I, Witness

Story by Kim Echlin
Photos by Nathalie Daoust

1   |   2   |   3   |   Home

I, Witness

Year Zero was the dawn of an age in which, in extremis, there would be
no families, no sentiment, no expression of love or grief,
no medicines, no hospitals,
no schools, no books, no learning,
no holidays, no music:
only work and death.

New Internationalist

A Man on the Road to Choeung Ek

The grass has done its work. But I saw with my own eyes how they killed. The city road turns into country, through paddy and sugar palm. Children catch frogs along the ridges, run past the bones. In my work brigade not far from here, they called a big meeting. They dragged out a young couple and blindfolded them and tied them up to a tree. They ordered my brigade to come and see people who fall in love without permission from Angkor. “What should we do?” the leaders yelled. My brigade yelled back, “Kill! Kill!” I said that thing too. A young boy beside me stepped forward with a bamboo stick like onto a stage and hit the man across his head. Blood was coming out of his nose and his ears and his eyes. They took the blindfold off the woman and she looked and she did not say one word. She went pale and she closed her eyes and they beat her too. After many blows they finished her off. I did this thing too. I hit a still living human being hard on the head and the neck and back. When I tell my story to a foreigner at Choeung Ek she says, “Why did you shout, Kill, Kill?” I move my hands in circles in front of my chest, like this, and I say, “It came out. I did not know what to feel at that time. Words came out with all the other voices.” I bring my hands into an open funnel in front of my face, as if to look through a tunnel. I say to the foreigner, “I am a living dead. I have my body, I can move, I can speak, I can eat, but I am dust without words.” On the road to Choeung Ek.

When samai a-Pol Pot time was over I volunteered to count the bodies in the graves. I hoped to find my family. At Choeung Ek, one of us who survived made this sign out of words that cannot tell:

Foreigner

I love the traditional proverbs here. “Tek yap’ kum niyay nin sri, don’t talk to your wife in bed at night.” Or, “If you are mean, be mean so that people respect you. If you’re stupid, be stupid so that they pity you.” Or, “When the waters rise the fish eat the ants; when the waters sink the ants eat the fish.” They loop in your head. People repeat them all the time. They have the authority of morning; from their light people set out.

Imagine what it would be like. A four year slaughter. Imagine it the way I do, working at a mass grave, waist deep in mist. Imagine it in more than a television way. Imagine your street; now think of every seventh person murdered. Imagine waking up one morning and voices outside your bedroom window shouting, “Comrades, it is Year Zero.”

Teenaged soldiers who can’t drive lurch down your street in tanks and trucks. They are country kids. They’ve been hiding out in the jungle. They screech brakes, pop clutches. You get dressed quickly, go outside. They scream through megaphones at you to leave your home. They fire guns and kill anyone who talks back, or asks questions, or, god forbid, refuses to go. They can’t read or write.

Think of your old mother who cannot walk. She lives on the other side of the city and you cannot get to her. These hard-eyed boy-soldiers dressed in black pajamas tramp through the hospital shooting anyone who can’t get up. Think of people trying to push hospital beds along the road.

Your bowels have turned to liquid. You do not know where you will sleep this night. There is no clean water. Nowhere to shit. What did you bring? Did you think of matches? Did you think of a cooking pot? A bowl? You have seen old people die on the roadside. You have seen a woman giving birth in a ditch. After only a few days you are a thirsty, crouching, filthy creature. You are so hungry your head explodes. Already you have stolen your bowl from a shot corpse by the side of the road. What will you do next?

What are you capable of?

Year Zero. Your country has a new name. The whole country works in rice paddies. Seed. Plant roots. Harvest. Cut with knives. Pound. Winnow. Bag for soldiers. Music is forbidden. Talk is forbidden. They set fire to libraries. Banks. Mail. Telephones. Radio. All contact outside the country is gone. The teenagers serve Angkor, The Organization. The leader is Brother Number One. No one knows his name is Pol Pot yet. No one knows he used to be a schoolteacher called Saloth Sar. How did this happen? You fell asleep and now nothing is what it was. Are you? Will you risk being killed to be who you are? If you do, no one will ever know.

In Year Zero who are you?

1   |   2   |   3   |   Home