War, enemies and the truth about Santa Claus

“Mom, is Santa Claus Really real?” Aiden asked me with such sincerity and concern that I was taken aback. Do I lie to him in the name of perpetuating a kid fantasy? Do I set him up for disappointment when he learns the real truth? Or should I just let him enjoy the fun of a mythical Santa (perhaps making it my own by, say, telling him the Norwegian/David Sedaris version of Santa as a giant Black man). Oddly, I just had no idea how to answer the question.

Then again, we've broached topics recently that have left me speechless.

For example, while shaving my legs in the bath the other night, Aiden came in to supervise.

What are you doing?

Shaving my legs.

Does it hurt?

No, only when I’m not careful and I cut my leg.

Cut your leg?!

This is a razor and it’s very sharp. It can cut your leg if you’re not careful.

Like Tim’s leg?

Sorry? What do you mean?

Like Tim’s leg? Did a razor cut his leg off?

Our friend Tim is a former Marine whose leg was blown off in Vietnam. He recently updated his prosthetic with a fancy contraption that probably cost about as much as my home. So now he likes to show it off, and Aiden is fascinated. Aiden heard that Tim stepped on an explosive device, but there’s no real place for that in the mind of a four year old. Might as well have been a razor that cut off the limb. In fact, the shrapnel probably functioned in exactly the same way. So we continue.

No, his leg was cut off by an explosion, though there may have been a piece of metal that was just as sharp as a razor.

So where is his leg?

I think it fell far away.

Did he go get it?

Well, Tim fell unconscious. He wasn’t able to.

What’s unconscious?

In some cases the body is so shocked it kind of falls asleep to protect itself. He didn’t wake up until he was in the hospital.

But where did his leg go? What happened to it?

Well, um... maybe animals ate it. I'm not really sure.

War is certainly a topic of our times, and a topic of my life, but answering questions with honesty and without inducing fear and horror is another thing entirely. What happened to his leg? It’s a perfectly logical question for a four year old. In later years we might ask, what happened to his soul – and how can we get it back into his body and into his heart? What do we do to repair the fabric of his mind? and thankfully he only lost his leg and not his life. But those aspects are too big and esoteric for a four year old. He wants to know, Why was there an explosion? Were they bad people? Why did they want to hurt him?

I wished I could call Tim and have him come over. Not that any of us have the answer to these questions. And none of us knows which detail might lodge into the mind of a young boy and stay there for years, maybe a lifetime. With Aiden’s mind and consciousness developing I think it’s important to start sharing information about the fact that some people aren’t so good, that some ideas aren’t so good, and that fighting is rarely if ever a way to solve problems. Fighting hurts people and guns hurt people, and when we aren’t kind to each other our words can hurt people. And is that really how we want to be with the people around us?

But what about enemies? he asks. What if we just hurt our enemies?

*

The other day in a café, a young man at the table next to us started asking Aiden about his new books. Within minutes, the two had gone through the I Spy booklet and with Aiden now climbing into the stranger’s lap had moved onto a Berenstein bear book warning children about how to avoid strangers.

The young man laughed under the weight of Aiden’s body, now reclined into his arm. “Yes, it’s important not to trust strangers,” he chuckled, looking at me. Always attentive to the subtlest of sentiments, Aiden climbed off of the man’s lap and came to mine. I read him the book myself, emphasizing that not all strangers were kind and that they could hurt him, and how he could yell if anyone ever tried to get him to climb into a car or otherwise lead him away. I felt sick by the end of it. Sick because I hated conveying that message but I think it’s important. I know that preparing my son for a life of war, caution and the possibility that there are strange people out there set on hurting him is what I need to do. But suddenly war seemed easier to explain. The absurdity of fighting was much easier to rationalize than the kind of illness that leads people to hurt children. Surely there is some overlap, but how do we know if someone is an enemy, and why should we spend any time or energy trying to define this? No one is our enemy, right?

But what about the people who took Tim’s leg? he asks.

Sometimes it feels too much and these topics of dangers and strangers, enemies and why there are wars, are not subjects on which I want to make too many mistakes. We go, we talk, we are gentle, and sometimes things slip. Like last night:

Why was she talking about the end of the world, mom? When is that?

There's no end of the world, honey. It all just keeps going. So yes, let’s ask Tim. Let’s ask him again about his leg.

(beautiful photo by the wonderful Jennifer Esperanza)

Help Survivors of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia

Cambodia project needs your help to become a book! Help us help TPO.

