[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.]
As April turns into May and May into June, the leaves shrivel, the trees turn brown, and the river streams dry up. Under the summer sun, the stench of death is so strong in the village. I cover my nose and mouth with my hands and breathe only the air that filters through my fingers. There are so many dead people here. The neighbors are too weak to bury all the corpses. Often the bodies are left in the hot sun, until the smell permeates the surrounding air, causing everyone passing by to pinch their noses. The flies come buzzing around the corpses and lay millions of eggs on the bodies. When the bodies are finally buried, they are nothing more than large nests of maggots.
For lack of anything else to do when my body gets too sick to work in the garden, I often watch the villagers dispose of the corpses. I see them dig a hole underneath the hut of the dead family and cringe as they push the bodies into the hole. The dead families are buried together in one grave. There were times when such scenes terrified me, but I have seen the ritual performed so many times that I now feel nothing. The people who die here have no relatives to grieve for them.
Source:
Ung, Loung. “New Year’s, April 1976.” First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. Harper Perennial, 2017. 85. Print.
Further Reading:
After surviving the Khmer Rouge Ung Loung probably thinks the "Handmaids Tale" is a comedy.
I read "The killing fields" a long time ago.... Nightmare food.
Say what you want about our species our tenacity when it comes to survival is truly incredible.