustling in the wind. Bamboo has always felt safe and familiar -- like some hidden dragon is moving with me just beyond the thicket, silently watching over me.
I arrive at the gate. It's open. The serpentine guardian lanterns are silhouetted by the moonlight. Their lights are off. Before I go any further, I turn around and lift my head. The night sky here isn't a black expanse. It's a brilliant tapestry of lights and colors. My imagination is spun and strung between the stars. I could stay tangled here for hours. The blackness is almost an afterthought.
I am snapped back to earth by perhaps the only other subtle kind of fire in the night more wonderful. Fireflies. Among the stalks of bamboo, in the clearing around the gate, all around me, the little bugs flicker and glow. These tiny embers of organic magic ignite and blink away so fleetingly, they seem almost imagined.
Some minutes trickle away into forever, and then I leave the nightfires behind and pass through the gate. The little house rises up from the clay just beyond. It's raised on stilts, with hammocks strung between the supports below. In a few months, come the rain season, anyone walking here would be walking on water. The hand-built clapboard house is just one room, but home to some of the kindest, most generous seven people I know.
I continue forward underneath the house. The earthenware cisterns and tiny concrete bathroom and kitchen are dark off to my left. I move on deeper into the farm. As I near the wooden chicken coop, I see the shapes of a dozen birds tucked warmly into their feathers, settled all around in their evening roost.
When I near the pond, a strange fragrance causes me to stop. It smells like jasmine, but fainter, more ethereal. I hadn't seen any jasmine vines here during the day, so the soft tendrils of contentment carried to me on the nighttime air are something of mystery. Then I look more closely to the water. The moon is out, but there is no reflection. Only pale shapes hovering over the surface. Lotus blossoms. The lilies cover the pond. The flowers are just beginning to bloom.
This is where I will sleep. Between two trees on the water's edge, I string my hammock. The rice fields beyond are cast in white moonlight. I lay down, and let the fabric wrap around me. I breathe deep. The night is silent when your mind is alight and moving, but when you are still, it rises into a symphony. The sound of ten thousand crickets pour into my ears.
As I begin to fade from one dreamland into the next, I am startled by footsteps coming toward me from the brush beyond. Alone and zipped-in, I feel vulnerable. I start up and rustle in my sleeping bag. The noise should scare any deer or rodent away. The footsteps come nearer. I fumble for my little lantern. I am afraid. The farmer's children didn't want me to come out here to sleep. Above the door frame in the stilt house, they have a prayer scribbled across in white chalk. A warning to spirits not to pass the threshold. They were afraid that out here, the ghosts of the night would get to me.
I told them, "I'm not afraid. If I see any ghosts, I will become their friend."
And here they were.
I shine my light toward the forms just feet from my prostrate body. Here are the ghosts. Their noses are wet, and their tongues dangling. Waggly tailed, two farm dogs smile at me. I shake my head. "Pups, hey," I say.
The dogs don't move. I lay down again. Then, I feel them come nearer. I hear them beneath me. They curl up beneath the hammock.
Not quite dragons, but they suit me just fine.
Nighttime on the farm is as close to a dream as I've ever been.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Digging for treasure
Every day is a search and a discovery. Whether it's some personal truth I'm uncovering, or a story long buried and otherwise destined to be lost in the back of an old man's mind, not a minute here passes without finding something new, or moving in some way toward yet another little revelation.
At times the emotions have welled over past that brim of impersonal composure we all try to keep. I've lost count of the men and women I've seen shudder and cry as I've had them reveal soul-bound wounds kept constantly covered for the past 30 years, but never healed. Driving along some unnamed dirt road one morning, I had to put on my sunglasses. It would have been unbecoming for a guy looking so rugged and tough in his scarf and scruff to be watering up in the eyes. Imagining the hope and heartbreak that had been spilled on that same swathe of rice field was a flurry of images too many. It was the drop that pushed my basin of empathy past its spilling point.
But it's these surges of passion that make the rooster-crow wake-ups and mosquito-thick nights joys to experience. I've said to friends in my short Gchat sessions: Never in my life have I woken up every day and loved every moment as much as now. I'm doing what I've always, truly wanted to do. If I was born to do something, this is it.