Most of you know that Alan and I spent last summer in Cambodia interviewing and photographing survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime. We collaborated with a great organization called TPO (Transcultural Psychosocial Organization), one of the few in Cambodia doing mental health work, which the country desperately needs. Now TPO wants to use our work to promote what they do best, which is helping the survivors, and particularly those who are having massive memories come up around the country's war tribunal.

Please help us help them. We need to help TPO raise $2500 to print 200 hundred copies of a hardback book with the images and stories of survivors. It’s an historic account and also speaks to the power of storytelling for psychological healing. This book will go to all the people we interviewed, to the donors who made our work in Cambodia possible, and then to TPO to help them promote their work. In fact, the organization has been asked by the UN to present something at an upcoming conference in Geneva. We would love for them to have a printed book of our work to offer.

We’ve set up a paypal account to make this easy (send through alan@amtproductions.com once you have an account). Then we’ll send the funds directly to Cambodia and get the print run underway. Alan and his designers have already adjusted the layout and sent a PDF to the printer. This is a great way to support an organization that has such immense and difficult work to do – and also to support our work and all the efforts we put into this project to help survivors of war. Any amount would be greatly welcome!

Thank you all for following us and supporting us! If it goes well, we'd love to reprint it here in the states and have copies available for friends and supporters.

Call either me or Alan with any questions (or if you'd like to donate but can't manage paypal, like my mother).

Zélie - 505-699-1662

Alan - 505-470-0659

Some things I will/will not miss in Cambodia

I'll be wrapping everything up in the coming week and a half (while also trying write my dissertation proposal!) and so it seems appropriate to reflect a bit on times here in Cambodia.

Many things can be separated into miss and won't miss lists, but so many other sights and sounds just can't be labeled. It has been a wonderful experience overall, and an amazing education on culture, history and the work I want to do collecting oral histories of trauma victims. But those lessons will need their own post. For example, there are still a few things that I can't get used to during interviews. For example, when someone we’ve interviewed can remember every province, commune, district and village to which they were sent during the KR regime, but then forgets that two of their previous children were killed. Or when someone asks after we conclude an interview if I believe their story. This still pains me so much, and really represents the magnitude of some people's search for recognition and acknowledgment. It also shows the importance of listening work, and of giving people the opportunity to tell their stories.

More on this as I reflect on my work here, but first a few things I will and will not miss. :)

Some things I will be happy to leave behind:

-Pollution
-Crazy traffic

-Witnessing moto accidents (luckily no major injuries)
-Complete lack of communication between people – even speaking the same language
-The look of fear, suspicion and sadness on people’s faces
-MOSQUITOS and sand fleas
-Visits to the hospital where the “doctors” knowledge is often questionable at best
-Aiden's various rashes/bites/infestations/otherwise unexplained maladies.
-Spending personal money on projects organizations say will be covered and NOT getting reimbursed. Nope, definitely won’t miss that.
-Living in hot muggy climate with no air conditioning
-Lack of good organic, clean food

people pinching, grabbing, hitting Aiden as an expression of their "love" and "adoration"

-Similar people grabbing Aiden's private parts. Apparently a male "bonding" thing. (In my country there's a word for it. It starts with a "p" and ends with "philia")
-Having to contend with the possibility of political censorship with every interview, presentation, thought of exhibit, etc.

But the above-mentioned have been largely overshadowed by some amazing and wonderful experiences with lovely people and incredible countryside. Here are some things I will very much miss about Cambodia:

-Those frogs at night, whose call sounds like someone running their finger across a stand up base.
-Riding in a tuk tuk every day, everywhere

-Smiling people who love kids! After the UK, this was the greatest joy.
-Open air markets with lots of color
-Mangoes and fruit smoothies
-The Cambodia daily newspaper – a really great paper for a country with serious censorship issues
-Restaurants with outdoor play spaces for kids.

-The riverside walk at about five pm when the light is just right, and especially right after a rain when the sky feels clean (er).
-The temples of Angkor, especially Angkor Thom.
-Hearing Aiden speak some Khmer (his “English-speaking” babysitter doesn’t speak any English).
-Hearing Aiden speak some French
-Hearing Aiden speak some Spanish (Dora videos)
-A beach! Sand/Sun
-Good friends, old and new, and lots of laughter
-Ice cream, and lots of it
-Sitting in my chair watching the torrential rainstorm move across the sky and come directly into my living room
-Vietnamese coffee (any coffee, really.)
-That little market in Takeo with bowls of snails, and veggies from Vietnam
-Motorcycles! Seeing how many people can fit on one small motorbike – SIX is my top! As Alan says, seat belt laws are for ninnies
-Elephants!

