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?

Picking Fruit from the Poison Tree

I wonder if Pol Pot felt satiated as he watched Cambodia devour itself? His appetite for blood was certainly boundless - once he acquired that brackish taste he couldn’t get enough. The Khmer Rouge anthem was already a dreadful omen: a national hymn awash in bloody fixation...

I am now in Cambodia for a month doing research on the Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979. Probably about a million and a half people were killed during this period but it’s hard to say. I guess at some point people just stop counting. A few days ago I visited Tuol Sleng – a notorious Khmer Rouge prison facility where 21 000 people were tortured and then sent to their death. They died alone, in the dark, in the nearby Choeung Ek killing field – a single blow to the back of the neck if they were lucky. Can there be a more profound aloneness then being cast apart from all of humankind? Can there be a more woeful death than the death of hope itself?

Tuol Sleng is a Khmer word that can be roughly translated as “poison-tree hill”. It was an abyss of cruelty, penitence without the promise of redemption. Guards wandered the filthy corridors between the tightly-packed cells; beasts in the form of men. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that they were men in the form of beasts, their humanity sublimated. They toiled with tools born of sadistic inventiveness, their spirits consumed by breathtakingly rootless spite.

Their headmaster was a former teacher known as Duch. He seemed the embodiment of the totalitarian espirit des corps: slavishly devoted to slavish devotion. Of course he was a mathematician: a formula for every human problem; formalism and legalism as the only true forms of perfection and beauty. The utopian ideal could be realised! This was nothing less than the consummation of every anal-retentive impulse. Squeeze a little harder Herr Eichmann and soon you’ll be shitting solid gold bricks - enough wealth to sustain the Reich for a thousand glorious years!

I tried to interview Duch but he’s off-limits (he is currently, finally, on trial at an international tribunal). Duch found Jesus sometime in the 80’s (I wonder if Jesus ever bothered to find him). Within days, I should be interviewing a former senior guard at Tuol Sleng - Him Huy. This should be fascinating and I’m not quite sure what to expect.

Today I’m heading to the far north of the country, into the mountains along the Thai border in search of Khmer Rouge cadres who might be willing to talk to me. Pol Pot lived and died in those mountains and his restless spirit still stalks the people there.

Kjell

Ps. Next time I will write more about the positive (contemporary) things in this beautiful country.