Like the sweet ache of a love fading away, Calcutta is decaying, crumbling, rotting. The Mynah birds feast on this decay and more and more it’s becoming their city. The elegance of old Calcutta is being replaced by soulless concrete canyons. In many ways Calcutta is on the decline, but the melancholic remnants of past glory only make the place more beautiful. In those crumbling citadels of old Calcutta you will find artists and eccentrics. Do your business in Delhi, Bangalore, or Mumbai and come back to Calcutta to dream while the world falls down around you.
At night, as I’m drifting off to sleep I hear the neighbourhood night watchman strolling the streets blowing his whistle to let you know that he’s there and you’re safe. I awaken to the sound of the key walla jingling his keys as he strides down quiet lanes in search of customers.
She was the cool side of the pillow in the heat of Calcutta. We walked Calcutta’s whimsy: into a weathered Zamindar’s palace filed to the brim with aged European marbles (Medusa and David in sets of two – presumably ready post-flood to repopulate aristocratic abodes), past the Mansions of Chitpur Road, through oil smeared lanes of metal-hammering machinists, finally ending up in the ramshackle book stalls of College Street.
Many a revolution has been plotted in the coffee cooperative off of College Street. Waiters in white Punjabis shuffle past peeling paint, dancing to the tune of creaking ceiling fans. The dreamers of Calcutta have always been revolutionaries. This revolutionary spirit has redrawn the map – during the Vietnam War the Americans discovered one day that the front door of their consulate was now on freshly re-named Ho Chi Minh Street. They tried to outmanoeuvre the West Bengal communist government by relocating the entrance to the back of the building (thereby changing their street address). Their construction permit was denied and so, even today, you will find the American eagle grimacing on Ho Chi Minh Sarani.
The Maidan, the great green heart of Calcutta, beats with the life of the city where Ho Chi Minh meets Chowringhee Street. Passing through any of Calcutta’s innumerable parks you are likely to see young Indian couples making out. Rolling up stately Chowringhee Street looking into the gardens around the Victoria Memorial is like gazing into the closet at a teenage party. Why all this public embracing? Is it because Indians love the great outdoors, or are they just especially romantic? Nope. They’re just trying to escape away from the watchful eyes of their extended families. Ok, maybe that’s a bit romantic.
Calcutta is the city dissembled, then thrown back together again with artful neglect. The result is often confounding but always soulful. Calcutta has the sense of place that you find in any great city – whichever street you’re on, you never feel like you are anyplace other than Calcutta.
I have spent many hours rumbling over those bumpy streets. Sometimes in an old bus it feels like riding the waves in an overturned boat, the wooden ribs of the ceiling surrogate for the hull of a schooner. The city in transit is a blur of commerce – specialised markets are everywhere (from the saris of Rash Behari Avenue to the condoms of “rubber street”). When I’m not in the bus you will find me zooming in taxi cabs past Hindu shrines as my driver chews pan (a mild narcotic). The rickety Austin Ambassador taxis are adorned with a plastic figurine of the Hindu goddess Durga glued to the dash and strings of shrivelled chillies and lemons hanging from the rear-view mirror for luck.
If you look closely enough in that smudged mirror you might just spot the concave people of Calcutta. They are tucked into the hollows, clustered under bridges, scampering on the pavement trying to claim some space to eat their dal and rice. Calcutta historically responded to the urge to subdue reality by mansioning up from top to bottom. This was the only way to reserve the rights of denial and refusal. But these very same mansions are now gloriously deteriorating and dilapidating. The maharajas and colonialists have moved out and the poor have squeezed themselves inside. Is this the harbinger of the death instinct or just the end of empire and the rise of true democracy? The right to be poor, after all, is still fundamentally a right to be, a right to exist
Once a year, poor farmers, from the dusty villages of West Bengal, pour into Calcutta for a week of revelry and a month of employment. All over the city elaborate Pandals are erected on bamboo frames. The Pandals are temporary buildings that are an unlikely hybrid of religious shrine and fair attraction. The carnival engulfs the Pandals and spills into the streets with dancing, cacophonous drumming, and stalls selling salty and sweet indulgence. The dioramas that are the centrepiece of each Pandal are crafted by the artisans of Kamartuli, showing the eight-armed goddess Durga spearing a demon in human form while surrounded by Ganesh and the rest of her celestial family. In the end, the idols are brought to the Ghats on the Hooghly River and immersed; as we know nothing last forever, and so the entire diorama dissolves.
