I was going over some old notes and came across this little story from a few years back. It may be a bit unsettling and is certainly troubling, but I think it is a story worth telling. Took me a few tall gin and tonics at the FCC (Foreign Correspondent’s Club) in Phnom Penh over-looking the river Tonle Sap to get the wretchedness out of my system that hot afternoon, but a little black cat wearing a red bandana around his neck applied the needed softness to the day. 

Friday...

Along Pattaya Beach...

I watched a group of Russian lovelies purchase the freedom of little sparrows from an old Thai woman, her concession a stack of small wooden cages full of the chirping birds.  Good for karma as the Buddhists say to free up the little guys, so the ladies were delighted as they watched the birds wing their way from captivity and into the air high above the swaying mimosa trees, the green branches with bright red flowers bending in the wind.  The old lady gathered up her empty cages and headed down the beach while the happy Russian women slipped over to purchase nam som (fresh orange juice) from a nearby vendor.  Of course the little birds came home to roost--they flew over the trees and then back to their open cages as the little old lady met them a few hundred meters down the walkway.  A good feeling for all, and a good business for the Thai vendor during the Pattaya high season.   

Cambodia was a few days ago.  I took the bus from Pattaya and my first stop was at Koh Kong at the border for an overnight before continuing on to Phnom Penh.  Koh Kong is a dusty crossroad within the province of Koh Kong, where boats depart for the island of Koh Kong, a pristine destination that doesn't have accommodations, but abounds with lovely beaches and jungles spider webbed with flowing streams and waterfalls.  Currently the Cambodian army resides on the island as unrest with Thailand has caused a certain posturing.  

I met up with an English gentleman who was familiar with the area, and walked with him from my hotel the three sweaty kilometers to the 'chicken farm', a dusty enclave of scattered farm buildings, broken down clapboard houses, and an open-air kitchen with beaten down tables and plastic chairs, stacks of Chang Beer and crates of bottled Coca Colas against a concrete wall.  Weathered ladies and farm laborers milled around us as a cook prepared a sizzling pork dish in a black wok a few feet from where we sat at one of the tables under a dirty green awning.

Three young Khmer girls joined us shortly in the tropical heat, their mama-san now swinging slowly on her stomach on a canvas hammock, her eyes intent on the business at hand. Two of the girls were sisters and they conveyed to us their circumstance of working off their mother's debt of $400 to the mama-san to pay off a hospital bill.  A tiny six year-old came over and sat between the girls. Her face was smudged with dust, her dress ragged and tattered, her feet bare. Wasn't long before I realized that she was in the mix. There were no signs of play, no smile when I tried to playfully elicit it--she was starring at us as a hungry child would at a plate of cookies. Black barnyard hens and roosters darted amongst us, little chicks flitting about my feet.

I left after a few beers.The stories you hear are usually true.  The tale of the mother's indebtedness and the payoff with her daughters is an old one, but often is  just a ruse to elicit a bump in the bar fine. My friend made arrangements for later, while I walked back alone along the red clay road spinning tales in wanderlust.The police had raided the encampment earlier and emptied the coop except for the girls we saw--the mama-san had not paid her dues.

NGO's often spearhead movements with U.S. backing, sometimes government, sometimes churches, but the resulting stings usually turn out the same: "The girls were found of age," or they were all taken to safe houses, especially the little ones.

Invariably, though, they voluntarily make it back to the roost, even the little ones.  If not voluntarily, under the direction of the police who run the farm in the first place.

Little Pol Pot and the Tiny Cinched Hands

This afternoon I walked for a good two hours in the Phnom Penh heat and found my way to Tuol Sleng (an old three-building school used by Pol Pot as a torture prison), now the genocide museum--one of Pol Pot's contributions to Cambodian tourism.

A little black cat with a red bandana around his neck followed me from a roadside barbecue stand in front of the museum into the old school yard which became the Auschwitz of Phnom Penh back in '75.  He was named Little Pol Pot by his owner who smiled while I fed his kitty pork on a stick.  "Good for tourism, good for conversation, good for business," he explained when I asked him why the unlikely name for such a cute little cat.

I made my way over to the third building where rusting barbed wire and a warning sign indicated that tourists were not allowed.  I crawled through the wire anyway and climbed three flights of crumbling steps to the classrooms which housed the tiny cells, each about 4 by 5 feet containing only an empty metal ammunition box and iron foot rods, the windows heavily barred.  I went into one of the cells and sat down with my back against the wall and took out a James Lee Burke paperback from my satchel and read for about an hour with Little Pol Pot in my lap  The coolness of the tile against my back was comforting and I soon was sleeping away the heat of the day.  

In 1975, Pol Pot (not the cat) and his army emptied out Phnom Penh of its two million inhabitants in about three days. 

Pol Pot

During his civil war he hewed the intelligentsia of Cambodia at the knees--the educated were sought out and executed, often horribly-- people with eye glasses, people with smooth hands. The executioners were usually young and under watchful eyes to perform their duty, or they too were eliminated.  Cambodia is without the elderly; between 1975-77 those over the age of fifteen were the targeted. The gene pool has been savaged, a large part of the remaining populous having a direct hand in the annihilation, a day-to-day memory as life goes on.

First I kill my father....

The main entrance to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum- (S-21)

 

 

 

 

 

 

A small cell In Tuol Sleng

I left Little Pol Pot and returned to my motorbike parked near my hotel and headed down Sihanouk for the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, about fifteen K from the city limits. Not unlike the boxcars that the Nazis used to transport the Jews, the lorries used by Pol Pot were filled with standing prisoners of S-21 (Tuol Sleng) carried out in the night, their hands tied snuggly behind their backs. They stood bunched together in the open air, squeezed too tightly to sit. 

My bike bumped along the pot-holes as I followed the fateful trail until the road turned left down into a farm about a kilometer off the main highway. I paid 1,000 Riel (25 cents) to a young boy to watch my bike as I walked over to a mound of red clay, white-bleached bones pushing at the surface. Policemen in khaki uniforms with epaulets looked on as I bent over to gently pull out a pair of little bones which were barely poking out, two hands and arms, white and tiny, still cinched together by white kite string, the cord bleached and frayed from sun and age. Tourists stopped and guides watched as I picked the knot loose and let the little hands fall free. People took photos, the police held their ground.  A symbolic gesture is all--The terror of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge is over now.

The tiny cinched hands are finally free..

But then at last away it flew,

And then 'twas mortal--well I knew,

For he would never thus have flown,

And left me twice so doubly lone,--

Lone--as the course within its shroud,

Lone--as a solitary cloud...

       The Prisoner of Chillon

       Lord Byron

A few months later....

Today I revisited Tuol Sleng museum and walked along its outer wall, peering in.  I felt something pulling on my pant leg and looked down-- there was Little Pol Pot, my gentle friend looking up at me, as if to say--"Where have you been?"   :-)

Little Pol Pot

From Phomn Penh,

Dan(ny)

Thanks my friend for another touching and well written story.  Being a Christian, I know the devil and how he and his demons work day and night to influence mankind to perform acts of cruelty most could not imagine.  I remember when I was younger and listened to him when he influenced me to do things that I am now ashamed to admit.  He still tries to influence me, but now I know his voice and I resist the temptations.  I am stronger than he is, but he will never stop trying to tempt me.  We all need to distinguish the evil from the good and do our best to resist temptation.  God smiles and the devil frowns every time we resist.  I just finished "The Screwtape Letters" found in the book: The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics .  I highly recommend it.