-Testimony therapy ceremonies at the killing fields

- The "crew", a great group of people who helped with aiden, with translation, with photographs, and with everything else we needed in Cambodia. Thank you Vandy, Tongny, Sinoun, Channut, and Judith. We will miss you guys, but hopefully will be back to continue our work sometime in the near future!

-And most of all I will miss interviewing amazing people with incredible stories. So many brave and open hearts giving their time and sharing their lives.

Thank you all!

Khmer Rouge Tribunal response

Note: I’ve tried several times to upload photos and each time I’ve crashed the system. One of these days the conflict between me and technology will call a fragile ceasefire. Until then I’ll (and you’ll) just have to settle for text.

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal was surely broadcast across the states and various countries. One of Cambodia’s most notorious leaders during the khmer rouge regime was finally handed a verdict for his crimes. He was found guilty of overseeing (though not directly causing, the court was eager to point out) the deaths of about 14,000 people and he was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Considering illegal detention and time served the sentence was reduced to about 19 years. Fourteen thousand people and the best case scenario is that he’ll serve 19 years. There is also the possibility that he will be pardoned on the king’s birthday, which is quite possible and something Cambodians fear. The larger implication is that Duch could walk out of prison during his lifetime, a thought that makes survivors here both rageful and distraught.

If the verdict weren’t bad enough, the court ruled against any meaningful reparations, claiming the defendant was indigent. Now, claimants weren’t asking for much: a wall at Tuol Sleng prison with the names of the dead, for example, or a small pagoda built to honor the dead. The court offered instead to list the names of the dead on their website – as if most the people living in the country even had a computer or access to the internet!!

They also offered to record the “remorseful sayings” of Duch in a book for the claimants. I assume they would leave out the request for full amnesty that followed his last “remorseful saying.” Ugh. What a mess.

And to top off the beauty of the event, out of 92 claimants 26 of them were rejected on the day of the verdict. Meaning that their claims were denied on Lord knows what grounds, despite the fact that they had been participating in the proceedings for the previous NINE MONTHS. My first interview following the verdict was with one of the rejected civil party members; it turned into suicide counseling when she threatened to kill herself inside the Tribunal so her story would be known!

Court officials made grand gestures about the sound legal nature of the decision, and the great impact and influence it would have on the Cambodian legal system for generations to come. Perhaps all that is true, but claimants don’t really care about that. No, I don’t think there would have been a verdict that satisfied all Cambodians. Forty years (the maximum under Cambodian law) might have been accepted by most, but some people I interviewed still felt anything short of death (and I won’t even get into the details of how one subject described how that death should be experienced) was too good for the man. “He can still tuck his clean shirt into his slacks, can eat well and sleep on a nice bed,” this man said.

If reconciliation was one of the goals of a court procedure, then this court failed in huge measure. What Cambodians want and need is recognition for what they suffered during the Khmer Rouge regime. They have been told to forgive, forget, and move on. “Dig a hole and bury the past,” as the prime minister once famously said. But that cannot be done until the past is acknowledged. Cambodia is a country in a state of Post Traumatic Stress. Stuffing the truth down even further is not the answer. The country needs to get more creative and dedicate some of its rapidly growing wealth (which oddly seems to remain in government coffers) to healing its population. It will benefit the country in the long run to honestly reconcile with its past. It will heal souls and return the “courage” that has been taken from the Cambodian people and that they so dearly need back.

First Survivor interviews

The beach was a great reprieve from city life -- and Aiden’s three hour afternoon naps didn’t hurt either! It was with a bit of disappointment that we had to head home, but that night, July 2, Alan was arriving and we had to prepare the house.

Alan settled in nicely, seemingly adjusting the heat and hustle with ease. We hit the ground running, and on the following Tuesday had our first interview at Tuol Sleng prison with Chu Mey, one of only twelve of the prison’s survivors and one of only four survivors still living. Starting out with new (and heavy) audio equipment was a bit of a challenge, but even more than that were the attempts at trying to get someone who has interviewed literally hundreds of times give answers that were not canned. The fact that I knew much of his chronological story and in reality was searching for the sub layer never quite sunk in – or perhaps was never accurately translated. Indeed, working with the translator was a challenge—not as difficult as with the first translator I interviewed, but difficult nonetheless. I could never be sure if it was the subject who was resisting the answers or the translator encouraging, even unconsciously, avoidance. The interviews always reverted back to the details of the life story and we could rarely penetrate any deeper. After five hours of dialogue (and I couldn’t help notice my lunch turning stone cold as it sat beside me, my stomach grumbling) my patience was tried and I simply didn’t know what else to do to turn the tide. This isn’t to say I didn’t hear an amazing story from someone who is lovely and open and so eager to share his tale for the world to hear. It’s more that I’m being confronted with a culture that does not easily express emotion. To do so is considered brash, weak or worse: akin to an illness, for which the Khmer Rouge would kill.