Besides, my time here is short. Every moment I sit idle, I feel a commensurate amount of guilt weigh down on me. If I don't record everything I can glimpse from the ether of history that's disappearing 'fast as the old people who keep it alive, fully expose myself to that flash of intensity in the human condition that shaped the course of my family's existence, I feel as if I am committing an injustice. It's in my power to keep this story alive, and give it to my kids someday when they're writing the next chapter.
Part of digging as deep as I can means finding pictures from that era; I want to be able to create something that breathes life and color into this small part of Cambodia. In order to do that, I need to see that life and color firsthand, not just through faded memories. But as I have learned, personal photographs from before 1980 in this country are rarer than any gold or gem.
My grandfather, who died when I was 6, left a long legacy in the town in which I am now immersing myself. It seems as if every person over 40 I meet here in Monkol Borei is an instant friend when I tell them Tek Bun Tao is my father's father. His legacy is one I plan to explore in whatever work comes of this journey of mine. But the reason I bring him up now is because today, I visited one of his last surviving peers from the old days, a tiny old man named So Ban Wuan. So Ban, now 80, owned one of the only major gas stations in the province. My grandfather, he was one of the biggest rice brokers. After an hour learning from So Ban about how the leading men of Monkol Borei discussed evacuation plans on the eve of the Lon Nol's defeat, I asked if he had any pictures from that bygone era. He laughed, and smiled a toothless smile.
"The Khmer Rouge took all that away from me."
When they call that time in this country "Year Zero," they mean it. The regime tried its hardest to restart history. Photo albums were burned or buried. Possessing anything from the "old way" was grounds for punishment. And the way this Orwellian government worked, you could be beaten for having pictures -- or killed on the spot, depending on the mood of your individual leader that morning. Sometime, I'll get around to telling the story of the town leader who was demoted to fertilizing fields with human waste for not killing anyone while he was in charge. But like a lot of tangents I've been going on, that's a tale for another time.
But also today, I met a woman who was the daughter of one of the most influential men in Cambodia at the time: Boss Yar. He was also a good friend of my grandfather's, and played a major role in shaping my family's path during the war and its aftermath. After two interview sessions with the boss's daughter, I asked her if she had any photographs. Amazingly, she did. Three tiny albums worth. During the Khmer Rouge days, she'd used up all her gold as bribes. Her family's wealth was stolen and misused. Her father was eventually taken away and killed; for a rich man, he'd lasted a long time under the Khmer Rouge. But somehow, she'd kept these photo albums -- mostly containing pictures from her wedding and a few from her childhood. She'd hid them in the fields as she worked. She kept them buried sometimes. But always, they were never far. And now, they were in front of me. A trove of color pictures from a time an army tried to erase.
And even more amazingly, two pictures out of the 40 or so were more valuable than any gold for me. One was a photo of my 12-year-old dad, my grandfather, Boss Yar, and my great uncle Ted all standing in front of a big green American car, about to head off somewhere -- probably Thailand, but I'll need to ask my dad later to confirm. The other was of my grandmother. It was a photo from Yar's daughter's wedding. It showed just part of her face, but her expression is timeless, youthfully staring up in quiet reflection during a prayer. My uncle was the one who picked it out from the tattered dozens.
All the stories I've heard over the past three weeks suddenly had more definition. Their presence became more vivid in my mind. I'd discovered yet another priceless artifact.
At times the emotions have welled over past that brim of impersonal composure we all try to keep. I've lost count of the men and women I've seen shudder and cry as I've had them reveal soul-bound wounds kept constantly covered for the past 30 years, but never healed. Driving along some unnamed dirt road one morning, I had to put on my sunglasses. It would have been unbecoming for a guy looking so rugged and tough in his scarf and scruff to be watering up in the eyes. Imagining the hope and heartbreak that had been spilled on that same swathe of rice field was a flurry of images too many. It was the drop that pushed my basin of empathy past its spilling point.
But it's these surges of passion that make the rooster-crow wake-ups and mosquito-thick nights joys to experience. I've said to friends in my short Gchat sessions: Never in my life have I woken up every day and loved every moment as much as now. I'm doing what I've always, truly wanted to do. If I was born to do something, this is it.
