In the Shadow of the Banyan (6 page)

A shot resounded.

The crowd became suddenly still. A soldier stepped through the half-open gate, pistol held high above his head. He issued an order, waving left and right, and quickly the crowd divided to allow for a narrow path in the middle. The other soldiers standing guard began plucking out the foreigners and letting them through, while pushing the Cambodians back out onto the street.

Beside me, Tata murmured in disbelief, “Good god, they’re doing what they said they would—they’re expelling all foreigners.”

“Is it a diplomatic sanctuary then?” Mama asked, turning to Papa.

“A temporary one, it looks like,” Papa replied, staring straight ahead at something.

“They’re not letting anyone in without a foreign passport.”

I followed his gaze to where a young couple stood a little apart from the crowd. The man was a
barang,
one of those white giants with hairy arms and a protruding nose; the woman Cambodian and heavily pregnant. He was telling her something, an earnest expression hovering over her frightened one. She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. He took her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers. A Khmer Rouge soldier marched over and shouted at them, his face contorted with disgust. The
barang
tried to explain—
My wife, my wife,
his lips seemed to be saying in Khmer—but the soldier paid no attention. Two more strode over and pulled the couple apart. The man cried out, the woman sobbed. A mob quickly came between them.

Papa pushed forward with the car. I looked back, searching for the
barang,
but he’d disappeared. I looked for his wife. She too was gone. I blinked, once, then again. Still, I couldn’t bring them back. They were lost, as if erased from the human landscape.

We headed away from the villa, turning left onto Norodom Boulevard, which cut through the middle of the city. Papa had thought traffic would move more quickly here since it was a main thoroughfare. But it turned out to be even more congested, its lanes no longer visible as tanks and army trucks crawled alongside smaller vehicles, its once cleanly swept sidewalks now littered with indiscretions: an old man spitting into his chamber pot, a little boy relieving himself, a woman going into labor.
Papa wanted to get off the road and head toward Sisowath Quay along the river instead. But every turn we came to was crammed, impossible to penetrate.

We had no choice but to push on, weaving our path now around the Independence Monument, whose giant mauve flame steeple seemed dwarfed by the unbroken mass surrounding it. Voices echoed from every direction through bullhorns: “DON’T STOP! KEEP MOVING! THE ORGANIZATION WILL PROVIDE FOR YOU! THE ORGANIZATION WILL LOOK FOR YOUR LOST RELATIVES! KEEP MOVING! GET OUT OF THE CITY! THE ORGANIZATION WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU.”

Who was this Organization? The Khmer name—“Angkar”—sounded to me like “Angkor,” the ancient stone temples whose steeples bear the carvings of giant faces looking down at you. I imagined the Organization to be a living version of one of those carvings, a deity of some sort, or a very powerful king. I propped myself up on one knee, chin resting on the headrest, and looked out the back window. My eyes followed the movement of a Khmer Rouge soldier as she headed toward our car. She stopped just a few feet away to talk to a skinny old man who reminded me of Old Boy. The old man put his palms together, pleading with her, his hands like a bobbing lotus in front of her face. It seemed he wanted to go up the steps of the Independence Monument, maybe to rest, to find someone, to get his belongings, I could only guess. The girl shook her head and pointed in the direction she wanted him to go. He persisted, pushing against the flow. The girl slipped her hand under her shirt, pulled out a pistol, aimed. A shot rang in the air. It echoed, like three separate shots, one after another. People screamed, pushed against one another, tried to run but couldn’t.

“What was that?” Mama asked, jerking to full alert.

The old man dropped to the ground. A dark pool bloomed around his head. A halo of blood. Crimson like the betel nut juice dripping out the side of Grandmother Queen’s mouth.

“What
was
it?” Mama asked again.

Still, no one said anything.

“KEEP MOVING!” The Khmer Rouge soldier marched past our car now, her arm raised high, gun in hand. “KEEP MOVING!”

I turned and faced front, sliding into the seat, closing my eyes. The noises outside beat on my eyelids, and I felt my lashes fluttering like a pair of wings severed from the burnt body of a butterfly.