One day soon, I’ll leave and Calcutta will continue its dissolution without me. Yellow plaster will peel away to reveal ochre brick and evergreen-painted wooden shutters – a structural strip tease. Yet, for now, I’m still immersed in the sublimated soul of Calcutta – old world charm and sweet desire vaporised by the heat of the modern age. Now I’m dreaming the dreams of a weary romantic, ready to roll on. I pledge my fidelity, promising I will only dream of her…at least until the moment I fall in love again. And even then, I will remember these days, so dirty and alive.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
Cast Adrift in Kampuchea
I spent the last month doing research in Cambodia, an aquatic land in Southeast Asia. Water surrounds and inundates in Cambodia - from the seacoast of the Gulf of Thailand to the expansive inland sea known as Tonle Sap, to the sky itself, awash with monsoon rains. The monsoon swells the Tonle Sap to five times its normal size. Traversing the lush green of the rice patties you pass traditional Khmer wooden houses elevated on stilts. It is the world’s richest fishing ground and peasants cast their nets in the hope of grabbing fish as they swim cross country. This week is the Water Festival – the most important festival on the Khmer calendar – celebrating the natural phenomenon of the Tonle Sap River reversing its flow to pour into the sea. The Apsaras, nymphs of the clouds above and the water below, are the protectors of Cambodia. After years of war one has to wonder if the nymphs have been on vacation (perhaps visiting the world’s largest paperclip in Kipling, Saskatchewan)? Like a placid sea, the Buddhist Khmer wear a mask of tranquility that belies sometimes turbid depths.
The Lonely Song of Sihanoukville
Lying face down on the beach in Sihanoukville (ahh the tough life of a PhD student) my peace is disturbed by the licentious sound of “Hey Mista….want a massage?” I mutter “no thanks” into the sand, and she knowingly replies “Ahh…you heartbroken!” It wasn’t in the slightest bit true, but I understand why she would find my refusal odd (not to mention my pasty back). Something strange happens in Sihanoukville. You see middle aged white men with young Cambodian girls (“hostesses” as they are called). I have never seen women so commoditised as they are in Cambodia and Thailand. In Tahiti, the fantasy of nubile Polynesian women was definitely marketed but the difference is the women themselves weren’t on offer (rather than lounging naked they were dressed with the buttoned up zeal that is the global gift of Christian missionaries). At dinner one night I was an unwitting witness to the playing out of the great greasy game. A middle-aged British man with slicked back hair and fading tattoos on his arms sat down next to me followed by a twenty-four year old Cambodian woman wearing a slinky black dress, red shoes, and too much makeup. My close proximity left me with no choice but to be immersed in their conversation. After lots of awkward small talk he asked her with plaintive earnestness, “why do you like me?” It seemed to me, to be an absolutely ridiculous question, but she humoured him, pausing for a long time before offering “because you are nice?” Later on he asked her if her mother knew what she did for a living. She said that she didn’t but he insisted “she probably knows, she just isn’t saying anything.” I wasn’t really sure what to make of all this. There is something unpleasant and exploitative about the whole business. But I think it would be absurdly paternalistic to assume that the women are all unwittingly victimised. On this particular night, what I saw was an almost chivalrous, but desperately lonely, man paying for the privilege of companionship. These sorts of scenes played out many times around me in Cambodia, but I was never so privy to this secret knowledge as I was that night.
Hours later, I sat completely alone in the dark on the beach and watched flashes of lightning illuminate fishing boats drifting across the Pacific horizon. As I closed my eyes the only sound I could hear was the constancy of the wind whispering in the casuarina trees.
Angkor Wat
Few civilisations rival the Angkor in terms of architectural industriousness. The Angkor built innumerable monumental temples, cities, and reservoirs. A “hydraulic” civilisation its efforts were centred on irrigation and spiritual transcendence. Today the legacy of the Angkor civilisation is still visible in the many impressive temples spread throughout Cambodia. None however, are more famous, or more impressive than those in the Angkor Wat area. Angkor Wat is a singularly impressive feat of material culture. In Angkor Wat you can explore the largest religious building in the world, climb massive pyramidal temples, and clamber through sprawling ruins swallowed by the dense jungle. Climbing through one such ruin I was met in the dark by a police officer who flashed his badge at me. I had heard stories about the rampant corruption in Cambodia and so I braced for the worst. He wanted to sell me a “souvenir” police badge. Bizarre.