Besides, my time here is short. Every moment I sit idle, I feel a commensurate amount of guilt weigh down on me. If I don't record everything I can glimpse from the ether of history that's disappearing 'fast as the old people who keep it alive, fully expose myself to that flash of intensity in the human condition that shaped the course of my family's existence, I feel as if I am committing an injustice. It's in my power to keep this story alive, and give it to my kids someday when they're writing the next chapter.
Part of digging as deep as I can means finding pictures from that era; I want to be able to create something that breathes life and color into this small part of Cambodia. In order to do that, I need to see that life and color firsthand, not just through faded memories. But as I have learned, personal photographs from before 1980 in this country are rarer than any gold or gem.
My grandfather, who died when I was 6, left a long legacy in the town in which I am now immersing myself. It seems as if every person over 40 I meet here in Monkol Borei is an instant friend when I tell them Tek Bun Tao is my father's father. His legacy is one I plan to explore in whatever work comes of this journey of mine. But the reason I bring him up now is because today, I visited one of his last surviving peers from the old days, a tiny old man named So Ban Wuan. So Ban, now 80, owned one of the only major gas stations in the province. My grandfather, he was one of the biggest rice brokers. After an hour learning from So Ban about how the leading men of Monkol Borei discussed evacuation plans on the eve of the Lon Nol's defeat, I asked if he had any pictures from that bygone era. He laughed, and smiled a toothless smile.
"The Khmer Rouge took all that away from me."
When they call that time in this country "Year Zero," they mean it. The regime tried its hardest to restart history. Photo albums were burned or buried. Possessing anything from the "old way" was grounds for punishment. And the way this Orwellian government worked, you could be beaten for having pictures -- or killed on the spot, depending on the mood of your individual leader that morning. Sometime, I'll get around to telling the story of the town leader who was demoted to fertilizing fields with human waste for not killing anyone while he was in charge. But like a lot of tangents I've been going on, that's a tale for another time.
But also today, I met a woman who was the daughter of one of the most influential men in Cambodia at the time: Boss Yar. He was also a good friend of my grandfather's, and played a major role in shaping my family's path during the war and its aftermath. After two interview sessions with the boss's daughter, I asked her if she had any photographs. Amazingly, she did. Three tiny albums worth. During the Khmer Rouge days, she'd used up all her gold as bribes. Her family's wealth was stolen and misused. Her father was eventually taken away and killed; for a rich man, he'd lasted a long time under the Khmer Rouge. But somehow, she'd kept these photo albums -- mostly containing pictures from her wedding and a few from her childhood. She'd hid them in the fields as she worked. She kept them buried sometimes. But always, they were never far. And now, they were in front of me. A trove of color pictures from a time an army tried to erase.
And even more amazingly, two pictures out of the 40 or so were more valuable than any gold for me. One was a photo of my 12-year-old dad, my grandfather, Boss Yar, and my great uncle Ted all standing in front of a big green American car, about to head off somewhere -- probably Thailand, but I'll need to ask my dad later to confirm. The other was of my grandmother. It was a photo from Yar's daughter's wedding. It showed just part of her face, but her expression is timeless, youthfully staring up in quiet reflection during a prayer. My uncle was the one who picked it out from the tattered dozens.
All the stories I've heard over the past three weeks suddenly had more definition. Their presence became more vivid in my mind. I'd discovered yet another priceless artifact.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Learning from the past, teaching the future
Shortly after the sunrise faded from hazy shades of red daybreak to the clear blaze of mid-morning, I left Batambong with my uncle for an area known as Kok Kokh. It's a rural place where rice plains stretch on for miles past the horizon. The now-dry paddies are isolating in their vastness, their procession of perfect flatness interrupted only by the gently curving silhouettes of lonely mountains rising from a terrain painted in dirty hues of ocher and gold. This was the commune where my uncles and grandparents were forced to toil for two years by the Khmer Rouge. My grandfather called this place his prison.
Not far from the main road, now a paved highway, but formerly a 1-lane earthen affair, there used to be a temple that was used by the Khmer Rouge as a detention and torture center. A few days earlier, I'd spoken with a survivor of that horrible place. He was a strong old man, the kind of guy whose fire shines through his ancient eyes, even when they're watery from remembering many hard years past. My family was lucky enough to have been kept far from that part of Koh Kokh. They were assigned to the backcountry far from the main road, to a tiny cluster of huts on the other side of the sweeping miles of rice fields due west of the temple-turned torture chamber.
