First They Killed My Father Read Online

  first

they killed my father

a girl of kingdom of cambodia remembers

LOUNG UNG

In memory of the two million people who perished under the Khmer Rouge regime.

This book is dedicated to my father, Ung; Seng Im, who e'er believed in me; my mother, Ung; Ay Choung, who always loved me.

To my sisters Keav, Chou, and Geak because sisters are forever; my brother Kim, who taught me nigh backbone; my blood brother Khouy, for contributing more than one hundred pages of our family history and details of our lives under the Khmer Rouge, many of which I incorporated into this book; to my brother Meng and sister-in-law Eang Muy Tan, who raised me (quite well) in America.

contents

Writer's Note

family chart 1975

Phnom Penh April 1975

The Ung Family April 1975

Takeover April 17, 1975

Evacuation April 1975

Seven-Day Walk April 1975

Krang Truop April 1975

Waiting Station July 1975

Anglungthmor July 1975

Ro Leap November 1975

Labor Camps Jan 1976

New year's April 1976

Keav August 1976

Pa December 1976

Ma's Little Monkey Apr 1977

Leaving Home May 1977

Kid Soldiers August 1977

Gilt for Chicken Nov 1977

The Terminal Gathering May 1978

The Walls Crumble November 1978

The Youn Invasion January 1979

The First Foster Family unit January 1979

Flight Bullets February 1979

Central khmer Rouge Attack Feb 1979

The Execution March 1979

Dorsum to Bat Deng April 1979

From Cambodia to Vietnam October 1979

Lam Sing Refugee Military camp Feb 1980

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Resources

P.Due south

Praise

Likewise By Loung Ung

Copyright

About the Publisher

author's note

From 1975 to 1979—through execution, starvation, disease, and forced labor—the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the land's population.

This is a story of survival: my own and my family's. Though these events constitute my experience, my story mirrors that of millions of Cambodians. If you had been living in Cambodia during this catamenia, this would be your story too.

family chart 1975

phnom penh

Apr 1975

Phnom Penh urban center wakes early to accept advantage of the cool morn breeze before the sun breaks through the haze and invades the country with sweltering heat. Already at 6 A.M. people in Phnom Penh are rushing and bumping into each other on dusty, narrow side streets. Waiters and waitresses in black-and-white uniforms swing open shop doors as the aroma of noodle soup greets waiting customers. Street vendors push food carts piled with steamed dumplings, smoked beefiness teriyaki sticks, and roasted peanuts forth the sidewalks and begin to prepare up for some other day of business. Children in colorful T-shirts and shorts kicking soccer balls on sidewalks with their blank feet, ignoring the grunts and screams of the food cart owners. The wide boulevards sing with the buzz of motorcycle engines, squeaky bicycles, and, for those wealthy enough to afford them, small cars. By midday, as temperatures climb to over a hundred degrees, the streets abound quiet again. People rush home to seek relief from the heat, have lunch, take common cold showers, and nap before returning to work at 2 P.Thou.

My family lives on a tertiary-flooring apartment in the heart of Phnom Penh, and so I am used to the traffic and the noise. We don't have traffic lights on our streets; instead, policemen stand on raised metal boxes, in the heart of the intersections directing traffic. Yet the city ever seems to be ane big traffic jam. My favorite way to get around with Ma is the cyclo because the driver tin maneuver information technology in the heaviest traffic. A cyclo resembles a big wheelchair attached to the front of a bicycle. You just accept a seat and pay the driver to wheel you around wherever yous want to go. Fifty-fifty though we ain two cars and a truck, when Ma takes me to the market we frequently go in a cyclo because we become to our destination faster. Sitting on her lap I bounciness and laugh as the driver pedals through the congested city streets.

This morning, I am stuck at a noodle shop a cake from our apartment in this big chair. I'd much rather be playing hopscotch with my friends. Big chairs always brand me desire to leap on them. I hate the way my anxiety only hang in the air and dangle. Today, Ma has already warned me twice not to climb and stand up on the chair. I settle for simply swinging my legs back and along beneath the table.

