In my random musings, if ever I reference world’s top religions, I cite four: Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam.
That was, until I went to Southeast Asia. It was an affirming eye opener for me to see how Buddhism is so prevalently and assiduously practiced in Thailand and Cambodia, and in Vietnam too, albeit to a lesser extent.
And I have a story to tell about Southeast Asia. Cambodia in particular. And singularly about Sam, our tour guide in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
We’ve been on multiple escorted tours by now, on five of the world’s seven continents, and have met different guides on each.
Tour guides can enhance or diminish one’s trip experience. We have not had a disappointing one yet.
But Sam was different.
Sam has Cambodian first and last names. But I will not give it up here.
The reason why, you’ll see by the time you finish reading this account. That is: if you do. Warning: it is long.
I’m a self-professed history buff, a trait that can be traced to my mother.
So even at the onset of planning for this trip, and more urgently after we arrived at the Siem Reap Airport from Bangkok, I was particularly curious about the era of the ruthless Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, and the reign of unimaginable terror he inflicted on his own countrymen from 1975 to 1980.
Little did I know that what I’d hear would overwhelm me.
How, a diminutive man could wreak such severe emotional and physical devastation in such a short span of time, on a peaceful and peace-loving people, of this beautiful land of lush paddies and dense forests that I fell in love with in short order, is one I will never find an answer to.
But I gave it a good try. To understand.
So I had been ‘pestering’ Sam about it from the day we arrived, and he kept saying he’ll answer ‘later’.
I even considered that he may be putting me off.
We spent two jam-packed days, touring the iconic Angkor Thom one morning, and Angkor Wat the same afternoon, with some serious bargain shopping squeezed in between, cruised on one of their countless waterways on river boats, visiting the floating, fishing villages that Cambodia is renowned for, where a doe-eyed kid with a snake wrapped around him (literally!) kept calling out to the American tourists for ‘one Doellaar’. And if you wanted to pet the slimy one, the ‘Doellaar’ fee would double. 😱
Upon seeing this kid’s picture with the reptile draped on him and reading my caption on it, one of my daughters (who shall remain nameless for now) wailed in a text, ‘Mum! PLEASE tell me Dad gave him the Dollar’.
To anybody who travels to this region, I’d recommend taking a boatload of George Washingtons. We almost had to have our daughters wire transfer us some serious Greens. 😁 They’ll come in handy.
Cambodians are like tadpoles. If you take them out of water, they will not survive.
Once, on one such boat excursions, when there didn’t seem to be many life jackets on board (a code violation!), I, who’s ‘swim-deficient’, asked Sam if there were commonly any boating accidents. He smiled and said, Never. These ‘skippers’ are professionals at their craft, and accidents or capsizing are unthinkable to them.
Two days, thus, flew by.
Then on the last day, and literally in the last hour he was with us, there in the treasured privacy of our bus where no one from the ruling class could overhear us, and in the presence of thirty-four trusted well-wishers from America, who’d never give him up in a million for a million, Sam opened up his heart’s floodgates and told us a, his, story.
The previous two days, Sam had been jovial, always smiling, even cracking lame jokes in his less than stellar English.
Suddenly in the secluded space of that big tour bus, Sam’s talking lane and his demeanor took a detour.
The ride from our hotel in Siem Reap to the airport took a bit more than an hour.
In that one hour, I heard a story from Sam that, well, let me just say, I’ll never be the same again.
Cambodian people stole my heart. And Sam broke it.
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Sam’s Story.
He was born in 1969. he was 6 years old when Khmer Rouge was swept into power. Rouge is French for Red, as in Blood. The leaders of this bloody movement were French-educated and got caught up in the Communist Revolution that was sweeping across France and all of Europe in the 50’s and the 60’s.
Only the Rouge applied its ideologies indescribably more ruthlessly in Cambodia.
Pol Pot wanted to create a fully Agrarian Society where everybody tilled the land and all were equal. He saw that as a way forward to Utopia.