After a mile of dusty driving down a clay road that's been tamped over three decades by millions of shoeless footsteps, we got out of the car, and my uncle surveyed the land. He climbed onto a dirt rampart that once stood 10 feet tall, but was now half as high, eroded from years of neglect and war. When he was 15-years-old, my uncle had helped build this earthen construct, meant to be the wall to a reservoir for the seemingly endless acres of rice that surrounded us. The wall stretched on for 5 kilometers. It was built by thousands of starving, scared and abused people put to work by the Khmer Rouge. It was a symbol of agrarian might; it was evidence of the lunacy that had gripped an entire country for nearly a decade.
Stories of his two years working in this place, catching rats and snakes to keep himself alive, the ignored infections and injuries, the cruel masters that demanded 18-hour days from children taken from their parents and put to work with pick-axes and scythes, gave me an idea. When I get back to the ranch next week, I'm going to carry baskets of dirt from sunrise to sunset. I'm going to till rice fields by hand until I can feel the same pain so many of my ancestors endured. I'm on a quest to tell this story the best way I can. In order to do that, I need to immerse myself as far as I can.
My uncle felt a bit ill after a few hours walking the rice fields under the sun, so we headed back to Batambong. Along the way, he told me the greatest story of escape and survival; the road we were driving on was the same one my grandfather lead 10 families along 30 years ago, using a candle to find the landmines in the dark as he ran from his prison. That's a story for another day, though.
When I returned to Batambong, my uncle went back to our guesthouse and took a nap. I ventured off into the city, visiting a museum, sampling the cuttlefish and fried treats along the storied riverbank, and finally, I stopped by the local temple. The towering building shimmered in the midday sun, its golden parapets decorated with ghoulish figures from Khmer lore. My favorite, and in my mind, the most frightening, is Garuda; a towering beast with a beaked head and rows of pointed teeth, usually surrounded by serpents, winged, standing on powerful, claw-tipped legs.
Under this ferocious display, monks in bright saffron robes began to fill desks under an open wood building in the temple courtyard. An English class was about to began. I quietly slipped in, and began listening. I was noticed about 5 minutes into the lesson: Intransitive verbs. I gave a polite bow to the teacher when he noticed me. And the class of about 15 all turned to me. The teacher laughed, and said, "New student." He went back to the lesson.
I never liked grammar. I soon left. I walked further into the Wat complex, and eventually came upon a monk. He was a small man, wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses. He was sitting cross-legged on a bench under the shade of a bushy tree. He greeted me in English. We began to talk. I complimented his vocabulary and curiosity. He asked me to do him a favor.
If anything, his request was a favor to me. He was also an English teacher; he taught English 5 days per week at a local university. His class would begin in less than an hour. He wanted me to visit his class and talk to his students. I happily obliged.
The monk provided a motorcycle, and with him on the back, we zipped through the streets of Batambong to the nearby university; a 4 minute ride.
We walked through the gated school yard, and I asked about his students, tuition, general topics. Before I came, I filled a page of my notebook with things I thought the students might be interested in: America. Where my father was born (in the Batambong hospital, actually). Jobs. Travel.
We approached the classroom, and there were about 20 smiling, curious students waiting outside the classroom. They were in their late-teens or early 20s. Their English skills were still pretty basic, but their curiosity and wide-eyed enthusiasm impressed me beyond belief. I've always loved teaching and telling others with less experience about things I might know a little about. In my heart, I was smiling even bigger than on the outside. I could make a tiny difference here.
I stepped into the concrete classroom, filled with old wooden desks and a bare, flickering fluorescent bulb.
The monk said I could fill the whole hour with whatever I felt like talking about. Twenty minutes after class time, I was still answering their questions. They were smart, and many had the kind of sparkle and apparent drive to rise above their humble roots and become the things they told me they wanted to be; doctors, teachers, and definitely not politicians. They're aware of the corruption wracking their country. A shame, that the government's misdeeds have turned off so many from seeking positions of power, positions that can bring change.
While they were interested in my general schlep about American Football (a classroom now knows the Florida Gators are the best college football team in the world), Los Angeles traffic, and how tall the buildings in New York are, I found they were more curious about my personal life. How I came to be where I am. How I came to look how I look. If I was married, or had a girlfriend (or girlfriends).
