drums.
To me and the people I knew, the war seemed far away. Never mind that the South Vietnamese border was only a few hours’ drive from Phnom Penh. We were used to that. Never mind that the
Vietnamese communists had a network of hidden roads, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, along the Cambodia-South Vietnam border. We were vaguely aware of it, but our press didn’t remind us of it often.
We had had no idea at all that communist supplies were arriving in the ocean port of Sihanoukville, that the Americans had been sending Special Forces teams across the South Vietnamese border or
that US B-52s had been dropping bombs in Cambodia for nearly a year. Nobody told us that. Most Cambodians were like me. We were from villages. Our horizons were bounded by rice fields and
trees.
We had been at peace because of one man, Norodom Sihanouk. The French appointed him king when he was a schoolboy, expecting that he would be easy to control, but Sihanouk outmanoeuvred them,
just as he outmanoeuvred everyone else. After negotiating our independence in 1953, by hinting at revolution if France refused, Sihanouk abdicated as king and ran for election. He won by a huge
margin and continued to be the country’s leader. Domestically he kept the support of the dark-skinned ethnic Khmers, who made up the majority of the population, by appealing to their racial
pride and by telling everyone over and over how lucky we were to be Cambodians, descendants of the ancient empire at Angkor. But he also protected the rights of the light-skinned minorities, the
ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese. In foreign policy he played the communist powers against the Western powers, accepting aid from all of them until 1965, when he cut ties with the United States after
what he felt was an insult to his pride. He leaned to the left after that, but officially he kept Cambodia neutral and nonaligned. The American government didn’t like him because he
wouldn’t let US troops come openly into Cambodia to fight the North Vietnamese.
In Cambodia, Sihanouk was immensely popular. We barely noticed his faults, like allowing corruption to go unpunished, and keeping incompetent people in the government. Few of us were educated
enough to care. When he spoke to us in his loud, high-pitched voice, shouting and gesturing wildly, eyes bulging with excitement, we listened with respect.
Sihanouk loved drama of every kind. He made movies starring himself. He supported the Royal Ballet; the ballerinas were his concubines. He held huge rallies near his palace, where he heard the
complaints of the common people, then called the guilty government officials in and scolded them on the spot. And every year he held a ceremony at the place where the Mekong and the Tonle Sap
rivers join and then separate again. At the precise moment when the current reversed and the water began to flow uphill toward Tonle Sap lake, he blessed the waters, which made the water’s
reversal seem like something he had caused magically (though, of course, the moon’s tidal pull on the rainy-season floods made it happen). Foreigners called him ‘Prince’ Sihanouk,
because he had officially abdicated, but we still called him ‘King.’ Many peasants believed he was a god.
The trouble began on March 11, 1970, when Sihanouk was out of the country and the press was playing up the North Vietnamese sanctuaries along the eastern border. I was attending a lecture when
the protest march started. When I caught up to it later, rioting was under way. Young lycée students were throwing papers, filing cabinets, desks and chairs out of the second floor of the
North Vietnamese embassy. They tossed bundles of currency on the street below. They lowered the North Vietnamese flag from its flagpole and burned it. They did the same at the embassy of the
Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, or Viet Cong, which was located nearby. ‘Vietnamese stay out of Cambodia!’ the students shouted. ‘Don’t
To me and the people I knew, the war seemed far away. Never mind that the South Vietnamese border was only a few hours’ drive from Phnom Penh. We were used to that. Never mind that the
Vietnamese communists had a network of hidden roads, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, along the Cambodia-South Vietnam border. We were vaguely aware of it, but our press didn’t remind us of it often.
We had had no idea at all that communist supplies were arriving in the ocean port of Sihanoukville, that the Americans had been sending Special Forces teams across the South Vietnamese border or
that US B-52s had been dropping bombs in Cambodia for nearly a year. Nobody told us that. Most Cambodians were like me. We were from villages. Our horizons were bounded by rice fields and
trees.
We had been at peace because of one man, Norodom Sihanouk. The French appointed him king when he was a schoolboy, expecting that he would be easy to control, but Sihanouk outmanoeuvred them,
just as he outmanoeuvred everyone else. After negotiating our independence in 1953, by hinting at revolution if France refused, Sihanouk abdicated as king and ran for election. He won by a huge
margin and continued to be the country’s leader. Domestically he kept the support of the dark-skinned ethnic Khmers, who made up the majority of the population, by appealing to their racial
pride and by telling everyone over and over how lucky we were to be Cambodians, descendants of the ancient empire at Angkor. But he also protected the rights of the light-skinned minorities, the
ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese. In foreign policy he played the communist powers against the Western powers, accepting aid from all of them until 1965, when he cut ties with the United States after
what he felt was an insult to his pride. He leaned to the left after that, but officially he kept Cambodia neutral and nonaligned. The American government didn’t like him because he
wouldn’t let US troops come openly into Cambodia to fight the North Vietnamese.
In Cambodia, Sihanouk was immensely popular. We barely noticed his faults, like allowing corruption to go unpunished, and keeping incompetent people in the government. Few of us were educated
enough to care. When he spoke to us in his loud, high-pitched voice, shouting and gesturing wildly, eyes bulging with excitement, we listened with respect.
Sihanouk loved drama of every kind. He made movies starring himself. He supported the Royal Ballet; the ballerinas were his concubines. He held huge rallies near his palace, where he heard the
complaints of the common people, then called the guilty government officials in and scolded them on the spot. And every year he held a ceremony at the place where the Mekong and the Tonle Sap
rivers join and then separate again. At the precise moment when the current reversed and the water began to flow uphill toward Tonle Sap lake, he blessed the waters, which made the water’s
reversal seem like something he had caused magically (though, of course, the moon’s tidal pull on the rainy-season floods made it happen). Foreigners called him ‘Prince’ Sihanouk,
because he had officially abdicated, but we still called him ‘King.’ Many peasants believed he was a god.
The trouble began on March 11, 1970, when Sihanouk was out of the country and the press was playing up the North Vietnamese sanctuaries along the eastern border. I was attending a lecture when
the protest march started. When I caught up to it later, rioting was under way. Young lycée students were throwing papers, filing cabinets, desks and chairs out of the second floor of the
North Vietnamese embassy. They tossed bundles of currency on the street below. They lowered the North Vietnamese flag from its flagpole and burned it. They did the same at the embassy of the
Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, or Viet Cong, which was located nearby. ‘Vietnamese stay out of Cambodia!’ the students shouted. ‘Don’t
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