The movement had no use for the ‘rich’ and the educated, they were not good or needed for the land.
And if the ‘privileged’ didn’t submit voluntarily, then they’d be forced to do so, and if that didn’t work, they’d be promptly eliminated. That simple.
In this ‘inhuman experiment that involved humans’, 3 million ordinary Cambodians were slaughtered, their crime being ‘Upper, or Middle Class’.
Sam’s father was a relatively high-ranking official and had to flee the homestead or be killed, and was not seen for years.
Sam lost his entire family which included his siblings, and an aunt who had a 2-year old child. Wish you could have seen Sam’s face when he talked about this aunt and the child. Someway, his mother was spared.
The K. Rouge effortlessly enlisted adherents by compelling and deceitful propaganda, one that included accounts that the ‘rich’ were all working for the American CIA. And without a doubt, Americans were out to kill them as they did in Vietnam. Right? What part of it don’t you understand?
The villagers, who were censored from Western news outlets, had no way of knowing otherwise.
Neighbours were encouraged to report on neighbours.
Some of the recruits were boys ten and twelve years old. A corruptible age.
Their forces would come into households and demand people to show their hands. If they were not weathered as that of a farmer, they’d be shot.
Once, Sam was at a ‘party’ with other ‘invited’ guests, all dressed up, some even in ties and western attire, treated to sumptuous food, and halfway through, the members of the military who were mingling with the crowd started shooting ‘guests’ one by one.
Sam sprinted out of the hall and into the forest. He was ten years old.
As if all this wasn’t enough, the Khmers put cow manure into the countryside’s water wells.
This continued on to the point where the family had nothing left to eat, and finally, one day, out of desperation and in spite of his mother’s vehement objections, Sam enlisted in the army. He said to his mother, ‘we need money’. Simple as that.
There, in the military, Sam lost part of his hearing from being exposed to frequent firing of mortar shells, and part of his eyesight from the vapor and the noxious fumes that filled his Jeep. Sam wore glasses with very thick lenses.
In a remarkably positive ending, Sam returned home after the Khmer R. was defeated (with aid from the West, mostly America’s, I might add).
Subsequently, Sam joined a Buddhist Monastery, where he discovered Buddhist Ways of attaining peace by letting go, and learned to cope with the psycho-scars of his young life.
This interlude also led him to make the decision to attend a university where he majored in Tourism and studied English, enabling him to become a Tour Manager for an American Tour Company.
By all accounts, it’s a good job, even coveted.
The entire time Sam was conveying all this, pitch silence flooded the vehicle carrying 34 utterly privileged Americans, whose DNA Double Helix is encrypted with the assumption that God has endowed all Humans with certain Unalienable Rights – Rights to Freedoms Of Speech, Expression, Press, Assembly and of Petitioning The Government.
Sam took out collective breath away, allowing the silence to speak volumes.
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This is where I turn pontifical.
As with Human Species being Universal, I ask the same question as all of us.
Why does a Creator God, Benevolent and Omnipotent, allow this?
I don’t profess to know even in the slightest.
Why does He allow six million of His Chosen (Chosen to give the world The Law, The Polio Vaccine, Google, and Jesus) to burn in an oven?
But a morsel of persuasion is this.
The same Gene Pool, the same Genetic Material, that created one such as Pol Pot also gave us Sam.
The two were given the same chances and backgrounds with a bi-polar gulf between their paths.
I’m not suggesting the use of Free Will here. No Bible Verse is going to do the trick either.
But: (there are always the ‘ifs and the buts’, you know!)
When we cry out in an arid desert, God doesn’t suddenly turn the desert into fruit orchards with streams flowing through them.
He leads us to that drop that prevents death from dehydration.
Ishmael was given the only drop of water that the desert could muster up.
Now, why was Sam spared and not his siblings? Why was Elie Wiesel, but not his family?
Don’t yell at me, Sam was spared to give some extremely pampered Americans from highly fortunate circumstances a Massive Display Of Humanity.
My hunch is that everyone emptied out their wallets for Sam that day, before we strolled into the terminal for our next leg of flight.
On a side note, Elie Wiesel taught our niece a class on Religion when she was a student at the Boston University Medical School some 30 years ago. Dr. Wiesel’s course was the most sought-after class on campus at the time, and next to impossible to get into, there was a long waiting list, but Med students were given preference of registration. The syllabus-makers must have figured, The physicians-in-training needed to be injected with a good dose of about Humanity, as well.
OK, back, When we started our tour in Bangkok, our guide, Otto, instructed us on how Southeast Asians greet each other. It is with hands clasped in a prayerful gesture, like the Indian Namaste, and not with a handshake. All of us pretty much adhered to that the entire time.
As I was getting out of the bus to step into the Terminal for our flight to Saigon, I put my carry-on bag to the side, and gave Sam the biggest hug I could manage. He, in turn, gave me the biggest smile he could conjure up, and returned the hug in equal measure.
I returned home with immense admiration for the Buddhist religion (an offshoot of Hinduism, another Opinion Piece in the making).
There was nothing in it that I found to be incompatible with my faith.
That Dogged Seeking of Peace is what enabled Sam to Live and Tell.
On our last day in Hanoi, while we were waiting in the hotel lobby for our ride to the airport and our final flight home, I had one last question for Tom, our guide in Vietnam (if only to understand his religion better).
I asked, suppose you had a child who suffers of some dreadful disease, do you pray to God to make him better?
Tom, softly looked me in the eye and said, ‘no, Mercy, this is not what we believe. We believe, If you do Good, the Good will come back to you’.
How can I argue with that?
I have always loved our many trips to Europe, with its Cobble-stoned streets, the side walk Cafes, the Cappuccinos in the small China cups and saucers with a dainty spoon perched to the side, and served with a side of Biscotti. A piece of Heaven, I might say.
There I was in Cambodia, farthest from those sparkling Euro streets in miles and feel, and I ended up loving the Place, the Peasants, the Paddies, The Peace that Permeates, and of course The Pho, just the same. Who would have thought?
Post Script: The Cambodian American Story
One more bit to narrate, if you’ll indulge me.
Our company, being physically close to Lowell MA, and Lowell having been known at one time as the Cambodian Capital of America, employs many Cambodians.
So my Cambodian co-workers, there are about seven of them, came inquiring about our trip as soon as I showed up on the Monday after our arrival back Stateside, to hear about A Country They’ve Never Seen.
Even as I thought I knew bits about them, there were many more missing pieces.
All of these seven were born in the US.
Their parents had escaped the Khmer Rouge, the details are too harrowing to go into here, lived in refugee camps in Thailand, and then some benevolent American guy sponsored them through some church in MA, and they were brought to Lowell, MA.
All in their late 20’s or early 30’s, know only minimally about the atrocities that caused their parents to flee, because the parents simply weren’t talking. Still aren’t.
None of the parents (thereby none of the children), has gone back to Cambodia, ever, the memories are too painful, or they have no relatives left, they were the last ones to escape alive.
One, named An, told me her mother gave birth to her older brother in the jungle while fleeing, and she and her siblings in America were not allowed to watch ‘The Killing Fields’ while still residing at home.
No further tales, I said enough, but this much I felt compelled to convey.
And I strongly suggest that you, please, watch the movie, ‘The Killing Fields’.
By now I’m sure you feel as though you could’ve read ‘The War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy, and in less time. And you would have read a classic. 😉
Nevertheless, If you made it to here, thank you.
Hope it achieved giving you a minimal feel for the history of a Place Called Cambodia and the magnificent resilience of its people.
History lives in the telling and retelling.
wish you all Travel Mercies…
mercy
mercy's musings 