Cambodge

“Where do you want to go to?” – The question seemed absolutely unapproachable. The world map laying on the floor in front of me harvested too many wonders to just go and pick one. It was one of my typical National Geographic nights with my dad. We would wait for mom to come back from her night watches as a doctor while watching lions in African savannas, discovering kung fu in China`s monasteries or just going trough one of my dad’s big picture books. Usually, I would fall asleep before she actually got there, but I always put up a fight, and my dad usually complied as long as we did something educational, thus the NG nights were born.
However, that night was kind of different, the decision was made that we were going to travel next summer, and being the hippie parents that they were, my dad decided to let me in on the process of picking our destination. “Where do you want to go to?”, the question lingered on the air while I watched the drawings. Well, there was Mt. Everest for once, but my mama got cold easily so that wouldn’t be to much fun, maybe the pretty beaches in Yucatan, Mexico, but I had seen enough beaches in Porto Rico. I wanted something new, I wanted something ancient, I wanted to dig in into the World’s entrails, and then I saw it, an ensemble of temples fighting their way through the jungle in a remote part of the world that I had never cared for.
It was near China, even at my 5 or 6 years I could say that, I hadn’t watched all those kung fu movies for nothing, and China was pretty big. However, this country I couldn’t really distinguish within the rest of the nations in that chubby peninsula where it was located. Rivers crisscrossed it, sometimes traveling to the bordering countries making a messy drawing of water and border lines in the map. I pointed my finger and said decidedly “Here”. I knew it was far away and maybe we wouldn’t have the money, but it was worth a try. Maybe if I stopped dirtying up the walls by climbing them like some crazed spiderwoman and stopped collecting expensive 25 cents stickers my parents would consent. Maybe I could sell my sticker collection, I had tons and girls always want something pretty and shinny to make their notebooks look nice. So I pointed and smiled, knowing that my dad would be proud of me wanting to see temples and ruins, which he seemed to enjoy far more than I would ever understand.
He looked at me and smiled. Angkor, Cambodia. We can’t go there- I know its far, but-No, well that too, but we can’t go because its not safe, there’s a war going on. And I knew my cause was lost, if my dad said there was a war going on there was no saving money or strategic behavior, accompanied with a pinch of nagging that would make a difference.
It was the early nineties and a Porto Rican girl wanted to go to Cambodia. She wanted to see it, the land of the great Khmer civilization, far more mystical and interesting than fashionable pharaohs. But Cambodia was still struggling to overcome the remnants of the Khmer Rouge, the memory of its killing field still smelling of blood and human extermination. I wanna go to Angkor and it hosts people who lead racial exterminations campaigns. I wanna go to Angkor Wat, or the City Temple, and its majestic stones slowly become rain strainers with so many bullets intersecting their universe. The man made moats can’t protect it now, they can no longer be the link within earth and heaven… earth has taken over. My Cambodia: the country were during 1976 to 1979 “the Khmer Rouge murdered, worked to death, or killed by starvation close to 1.7 million Cambodians—more than one-fifth of the country’s population” 1.
One point seven million and even to this day, more than ten years later from my map wishing, people are suddenly blasted to the past with one more mine detonation. I didn’t know the extension of the war back then, but I did know war, and that it was bad. Now being older I can easily come up with fancier, less childish terms. It was horrible, atrocious, murderous, terrifying, monstrous and even ghastly. Yet, beyond that, one simple truth remains: it was bad.
Somehow, even when hanging near the local band where all musicians had lost at least one limb, the street vendor children seemed determined to move forward with a smile on their face and as many dollars as they could get. English was the way to success for them, thus they spoke it better than your average retailer or tourist worker I ever encountered in Japan. Without any trace of the western idea of Asian reserved modesty they surrounded the tourists: “Where you from, sir? United States, yes, yes, that’s between Canada and Mexico. What state are you from, sir? Oh the capital is Harrisburg, right? Maybe you could send some postcards to your friends back then” And you were trapped, how could you not buy a postcard from that kid who knew that the capital of Pennsylvania is Harrisburg? I have a US passport and had no idea until I spied on that conversation, yet somewhere in Cambodia a kid who probably lives under the poverty level knows that.
Thus, I have gone and come back from Cambodia. I saw 5 temples extensively, reading bits and pieces of its ancient courts with tastes of India in every Hindu statue or Ramayana retelling. I shared with the Americans the thrill of finally reaching the upper part after putting my spiderwoman skills to use by practically crawling up the almost two feet high steps. I nervously giggled with the Japanese teenagers when wondering whether we would in fact make it all the way down without having an anxiety attack due to vertigo. Angkor was absorbing us with its sensuous carved dancers and intricate spires, and somewhere along the gate where we would exit, under the nonchalant watch of its crippled father, a kid would be waiting for you. “Lady, lady, remember me? By me a postcard, pretty lady, please?”