Alive in the Killing Fields by Nawuth Keat

Author:Nawuth Keat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Published: 2009-03-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

CROSS FIRE

“The Vietnamese are entering the cities!” Van Lan told me in a low voice as I was just about to fall asleep one night. “They will save Cambodia from the ‘saviors.’”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“The freedom news reported it,” he said, and I knew what he meant. We got the news from the radio. Of course, the Khmer Rouge did not permit anybody to have a radio. But some of the adults had one anyway. Without a battery, it was of no use, and nobody had batteries. But someone managed to rig a battery out of salt, dried charcoal and a piece of metal. This makeshift battery worked for about an hour. The adults listened in the evenings, taking turns to make sure no Khmer Rouge could hear them. The Khmer Rouge usually camped at night in the jungle, away from us. Even though having a radio was risky, Van Lan craved information. Without it, we were totally isolated. We had no idea what was happening anywhere else in the country. In whispers, the adults called the program “freedom news.” It was broadcast in the Cambodian language from Washington D.C., a place that somebody said was in America. When Van Lan told me the Vietnamese were coming into the cities, I was happy. Even though I had never heard good things about Vietnam, it seemed to me having the Vietnamese in charge—anybody but the Khmer Rouge—would be an improvement. Maybe things would change for us, too. But right now, we were far from the cities. In the countryside, the Khmer Rouge still controlled everything.

One afternoon as I walked with some other kids from one rice field to another, I heard the roar of loud engines coming up the road. I hadn’t heard the sound of a motor vehicle for years. I actually had been missing the smell of gasoline. Would it be the Vietnamese who might protect us, or the Khmer Rouge who would threaten us? Gunfire opened up. The Khmer Rouge were shooting at Vietnamese tanks. Caught in the cross fire, I hid behind a banana tree and then jumped into a rice paddy. I knew that if I ran, the Vietnamese would think I was a retreating Khmer Rouge and shoot at me. I stayed under water behind a levee until the gunfire stopped. When it was quiet, I cautiously looked up. A lot of people were injured. When I joined my family at the end of the day, I didn’t say anything about what happened. I knew that Chantha would be really scared to know that I had almost been shot, so I just kept quiet about it.

We still slept in temporary camps. One day another camp of about a hundred people was set up across the road from ours. The next morning, as usual, I went to work in the rice fields. So did the adults from the new camp. Only old people and very young children stayed behind at the camps.

While I was working in the field, I saw two jets flying low in the sky.

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