That said, Chu Mey was the first to tell me that it was only through the presence of TPO counselors at the trial that he could tell his testimony at all, and it is through telling his story that he has found meaning and strength to go on. This is a common refrain, and this is in fact why I am doing what I’m doing. The healing powers of storytelling… In the US we call it psychotherapy, but it’s more than that. It’s the act of telling and being listened to with a sincere interest to hear. It’s about presence and believing someone’s story. One survivor described his two years in a prison in Siam Reap then ended with: do you believe my story? Duch wants people to believe that the things we say didn’t happen. I tried to imagine the living this man’s experiences – horrible enough in and of themselves – and then being told that I was exaggerating or even lying. Insult to injury but with a layer leveled at destroying the self.

Yes, I believe his story. Yes, I believe everything he said, even if there are other cases and times when I do in fact have my doubts. So it’s also about acknowledging someone’s experience, being able to honor what someone has gone through, and to say to that person that in telling their story there may be some kind of redemption and some kind of reconciliation.

The most fear I saw in someone’s eye was from a woman who served as a Khmer Rouge soldier until she herself was imprisoned and tortured. She was one of the lucky ones, and was able to stay alive until the regime ended. She married her husband shortly after the Vietnamese invasion but tells me that it was only in 2007, after her photo in Tuol Sleng was identified and she was encouraged to testify at the tribunal, that her husband learned she had been a soldier – and she learned that he had had a wife and child before her, both of whom were killed by the Khmer Rouge. This detail struck me more than many others, and as we rode back home in the tuk tuk I wondered aloud, “Can you imagine being married for almost thirty years and never sharing your personal experiences under the Khmer Rouge with your partner? If you suffered, had nightmares and difficulties sleeping because of your post-traumatic stress [as she acknowledged], then how would you explain that? If you rarely left your house or covered your face for fear of being identified by others, then what would you say by explanation? We in the West – and particularly among my highly communicative friends – are very focused on notions of clear communication and honesty, particularly in relationships. So where would this fit in, this idea of survival through silence? growing silent trees, as they called it here. When is it that the survival is assured (or as assured as any survival can be) and the silence is all that remains? Or is it as one survivor noted, “the khmer rouge never left. They are in all the high government positions, so why would we think it’s safe to start speaking about our experience now?”

To the Beach! Sihanoukville

A month in Phnom Penh with hardly an excursion elsewhere and I decided the game was up! After realizing that Alan would be arriving in a matter of days and that soon after our work would begin in earnest, I started eyeing a bus schedule at the visa extension office. Within a couple of hours I had run home, packed bags, shopped for snacks, collected Aiden from school and decided to head south! I’m writing this from Sihanoukville, about four hours south of Phnom Penh (or five hours if you take the wrong bus like we did; there are drawbacks to being so spontaneous) where the beach is lovely, and the food and hotels quite cheap. Aiden befriended two kids also from Phnom Penh and the trio has become inseparable. In fact, it’s been so nice, our Wednesday return date drifted into Thursday and was just extended a final time to Friday. I do have to return as Alan is coming in late Friday and I’ve promised to be at the airport for him. It is the least I can do.

We’ve tried four different hotels in four nights and I can say that four times a charm. Tranquility hotel is our favorite so far, the smell of bug spray not withstanding. Considering that in last night’s room there were so many cockroaches in the drain I could barely get to sleep, today the smell of bug spray is welcome! Ah, yes, the beach…

Sihanoukville is not the cleanest of beaches, and I was advised to pack up the kid and head next door to Sokah beach, a private beach attached to a luxury resort. I had been told that for a five spot we might buy a lounge chair, and with lunch the pool would be open. Much to our disappointment the five spot has since increased to $10 A HEAD for the use of their private beach, and lunch buys you nothing but lunch. “You can eat but if you start playing, you pay $10 each,” the somewhat embarrassed beach guard told us. I tried to imagine making Aiden and his friends sit quietly while we had lunch and not even feign any playing lest we get charged for enjoying the atmosphere too much. Then I thought better of it. No need to give elitist, corrupt landowners (and Sokha is surely corrupt; it is only a matter of time before the shanty town that shares their beach will be “relocated” for its own good) any more funds. Let them have their six guests. We’ll head back to our lovely site. Furthermore, by “cleaner” my friend must not have been referring to garbage necessarily, but to the fact that vendors and beggars are not allowed. Hmmpf, Clean indeed… At least the kids got to play on the playground before we were approached.

