Time Passing

Time just goes by, nothing changes. Now I only have two sarongs, a few shirts to wear. No shoes. I make myself a hat from palm tree leaves. Brush my teeth with sand.

Every day we wake in the dark. The bell rings calling us to eat. We sit together in our work groups on long tables, there is one bowl of soup for four people. A small bowl of salt. If you are lucky, you sometimes find a snail on the walk to work, hide it in your pocket to eat when noone is looking.

Pick rice, replant field. Pick rice. Replant field. Pick rice. A day, a week, a month Work on one row, dig, finish, move to next row. Walk home to eat. Rest one or two hours. Back to fields.

The Khmer Rouge knows we need more energy to work and a nurse comes to give everyone vitamin shots.

But I am one of the unlucky ones. My body soon turns feverish and my arms swells and reddens. It quickly becomes so painful I cannot work.

“Just cut off my arm," I scream at the hospital. "I cannot sleep.”

A nurse cuts a big hole in my arm to get out infection, puts a bandage over it and send me back to the fields. I am not strong enough to work in the fields yet so Iwork picking up cow dung around the camp.

Every week we go to the Angkar meeting. We sit on haystacks. Everyone has to go unless you are too sick to walk. Group leader talks about who is lazy, who is bad. Always talks about crops, how to make more food to eat.
"Work harder," they say. "No difference if you used to be a doctor lady. Get that out of your head. Now you are Angkar. Everybody is the same. Work hard or you will die."
Now our job is even more difficult. We are working to get three rice crops a year.

It never matters how hard we work. There is never enough food and the harder we work the less food we get. The soup is now water and a scoop of corn.

Then the chicken pox come, kills everybody’s children, even Khmer Rouge. Not matter to me anymore. All my children have already starved to death. What do I care?
When all the children die, they put me to work with the old people. My old friend Tha tries to work on the row next to me so he can help me finish.


“Oh my good friend,” he says. “I remember you when you first came. You were so beautiful.”

Tha is always a friend to me. He teaches me how to collect water to make palm milk from leaves. He always hides food in his pocket for me. Even though his son is a general in Khmer Rouge, still he work in fields. Gets few favors.