Entering Cambodia with a Book (Part 1 of a reflection built around Loung Ung's "First They Killed My Father")

 
"My heart drops at the sight of Pithy's mom holding her corpse to her chest, weeping.  Pithy is limp in her arms, her blood soaking into her mom's blouse.  So much blood everywhere.  Then I see that Pithy's mom is also injured.  She is bleeding from her stomach and arms.  Pithy's brother squats beside them, urging his mom to leave.  His voice quivering, he tells her the Khmer Rouge soldiers are crossing the river and will be upon them any minute."

- Cambodia, February 1979 (from Loung Ung's First They Killed My Father)

In the spring of 1979, I was busy with the routine of my first year of formal education.  I learned a lot in kindergarten but couldn't tell you what anymore, at least not in the formal sense.  It was the acts of play or the casual observation that stuck with enough force in my five-year-old mind that it still remains there today.  I remember making my first tie-dyed shirt.  It was a blue-purplish color and as it dried I took in the fact that, with the help of a teacher, I created something beautiful and useful (or however my young mind and vocabulary would have phrased it).  I remember the group nap time with the lights turned down and our little bodies stretched out on the carpet.

I also remember the second grade teacher a few rooms down who would be giving birth before the year was out.  I'd sometimes see her leading her class down the hall, herself being led by the unborn baby in her belly, and my desire to touch her stomach was fierce.  Of course, being the extremely shy kid that I was I would not have dared to do that, but I was jealous of her students who spoke of feeling the baby kick.  She was a kind teacher, even smiling at students who were not her own when she would pass them in the hall.

Finally, I vividly remember discovering that teachers in their twenties have a curve in their hips, outlined by polyester pants.  I was a very quiet child when I was five and did not talk much with other students, but I managed to figure out alone how one gets those curvy teacher hips.  I observed that we kids all drank PET chocolate milk during snack time while the teachers always drank skim.  So it was the skim milk that made the odd shapes on the teachers.  I enjoyed looking at their curves while I ate my snack each day but I sure had no interest in getting that shape myself.  So I developed a strong bias against skim milk.

This was the spring of 1979.  Jimmy Carter was in the White House about to watch Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat sign the Camp David accord.  Joel Carillet was in kindergarten discovering the secrets of female curves and tie-dyed shirts.  And a girl just three years older than me named Loung Ung was emerging from the hell of Cambodia's Killing Fields, her innocence long dead even though she was somehow still alive.

I met Larry on the boat about an hour out of the Vietnamese town of Chau Doc.  I was on my way to Cambodia, heading up the broad Mekong River, saying goodbye to the smiles, the conical hats, and everything else that I had come to love about Vietnam.  Larry was a general contractor in California and came to Vietnam every other year for vacation.  His first journey here occurred when he was a twenty-year-old.  That was in 1968 and he pulled some faded square photos out of his pocket to show me how much things have changed since he was a helicopter gunner, flying these Delta rivers and canals routinely, preferring the coolness and easy navigation they provided to the land that did not.  Through his photos I was given a glimpse into the war years: his old Vietnamese girlfriend, a buddy that was killed shortly after the photo was taken, his base at Vinh Long, soldiers goofing off with a giant vulture-looking crane they had caught, and more.

At some point Larry asked what I was doing here and I told him I was traveling across Asia for a year to learn more about the people and to try to write a book about them.  That's why my backpack was so heavy, I said.  It has 16 books in it.  I also told him I had a feeling I would be learning more about myself than I bargained for on this trip as well.  He reached into his bag and pulled out a book he had just finished.  "Have you read it?" he asked. I had not.  Next thing I knew Larry dropped it in my lap and said, "It's yours."

You do not find books about Cambodia that speak of its prosperity, bright future, safe back-country camping opportunities, or model government.  That is because it does not have these things.  You are more likely to find a book like the one that stuck to my sunburned legs.  First They Killed My Father could have been written by tens of thousands of Cambodians.  Loung Ung is the one who wrote it though, and her retelling of life as a young child in the late 1970s is both captivating and convulsing.  I'm glad the Vietnam Vet named Larry gave me this gift.  Through it I would learn more about Asia and even be provoked to learn more about myself as I thought back to some old, nearly-forgotten memories.  I would realize more clearly how figures as diverse as a cartoon superhero named Mighty Mouse and a genocidal leader named Pol Pot have taken part in shaping who I am today.

I moved over to the front of the boat and stretched out on the shaded wooden deck as we chugged up the Mekong, my head propped up by someone's backpack.  I opened my new book and made it through the first few pages, not once able to shake the discomfort I felt in knowing that Loung Ung was in the Killing Fields while I was in kindergarten.  We were two kids living in two worlds yet sharing the same earth.  This realization alone made the book so convulsing.

With these thoughts I closed my eyes.  I needed to sleep now since Vietnam had so wonderfully worn me out, but I looked forward to discovering what she was doing in 1979.  I looked forward to picking up the book with fresher eyes.  And I looked forward to Cambodia.

(Part 1 of 4)

To read Part 2, click /viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976766514.