Book offers first-hand account of Phnom Penh exile

When the Khmer Rouge overran Cambodia in the early 1970s, everyone was driven out of Phnom Penh, its capital, to work as laborers in the countryside, forced to find their own food; every vestige of intellect was stamped out, every sign of having lived in a city (nail polish) removed. Families were separated to eliminate solidarity.

They did not call themselves Khmer Rouge and threatened to shoot anyone who did. They were revolutionary soldiers. It is estimated that between 1 and 2 million people were killed before the military regime was overthrown in 1979.

In the Shadow of the Banyan is Vaddey Ratner’s own story – told in the person of Raami – who was five when she and her family, and in fact everyone in Phnom Penh, was forced out into the country. She was the daughter of Cambodian royalty dating back to the early part of the 19th century. Even the language they spoke was different from that of the rest of the citizenry.

Though she never forgot her father’s teachings, his humor, poetry and wisdom, she was forced by the military to choose between her parents – the army broke up families so the citizenry could not establish solidarity with each other – and she chose her mother.

Gradually, she lost the rest of her beloved family: her uncle (who hanged himself with a rope he’d made himself) and his sons, her grandmother and, finally, her baby sister. She felt particularly guilty about this death, as she had wished her own polio-shortened leg onto her baby sister.

Because of her polio she was not forced to work in the fields like the others. However, she still had to forage for food – they were given none. Food was hard to come by; they ate leaves and insects.

More hardship, unexplained killings, lack of privacy and the new rule that all must eat in a common room – no longer where one lived – discouraged the girl. She also couldn’t eat – a factor of starvation, apparently. Finally in sadness and hopelessness, she stopped talking as well.

Then, inexplicably, the Vietnamese were fighting the Khmer Rouge, who were gradually disappearing. Her mother brought out a tiny map her father folded into a little ship, which told them to go to Thailand, which they managed to do.

Still not knowing how they would arrive at safety, they heard the sound of a helicopter, and before they could run, it landed and the pilot stepped out. Her mother translated: he said they were with something called the United Nations, which had sent them to look for fleeing refugees.

This heartbreaking story is told with action and feeling, but without sentiment. Hard as it is for us to imagine such conditions in such relatively recent times, Ratner’s story has the ring of truth to it. Her love of family shines through it and gives the book a theme and a unity beyond the horror of the conditions she describes.

Posted by Rae Eastman on November 15, 2012. Filed under Arts and Entertainment,Book Reviews,Columns,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry