Hunger
“I was a young kid. I didn’t know much about anything and I was scared.” — Rindy
May-October 1975
weren’t leaving soaked into our bones. It rained on our heads and ate our feet like mud. It started with a few panicked whispers then turned into an exchange of blank stares and the sound of starving stomachs. Each person sank into his or her fate like a bug realizing the spider has caught it in its web, a binding too tight to escape. The meager food rations of porridge or salty broth with a little rice, dwindled. The portions became too small to sustain any of us. Those in the camp began to faint from hunger and some couldn’t walk to get the little bit of food that was allotted to them.
“Angkar has just won a great victory and is poor because of the great losses and the struggle,” the soldiers would say as we lined up to get food. “But only for a short time. Angkar will provide food for us, but sometimes the food will be late. That is why we must plant rice. With rice we will be wealthy and happy. Rice is life.”
Later that night, Khan and the man who had built a shelter next to us spoke in whispers.
“There just isn’t rice.” The man looked around, making sure a Khmer Rouge wasn’t patrolling.
“What do you mean?” Khan spat.
“Keep your voice down,”the man hissed. “I heard the typical rice crops in Cambodia had been affected badly by the war, but I never could have expected it to be this bad.”
“Yes,” said Khan. “I heard soldiers talk about tramping through rice paddies while they fought for the Lon Nol, destroying crop after crop.” Khan was still concealing his identity, but I knew he had tramped through rice paddies himself. “Many left planting rice to fight in the war on one side or the other because they couldn’t farm their fields in peace and needed an income. Looks like most joined the Khmer Rouge.”
“It’s true, but the Americans drove them there.” The man’s tone was laced with barely suppressed rage. “I had a brother in Kandal Province who was killed by the B-52 bombs—he and his whole village were destroyed. The bombs took out rice paddies for miles around, and I doubt they will be farmed for years to come. That was just one small village. It happened in hundreds of villages.”
Khan and the man stopped talking when the patrolling soldier stopped nearby to light a cigarette. I heard the click of his lighter and then silence. I fell asleep and dreamed of a tiger, crouching in a rice paddy, creeping closer and closer to me, but I was unable to move, unable to flee.
The days passed into weeks, which passed into months of plowing and planting the rice paddies. Soaking rain fell most nights, so the Khmer Rouge allowed us three days to build stronger shelters. Vuthy and I helped Khan cut bamboo poles and weave together palm leaf strips to make the walls and a roof for our shelter. We draped tarps over the top to keep out the rain. It wasn’t large, but when we laid down, we all fit. Khan yelled at us several times for not doing it right or cutting the poles too short, but he didn’t beat us because the Khmer Rouge came over and yelled at him to quiet down. He feared them, and I too had found some one to fear far more than I had feared Khan.
Water flowing through the paddies brought life. But when we tried to gather snails or frogs from the rice paddies as we worked, the Khmer Rouge would bark, “Do not stop to get snails. Plant rice. Rice will sustain us. If you have time to pick up snails, you are not working hard enough. If you do not work, you do not eat.” So we got better about collecting them when the soldiers turned their backs.
Some tried to fill their stomachs with rice seeds as they planted, but anyone who was caught doing that was shot. Because “stealing from the collective to feed the individual was a grave offense,” according to the Khmer Rouge.
When we weren’t working in the paddies or at the talking meetings the Khmer Rouge gave each night, the sound of suffering was worse. One old woman near our camp lay so still that I thought she was dead, but someone came and slapped her face repeatedly until she sat up. A piece of mango peeling was produced, and she quietly nibbled on it, with shrunken cheeks and knobby fingers. Another man had such swollen legs that he couldn’t walk and began to moan so loudly that the soldiers yelled at him to keep quiet. He could barely make it back and forth from the hole he had dug to relieve himself. Vomit and diarrhea were all over the ground in stinking piles.
So far, sickness had not touched our family, but soon Mteay’s milk dried up and Tang began to cry ceaselessly, always clawing at her shrunken breasts. We each reserved some of our food for her, but she only got sicker. The baby’s formerly chubby frame was riveted with hunger and her stick-thin arms and legs writhed through the air as if being prodded and poked. Starvation sunk its fingers into her tiny frame, refusing to let go. Mteay rocked her in her arms as she wept through bloodshot eyes, teetering from side to side. At night when it was worse, I snuck to the edge of the rice paddy to look for fish or snails for her to eat, but they were hard for her to chew, even when Mteay cooked them and mashed them up.
Crying, coughing and desperation settled over the camp like an inescapable cloud. The soldiers became even more severe. They gripped the stalks of their guns tightly and paced down each row to discourage any ideas of rebellion. But starving people had a difficult time following rules. Panic began to slither amongst us and bit some harder than others.
Early one morning, a commotion started in the far end of the camp. I watched as a large truck pulled up to one of the houses the Khmer Rouge cadre's occupied. The soldiers began to unload supplies. I stood, knees shaking with hope; the desperate hope that the truck contained food.
