If one were awakened under a normal circumstance, one would certainly appreciate everything an early dawn of Cambodia had to offer in the countryside. A green pasture decorated by a variety of Asian trees. The concord of the very early morning blended with the natural chaos from the farm animals: the crow of the roosters, the mating rituals of the ducks, chickens, pigs, and geese, and the pleasant sounds of the wild birds.Life in Cambodia under the communist regime of the Khmer Rouge was no normal circumstance. Still exhausted from the inhumane, sadistic, farm labor of the previous day, I was not easily awakened. There was nothing (not the loudest rooster, the most vicious tropical thunder nor a blast of artillery) could awake me. Yet two things never failed to wake me up. One was a whistle (or sometimes bell) sounded in the morning to let everyone know it was time to get up and start another day of hard and inhuman labor on the farm. The other was the excruciating hunger.
This particular morning, I was awakened by a hunger pain in my stomach. My previous supper was nothing more than a rationed bowl of rice porridge made solely from a tiny amount of white rice and the disproportionate amount of water.
Since I beat the whistle, I had some time to just sit there and gaze. Dazed, tired and hungry, I found myself scanning my surroundings searching for food or a glimpse of any hope… a glimpse of anything. Suddenly I set my sight on my youngest sister, Ali heading out toward the village’s common well.
As if the Khmer Rouge weren’t brutal enough, Mother Nature was not too kind to the Cambodians either. In addition to the suffering that was inflicted by the Khmer Rouge, my entire village (along with other villages in the province of Battambang) was punished by a drought. For months, our only source of water came from the lazy drips at the bottom of the well. Every day my sister collected roughly three pales of water from the bottom of the well to share between our three close families (my parents’, my oldest sister’s and my fourth sister’s).
Absentmindedly, I followed Ali to the well. Ali was barely eleven years old but a much brighter and more mature child than I was. Just before she reached the well, I was aware of my emotional agony, my pity, for my sister. I noticed her bare legs from knees down -- dry, cracked, stained and barefoot. Her entire body was covered only by an old ragged sarong rolled at the waist leaving the top of her body naked. From behind, through her exposed dry, rough skin, I could see her vertebra and the backside of her ribcage. If I weren’t so weak from hard labor and malnutrition, I could have picked her young frail body up with one hand.
Her dirty hair couldn’t look more beautiful that morning. With one pale in each hand, she turned and forced a tired and heartbreaking smile my way. No words could account our silent communication. I wanted to run to her, gather her in my arms, press my face to her bony cheek, stroke her dirty hair and tell her we will be alright.
I could have counted every rib racked up above her awkwardly bloated stomach. The appearance of her chest is no different from a chest of an eleven year old boy with malnutrition. With her famine face, her bigger-than-normal eyes and lips seemed oddly beautiful. Whatever sibling rivalry we had before, there remained no doubt that the deep bonding love and care between us were silently exchanged in that brief moment before she turned and descended to the bottom of the well.
Standing on the rim of the well looking down, I saw my sister crouching at the bottom of the well among five or six other kids of her age and a couple of older women. The well was at least twenty feet deep, and it was dry except about six inches at the bottom. I couldn’t help wondering what if the well collapsed.
Sad, hungry, nostalgic, tired (emotionally and physically) and indifferent, I mindlessly left my sister to her task at the bottom of the well. I walked back to my family’s straw hut and then awaited the whistle to start another day in hell.
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