Partying and sunbathing before committing atrocities
A reverie…
When the Khmer Rouge finally took power for real, entering Phnom Penh in April of 1975, one of the first things they did, apart from kicking off a program of systematic extinction of their, — now their, — country’s population in ways brutally direct, conceived and planned well in advance, but also inadvertently — as a result of this or that attempt, program, policy aimed, of course, always, at making the people of Democratic Kampuchea free, happy, prosperous. Well, in parallel to all of this important work they started overrunning various small islands which were considered as territories contested by the Khmer Rouge and by People’s Republic of Vietnam, their former ally in the struggle against the capitalist aggressor — a fact most Vietnamese nowadays will deny with ferocity and dedication, which after a few initial interactions becomes quite tiresome. Patrol boats full of Khmer Rouge soldiers would land usually at dawn, personnel disembarking and seeping into the small fishing communities normally not more that a hundred souls strong, to cleanse them of the “Vietnamese occupiers”, lay the basis for a Kampuchean outpost and declare the island, much to Vietnamese distress, territory of Democratic Kampuchea. Well, as much a state-building business as mass murders of undesirables I suppose.
Sitting at the back of one of about half dozen motorboat taxis ferrying a holidaying crowd, mostly white, mostly of the beat down backpacker kind, between the Nat Beach, where I spent the day in company of two German backpackers, and the village of Koh Rong, the eponymous islands entry point and main hub, this was what I was thinking about… not even thinking… visioning? feeling? Dusk dying into the clouds on the horizon, LSD in my system wearing off, observing the last of stragglers make a dash down the beach and wade into the water toward the boats, — and they had to wade for quite some distance, those late ones, holding their inevitable backpacks over their heads like they would, some thirty years earlier, their AK47s and combat gear they did not to get wet — for the boats have already cast off and were drifting slowly out into the open water. Sitting there, right after the last of the stragglers got on board and settled in, I became acutely aware of silence, silence sudden, gloomy, and chilled, and filled with premonition. It was then that the ‘thinking’, the ‘imagining’ turned into the feeling, the deep sensation, so, so real.. I could not shake it off… could not stop imagining myself one of those young hapless Khmer Rouge fighters, all of us sitting tight on those four or five boats bobbing a bit off the shore — everyone, as if feeling the same, was silent and serious — as if preparing, each in their own way, for the moment the boats will cast off towards yet another island, and yet another round of atrocities with have to be performed — a job of work to be done. No, not a sensation… a realization…
Then the engines roared and the spell broke. In no time at all I was back at the hostel in Koh Rong I was staying in, and started smoking myself into oblivion. The spell broke, you see, but the understanding remained — the kind which is hard to face and be reckoned with, yet has to be acknowledged, respected, and never, never suppressed, explained away, outright denied. That sort of understanding. This was me discovering a part of me I never even imagined existed — and a part which I now will have to reflect upon, integrate, and never, never forget that it’s there, just waiting for a right chance. And, by God’s grace, I haven’t, so far I haven’t.