Playing out my Indiana Jones fantasies only made me more conscious of the potential of close encounters of the slithery kind. In Ta Prohm I saw no snakes but I did see a pretty large snakeskin. Snakes are ubiquitous in Khmer iconography and likewise Angkor Wat is itself a source of great national pride for the battered Khmer, a motif of the possible (it’s even on the Cambodian flag).
The Fire at the Ends of the Revolutionary Earth
After forcibly dragging myself out of the temples and off the beach, I went to the northern fringe of Cambodia in search of the last gasps of the cruel Khmer rouge revolution. The town I stayed in (Anlong Veng) was the stronghold of the Khmer Rouge up until only a few years ago. It’s a dusty town with not much going for it. My hotel room was dark and somewhat dirty. The lights weren’t working at all so I went to get the desk clerk. He smiled and returned with me to my room explaining that the power was turned off during the days. As he was opening the curtains I heard a “hisssssssssss” and in an instant the clerk was frantically staggering backwards. “Snake!!!” Sure enough there was a small green viper climbing the window frame. He was pretty shaken up and I’m a bit afraid of snakes as well so it was not a happy moment. After this I kept an eye out and poked and shook everything out before I got too close. During my two days in Anlong Veng I saw snakes all over the place including a large snake attacking chickens under a house during an interview and a snake in a restaurant causing panic and mass evacuation.
Nonetheless, I shelved my ophidophobia and set out the next day I set out in search of Khmer Rouge. I had no idea what I was doing I just knew I was in a place full of Khmer Rouge stuff and I was going to find some of it. I ran into a couple of Germans (the only other foreigners to be seen). They asked me politely what I was doing wandering around the town – I told them I was looking for Pringles and Khmer Rouge. This sounded like a joke but I was completely earnest (and hungry). The culinary options were pretty limited in Anlong Veng. On the way there our bus stopped at a roadside market that, from a Canadian perspective, was like a horror movie come to life. Peeled and headless live frogs hopped along, an old woman spooned syrup over baskets of fried tarantulas, crickets and sparrows were roasted on skewers, live fish were smacked with mallets as they were sold to customers. Cambodians will eat anything. This is probably to their credit. They definitely aren’t half-assed omnivores like North Americans and Europeans.
I finally found a motorbike and driver who know some Khmer Rouge spots so off we went. First stop was Ta Mok’s house. Ta Mok (aka brother number five but let’s call him bastard number five for the sake of clarity) was a tough nut, with one leg and a mean disposition fuelled by fanatical ideological belief. I explored his house and compound. Not much was left but the walls were covered with murals of Angkor temples and strategic maps of Cambodia (used for planning military campaigns in the civil war). To gain entrance I paid the crusty guard a couple of dollars. He was a veteran Khmer Rouge soldier and he looked the part with olive green fatigues and a wooden foot.
After we left Mok’s house we ascended into the Cardamom Mountains along the Thai border. It took us about an hour and a half of pretty rough going before we reached Pol Pot’s hideout in the jungle. At times the road was so rough I had to get off the motorcycle so we could ford a patch of water. The lush countryside lining the muddy road was deceptively beautiful but in reality it was a giant minefield. Skull and crossbones signs warned the intrepid not to stray too far from the path. There are about one or two million landmines in this area of Cambodia alone. It is one of the mostly heavily mined areas in the world; one of the reasons that you see so many amputees of a certain age begging on the streets of the capital.
Pol Pot’s house is in ruins. Local villagers have picked it over pretty well, even using the construction materials to build their own residences. What remains is a basically the tile floor and a concrete room that used to be a cell. Who the hell has a cell in their house? Pol Pot, that’s who. There are several substantial concrete bunkers were he stashed his loot and was prepared to hide out if the bombs ever fell. These bunkers are now home to many large, venomous snakes. This has only reinforced the contemptible Pot’s reputation among local people as a man with powerful magic.
Several kilometres away is Pot’s grave and cremation site. All that remains is an earthy mound lined with beer bottles and incense sticks. Locals visit the grave to pray in hopes that Pol Pot will grant them good fortune. Pol Pot was removed from power in 1997 for ordering the brutal execution of a top Khmer Rouge official and his entire family. A year later he died a mysterious death (lack of oxygen, as several local people explained to me). I watched the Post-Mortem footage of Pol Pot. He lay in state for a couple of days with a huge block of ice sitting on his chest. When the time came, his followers laid him out on a mattress strewn with purple blossoms and the pile of tires underneath was ignited. With that, this dangerous man who could never distinguish utopia from dystopia went up in smoke. With this ignoble and anti-climatic end Pol Pot had escaped earthly justice, but, at long last, Cambodians were back on solid ground.
