Battambang, Cambodia.
When entering a holy building, you should always remove your sandals. Until yesterday, I was never really sure why.
This building I was in had concrete floors. It was dim and musty, with ratty prayer flags draped all across the room. Tarnished brass Buddhas were on a small platform above straw mats. My big bare feet were on the cold cement, next to this hole in the wall just above the floor.
"There was a pipe here," my little Cambodian guide said.
"Drain for when people's throats were cut. It made big mess on the floor, so Khmer Rouge installed drain pipe."
I looked down at the concrete and realized the stain under my toes was not from mildew or dirt, but blood. This whitewashed building was first a temple, then a prison, then an execution chamber, and now a temple again. Hundreds of people were killed in exact the spot I was standing.
“They don’t tie your hands, they tie your shoulders behind you so you are stiff. Very good posture. Very painful.”
This building is on a hill that rises from nowhere. When you drive the dirt roads through western Cambodia all you see is horizontal countryside. It’s dusty, hot, and eerily flat. Then there's suddenly this mountain dramatically cutting away the horizon with sheer limestone cliffs and hundred-meter vertical drops.
This Wat is part of a small temple complex sitting atop this geological phenomenon. Beautiful views of the smoky landscape all around. They’re constructing a huge Buddha on the side of the mountain, its skeleton is already in place – a latticework of bamboo scaffolding hugging the enormous cliff-face.
In the Cambodian Civil War this location was strategically perfect. Two huge WWII-era artillery guns sit next to this Wat with a broad view of the hazy countryside. They have some bushes growing over them.
"Made in U.S.A. 100 Millimeter, aiming range 2 kilometer, full range 7 kilometer." Said the little man.
"Do they still work?"
"Oh yes, last used 2000. But they antiaircraft guns. Khmer Rouge had almost no planes."
"Who did they shoot at?"
"People if they aim properly. Sometimes they just fire that way. Very operational. Do not go close, still mines."
The barrels of these huge guns were pointed westward, over many miles of sugar palms, brown rice fields and thatched huts. In the hazy afternoon sun it was hard for me to imagine anyone properly aiming them at anything on the ground. Monkeys were jumping around the chedi right next to it, hanging on the guardian statues and climbing the radio tower above.
We walked down a path, then over a small stone stairway, and down into the mountain. A limestone cave opened up around us, with prayers painted in Khmer on the walls. At the bottom of this pit I could look up and see a gaping hole above, and a fifty foot drop onto sharp stones nearby.
“We found many of the bodies right here. Very badly decomposed.”
In front of a little red donation box there was a ten by ten foot cage made from a chain-link fence and screening. It was completely full of skulls, each with a wide cracked indentation. Ratty clothing of the victims sat on top. Mosquitoes were everywhere.
“They kill, but you don’t need to be criminal. Simply be a teacher or a doctor, read lots of books or just wear glasses. That was enough.”
The victims of this killing cave were usually bludgeoned to death on the ground above in order to save bullets. They were dropped down this shaft as a quick burial. Out of sight, out of mind.
The communist regime here felt that eliminating all education and religion would create a socialist utopia. They relocated hundreds of thousands of people into the countryside, made them work in the fields for the good of all. Any dissent was criminal. Any criminal was executed.
Dozens of Khmer Rouge leaders defected to the government side just before the fighting stopped. They now hold office all over the country. Many are lawmakers in Phnom Phen, one is the governor of Battambang.
“They do not teach this history in our schools. The government does not allow it.” the old guide said.
The motorbike driver that had taken me here was young. He was also a guide, but was distant and unconcerned with these dry bones. They mean little to him, because he did not learn. It’s oftentimes easier to live in ignorance than knowing what your country did to itself.
There is a reflection of something else here. My own ignorance of this people’s suffering and its place in my nation’s past. I never knew my parent’s generation carpet-bombed the entire eastern portion of this country. I never heard of the atrocities committed here in my own lifetime. Cambodia's story meant little to me, because I did not learn.
But the old people are different from anywhere I’ve been. Watching the world fall into violence every few years has given them perspective. Their eyes are serious, kind and resolute. Their adversity has bred endurance.
I understand why they ask you to remove your shoes when entering this holy place. It's hard to distance yourself from suffering if there's nothing between clammy bloodstains and your own skin. Then you have no choice but to learn.
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