[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 area in which young Loung has been living has been liberated by the Vietnamese, and she is running an errand to their makeshift refugee hospital.]
It is noon when I see the hospital. Taking short steps, I proceed slowly toward it, dreading going in. The abandoned makeshift hospital looks sicker than its patients. The one-level warehouse is gray with age, crumbling from the destruction of war. Dark green mold eats through the cracks in the wall as wild trees and vines threaten to overtake the building. Stepping out of the sunlight into the dark building temporarily blinds me. Inside, the temperature is uncomfortably hot and the air hangs heavy, unmoving. The shrill cries of babies, the repetitive moans, and the echoes of shallow, labored breathing bombard the large space.
The stench of human waste, urine, rotting wounds, and strong rubbing alcohol surrounds me, permeating my clothes, skin, and hair. My throat tightens and I swallow hard to suppress a gag. I want to run out of the building. My eyes twitch, wanting to shut so I do not have to look at the bodies lying on the floor. During the Khmer Rouge rule I saw many dead bodies. Having lost all hope of escaping the Khmer Rouge, many went to the infirmary to die. They did not have families to hold their hands and swat away the flies when they became too weak. Like Keav [her older sister, who was starved and worked to death in another camp], they wasted away and laid in their own feces and urine, completely alone. In a Khmer Rouge hospital, people moaned and whimpered in pain but did not scream. Here at the hospital in the newly liberated zone, people scream in pain because they’re fighting to live.
[…]
Ahead of me, two nurses kneel beside a young boy. An old woman sits cross-legged next to them, her face long and sad. The nurses are busy preparing silver trays of tools, bandages, and alcohol bottles. I hover over them, looking at the boy who lies motionless on a straw mat. He looks five or six years old, but I really cannot tell. His eyes are slightly open; his lips are gray and bloodless. My body vibrates with pain when I see that his upper body is badly burned. The skin looks as if it will peel off in one crisp layer. One of his legs is missing from the thigh down and the other is wrapped in bandages. The old woman cries softly, her hand clutching his small one, her thumb massaging the top of his hand in a circle. Her other hand fans his body, chasing away the black-green flies that wait to lick his scorched flesh.
”Bong Srei, what happened to him?” I ask the nurse as she prepares to clean him.
”He was walking here to visit –“ The boy screams then, making the old woman sob louder. My toes and feet tingle when I hear the nurse say the boy either kicked a grenade or walked over a landmine. I quickly walk away and leave them with the boy screaming until he passes out.
Source:
Ung, Loung. “Flying Bullets, February 1979.” First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. Harper Perennial, 2017. 186-87. Print.
Further Reading:
ខ្មែរក្រហម (Khmer Rouge) / “Red Khmer”
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