[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 soldiers of the Khmer Rouge have taken Loung’s father, never to be seen again.]
Listening to Geak and Chou breathing softly, my eyes stay wide open. After he hid from the soldiers for twenty months, they finally found him [Loung’s father]. Pa always knew he couldn’t hide forever. I never believed he couldn’t. I cannot sleep. I worry about Pa, and about us. What will become of us? We have taken our survival for granted. How will we survive without Pa? My mind races and fills my head with images of death and execution. I have heard many stories about how the soldiers kill prisoners and then dump their bodies into large graves. How they torture their captives, behead them, or crack their skulls with axes so as not to waste their precious ammunition. I cannot sleep thinking of Pa and whether or not he died with dignity. I hope they did not torture him. Some prisoners are not dead when they are buried. I cannot think of Pa being hurt this way, but images of him clawing at his throat, fighting for air as the soldiers pile dirt on him flood my mind. I cannot make the pictures go away! I need to believe Pa was killed quickly. I need to believe they did not make him suffer. Oh Pa, please don’t be afraid. The images play over and over again in my head. My breath quickens as I think about Pa’s last moment on earth. “Stop thinking, or you’ll die,” I hiss to myself. But I cannot stop.
Source:
Ung, Loung. “Pa, December 1976.” First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. Harper Perennial, 2017. 105-6. Print.
Further Reading:
That hurt to read.