[The following is an excerpt from Loung Ung’s amazing memoir about her experiences as a young girl who survived the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia during the late 70s. Here, the family is fleeing the capital city of Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge takes control of it and forces the residents to evacuate to the countryside. Even the patients and staff of the city’s hospitals were forced onto the roads with now warning.]
”Many old and sick people did not make it today,” Khouy offers grimly. “I saw them on the side of the street still in their bloody hospital robes. Some were walking and others were pushed in carts or hospital beds by their relatives.”
Now I understand why Keav kept wrapping the scarf around my head, telling me to keep my head down, to not peer above the truck’s sides.
”The soldiers walked around the neighborhood, knocking on all the doors, telling people to leave. Those who refused were shot dead right on their doorsteps.” Pa shakes his head.
”Why are they doing this, Pa?” Kim asks.
”Because they are destroyers of things.”
Chou and Kim look at each other and I sit there feeling lost and afraid.
”I don’t understand. What does all this mean?” I ask them. They look at me but say nothing. Yesterday I was playing hopscotch with my friends. Today we are running from soldiers with guns.
Source:
Ung, Loung. “Evacuation, April 1975.” First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. Harper Perennial, 2017. 26-7. Print.
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