The Killing Fields

I've put off writing about this for as long as I can. I'd read a bit of the history of the Khmer Rouge (1970-75), Pol Pot, and the genocide of their own people. The Khmer Rouge killed nearly 1/4 of Cambodia's population, around 2 million people total. They executed every educated Cambodian, everyone who wore glasses, every teacher and everyone who opposed Pol Pot's plan to start again, to bring Cambodia to "year zero." Women and children were beaten against trees and buried alive.

Still, what I knew didn't prepare me for the newness, the horror of The Killing Fields. Our tuk-tuk driver took us from the developed Cambodian city into the dirt-poor country. Every mile was poorer until I was feeling guilty for looking at the unclothed, starving Cambodians as a tourist. And they continued to smile and wave. Unless you're prepared to help them, this is the kind of thing you should see in National Geographic or on CNN. After seeing the Killing Fields, I realized the land near it is so haunted only the desperately poor would live there. We paid the 2$ entrance fee and stared straight at a 200ft tower of skulls. You're allowed to walk along the glass and look into the skulls sockets, only you are required to take off your shoes. There must have been 60,000 skulls piled on top of each other to the sky. I looked briefly, enough to notice many of the skulls were smashed in but not long enough to really take it in. It was unbearably hot and silent. I was having trouble breathing.

I quickly turned by back on the skulls, read some awful accounts of how the people were killed and avoided looking anyone in the eye. The field wasn't very big and you could see unfarmed land stretching in every direction. No one would dare live here. Every 10 feet, we'd come to a large pit in the ground with signs reading, "158 buried," "215 buried," "85 children buried," and on and on. Grass didn't grow in the graves and each had a strong smell. Entirely new to me, but I guess that's the smell of decaying bodies. It doesn't require a child's imagination to close your eyes and see it all. That's why it's so shocking, because many of the bodies were still being found in the 80s. The fields hold all the torture and death, preserved. Haunted.

There was a tree with a sign informing that children were beaten against it and little bones remained cluttered around it. There was another tree with a sign reading, "Magic Tree." The sign explained that the Khmer Rouge hung a boom-box from the branch. It played extremely loud music to drown out the sounds of torturing and dying all around. Darryl stared disgusted at this tree for a long time.

And it only got worse outside. Half-naked, bony children surrounded us begging, "sir, 1 dollar, 1 dollar please!" We hadn't prepared for this. We gave everything we had (about 10 dollars each) but they kept on coming, begging. We jumped into the carriage and told the driver to get us out quick. They held on, running barefoot with the motor-cycle, crying. We felt helpless. One by one, they couldn't keep up and fell behind but one teenage boy kept pace long after the others. We pleaded, "we have nothing," and showed him our empty pockets but it didn't matter. I could see his ribs as he ran with us. Darryl and I couldn't look at him, or each other so we just stared at the ground praying he'd give up. We were trying to block out the sadness of the whole scene. Finally, the motorcycle won and he let go. I watched him drop to the ground crying and we drove off. I've seen some poverty my time in Asia but that whole experience sticks in my mind like a picture and haunts me still.