The colors of sunrise brought the smell of rice cooking with prahok an aroma I hadn’t smelt in the months since we had moved to the camp. One man, unable to quell his hunger any longer, lunged toward one of the caldrons cooking the rice and plunged his hand into the boiling water. The soldiers reacted quickly, pulling him back and casting him into the dirt as he clutched futilely at the few grains sticking to the blisters already forming on his hand. Every eye was glued on the pots, and the camp was filled with the sound of empty stomachs, clamoring for food.
Some of the Khmer Rouge soldiers stood around the pots, smoking cigarettes and laughing as the sun cast long shadows across the ground. The smell of food mixed with the smoke of their cigarettes nearly drove me mad. When the rice was done, the soldiers lined up on both sides of the pots to take turns eating their fill while others patrolled the camp. My mouth was dry, but I managed to summon enough moisture to wet my lips as I looked longingly at the soldiers with rice grains dribbling from their chins as they ate with their bowls and spoons. They often kept their spoons in their pockets, being as dear to them as their guns, but with each meal, we had to leave ours in a big pot at the end of the food line. We all stared, our eyes clapped on the men eating.
At last, the barking command came for us to line up in two rows, and the whole camp sprang to life. It exploded in desperation, like a beast awakened from a deep sleep. I grabbed Vuthy’s arm, and we propelled our weak legs forward as everyone began to push their way to the front. The soldiers shoved us into a single file line with the butts of their guns. Some got hit harder than others, and I passed one man who bled from a cut in his head, lying dazed in the dirt.
We were so far from the front of the line, that I could hardly see the pots of rice through the jutting elbows and shuffling legs of the starving. The line inched forward. I focused on Vuthy’s hair in front of me. It had grown long and matted in the months we had been here. Vuthy turned and looked at me, his eyes dark tunnels of hunger.
“We’ll make it Vuthy, almost there.”
I tried to think of a joke to distract us, but I could only think of hunger. In front of Vuthy stood a tall man. I couldn’t see past him, and a bare foot collided with my heel as the line crept forward.
Spoons clinked as they were snatched from the pot. Desperate throats gulped. I trembled. My mouth salivated at the close proximity of food. A tear slid down Vuthy’s face, and I wiped it with the back of my dirt-smeared hand before the guard to my right could see. Crying was not allowed by Angkar. The boy behind me stepped on the back of my heel again, but I didn’t care. I was focused on the sound of eating.
At last, I could see the front of the line around the tall man, but the sound of spoons and pots had stopped. My stomach clenched in panic as I came face to face with my worst fear. Vuthy turned around, and we locked eyes for a single, agonizing moment. The unspoken panic asked the question I dared not voice. His black eyes brimmed with tears, and he nibbled at a black fingernail as if it was all he could do to keep from screaming. Our eyes only locked for a moment, but the fear in them bore into my chest like a hot poker.
What if they ran out of food?
Catching a glimpse of an old woman eating out of her hands as she hurried past to enjoy her much anticipated meal caused warmth to wash over me. I stumbled forward, blind with relief.
“There’s still food,” I whispered, hoping Vuthy me heard, but I couldn’t tell if my voice had escaped my throat.
“Vuthy there’s still food,” I said again, louder this time. Vuthy’s feet danced in anticipation. He knew it too.
The tall man in front of us peeled away from the line, holding rice in his cupped hands, devouring it in large mouthfuls. Vuthy stepped forward and received his rice. My knees trembled and dizziness swam in my eyes. I willed myself to remain upright, to make it one more step. At last, I extended my hands shakily as a female soldier dumped a glob of rice into them. The rice felt cold in my clammy hands, but I lifted it to my lips and gulped it down in several large bites. It stuck to the roof of my mouth and clung to my throat. I sat down beside Vuthy and he looked at me, mouth full of rice but hands now emptied. A few grains escaped from between my fingers, so I searched the ground to find them. The dirt was so sifted that it made it difficult to locate such a small object, but at last I found the two grains and popped them into my mouth. I tasted mostly the dirt, but the rice was in there somewhere.
With a satisfying heaviness in our stomachs, we returned to our family’s camp. But as I neared, the air was heavy and oppressive. I looked at the sky. It was about to rain. My stomach twisted around the rice I had just eaten. I found Mteay clenching a handful of rice to Tang’s lifeless, purple mouth. Mteay sobbed as she stared at Tang's tiny body, lying limp on the filthy blanket. The wails coming out of her didn’t sound human. They pounded my eardrums like the wind. She didn’t touch the baby, just stared with wild eyes as she pulled at her hair, rice clinging to the black strands.
“What have I done in my past lives to deserve this, Buddha? How do I right the wrongs?”
I had heard others ask this question. It ran like a current through every whispered conversation, a fact and inescapable fate. We were being punished for bad karma, and we must endure it.
Rain poured from the sky, pounding the tarp over our heads as my family wept, concealing our grief from the watchful eye of Angkar. A question pounded through my brain. How long must we pay for sins we didn’t know we had committed?