Free Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor

cent sure that this was the woman I wanted to marry. If she could stand up to my tricks, she would stay with me through any troubles that might come our way.
    We heard her mother’s footsteps in the hallway. I gave Huoy a last hug and told her to go take a shower so her mother wouldn’t suspect. When Huoy’s mother came in she and I had
a polite conversation about unimportant matters. I asked her to accompany Huoy and me to a restaurant, but as always she decided to stay at home.
    At the restaurant I asked Huoy what we were going to do about her mother. Huoy put her glass down and tried not to smile.
    ‘I already told her that you love me,’ said Huoy.
    ‘But . . . I hadn’t told you yet.’
    ‘I just knew,’ said Huoy lightly. ‘And she knew even before I told her.’
    How embarrassing. How very embarrassing. They understood how I felt even before I did.
    What a fool I had been!
    I slapped my forehead with my palm.
    Huoy and I went for a walk along the river. It was the dry season, and the water had dropped far down the sloping concrete embankment. We could see big cargo boats and ferries and the huge
modern span of the bridge built with Japanese foreign aid, and dozens of sampans plying the water. We saw all those things, but we didn’t really see them. They existed as a backdrop for our
conversation.
    ‘You and I,’ I said as we strolled along, ‘we must build
honneur
and
bonheur
together. We have a big responsibility, to take care of each another and create
happiness in our families. We have a responsibility for tomorrow.’ Huoy didn’t say yes to this but she was smiling. In Khmer, ‘tomorrow’ also means ‘the future.’
We walked on thinking about our tomorrows together.
    ‘Please understand about my family,’ I went on. ‘I have always had problems with them. It is like a war that never stops. They are rich now. They are upset because you are not
rich. Tomorrow, someday, we will be married, but at least we already know what is in our hearts.’
    Huoy nodded, smiling again.
    ‘I know my parents very well,’ I said. ‘We must work on them gradually to earn their trust. So if I ask you to do something for my parents, whatever it is, please do it. Do it
for us.’
    ‘Yes,’ Huoy said. ‘Yes, I will.’ She understood this, that we could be happy only if we made our families happy. In our culture, the family as a whole is more important
than the individual family member.
    We walked along the promenade, not noticing anyone else. I had my hand around her shoulders and then on her waist and then her shoulders again. Her long hair blew across my chest in the breeze.
The moon reflected off the river, and boats shuttled here and there, dark shapes on the surface of the water.
    We walked to the Royal Palace and sat on a bench, looking at the river. We talked in low, contented voices about our happy years ahead.

4
Civil War
    After the coup, Sihanouk could have chosen to live the rest of his life in his villa in France. It would have been better for Cambodia if he had. But he didn’t. The
campaign to denounce him and events like the burial of his statues in pig manure injured his public image, or face.
    Face is the mask of status and dignity that Asians show to others, who are all wearing masks of their own. It is what makes Cambodia such a polite society in normal times: I respect your face,
you respect mine, and we keep our real feelings about each other hidden. In our language, to insult someone publicly is, in the literal meaning, to ‘break his face’. Sihanouk was very
proud. He refused to be ‘broken’.
    So, not long after the coup, a familiar, high-pitched voice came out of the radio. It was the Royal Father, speaking over Radio Peking. He explained that he had been a victim of a group of
‘arch-reactionaries’. After receiving power and favours from him, he said, they had showed their gratitude by insulting and humiliating him, overthrowing and condemning him as a man who