Needless to say it has not been all luxuriating and fresh Barracuda. No! I had been in Phnom Penh a month trying to organize meetings, raise funds, create working partnerships and arrange and test translators. But all of a sudden our most important partnership to date had to be finalized the day after I left the city, with requisite meetings, phone calls, requests for MOU and schedule creation, etc. to be completed within a matter of days! Incredible. Judith filled in at the meetings; phone calls and emails are flying; and and I'm trying to finalize the MOU this evening to set the groundwork for the flurry of collaborative activity that will begin a week after Alan arrives. Welcome to Cambodia, my friend! But the partnership looks great with a group called Youth for Peace which is doing beautiful work, specifically on a memory project with Khmer Rouge Survivors. Seems a perfect fit. Hopefully they will provide transportation and translation in return for artwork and other documentation. All this to be finalized in that MOU I'm finishing. But first a bit more BBQ Barracuda...

First translation-let the learning curve begin

Oh my… First day working with a translator and I fear this is going to be much more difficult than I expected. In fact I admit I’m a bit afraid. It’s about translation and expression, perhaps language itself and the way people have access to it. I have to remind myself that the people who were educated in Cambodia were killed under the Khmer Rouge regime. Those who survived the regime were often the farmers or otherwise manual laborers. The people I encounter who speak French and English well most often weren’t here during that time. They managed to escape or were away when the evacuations began. And while the regime was overthrown more than thirty years ago, there were lingering effects. I read of parents not wanting to send their children to school because they saw what happened to educated people, and how could they be sure it wouldn’t happen again? This differs so profoundly from Iraq where almost everyone I met was educated to some degree, with most city-dwellers I met holding at least a bachelor’s degree, if not a Masters and more. Many spoke English or at least understood some of it. The translators we worked with were educated at least in part in England and France. So even though Arab culture and people were so different from what I knew, I didn’t feel as far away from them. That’s not the case here. At least for now. It doesn’t mean this divide can’t be overcome; it just means that each interview will take more time, better translation, more patience, more relationship building and understanding. I’ll have to continue my search for a translator with whom I can work for the whole project because this relationship is crucial. Understanding one’s perception of a question – by defining justice, I am not (only) asking how many years leaders should spend in prison, for example – as well as pronunciation particularities can make or break an interview.

Take one of today’s more comical exchanges, which unfortunately revolved around someone’s terribly traumatic moment: I was asking a woman to describe an important memory, good or bad.

“She was carrying the ground”, the translator tells me. “It was so hard for her.”

“The ground?”

“Yes, to a field.”

“Carrying the ground to a field…” I repeat in the hope that by hearing his own words he might also recognize the not exactly clear nature of what he is saying. No dice. I have to guess. What could she carry to a field, I wonder. “Maybe dirt? Was she carrying dirt?” I ask. Translator nods excitedly. “Yes, then she had to carry a “seed” with her hands.”

“Seed to plant? In the ground with the dirt?”

“No SEED”

“A seat? Like a chair? Maybe for the soldiers?”

“No! SEED SEED SEED. From the button. You understand?!”

No I didn’t understand and despite my best efforts not to, had to chuckle at his exasperated look. A room full of old Cambodian women watched my face. Then it hit me “oh, SHIT! Did she have to carry Shit??”

“Yes!!”

“Then she was climbing on top a tunnel she fell and soldier blame her. She thought she going die but then carry seed.

“Carry seed again?” I ask.

“No this happen before”

“… oh.”

Ok, so with a bit more time I will catch context/timing much more quickly, but at the outset I don’t want to assume that a KR soldier made this woman carry shit back and forth to a field because she accidentally fell down. Of course he would. He did that and more. I just need the language to understand it. And I need more. Not just the events but feelings, which are so rare here. Even the word “emotion” is different. In a TPO meeting the other day the lead psychologist was discussing people’s emotional response and spoke at length in Khmer but interjected the English word “emotion” throughout. I still have to ask about this discrepancy, and also remember that raw emotion is still not a cultural trait here. Indeed, who would want to feel after what they’ve gone through?