I happily answered. And with my answered, I instilled some of my personal philosophy; don't let fear get in the way of your dreams. Where there's a will, there's a way. Follow your heart, not what anyone else tells you.
Hopefully some of it stuck. I thought the monk might get a bit mad at me for preaching such idealism to his students. But instead, he urged me to give even more advice. To them, I was something of a hometown success story. After all, my family was from Monkol Borei, just a short drive to the north. And here I am, coming back home to write a book, about to start work at the New York Times, looking the part of world traveler and teaching them expressions like "peace out, man," and "bingo!"
I rode back to my hotel with a lifted spirit. I wanted to go back. I wanted to learn more from them. Hopefully they wanted to learn more from me.
I finished the day with an interview with a retired general. He'd survived three wars, and four different regimes in this country, from monarchy, to totalitarian state, to what passes for democracy. We had Cokes behind the gated walls of his compound. He'd served a term as a Cambodian senator, rising quickly through the ranks after the Khmer Rouge. He was also a victim of the regime. After discussing India and the Tamil Tigers, comparing the situation to K.R. insurgency in Cambodia, he smiled at me.
"I'll call you nephew now," he said. "No, wait. I'm too old. More like grandson."
Not far from the main road, now a paved highway, but formerly a 1-lane earthen affair, there used to be a temple that was used by the Khmer Rouge as a detention and torture center. A few days earlier, I'd spoken with a survivor of that horrible place. He was a strong old man, the kind of guy whose fire shines through his ancient eyes, even when they're watery from remembering many hard years past. My family was lucky enough to have been kept far from that part of Koh Kokh. They were assigned to the backcountry far from the main road, to a tiny cluster of huts on the other side of the sweeping miles of rice fields due west of the temple-turned torture chamber.
After a mile of dusty driving down a clay road that's been tamped over three decades by millions of shoeless footsteps, we got out of the car, and my uncle surveyed the land. He climbed onto a dirt rampart that once stood 10 feet tall, but was now half as high, eroded from years of neglect and war. When he was 15-years-old, my uncle had helped build this earthen construct, meant to be the wall to a reservoir for the seemingly endless acres of rice that surrounded us. The wall stretched on for 5 kilometers. It was built by thousands of starving, scared and abused people put to work by the Khmer Rouge. It was a symbol of agrarian might; it was evidence of the lunacy that had gripped an entire country for nearly a decade.
Stories of his two years working in this place, catching rats and snakes to keep himself alive, the ignored infections and injuries, the cruel masters that demanded 18-hour days from children taken from their parents and put to work with pick-axes and scythes, gave me an idea. When I get back to the ranch next week, I'm going to carry baskets of dirt from sunrise to sunset. I'm going to till rice fields by hand until I can feel the same pain so many of my ancestors endured. I'm on a quest to tell this story the best way I can. In order to do that, I need to immerse myself as far as I can.
My uncle felt a bit ill after a few hours walking the rice fields under the sun, so we headed back to Batambong. Along the way, he told me the greatest story of escape and survival; the road we were driving on was the same one my grandfather lead 10 families along 30 years ago, using a candle to find the landmines in the dark as he ran from his prison. That's a story for another day, though.
When I returned to Batambong, my uncle went back to our guesthouse and took a nap. I ventured off into the city, visiting a museum, sampling the cuttlefish and fried treats along the storied riverbank, and finally, I stopped by the local temple. The towering building shimmered in the midday sun, its golden parapets decorated with ghoulish figures from Khmer lore. My favorite, and in my mind, the most frightening, is Garuda; a towering beast with a beaked head and rows of pointed teeth, usually surrounded by serpents, winged, standing on powerful, claw-tipped legs.
Under this ferocious display, monks in bright saffron robes began to fill desks under an open wood building in the temple courtyard. An English class was about to began. I quietly slipped in, and began listening. I was noticed about 5 minutes into the lesson: Intransitive verbs. I gave a polite bow to the teacher when he noticed me. And the class of about 15 all turned to me. The teacher laughed, and said, "New student." He went back to the lesson.
I never liked grammar. I soon left. I walked further into the Wat complex, and eventually came upon a monk. He was a small man, wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses. He was sitting cross-legged on a bench under the shade of a bushy tree. He greeted me in English. We began to talk. I complimented his vocabulary and curiosity. He asked me to do him a favor.
