1 post tagged “siem reap”
If I could go back and talk to my high-school self, I would say: "You fool! Take French seriously, learn the language so you will not feel mute abroad!" Back then, I never suspected that traveling abroad would become one of my overriding passions and that French would pop up in places I didn't then know I wanted to visit. Like, well, France, and Southeast Asia.
And Cambodia, the western piece of France's invented "Indochine." Of course, English is still the best bet for getting around the region, but occasionally the language pops up in fascinating places. Like on "Rabbit Island," the secluded island that I and a small boatload of French tourists shared this past Saturday. But I was too insecure to strike up a conversation with them in their language.
But Monday, in a rural village on the outskirts of Siem Reap, I found myself seated next to a 60-something survivor of Khmer Rouge-era, a man who spoke no English but plenty of French. He is the father-in-law of the Cambodian reporter I was traveling with, and we had just visited a tiny backyard crocodile farm a short walk from his small house as part of an article I'm working on.
He learned much of the language before the French finally packed up and left in 1953, but his command of the language was almost as halting as my own. After we exchanged pleasantries and talked about how great his son-in-law Chandara is (one of the most intelligent English-speaking Cambodians I've met), he grinned and said something I'll never forget. Of course I've forgotten the exact French words, but the English gist is:
I am sorry, but my French is not so good. You see, I had to forget the language during the Khmer Rouge time. Then, we had to forget French. If the Khmer Rouge heard us speaking French, then --
And then, giggling, he made the international sign for murder: a straight hand quickly moved across the front of his neck. (Imagine being killed for speaking a language!) One of my favorite things about Cambodians is that they laugh at the most unexpected times, often for absolutely no reason at all.
I think that perhaps now, 28 years after the Khmer Rouge were flushed out of power, the only thing that some survivors can do - publicly - is laugh those four years off as the cruelest, sickest joke humanity has ever told. "Nazi" generally functions as a byword for evil, but after reading Elizabeth Becker's excellent "After the War Was Over" I realized that Hitler's regime at least had a certain kind of logic to it. Pol Pot's ideology was quickly replaced by rabid xenophobia and hallucinations, turning life into an absurd march into auto-genocide. The only logic was survival, for both him and his hapless subjects.
And now, decades later, an international tribunal is set to try Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity and genocide. Everyone knows what happened: the killing fields were not hard to find and the memories cannot be extinguished. And so now, a new absurdity: trying to follow international norms of justice. How can any survivor presume the innocence of admitted Khmer Rouge leaders?