Ma and Pa savour taking u.s. to a noodle shop in the morning before Pa goes off to work. Equally usual, the place is filled with people having breakfast. The clang and clatter of spoons against the bottom of bowls, the slurping of hot tea and soup, the smell of garlic, cilantro, ginger, and beef broth in the air make my stomach rumble with hunger. Across from usa, a homo uses chopsticks to shovel noodles into his mouth. Next to him, a girl dips a piece of craven into a pocket-size saucer of hoisin sauce while her mother cleans her teeth with a toothpick. Noodle soup is a traditional breakfast for Cambodians and Chinese. We usually accept this, or for a special treat, French bread with iced coffee.

"Sit even so," Ma says as she reaches downward to cease my leg midswing, but I end up boot her hand. Ma gives me a stern await and a swift slap on my leg.

"Don't you ever sit still? You are five years quondam. You lot are the most troublesome child. Why can't you be like your sisters? How will yous ever grow up to exist a proper young lady?" Ma sighs. Of course I have heard all this before.

It must be hard for her to have a daughter who does not act like a girl, to be so cute and have a daughter like me. Among her women friends, Ma is admired for her height, slender build, and porcelain white skin. I often overhear them talking most her beautiful face up when they recall she cannot hear. Because I'm a child, they feel costless to say whatsoever they want in front of me, believing I cannot understand. So while they're ignoring me, they comment on her perfectly arched eyebrows; almond-shaped eyes; tall, straight Western nose; and oval confront. At five′6″, Ma is an amazon among Cambodian women. Ma says she's and then tall because she's all Chinese. She says that some 24-hour interval my Chinese side will also make me alpine. I hope and so, because now when I stand I'm just as tall every bit Ma's hips.

"Princess Monineath of Cambodia, now she is famous for being proper," Ma continues. "It is said that she walks and then quietly that no one always hears her approaching. She smiles without ever showing her teeth. She talks to men without looking directly in their eyes. What a gracious lady she is." Ma looks at me and shakes her head.

"Hmm …" is my reply, taking a loud swig of Coca-Cola from the small bottle.

Ma says I stomp effectually like a cow dying of thirst. She's tried many times to teach me the proper way for a young lady to walk. Commencement, you connect your heel to the footing, so whorl the brawl of your feet on the earth while your toes curl up painfully. Finally you cease up with your toes gently pushing you off the ground. All this is supposed to be done gracefully, naturally, and quietly. It all sounds too complicated and painful to me. Besides, I am happy stomping around.

"The kind of trouble she gets into, while just the other day she—"Ma continues to Pa but is interrupted when our waitress arrives with our soup.

"Phnom Penh special noodles with chicken for you lot and a glass of hot h2o," says the waitress as she puts the steaming bowl of translucent potato noodles

swimming in articulate broth before Ma. "Two spicy Shanghai noodles with beefiness tripe and tendons." Before she leaves, the waitress too puts downward a plate filled with fresh bean sprouts, lime slices, chopped scallions, whole ruby-red chili peppers, and mint leaves.

Equally I add scallions, edible bean sprouts, and mint leaves to my soup, Ma dips my spoon and chopsticks into the hot water, wiping them dry with her napkin earlier handing them back to me. "These restaurants are not likewise clean, just the hot h2o kills the germs." She does the same to her and Pa's tableware. While Ma tastes her clear goop craven noodle soup, I drop two whole red chili peppers in my bowl as Pa looks on approvingly. I crush the peppers against the side of the bowl with my spoon and finally my soup is set up to sense of taste the way I like information technology. Slowly, I slurp the broth and instantaneously my tongue burns and my nose drips.

A long time ago, Pa told me that people living in hot countries should eat spicy foods considering it makes them drink more water. The more water we potable, the more we sweat, and sweating cleanses our bodies of impurities. I don't understand this, but I like the smile he gives me; so I once again reach my chopsticks toward the pepper dish, knocking over the salt shaker, which rolls like a fallen log onto the flooring.