Him and I
Other than motorbiking around the hills I also tried to interview as many former Khmer Rouge as possible. I was able to interview a Khmer Rouge prison photographer in Siem Reap. This was the man who took the famous photographs of thousands Khmer Rouge victims as they arrived in Tuol Sleng. Google “Tuol Sleng” and you will see these photographs. Their eyes are sometimes terrified, sometimes defeated, often confused, and sometimes defiant. This man was brutality’s paparazzo and now he has turned his infamy into a business proposition – selling photographs to journalists and others. His infant grandson was all giggles as he peeked upside down at me from between my legs.
Returning to Phnom Penh my work was focussed on finding more Khmer Rouge to interview. I was especially interested in former prison guards and I was lucky enough to find one. After hours of rumbling along dusty roads I interviewed Him Huy in his house – a typical rural Cambodian residence elevated on stilts with roosters and buffalo lying beneath. Huy looked like he should be wearing a hat that said “I’d rather be fishing” as he answered my many questions about why he did what he did. He sat cross-legged on the bamboo floor, his typical Khmer checked scarf doubling as a sarong. He told me that he had no choice. That he feared for his own life. It was unsurprising and might have been more persuasive if I hadn’t seen his signature on a document authorising the “smashing” of seven pregnant women. Yet, sitting in front of me, Him remained, like the rest of us, at once pitiable and powerful. He wanted one hundred dollars for the interview but I declined.
The next day I interviewed Vann Nath. Nath was one of only a handful of survivors of Tuol Sleng. A soft-spoken and eloquent man, Vann Nath was kept alive so that he could produce portraits of Pol Pot. The interview was surrealistic. We sat on the balcony of the Mando burger underneath an ashen sky and Nath spoke tentatively of the unspeakable. I asked him what he thought of perpetrators who denied their responsibility by saying they were just following orders. His face puckered up like I had just fed him a sour fruit, and indeed I had. He spelled out his disdain and moral outrage with each aspirated syllable. Leaning back in his plastic chair, his breathing quickened as lightning bolts lashed horizontally across the dark horizon.
The Verdict
Aside from the sometimes grim nature of my work, Cambodia was a great place to hang out for a month. The food is wonderful – a more delicate version of Thai food. I took a short Khmer cooking course to learn some of the tricks of the trade (now I just have to find fermented fish paste and banana leaves in Saskatchewan and I’m set). I also discovered that Khmer people love singing Karaoke and that they also love getting married. Combine the two and you’re really getting somewhere. Cambodians also have a passion for posting warning signs everywhere. In a country full of landmines I guess there’s a good reason for that. My hotel was full of such signs including admonitions not to bring explosives or cats into the elevator and also not to “throw your belongings out the window.” Was their last guest Axl Rose? I guess we’ll never know. But the best thing about Cambodia is, without a doubt, the fact that you can wear your pyjamas all day long. No, I’m not exaggerating, all the goddamn day. How can you beat that?
The Lonely Song of Sihanoukville
Lying face down on the beach in Sihanoukville (ahh the tough life of a PhD student) my peace is disturbed by the licentious sound of “Hey Mista….want a massage?” I mutter “no thanks” into the sand, and she knowingly replies “Ahh…you heartbroken!” It wasn’t in the slightest bit true, but I understand why she would find my refusal odd (not to mention my pasty back). Something strange happens in Sihanoukville. You see middle aged white men with young Cambodian girls (“hostesses” as they are called). I have never seen women so commoditised as they are in Cambodia and Thailand. In Tahiti, the fantasy of nubile Polynesian women was definitely marketed but the difference is the women themselves weren’t on offer (rather than lounging naked they were dressed with the buttoned up zeal that is the global gift of Christian missionaries). At dinner one night I was an unwitting witness to the playing out of the great greasy game. A middle-aged British man with slicked back hair and fading tattoos on his arms sat down next to me followed by a twenty-four year old Cambodian woman wearing a slinky black dress, red shoes, and too much makeup. My close proximity left me with no choice but to be immersed in their conversation. After lots of awkward small talk he asked her with plaintive earnestness, “why do you like me?” It seemed to me, to be an absolutely ridiculous question, but she humoured him, pausing for a long time before offering “because you are nice?” Later on he asked her if her mother knew what she did for a living. She said that she didn’t but he insisted “she probably knows, she just isn’t saying anything.” I wasn’t really sure what to make of all this. There is something unpleasant and exploitative about the whole business. But I think it would be absurdly paternalistic to assume that the women are all unwittingly victimised. On this particular night, what I saw was an almost chivalrous, but desperately lonely, man paying for the privilege of companionship. These sorts of scenes played out many times around me in Cambodia, but I was never so privy to this secret knowledge as I was that night.