If anything, his request was a favor to me. He was also an English teacher; he taught English 5 days per week at a local university. His class would begin in less than an hour. He wanted me to visit his class and talk to his students. I happily obliged.
The monk provided a motorcycle, and with him on the back, we zipped through the streets of Batambong to the nearby university; a 4 minute ride.
We walked through the gated school yard, and I asked about his students, tuition, general topics. Before I came, I filled a page of my notebook with things I thought the students might be interested in: America. Where my father was born (in the Batambong hospital, actually). Jobs. Travel.
We approached the classroom, and there were about 20 smiling, curious students waiting outside the classroom. They were in their late-teens or early 20s. Their English skills were still pretty basic, but their curiosity and wide-eyed enthusiasm impressed me beyond belief. I've always loved teaching and telling others with less experience about things I might know a little about. In my heart, I was smiling even bigger than on the outside. I could make a tiny difference here.
I stepped into the concrete classroom, filled with old wooden desks and a bare, flickering fluorescent bulb.
The monk said I could fill the whole hour with whatever I felt like talking about. Twenty minutes after class time, I was still answering their questions. They were smart, and many had the kind of sparkle and apparent drive to rise above their humble roots and become the things they told me they wanted to be; doctors, teachers, and definitely not politicians. They're aware of the corruption wracking their country. A shame, that the government's misdeeds have turned off so many from seeking positions of power, positions that can bring change.
While they were interested in my general schlep about American Football (a classroom now knows the Florida Gators are the best college football team in the world), Los Angeles traffic, and how tall the buildings in New York are, I found they were more curious about my personal life. How I came to be where I am. How I came to look how I look. If I was married, or had a girlfriend (or girlfriends).
I happily answered. And with my answered, I instilled some of my personal philosophy; don't let fear get in the way of your dreams. Where there's a will, there's a way. Follow your heart, not what anyone else tells you.
Hopefully some of it stuck. I thought the monk might get a bit mad at me for preaching such idealism to his students. But instead, he urged me to give even more advice. To them, I was something of a hometown success story. After all, my family was from Monkol Borei, just a short drive to the north. And here I am, coming back home to write a book, about to start work at the New York Times, looking the part of world traveler and teaching them expressions like "peace out, man," and "bingo!"
I rode back to my hotel with a lifted spirit. I wanted to go back. I wanted to learn more from them. Hopefully they wanted to learn more from me.
I finished the day with an interview with a retired general. He'd survived three wars, and four different regimes in this country, from monarchy, to totalitarian state, to what passes for democracy. We had Cokes behind the gated walls of his compound. He'd served a term as a Cambodian senator, rising quickly through the ranks after the Khmer Rouge. He was also a victim of the regime. After discussing India and the Tamil Tigers, comparing the situation to K.R. insurgency in Cambodia, he smiled at me.
"I'll call you nephew now," he said. "No, wait. I'm too old. More like grandson."
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Update from Cambodia
Quick update for the curious:
I'm writing now from Batambong -- one of the larger cities in Cambodia. Near here is where my uncles and grandparents spent two years of their lives in a Khmer Rouge labor camp. We're going to visit the former site tomorrow.
Earlier today I went to a botanical garden that had been turned into a brainwashing camp by the old regime. It was ringed by rice fields that were used by Pol Pot's men to dump bodies and execute captured soldiers. They were literally hauled in and strewn along the roadside, so those walking to be indoctrinated in the facility could see their remains -- and smell the death that awaited them if they stepped out of line.
The day before, I awoke in a hammock, swinging from the beams of a cattle shelter on a ranch carved out of minefield left over from the Khmer Rouge days. I was there for a side-project I am doing about the difficulty of land deals and farming in this part of the country, the Pailin district -- a stronghold for rogue soldiers left over from the old regime. During the night, a calf was nibbling on my sleeping bag. I never thought I'd need to shoe cows away as I slept. Interestingly, in my half-asleep state, I made the same noise Borat uses to talk to cows -- "Tschhhhh!"
It's apparently a reflex sound to communicate with bovines.
The roosters called as the sun rose, and smoke rising from the embers of a camp fire drifted into a pink dawn, acres of rice fields and banana trees and life-filled canals surrounding me. It was almost too surreal a morning.
