The Color Red

I halfway wrote a post, but then we had to go to the Grand Palace (which we never actually went into) and I never finished it. Regardless, at the end of the post, I'll give a brief overview of what we've done since Khao Sok...SO MUCH btw.

Yesterday we got to Phnom Pehn and we can't get away from the color red. It's the Chinese New Year, so every tree is bedecked with bright red and gold envelopes filled with money. The stores all have promotions, advertising 50% off and 2-for-1 deals in Khmer or English shiny red lettering. Last night, rob and I went to the casino. It was decked out in Year of the Goat scut urges and banners. We bet only red numbers in Roulette to honor the New Year.

This morning we visited Tuol Sleng, also known as S-21, the largest and most secretive torture detention center of the Khmer Rouge. (Rouge of course referring to the vibrant red that is the emblem of the Communist Party.) We never learned about the genocide in high school; the closest I ever got to education on the topic was looking at the cover of "First They Killed My Father", quickly deciding it was too sad to read, before putting it back on the shelf. In my courses on Human Rights at Tufts, the Cambodia Genocide was mentioned alongside the slew of broken "Never Again" promises, but I can't remember reading a single article or participating in any discussion on the topic. We passed over the Khmer Rouge for other, more "popular" genocides, like Darfur or Rwanda, and for my Latin American studies, there were Argentina and Chile to explore. In short, I had no expectations about what I was to see, simply that I knew I would be sad.

The prison is a converted high school, in part used for its natural cells made by the classrooms and part used because Pol Pot , the dictator, outlawed education, branding any individuals with any sort of formal schooling to be enemies of the state, wearing glasses, speaking a foreign language, and having "soft hands" all became crimes against the state. I can't go over everything we saw today, but by far the most striking brings me back again to the color red. The floors still had deep blood stains splattering the floor. they were in staircases and in prison cells, and they were way too real. New Years, Communism and blood - red is a very versatile color.

We went from the security prison to the death fields, following the route that so many doomed prisoners had before us. It's pretty far outside of the city, but there are tuk-tuks everywhere (their seats a nice, faux-leather shade of red) waiting to complete your journey. At the deaths fields, the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge, often boys and young men between 15- and 24-years-old, executed the tortured prisoners, dumping their bodies into mass graves that, to this day, let loose bone fragments and fabric scraps during the rainy season. The audio guide was excellent, walking the difficult line between intellect and emotion. The setting itself is eerie; meadows and rice fields lay on the outskirts of the barbed-wired memorial complex and I watched a farmer herd his cattle through undisturbed mass graves as I listened to stories of survivors on my headphones. Again, there is too much to share, but the red this time lay in the bracelets scattered onto every grave site by visitors paying their respects to the many innocent and tortured individuals who eventually found peace in death.

The last piece just happened five minutes ago as I was writing this post. The owner of our hostel is a hilarious older woman, laughing and chastising her workers quickly and efficiently, sewing up pants and curtains while dispensing invaluable travel advice on journeys to Siem Reap and Koh Rong. Rob and I befriended a French brother/sister pair when we all saw a rat skittering around the hostel's patio and the owner came out to see about the ruckus. We all made awkward jokes about the smart city rats, while keeping our feet firmly off the ground. Ten minutes into our banter, the hostel owner causally mentioned that "during the Khmer time, when we were very hungry and living in the country, we ate rats." She quickly moved on to compare the fat, rice-eating country rats with the slicker city ones, but that little comment "we used to eat rats" stood out. This woman, who owns the hostel and sells me water while wearing her silky red nightdress, used to eat rats. I think she's younger than my parents.