Survival in the Killing Fields Read Online Free Page A

equivalent of a bishop. The sculpture was to go inside a stone building made around AD 1200, in the period of an ancient Cambodian
civilization known as Angkor. But before installing the statue, my father and the monk had to drive to Thailand to get it.
    They set off together in Papa’s old black and brown Ford truck, north from the village on National Route 2 to Phnom Penh and then in a northwesterly direction around the huge lake known as
Tonle Sap and toward the Thai border town of Aranyaprathet. The roads were terrible. The truck kept breaking down. My father was irritated but he had to pretend to be calm, because of the monk.
When they finally got the statue, it turned out to be unusually large and handsome. Once they re-entered Cambodia with it in the back of the truck they had to stop in every small town along the way
to give a parade. The townspeople gave money, to make merit for themselves, to improve their chances of being reborn into a better life. The money paid for the truck repairs and for the gasoline.
Papa, who was an impatient man, couldn’t hurry things up.
    In my father’s absence my mother ran the store. I got in more fights than ever.
    The morning before Papa returned, a box with a dozen packs of imported playing cards was missing from the locked cupboard above my parents’ bed. The cards would have made a nice profit for
the family if they had been sold. My mother came to me and asked whether I had taken them. I told her truthfully that I hadn’t. But my mother was suspicious. Of all the children I was the
only one who got in trouble regularly.
    She got right to the point. ‘If you stole it and sold it, just say so,’ she said. ‘If I know you are telling me the truth, I won’t tell your father, and he won’t
beat you.’
    There was nothing I could say to her. Papa beat us occasionally, as all Chinese fathers did. But he didn’t hurt us much.
    That day I kept close watch on my older brother Pheng Huor. When he saw I was looking in his direction he lifted his gaze and looked back at me blankly. Whoever had stolen the cards had been a
member of the family. But even if my brother had stolen the cards, which seemed likely, I couldn’t prove it.
    The following day Papa drove up to the house in his Ford truck. He was tired and irritated from having to behave so well.
    My mother told him about the theft. He came angrily toward me. Perhaps he felt that this was the sort of thing that went on when he was away and that he needed to restore his authority.
    He led me out back of the house and tied me hand and foot to a big piece of lumber. Then he hit me on the shoulders with a wooden slat. He beat me for an hour. When he was tired he went into the
house, and then after a while he came out again with the slat in his hand. My mother stood in the doorway with a pitying look in her face, but she didn’t ask him to stop.
    I don’t know when he stopped beating me, because I lost consciousness. When I came to, my feet and hands were still tied to the lumber, but I had rolled over on my side. The sunlight was
coming in at a low angle over the rice fields. It was late afternoon. My mother and my favourite sister, Chhay Thao, had come out of the house. They untied me, and they asked me what they could
do.
    I lay on the ground without moving. They stood over me. Gradually I collected my thoughts.
    ‘
You
didn’t trust me,’ I said slowly. ‘You treated me like an enemy of the family. So don’t bother helping me.’
    My mother knelt next to me.
    ‘Your will is still strong, eh?’ she said gently.
    They helped me upstairs and led me to my bed. I slept. But that evening I woke up puzzled and angry. What had I done to deserve a beating like that? I loved sports. I loved to get out of the
house and play as often as I could. And yes, I got in fights with other boys. If that made me bad, if they were going to beat me for that, they could go ahead. That was their right. But I
hadn’t stolen