Around 6 a.m., I hit the road with my uncle, his childhood friend Borey and John Burk. John is an ex-marine football player, international teacher, retired hippie and Hollywood contractor who's friends with my uncle and on a photography assignment in Southeast Asia. He looks like a cross between Burt Reynolds and Sadam Hussein. No mater the time of day, he'll greet you with a high-pitched "Good morning!" and a grin.
With visibility on the road obscured by intense dust, the stuff so thick it turns the surrounding scrub and usually emerald banana trees rust-brown, we made our way through one of the most heavily land-mined regions of the country in search of the gem mines where my grandfather acquired the stone he kept in his ring. The ring is special to my story because with the massive blue sapphire set into it, he paid off people-smugglers to get him and his family across the border into Thailand just after the Vietnamese invasion.
But on the way, past the scull and crossbones-marked minefields, we hit a river. The only way to cross it, other than a motorcycle-only suspension bridge, is by fording it. If you've ever played Oregon Trail, you know what can happen to your cows, chickens or even little Jimmy when you ford a river.
Despite my intuition to check first, we took the straight-ahead route.
Borey, who is a government official in one of the northern provinces (don't want to give away too much and get the guy in trouble; he's so honest, he's been held back in politics), misread the riverbed and drove us into a divot. The Camry instantly sank. Water began to cover the hood and rush in through the floor panels and the cracks in the rear door on my side. I could see the river flowing by, nearly eye-level, through the closed window. I climbed out the other side, which wasn't in as deep. We waded out, and tried to keep our cameras and phones dry.
Thank god John suggested we leave the laptops back in the city.
Luckily, a man nearby was in this old Japanese truck pumping water into a giant drum in its bed. He put a cable on the right-hand-drive Camry (Thailand-spec) and pulled us out before the car washed downriver.
But the engine was soaked. We were out of the water, but the car was dead. To revive it, it took four hours and the most brilliant mechanic in all of Cambodia. This kid we found basically re-wired the whole thing using only the tools laying around this little shack along the road. We had to use a motorcycle to ferry in new spark plugs.
We'd spent our day fixing the car, so we had to head back to the ranch in Pailin province.
An associate of Borey's was throwing a party for his newborn son, so we went there to just say "hi" on the way back. This associate, though, had a lot of connections with former Khmer Rouge soldiers, many of whom still serve in the Cambodian Army. Without getting into too much detail, it was a rough bunch at the party, and their food (gristly goat meat) and drink (cheap "export only" beer from Thailand and rice rum) definitely fit their characteristics. I could tell Borey and my uncle (both nearly killed by the old regime) were definitely uneasy.
We excused ourselves as soon as we could, after giving some coins to the soldier's newborn baby.
We visited with the local school. The children crowded around. John was a hit. We want to go back there sometime soon to tell the extremely curious kids (heck, even the wide-smiling young principal) stories about America and the big world beyond.
More hopefully to come soon; it's hard to find an electrical outlet in some of the places I've been, let alone an Internet connection. Just an example -- I was something like 100 kilometers from a high-speed internet port when the Gators won the national championship. It was a full two days before I knew they'd won.
When I finally got to a computer (borrowed from a bookie in this sports betting place in Bantey Meanchey), I shouted to John when I saw a picture of Urban Meyer wearing his blue jacket hoisting a crystal football slowly download across the huge old CRT monitor:
"Wooo! It's great to be a Florida Gator!"
Two days late, at 10 p.m. on a weekend in a little bookie joint in a city that looks like something from a Mad Max film when the sun goes down.
The Chinese gambler, on his cell phone, looked over at me and smiled.
"You want make bet?"
If only I'd come in here before the game.
I'm writing now from Batambong -- one of the larger cities in Cambodia. Near here is where my uncles and grandparents spent two years of their lives in a Khmer Rouge labor camp. We're going to visit the former site tomorrow.
Earlier today I went to a botanical garden that had been turned into a brainwashing camp by the old regime. It was ringed by rice fields that were used by Pol Pot's men to dump bodies and execute captured soldiers. They were literally hauled in and strewn along the roadside, so those walking to be indoctrinated in the facility could see their remains -- and smell the death that awaited them if they stepped out of line.
