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My father traded his Omega watch for a fishing net. After setting up the net for the first time in his life and having to do so secretly, Father caught not a single fish. My aunt later exchanged the net for nearly half a kilo of palm sugar and salt.
Trade under Angkar (organization), aka the Khmer Rouge, was a risky and sometimes deadly enterprise as trade entirely relied on the discretion of two or more people from different backgrounds. And Angkar had complex surveillance systems across each zone, which caused suspicion among the population, whether they were new or base people. Everyone was suspicious of everyone else. Our family went through each day with the inescapable feeling of being watched.
A few months into the glorious revolution, my four-year-old sister developed diarrhea, and coupled with starvation, her condition deteriorated. My mother and aunt reached a decision: my mother was to find someone to trade with, a risk they both kept hidden from my father and uncle. Mother received one tablet of penicillin and one cup of rice in exchange for her gold chain. Of course, a tablet of penicillin and a cup of rice did not improve my sister’s condition. With my uncle’s Rolex watch, my father got two tablets of penicillin and one potato. My sister died a few days later. My aunt and her daughter were taken away several weeks after she made that exchange with the fishing net, five months after Angkar killed my uncle.
My father, who had never pulled a weed from the soil until Angkar put him to work in the field, discovered he had a green thumb. He could grow anything, not that the family could enjoy the bounty of his work. And that one potato grew—so well that it helped sustain the family.
Discussion (9)
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Very sad. Even sadder that despite the number of lives lost, young people still think these political ideas are good.
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We show them An Inconvenient Truth when we should be showing them The Killing Fields.
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Wow, Dmak, I haven't the words to adequately express my feelings. I think that you might have other stories to share that might inspire us all to cherish our freedoms. Please consider sharing more of them.
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I love @dmak's posts. They are reminders that we are so blessed to live where and when we do, and a reminder that others, elsewhere--even today or in the recent past--have suffered, or are suffering, indescribable, often governmentally-enforced, horrors.
On a (superficially) related note, a few members of my family are on a genealogy kick. In furtherance of that, I recently spent a morning on ancestry.com tracking down an individual who married into my family in 1922 or so. Part of that endeavor involved chasing down every person with that name who died in West Virginia between 1922 and 1927. What struck me most, and almost deflected me from my actual goal, was the "cause of death" given on the death certificate.
Good Lord.
Just 100 years ago in these United States, it seems that almost no-one died of old age, and even that those who did pass on in their dotage, seldom went quietly. A few examples:
This wasn't even in a time of war. This was an expression of the norm, in that these horrific instances so far outweighed the diagnoses of "cardiac insufficiency," or "cancer" as to overwhelm them.
Saying a loud and explosive "NO!" to allowing these sorts of things to continue, quickly sorts out the sheep from the goats. And I don't apologize for my culture's role in largely eliminating them. I'm sorry only that the instinct doesn't seem to be universal. Prayers, in several languages, and multiple religions, for those who have suffered and continue to suffer, in peacetime and in war zones.
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