“GET OUT OF THE CITY! THE AMERICANS WILL BOMB! THE AMERICANS WILL BOMB!”

“Pray to the
tevodas,
child,” Grandmother Queen said, patting my head. “Pray to the
tevodas
.”

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT YOUR HOMES AND BELONGINGS! JUST GO! GO! THE ORGANIZATION WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU!”

I prayed to the Organization.

•  •  •

By midafternoon, we arrived at the edge of the city and found a place to wait on the side of the road under a cassia tree. Just ahead lay Kbal Thnol, the traffic circle where Papa had told his younger brother to meet us. To the left stretched Monivong Bridge, which would take us out of the city toward Mango Corner, our weekend house. We would wait and cross the bridge together with my uncle and his family. This way we wouldn’t run the risk of being separated and sent in opposite directions.

We searched among the hundreds and thousands of faces that went by, but there was no one we recognized, no one who resembled my uncle or aunt or their twin sons. Once or twice when a Khmer Rouge soldier glanced our way, Papa restarted the engine and inched the BMW forward, pretending to move along with the crowd. I took in the faces drifting past us.

Among the scared and confused, a few seemed unafraid of the soldiers, indifferent to the threat of the Americans’ bombing. Near us a woman walked up and down the street selling fried bananas, waving a dishrag to keep the flies away. A little girl came along dangling an assortment of jasmine garlands around her arms. She traded a small garland for a fried banana. “New Year’s jasmines!” she called out. “New Year’s jasmines!” She had a voice, I imagined, a New Year’s
tevoda
would have—crisp, clear, like a bell ringing at a temple in the early dawn.

The little girl crossed the street, nibbling on the banana. She must have felt Mama staring at her, for she swung around, smiling, and ran to our car. Mama chose a garland with a long bright red ribbon spiraling down like the tail of a macaw and handed some money to the girl, who flashed us a big smile when she saw the amount. She went skipping away toward the fried-banana seller.

Mama detached the ribbon from the garland and gave it to Radana to play with. Then she hung the jasmine on the rearview mirror, letting the fragrance fill our car. When I looked again, the little girl had disappeared among the crowds, but I could still hear her voice singing, “New Year’s jasmines, New Year’s jasmines, get them while they’re fresh . . .”

A large fire suddenly shot up in front of a row of shop houses a block away. Cries and gasps rippled through the streets as small crowds gathered to watch. Through the flames and smoke, I saw soldiers hurl armfuls of paper into the roaring blaze. Several pieces fluttered about like stringless kites, only to fall back into the fire. I caught sight of a little boy lunging forward to grab a sheet the size of a banknote. A soldier seized him by the neck and threw him aside, which had the effect of keeping others away from the burning pile, now smoldering with heat waves as palpable as membrane.

All of a sudden Papa restarted the car and aimed for the bridge. A Khmer Rouge soldier was marching straight toward us, a pistol in hand. Again, I prayed to the Organization.

•  •  •

The soldier—a boy with freckles a shade darker than his cane-sugar skin—walked alongside our BMW, finding ways for us to move along the crammed, narrow lane around the traffic circle. I’d thought he was coming to shoot us. When he slapped the hood, Papa steered to the right, and when he slapped the side, Papa steered to the left. As we got on the bridge, Papa poked his head out the window and said, “Thank you, Comrade!” The boy broke into a smile and saluted Papa. Then just as quickly, he turned back and started directing other vehicles onto the bridge.

We inched forward, bumping into baskets, carts, cars, people, and animals. Beside us a woman pulled her injured husband in a wheelbarrow, her shoulders entwined in a cotton scarf tied to its handles, like an ox harnessed to a cart. Her husband lay on top of their belongings, his bandaged legs stretched out stiffly in front of him. Papa steered the BMW to the left, inadvertently blocking her way. The woman glowered, muttering under her breath, cursing us, I was certain. Finally, she let us pass, pausing to wipe the sweat from her forehead.