The day before, I awoke in a hammock, swinging from the beams of a cattle shelter on a ranch carved out of minefield left over from the Khmer Rouge days. I was there for a side-project I am doing about the difficulty of land deals and farming in this part of the country, the Pailin district -- a stronghold for rogue soldiers left over from the old regime. During the night, a calf was nibbling on my sleeping bag. I never thought I'd need to shoe cows away as I slept. Interestingly, in my half-asleep state, I made the same noise Borat uses to talk to cows -- "Tschhhhh!"
It's apparently a reflex sound to communicate with bovines.
The roosters called as the sun rose, and smoke rising from the embers of a camp fire drifted into a pink dawn, acres of rice fields and banana trees and life-filled canals surrounding me. It was almost too surreal a morning.
Around 6 a.m., I hit the road with my uncle, his childhood friend Borey and John Burk. John is an ex-marine football player, international teacher, retired hippie and Hollywood contractor who's friends with my uncle and on a photography assignment in Southeast Asia. He looks like a cross between Burt Reynolds and Sadam Hussein. No mater the time of day, he'll greet you with a high-pitched "Good morning!" and a grin.
With visibility on the road obscured by intense dust, the stuff so thick it turns the surrounding scrub and usually emerald banana trees rust-brown, we made our way through one of the most heavily land-mined regions of the country in search of the gem mines where my grandfather acquired the stone he kept in his ring. The ring is special to my story because with the massive blue sapphire set into it, he paid off people-smugglers to get him and his family across the border into Thailand just after the Vietnamese invasion.
But on the way, past the scull and crossbones-marked minefields, we hit a river. The only way to cross it, other than a motorcycle-only suspension bridge, is by fording it. If you've ever played Oregon Trail, you know what can happen to your cows, chickens or even little Jimmy when you ford a river.
Despite my intuition to check first, we took the straight-ahead route.
Borey, who is a government official in one of the northern provinces (don't want to give away too much and get the guy in trouble; he's so honest, he's been held back in politics), misread the riverbed and drove us into a divot. The Camry instantly sank. Water began to cover the hood and rush in through the floor panels and the cracks in the rear door on my side. I could see the river flowing by, nearly eye-level, through the closed window. I climbed out the other side, which wasn't in as deep. We waded out, and tried to keep our cameras and phones dry.
Thank god John suggested we leave the laptops back in the city.
Luckily, a man nearby was in this old Japanese truck pumping water into a giant drum in its bed. He put a cable on the right-hand-drive Camry (Thailand-spec) and pulled us out before the car washed downriver.
But the engine was soaked. We were out of the water, but the car was dead. To revive it, it took four hours and the most brilliant mechanic in all of Cambodia. This kid we found basically re-wired the whole thing using only the tools laying around this little shack along the road. We had to use a motorcycle to ferry in new spark plugs.
We'd spent our day fixing the car, so we had to head back to the ranch in Pailin province.
An associate of Borey's was throwing a party for his newborn son, so we went there to just say "hi" on the way back. This associate, though, had a lot of connections with former Khmer Rouge soldiers, many of whom still serve in the Cambodian Army. Without getting into too much detail, it was a rough bunch at the party, and their food (gristly goat meat) and drink (cheap "export only" beer from Thailand and rice rum) definitely fit their characteristics. I could tell Borey and my uncle (both nearly killed by the old regime) were definitely uneasy.
We excused ourselves as soon as we could, after giving some coins to the soldier's newborn baby.
We visited with the local school. The children crowded around. John was a hit. We want to go back there sometime soon to tell the extremely curious kids (heck, even the wide-smiling young principal) stories about America and the big world beyond.
More hopefully to come soon; it's hard to find an electrical outlet in some of the places I've been, let alone an Internet connection. Just an example -- I was something like 100 kilometers from a high-speed internet port when the Gators won the national championship. It was a full two days before I knew they'd won.
When I finally got to a computer (borrowed from a bookie in this sports betting place in Bantey Meanchey), I shouted to John when I saw a picture of Urban Meyer wearing his blue jacket hoisting a crystal football slowly download across the huge old CRT monitor:
"Wooo! It's great to be a Florida Gator!"
Two days late, at 10 p.m. on a weekend in a little bookie joint in a city that looks like something from a Mad Max film when the sun goes down.
The Chinese gambler, on his cell phone, looked over at me and smiled.
"You want make bet?"
If only I'd come in here before the game.
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