Hours later, I sat completely alone in the dark on the beach and watched flashes of lightning illuminate fishing boats drifting across the Pacific horizon. As I closed my eyes the only sound I could hear was the constancy of the wind whispering in the casuarina trees.
Angkor Wat
Few civilisations rival the Angkor in terms of architectural industriousness. The Angkor built innumerable monumental temples, cities, and reservoirs. A “hydraulic” civilisation its efforts were centred on irrigation and spiritual transcendence. Today the legacy of the Angkor civilisation is still visible in the many impressive temples spread throughout Cambodia. None however, are more famous, or more impressive than those in the Angkor Wat area. Angkor Wat is a singularly impressive feat of material culture. In Angkor Wat you can explore the largest religious building in the world, climb massive pyramidal temples, and clamber through sprawling ruins swallowed by the dense jungle. Climbing through one such ruin I was met in the dark by a police officer who flashed his badge at me. I had heard stories about the rampant corruption in Cambodia and so I braced for the worst. He wanted to sell me a “souvenir” police badge. Bizarre.
Playing out my Indiana Jones fantasies only made me more conscious of the potential of close encounters of the slithery kind. In Ta Prohm I saw no snakes but I did see a pretty large snakeskin. Snakes are ubiquitous in Khmer iconography and likewise Angkor Wat is itself a source of great national pride for the battered Khmer, a motif of the possible (it’s even on the Cambodian flag).
The Fire at the Ends of the Revolutionary Earth
After forcibly dragging myself out of the temples and off the beach, I went to the northern fringe of Cambodia in search of the last gasps of the cruel Khmer rouge revolution. The town I stayed in (Anlong Veng) was the stronghold of the Khmer Rouge up until only a few years ago. It’s a dusty town with not much going for it. My hotel room was dark and somewhat dirty. The lights weren’t working at all so I went to get the desk clerk. He smiled and returned with me to my room explaining that the power was turned off during the days. As he was opening the curtains I heard a “hisssssssssss” and in an instant the clerk was frantically staggering backwards. “Snake!!!” Sure enough there was a small green viper climbing the window frame. He was pretty shaken up and I’m a bit afraid of snakes as well so it was not a happy moment. After this I kept an eye out and poked and shook everything out before I got too close. During my two days in Anlong Veng I saw snakes all over the place including a large snake attacking chickens under a house during an interview and a snake in a restaurant causing panic and mass evacuation.
Nonetheless, I shelved my ophidophobia and set out the next day I set out in search of Khmer Rouge. I had no idea what I was doing I just knew I was in a place full of Khmer Rouge stuff and I was going to find some of it. I ran into a couple of Germans (the only other foreigners to be seen). They asked me politely what I was doing wandering around the town – I told them I was looking for Pringles and Khmer Rouge. This sounded like a joke but I was completely earnest (and hungry). The culinary options were pretty limited in Anlong Veng. On the way there our bus stopped at a roadside market that, from a Canadian perspective, was like a horror movie come to life. Peeled and headless live frogs hopped along, an old woman spooned syrup over baskets of fried tarantulas, crickets and sparrows were roasted on skewers, live fish were smacked with mallets as they were sold to customers. Cambodians will eat anything. This is probably to their credit. They definitely aren’t half-assed omnivores like North Americans and Europeans.
I finally found a motorbike and driver who know some Khmer Rouge spots so off we went. First stop was Ta Mok’s house. Ta Mok (aka brother number five but let’s call him bastard number five for the sake of clarity) was a tough nut, with one leg and a mean disposition fuelled by fanatical ideological belief. I explored his house and compound. Not much was left but the walls were covered with murals of Angkor temples and strategic maps of Cambodia (used for planning military campaigns in the civil war). To gain entrance I paid the crusty guard a couple of dollars. He was a veteran Khmer Rouge soldier and he looked the part with olive green fatigues and a wooden foot.
After we left Mok’s house we ascended into the Cardamom Mountains along the Thai border. It took us about an hour and a half of pretty rough going before we reached Pol Pot’s hideout in the jungle. At times the road was so rough I had to get off the motorcycle so we could ford a patch of water. The lush countryside lining the muddy road was deceptively beautiful but in reality it was a giant minefield. Skull and crossbones signs warned the intrepid not to stray too far from the path. There are about one or two million landmines in this area of Cambodia alone. It is one of the mostly heavily mined areas in the world; one of the reasons that you see so many amputees of a certain age begging on the streets of the capital.
