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Student Perspectives: Investigating Family History – Life in Wartime By Song Lin, International Relations StudentTaking my first faltering steps into journalism, with a book and pen I sat in front of my grandparents and asked them for information about their lives during the Pol Pot regime. At first, they were happy to answer and told me a long story about the happenings during that time, but as time wore on, their expressions changed to sadness as they recalled distant horrors and loved ones no longer here. Grandfather looked especially sad as he remembered the extremes of kindness and savagery he received from people. |
During Pol Pot’s regime, Grandfather was separated from his wife and children. They stayed behind in Prey Veng province while he was arrested. Without knowing why, he was detained along with six other people, two of whom were his brothers.
Over the next five months, they were interrogated one by one about their lives before the regime. During this time, five people, including his brother, were executed before his eyes. Despite his shock and anger, there was nothing he could do to save their lives. The months of detention had taken their toll on his vitality and there was nothing one man – little more than skin stretched over starving indignation – could do. He made his peace, said a silent goodbye to his wife and children, and prepared for death.
Luckily for him, fate did not record his name on the executioner’s list. Still shocked by what he had seen, he was sent to a dirty dark room with nothing to eat and only his bereavement for company. Early the next morning, he was ordered to work as a farmer throughout the day, returning at night to the dirty little room long after sunset had drawn a veil over another disjointed day. He was never given enough food to eat. Rather, the harder he worked, the less he was given to eat so it seemed.
Life is insupportable under these conditions and he soon contracted all the diseases associated with malnutrition. Once again, he stood face to face with uncompromising death, but once again the forces of life preserved him. A friend and fellow inmate made medicine out of herbs found growing beside the paddy fields and collected while the guards were looking the other way. Had they seen Nature’s Pharmacist at work, they would have beaten him to death immediately. Indeed, Grandfather’s friend always seemed to get more than his fair share of rough handling. Grandfather never forgot this man’s kindness. It stood in direct contrast to the vicious cruelty of the guards and was offered with no expectation beyond the daily round of pain and labor.
After three years of this hard labor, he woke up one morning to find open doors. He was free. Free from the beatings. Free from the bone-grinding toil. And free to find his beloved family.
Grandmother was working. She had reduced her anguish to the level of a dull ache as insistent as the memory of an amputated limb. She paid little attention to the dim figure shuffling toward her, keeping her eyes on the hoe as it bit into the red earth. The figure stood before her now and gently cupping her chin in his calloused hands, raised her eyes to meet his.
She screamed to release the joyous pressure that threatened to burst her heart. To her, his face shone brighter than the sun, fractured as it was as he smiled at her through tears. She couldn’t believe the unkempt man before her was her long lost husband. She had heard nothing from him in three long years and thought he was long dead. A moment was sufficient to reassure her of his living presence and there followed long hours of story telling. The joy of the reunion was then doubled as Grandfather was reunited with his children, one of whom was my mother.
However, the time of gathering was short. Grandfather was ordered to go to Kampong Chham province by foot and resume work as a farmer, working as hard as he had done previously but with more food. A few months later, Grandmother and her children were also ordered to Kampong Chham to work, where the family was reunited once again.
Following the collapse of this brutal regime, Grandfather and his family walked back to their village in Prey Veng province to start over.
Even though all the terrible things that happened to them have passed, the memories of what they have seen remain as if their hearts and minds possess dark stains that time cannot wash away.
After listening to their story my initial reaction was sadness for the suffering that these two gentle old spirits had endured. I think we are all lucky we do not have to suffer the same way as our parents and grandparents. We are even luckier now that Pol Pot’s book as been closed, never to be opened again. Cambodia has turned away from brutality and embraced peace. Listening to my grandparents, I am thankful for it.