Up and down the bridge people kept honking their horns as if this would make everything move faster. Two men got off their Vespas and started pushing each other back and forth, arguing over who had the right of way. A Khmer Rouge soldier strode toward them and the two men quickly separated, scrambling onto their mopeds, pushing forward with their feet against the ground, like criminals hurrying to escape.

Suddenly there was no more room to move. In front of us the crowd became confused. People screamed and pushed one another. Some tried to go back, but there wasn’t even room to turn their bodies around. The crowd behind us kept pushing forward. Our car rocked back and forth as if we were on a swinging wooden bridge instead of a concrete one. Papa stuck his head out the window and asked a man standing next to our car, “What’s going on?”

“They’re bringing prisoners through,” the man replied.

“
Prisoners?
Who?”

“Government officials and military people, those who tried to run—Here they come!”

“Don’t look,” Tata ordered. “Keep your head down.”

I lowered my head and then lifted it back up as a group of Khmer Rouge soldiers passed, escorting not several but
one
prisoner. He stumbled forward, blindfolded with a
kroma,
the traditional cotton scarf, hands tied behind his back. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, his face was bruised and swollen, his skin broken everywhere. He was a big man, but his injuries made him seem small and vulnerable. Khmer Rouge soldiers, two in front and three in back, hit and kicked him. The crowds pulled back and made a path for them. Everyone was silent.

As he neared, I saw that both his ankles were tied with an arm-length rope, which had the effect of making him waddle instead of walk. With his injuries, it seemed, he couldn’t run even if he wanted to. He brushed past our car. The soldiers took turns whacking him with the butts of their guns to hurry him on. He didn’t retaliate or react but plodded on, dragging his despair with him. I kept my gaze on him until he disappeared from sight.

The crowds converged and the noises returned. Everything and everyone pushed forward, trying to get ahead, get as far away from the possibility of capture as they could. Loudspeakers from either end of the bridge bellowed, “THE ORGANIZATION AWAITS YOU! THE ORGANIZATION WILL WATCH OVER YOU!”

I looked everywhere for the Organization, but all I saw was confusion. Desperation. A man climbed the side barrier of the bridge and was about to jump when a soldier caught his shirt and yanked him back down. The soldier moved on. The man stood there shaking as the crowds moved about him, his life saved and ignored all in the same moment.

When it seemed we would never get through, we came to the end of the bridge, and the road split in two. Papa turned left off the main road onto a smaller road along the river. Something caught his attention. A black Mercedes-Benz parked along the shoulder of the road. I recognized the car. Papa headed toward it. I stretched my neck, trying to see past the windows. Only when Big Uncle rose like a
yiak,
a mythical giant, out of the Mercedes, unscathed and stately, did my heart finally stop hammering.

He strode toward us, followed by Auntie India and the twins. The boys bounced excitedly when they saw Radana waving the red ribbon.

Papa turned to us and said, “Let’s get out of this mess.”

five

A
t sunset we arrived in Kien Svay, a small town just outside Phnom Penh. It had taken us the entire afternoon to traverse the short distance. Even so, it seemed we were among the luckier ones to have escaped the city at all.

Our country house, Mango Corner, was the only French-colonial-style bungalow in a row of Khmer-style teak houses along the Mekong. Situated on a two-acre plot shaded by mango trees, it faced a small dirt road that rarely saw cars or motorized vehicles. Most of the town’s residents were fruit growers, rice farmers, or fishermen, and except for oxcarts or boats, they owned nothing more than a bicycle. Now it seemed the whole city had descended on the town and overflowed into our once quiet enclave as people from the city, seeking refuge for the night, parked their vehicles in any open space.

To keep others out of Mango Corner, our neighbor, the caretaker of our property, had parked his oxcart in the entrance between the two rows of mango trees that gated our front yard from the road. When he caught sight of our cars, he rushed to remove the oxcart and let us through. “It’s a relief to see Mechas and the whole family,” he said, addressing Papa, his knees bent, head bowed, speaking the royal language. He quickly greeted all of us in the same way, and then again turning to Papa, said, “I didn’t know how much longer I could keep them off the property.” He motioned to the crowds in front of his own house. “I couldn’t turn them away, Highness.”