[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.]
”Pa, will they kill us?” I ask him later on that night. “I heard the other new people whispering at the town square that the Khmer Rouge soldiers are not only killing people who worked for the Lon Nol government but anyone who is educated. We have education, will they kill us, too?” My heart races as I ask him. Pa nods grimly. That is why he has told us to act stupid and never discuss out lives in the city.
Pa believes the war will last for a long time and this makes the very act of living sad for him. Every day we hear tales of other families who cannot see the end to their terror and thus commit suicide. We live knowing we are in danger of being discovered at any moment. My stomach churns with nausea at the thought of death. But I do not know how to go on living with such sadness.
Source:
Ung, Loung. “Labor Camps, January 1976.” First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. Harper Perennial, 2017. 75. Print.
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