"Stop what you're doing," Ma hisses.

"It was an accident," Pa tells her and smiles at me.

Ma frowns at Pa and says, "Don't you encourage her. Have you forgotten the chicken fight episode? She said that was an blow besides and now look at her face."

I can't believe Ma is still aroused nigh that. It was such a long time ago, when nosotros visited my uncle'southward and aunt's farm in the countryside and I played with their neighbor'south daughter. She and I had a craven we would comport around to have fights with the other kids' chickens. Ma wouldn't take plant out virtually it if it weren't for the large scratch that still scars my face.

"The fact that she gets herself in and out of these situations gives me hope. I see them as clear signs of her cleverness." Pa e'er defends me—to everybody. He often says that people merely don't empathise how cleverness works in a child and that all these troublesome things I do are actually signs of strength and intelligence. Whether or not Pa is right, I believe him. I believe everything Pa tells me.

If Ma is known for her beauty, Pa is loved for his generous heart. At v′5″, he weighs almost 150 pounds and has a large, stocky shape that contrasts with Ma'south long, slender frame. Pa reminds me of a teddy bear, soft and large and easy to hug. Pa is part Cambodian and function Chinese and has black curly hair, a wide nose, full lips, and a circular face up. His eyes are warm and brown like the earth, shaped like a total moon. What I love most about Pa is the way he smiles not only with his mouth but also with his eyes.

I dear the stories virtually how my parents met and married. While Pa was a monk, he happened to walk across a stream where Ma was gathering water with her jug. Pa took i wait at Ma and was immediately smitten. Ma saw that he was kind, strong, and handsome, and she eventually fell in dearest with him. Pa quit the monastery and so he could ask her to ally him, and she said aye. However, considering Pa is night-skinned and was very poor, Ma'due south parents refused to allow them marry. But they were in honey and adamant, so they ran away and eloped.

They were financially stable until Pa turned to gambling. At first, he was expert at it and won many times. Then one day he went too far and bet everything on a game—his house and all his money. He lost that game and almost lost his family unit when Ma threatened to walk out on him if he did not stop gambling. Afterwards that, Pa never played menu games once again. Now we are all forbidden to play cards or even to bring a deck of cards dwelling house. If defenseless, fifty-fifty I volition receive grave punishment from him. Other than his gambling, Pa is everything a good father could be: kind, gentle, and loving. He works hard, every bit a armed services constabulary captain so I don't go to run across him as much as I want. Ma tells me that his never came from stepping on everyone forth the way. Pa never forgot what it was like to be poor, and equally a result, he takes time to help many others in demand. People truly respect and similar him.

"Loung is too smart and clever for people to empathize," Pa says and winks at me. I axle at him. While I don't know virtually the cleverness office, I do know that I am curious about the earth—from worms and bugs to chicken fights and the bras Ma hangs in her room.

"In that location you go over again, encouraging her to behave this way." Ma looks at me, but I ignore her and continue to slurp my soup. "The other day she walked up to a street vendor selling grilled frog legs and proceeded to ask him all these questions. 'Mister, did you take hold of the frogs from the ponds in the country or do you heighten them? What do yous feed frogs? How do you pare a frog? Practice you discover worms in its stomach? What do you do with the bodies when you sell only the legs?' Loung asked so many questions that the vendor had to move his cart away from her. It is just not proper for a girl to talk and then much."

Squirming around in a big chair, Ma tells me, is as well not proper behavior.

"I'yard full, tin can I go?" I ask, swinging my legs fifty-fifty harder.

"All right, you tin can go play." Ma says with a sigh. I jump out of the chair and head off to my friend's house down the street.

Though my stomach is total, I still crave salty snack food. With the money Pa gave me in my pocket, I approach a nutrient cart selling roasted crickets. There are food carts on every corner, selling everything from ripe mangoes to sugarcane, from Western cakes to French crêpes. The street foods are readily available and always cheap. These stands are very pop in Cambodia. It is a common sight in Phnom Penh to run across people on side streets sitting in rows on squat stools eating their food. Cambodians swallow constantly, and everything is there to be savored if you take money in your pocket, every bit I do this morning.

