Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor

her husband shortly after Huoy was born. Easily frightened and withdrawn from society, she had sheltered Huoy, her only child, but
now that Huoy was a young woman her mother wanted her to see something of the world.
    Huoy and I had tea in the cafe on the ground floor of her building. We strolled through the smooth evening air down the boulevard to the Angkor Theatre. We saw a sentimental love story filmed in
Chinese with a Khmer sound track dubbed in. I didn’t touch her.
    We had begun our romance. We moved slowly, with exquisite and agonizing decorum. Both of us were shy. If we had anything important to say, we didn’t say it. We sent messages by allowing
our glances to linger, and by sprinkling our conversations with clues for the other person to interpret for hidden significance.
    In Cambodia romance is always like that. In our traditional
romvong
dance, men and women move around each other without touching, gracefully waving their hands in the air to the music.
Men and women don’t demonstrate their affection in public. Even if Huoy and I saw one another every day, we couldn’t have held hands on her street without shocking her neighbours and
giving rise to sensational gossip.
    Most Asian societies are chaste and prudish in their public behaviour. The women don’t provoke men as much as they do in the West. In Phnom Penh the women wore blouses with ruffles on the
front; they weren’t trying to show off their breasts. But they could dress modestly and still be attractive. A sarong, wrapped around the waist and covering the legs down to the ankles, or a
sampot,
which is a fancier version of a sarong, shows how a woman is built. Huoy wore a
sampot
most days. I was a normal, healthy young male. I couldn’t help sneaking glances at
her, imagining what she looked like underneath.
    Of course, other men watched Huoy too, and that was the problem. When she walked along the sidewalk by herself, calmly and slowly in the afternoon heat, there was something about her that would
have made any sane man want to walk up to her and start a conversation. I began to watch her, from far away, just in case.
    I discovered that Huoy did not talk to any other man regularly; she dropped her eyes and found a polite but determined way to walk on alone. But I was young and impatient and I needed to know
what was in her heart. I was also tired of behaving well. So perhaps six months after going to her apartment for the first time, we had our first quarrel. I accused her of walking home with another
man, even though she hadn’t. I itemized the details of his appearance, the colour of his shirt and trousers, his glasses. Huoy said it wasn’t true but I said I knew it was. ‘Is he
your boyfriend, or what?’ I said sarcastically. ‘If he is, congratulations. He is very handsome. If you get married to him, it will be very good. Congratulations.’
    Huoy began crying. She had grown up without the teasing and arguing of brothers and sisters, and she had no defenses against the kind of game I was playing. She was very soft. Tears came to her
eyes quicker than anyone I have ever known.
    I said, ‘Okay, tonight I have to go teach a class, so I won’t be back.’ I stayed away that evening and the two following.
    On the third day Huoy went to the hospital to see me. She arrived at nine in the morning. I was polite to her but let her know by my expression that I was angry and jealous. I let her wait. At
ten I summoned her to my tiny office. She was crying again.
    ‘My mother has invited you to the house tonight,’ said Huoy. ‘She wonders why you haven’t come the last few nights.’ It was Cambodian style to be indirect like
that, using other people’s causes to advance our own.
    I answered, ‘Why aren’t you in class today?’ Huoy was still taking university classes to get her teaching degree.
    ‘I skipped classes today because I wanted to talk to you. Why weren’t you at my house?’
    ‘I wanted to go but I was busy. You