March 28

My mom is visiting for the next couple of days, so this morning we went to the Killing Fields, maybe 20 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh, at a place called Choeung Ek. The Killing Fields are the infamous burial grounds from the Khmer Rouge genocide. The ride was distracted with happy conversation, so when I stepped on the soil of the Killing Fields, I wasn't prepared for all of the misery it would embody and inhabit. I've lived in Cambodia for almost 7 months now. Somedays I still feel so far from understanding Khmer culture, but everything about these moments made me realize what my heart has learned.

When we first entered, there was a small building with a high ceiling, glass windows revealing thousands of skulls stacked upon each other in disarray. Few signs were posted around different monuments, grave sites, and trees. It was early morning and quiet, a lady at the foot of the monument gave me a stick of incense to mourn and offer in grievance. At first I felt nothing, I don't know these people. Yet we passed burial grounds, mass graves, suddenly the skulls grew eyes and faces, turned into the faces of my children, of my students, of members of the community I now call home, and I began to shake and cry hysterically. My throat began to feel swollen and tight, and I started gasping for air, as European tourists walked past, snapping photos. Everytime it rains, more bones and clothing are unearthed and unburied from the ground, and everything about my humanity felt deeply violated. How could we do this to one another? How could this happen? There was a beautiful tree at the end of the path, a weathered wooden sign nailed to the base. The sign explained that the bodies of children were beaten against this tree. Later, I saw this area/situation depicted in a painting in a museum, of a man holding an infant by the leg, arm in full swing, ready to bash the body against the trunk until he/she was lifeless. Another tree, called the "Magic Tree" was told to have held a speaker where the KR (Khmer Rouge) would play music as loud as possible, hoping to drown out the moaning of its victims.

Next we went to the Toul Sleng Museum, which once functioned as the prison and interrogating center of the KR. Inside were empty rooms and cells, barbed wire. One room had an old metal cot with tools resting on top, what looked like a garden trowel and an empty plastic gas can. On the wall hung an antique-looking photograph of a man lying naked on this cot, limbs ripped off, body poured over with kerosene and burned, most likely alive.

Before we entered in, a man at the gate put his hat out, begging for money. He wore long sleeves and pants, but his face and neck were visible and had been horribly burned. He looked at me with his one eye, his face and ears completely melted off, missing one arm, he stretched the other towards me with his hat. He looked like one of those comic book villains who lives underground, scheming and seething in the sewage tunnels. I turned my face away so he wouldn't see me cringe. It wasn't at him as much as everything else. The difference is, this isn't a blockbuster summer hit movie, this isn't comic books or superheros. This is real life, and sometimes the pain can seem unbearable.