Wrapped in a green lotus leaf, the brownish, glazed crickets odour of smoked wood and honey. They gustation like salty burnt nuts. Strolling slowly forth the sidewalk, I watch men crowd around the stands with the pretty immature girls at them. I realize that a adult female's physical beauty is important, that it never hurts business to take attractive girls selling your products. A beautiful young woman turns otherwise smart men into gawking boys. I've seen my own brothers buy snacks they'd never usually eat from a pretty girl while avoiding delicious food sold past homely girls.

At five I also know I am a pretty child, for I have heard adults say to Ma many times how ugly I am. "Isn't she ugly?" her friends would say to her. What blackness, shiny pilus, look at her brown, smooth skin! That eye-shaped face makes one want to reach out and pinch those dimpled apple cheeks. Look at those full lips and her smiling! Ugly!

"Don't tell me I am ugly! I would scream at them, and they would laugh.

That was before Ma explained to me that in Cambodia people don't outright compliment a kid. They don't desire to call attending to the kid. It is believed that evil spirits hands go jealous when they hear a child being complimented, and they may come up and accept away the child to the other world.

the ung family

Apr 1975

We have a big family, nine in all: Pa, Ma, 3 boys, and four girls. Fortunately, we have a big apartment that houses anybody comfortably. Our apartment is built similar a railroad train, narrow in the front with rooms extending out to the back. We have many more rooms than the other houses I've visited. The near of import room in our firm is the living room, where we oft watch television together. It is very spacious and has an unusually loftier ceiling to leave room for the loft that my iii brothers share equally their sleeping room. A minor hallway leading to the kitchen splits Ma and Pa's bedroom from the room my iii sisters and I share. The olfactory property of fried garlic and cooked rice fills our kitchen when the family unit takes their usual places effectually a mahogany table where we each have our own loftier-backed teak chair. From the kitchen ceiling the electrical fan spins continuously, carrying these familiar aromas all around our firm—even into our bathroom. Nosotros are very modernistic—our bathroom is equipped with amenities such as a flushing toilet, an atomic number 26 bathtub, and running h2o.

I know we are middle-class because of our apartment and the possession

s we have. Many of my friends live in crowded homes with only two or three rooms for a family of ten. Most well-to-exercise families live in apartments or houses higher up the ground floor. In Phnom Penh, it seems that the more money y'all have, the more stairs you take to climb to your abode. Ma says the ground level is undesirable because dirt gets into the house and nosy people are always peeking in, so of grade only poor people live on the footing level. The truly impoverished live in makeshift tents in areas where I have never been allowed to wander.

Sometimes on the mode to the market with Ma, I catch brief glimpses of these poor areas. I lookout man with fascination as children with oily black hair, wearing quondam, muddied wearing apparel run up to our cyclo in their bare feet. Many expect almost the same size as me as they blitz over with naked younger siblings billowy on their backs. Fifty-fifty from afar, I see cherry-red dirt covers their faces, nestling in the creases of their necks and nether their fingernails. Belongings up small wooden carvings of the Buddha, oxen, wagons, and miniature bamboo flutes with one hand, they residual oversized woven straw baskets on their heads or straddled on their hips and plead with the states to buy their wares. Some have cipher to sell and approach us murmuring with extended hands. Every fourth dimension, before I can make out what they say, the cyclo's rusty bong clangs noisily, forcing the children to scurry out of our way.

There are many markets in Phnom Penh, some big and others small, but their products are always similar. In that location is the Primal Market place, the Russian Market, the Olympic Marketplace, and many others. Where people become to store depends on which market place is the closest to their house. Pa told me the Olympic Market was once a beautiful edifice. Now its lackluster façade is greyness from mold and pollution, and its walls cracked from neglect. The footing that was one time lush and dark-green, filled with bushes and flowers, is at present dead and buried nether outdoor tents and food carts, where thousands of shoppers traverse everyday.

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