Free When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Paperback by Chanrithy Him Page B

say, “Don’t sleep, koon . We’re almost there.” I open my eyes, then close them once again.
    Soon I hear children’s voices. Gradually the chorus becomes louder, “Look, those things spin!” The chatter of joyous laughter follows. A wave of young children run toward us as if we were a traveling novelty act.
    Pa slows down, then suddenly comes to a stop, causing our bodies to jerk forward. Children swarm around us out of nowhere, hovering the way flies cluster around raw flesh. They chase us, pointing and giggling like fools at the wheels. Some reach out to touch the rubber scooter tires, which hold a strange, hypnotic allure for them.
    This herd of half-dressed and naked children, ages two to nine, are unlike anything I have ever seen. The poorest of the poor. Their clothes are ragged, beyond old, the color faded beyond recognition. So many patches have been sewn haphazardly atop each other that their garments are thick and bulky. These are not typical country children but a postrevolutionary product. Dirt is a uniform, and everyone seems to need a bath. The youngest ones approach with noses encrusted with soot and snot.
    As filthy and disadvantaged as they seem, their fascination with the tires strikes me as weirdly out of place. It irritates me, at first, to watch them act so silly over something as basic as a scooter tire. I am repulsed, recoiling from these children, some even my own age, as they continue to chase us. It never occurs to me that for many this might be the first time they’ve ever seen a motorized vehicle.

There Are No Good-byes
     
    The New York Times
May 2, 1977
“Refugees Depict Grim Cambodia Beset by Hunger”
     
    BY D AVID A. A NDELMAN
    The purges that took hundreds of thousands of lives in the aftermath of the Communist capture of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, have apparently ended for the most part, according to the informants. But the new system is said to function largely through fear, with the leadership making itself felt at local levels through what is described as “the organization.”
     
     
    W e’re met by the familiar smells of the country, and I’m cast back into the past. I breathe deeply, taking in the sweet stench of urine, animal dung, and hay—a powerful formula that reminds me of the times when Pa brought me to visit Kong (Grandpa) Houng, Yiey (Grandma) Khmeng, and Yiey Tot (Great-grandmother). I glance down and realize how far I am from Phnom Penh.
    Along the path lie flat pools and small hills of verdant, runny dung left by cows, water buffalo, and oxen. I stare at the random drops as Pa maneuvers the motorbike around them. It is a crude landscape, where mud and dirt and dung are a fact of life. Houses are built on stilts. Children play not in the dusty road but in the field. Roads are where they go to collect dung for the rice fields.
    Pa and I arrive at Kong Houng’s house before sunset. The hum of the scooter announces our approach. Waiting to greet us is Aunt Cheng, along with other local people I don’t recognize. As she carefully makes her way down the steep oaken stairs, Aunt Cheng smiles her familiar, ever-present smile, almost a trademark. Her thick black hair is shorter than the last time I saw her—it’s been snipped from waist length to her chin. As in Phnom Penh, she wears a white blouse with a flowered sarong. * She smiles brightly at me, then asks, “Athy, where is everybody, your mother?”
    “ Mak ’s at Yiey Narg’s house. Everybody will come here tomorrow.”
    I quickly survey my new surroundings. A barn is used as storage for generous mountains of unhusked rice; bundles of hay are stacked near it, and among the fruit trees nearby, a large, branched tamarind tree stretches to the heavens, almost as tall as the barn.
    I stand in front of the stairs, looking at a place that was once familiar but now seems strange, for I haven’t seen it for five years, half of my life. The house is built on large pilings. Compared with the homes of other