fireworks on the quay and walked past carts selling sweets and cigarettes and fruit and noodles. Will stared at the river, said, I’ll make a New Year’s wish for you. I hope you find who you are looking for. And I’ll make a wish for me. I hope they start work again, so I can stay.
How long have you been here?
Long enough to fall in love with it.
His face was calm in the reflection of firelight off the water. I said, I hope your wish comes true. I cannot imagine what it is like to open a grave.
Will said, These are old graves. It is easier than fresh ones.
Two small boys ran past and tossed firecrackers at our feet. We jumped aside laughing, turned up a dark street. I asked, Once we know, what do we do?
Fireworks made with gold and silver paint exploded, drifted like milkweed seeds across the black sky. Will said, Maybe the only hope is that our humanity might kick into a higher gear, that the more we admit to seeing, the more we will believe we are not that different from each other.
18
Imagine a street; imagine waking up one morning and teenaged voices outside shouting, Comrades, it is Year Zero.
Country kids who cannot drive lurch down the street in tanks and trucks. They have been hiding out in the jungle. They screech brakes, pop clutches. They scream through megaphones. They fire guns and kill anyone who talks back or asks questions or, god forbid, refuses to move. They do not have good judgment. But they can choose anyone to die. Most neither read nor write. Imagine going out into the street and watching a man ask why he must leave his home and a teenager lifting his gun and shooting him.
Think of the old mother who cannot walk. Her children cannot get to her. These hard-eyed boy-soldiers dressed in loose black pants and shirts tramp through the hospital and shoot anyone who cannot get up. Think of people trying to push hospital beds along the road.
Imagine the walk out of the city. People do not know where they will sleep. There is no clean water. Nowhere to shit. No one knows what to bring. Does anyone have matches? A cooking pot? A cup? Old people die on the roadside and people walk past them because soldiers are waving guns. A woman givesbirth in a ditch. City people become thirsty, crouching creatures. Hunger makes their heads throb. Mothers snap at their children. People steal bowls from corpses. What else can they do? What is a person capable of?
Year Zero. The country has a new name. Everyone works on farms. Seed. Plant. Harvest with knives. Pound. Winnow. Bag for the soldiers.
Music is forbidden. Talk is forbidden.
The soldiers make bonfires of libraries and paper money. Everyone is hungry.
Banks. Gone.
Mail. Gone.
Telephones. Gone.
Radio. Gone.
Teenagers serve Angka, the Organization. The leader is Brother Number One. No one knows yet his name is Pol Pot. No one knows he used to be a schoolteacher called Saloth Sar. How did this happen? People fell asleep and when they woke up nothing was the same. Would a person risk helping a neighbor if a nervous, shouting teenager were pointing a gun?
In Year Zero there is no past.
19
I walked into the Globe on Sihanouk Boulevard and I saw you standing at the bar. Your dark hair was still long, tied back, and you wore a white T-shirt. You leaned on the bar and you were alone and absorbed in the music. You. In Phnom Penh.
Where you go, I will go
. And your eyes. Gold flecked. Mud dark. Blood gathered behind my eyes and the room went black and I blinked and breathed and saw you again.
The DJ put on an old Oscar Peterson recording. I listened to that caressing, flirting, demanding touch on a piano playing “L’impossible.” Now that I had found you I had to get used to you again. When the song was finished you shifted on your feet and looked around, and your eyes passed over me and then I watched them flicker back startled and rest on me.
Where you lodge, I will lodge
. And then you were walking away from the
How long have you been here?
Long enough to fall in love with it.
His face was calm in the reflection of firelight off the water. I said, I hope your wish comes true. I cannot imagine what it is like to open a grave.
Will said, These are old graves. It is easier than fresh ones.
Two small boys ran past and tossed firecrackers at our feet. We jumped aside laughing, turned up a dark street. I asked, Once we know, what do we do?
Fireworks made with gold and silver paint exploded, drifted like milkweed seeds across the black sky. Will said, Maybe the only hope is that our humanity might kick into a higher gear, that the more we admit to seeing, the more we will believe we are not that different from each other.
18
Imagine a street; imagine waking up one morning and teenaged voices outside shouting, Comrades, it is Year Zero.
Country kids who cannot drive lurch down the street in tanks and trucks. They have been hiding out in the jungle. They screech brakes, pop clutches. They scream through megaphones. They fire guns and kill anyone who talks back or asks questions or, god forbid, refuses to move. They do not have good judgment. But they can choose anyone to die. Most neither read nor write. Imagine going out into the street and watching a man ask why he must leave his home and a teenager lifting his gun and shooting him.
Think of the old mother who cannot walk. Her children cannot get to her. These hard-eyed boy-soldiers dressed in loose black pants and shirts tramp through the hospital and shoot anyone who cannot get up. Think of people trying to push hospital beds along the road.
Imagine the walk out of the city. People do not know where they will sleep. There is no clean water. Nowhere to shit. No one knows what to bring. Does anyone have matches? A cooking pot? A cup? Old people die on the roadside and people walk past them because soldiers are waving guns. A woman givesbirth in a ditch. City people become thirsty, crouching creatures. Hunger makes their heads throb. Mothers snap at their children. People steal bowls from corpses. What else can they do? What is a person capable of?
Year Zero. The country has a new name. Everyone works on farms. Seed. Plant. Harvest with knives. Pound. Winnow. Bag for the soldiers.
Music is forbidden. Talk is forbidden.
The soldiers make bonfires of libraries and paper money. Everyone is hungry.
Banks. Gone.
Mail. Gone.
Telephones. Gone.
Radio. Gone.
Teenagers serve Angka, the Organization. The leader is Brother Number One. No one knows yet his name is Pol Pot. No one knows he used to be a schoolteacher called Saloth Sar. How did this happen? People fell asleep and when they woke up nothing was the same. Would a person risk helping a neighbor if a nervous, shouting teenager were pointing a gun?
In Year Zero there is no past.
19
I walked into the Globe on Sihanouk Boulevard and I saw you standing at the bar. Your dark hair was still long, tied back, and you wore a white T-shirt. You leaned on the bar and you were alone and absorbed in the music. You. In Phnom Penh.
Where you go, I will go
. And your eyes. Gold flecked. Mud dark. Blood gathered behind my eyes and the room went black and I blinked and breathed and saw you again.
The DJ put on an old Oscar Peterson recording. I listened to that caressing, flirting, demanding touch on a piano playing “L’impossible.” Now that I had found you I had to get used to you again. When the song was finished you shifted on your feet and looked around, and your eyes passed over me and then I watched them flicker back startled and rest on me.
Where you lodge, I will lodge
. And then you were walking away from the
Similar Books