Pol Pot’s house is in ruins. Local villagers have picked it over pretty well, even using the construction materials to build their own residences. What remains is a basically the tile floor and a concrete room that used to be a cell. Who the hell has a cell in their house? Pol Pot, that’s who. There are several substantial concrete bunkers were he stashed his loot and was prepared to hide out if the bombs ever fell. These bunkers are now home to many large, venomous snakes. This has only reinforced the contemptible Pot’s reputation among local people as a man with powerful magic.
Several kilometres away is Pot’s grave and cremation site. All that remains is an earthy mound lined with beer bottles and incense sticks. Locals visit the grave to pray in hopes that Pol Pot will grant them good fortune. Pol Pot was removed from power in 1997 for ordering the brutal execution of a top Khmer Rouge official and his entire family. A year later he died a mysterious death (lack of oxygen, as several local people explained to me). I watched the Post-Mortem footage of Pol Pot. He lay in state for a couple of days with a huge block of ice sitting on his chest. When the time came, his followers laid him out on a mattress strewn with purple blossoms and the pile of tires underneath was ignited. With that, this dangerous man who could never distinguish utopia from dystopia went up in smoke. With this ignoble and anti-climatic end Pol Pot had escaped earthly justice, but, at long last, Cambodians were back on solid ground.
Him and I
Other than motorbiking around the hills I also tried to interview as many former Khmer Rouge as possible. I was able to interview a Khmer Rouge prison photographer in Siem Reap. This was the man who took the famous photographs of thousands Khmer Rouge victims as they arrived in Tuol Sleng. Google “Tuol Sleng” and you will see these photographs. Their eyes are sometimes terrified, sometimes defeated, often confused, and sometimes defiant. This man was brutality’s paparazzo and now he has turned his infamy into a business proposition – selling photographs to journalists and others. His infant grandson was all giggles as he peeked upside down at me from between my legs.
Returning to Phnom Penh my work was focussed on finding more Khmer Rouge to interview. I was especially interested in former prison guards and I was lucky enough to find one. After hours of rumbling along dusty roads I interviewed Him Huy in his house – a typical rural Cambodian residence elevated on stilts with roosters and buffalo lying beneath. Huy looked like he should be wearing a hat that said “I’d rather be fishing” as he answered my many questions about why he did what he did. He sat cross-legged on the bamboo floor, his typical Khmer checked scarf doubling as a sarong. He told me that he had no choice. That he feared for his own life. It was unsurprising and might have been more persuasive if I hadn’t seen his signature on a document authorising the “smashing” of seven pregnant women. Yet, sitting in front of me, Him remained, like the rest of us, at once pitiable and powerful. He wanted one hundred dollars for the interview but I declined.
The next day I interviewed Vann Nath. Nath was one of only a handful of survivors of Tuol Sleng. A soft-spoken and eloquent man, Vann Nath was kept alive so that he could produce portraits of Pol Pot. The interview was surrealistic. We sat on the balcony of the Mando burger underneath an ashen sky and Nath spoke tentatively of the unspeakable. I asked him what he thought of perpetrators who denied their responsibility by saying they were just following orders. His face puckered up like I had just fed him a sour fruit, and indeed I had. He spelled out his disdain and moral outrage with each aspirated syllable. Leaning back in his plastic chair, his breathing quickened as lightning bolts lashed horizontally across the dark horizon.
The Verdict
Aside from the sometimes grim nature of my work, Cambodia was a great place to hang out for a month. The food is wonderful – a more delicate version of Thai food. I took a short Khmer cooking course to learn some of the tricks of the trade (now I just have to find fermented fish paste and banana leaves in Saskatchewan and I’m set). I also discovered that Khmer people love singing Karaoke and that they also love getting married. Combine the two and you’re really getting somewhere. Cambodians also have a passion for posting warning signs everywhere. In a country full of landmines I guess there’s a good reason for that. My hotel was full of such signs including admonitions not to bring explosives or cats into the elevator and also not to “throw your belongings out the window.” Was their last guest Axl Rose? I guess we’ll never know. But the best thing about Cambodia is, without a doubt, the fact that you can wear your pyjamas all day long. No, I’m not exaggerating, all the goddamn day. How can you beat that?
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