Memorials

From an email to B:


The Killing Fields.


Its disturbing. The peacefulness of the setting, a former orchard with a little lake behind it. Trees, benches for enjoying the shade, chirping birds, and butterflies everywhere. And then as you walk, you look down and see a tooth by your feet.


When you enter the outdoor museum, you are first faced with a huge sanctuary, where they house 8000 skulls that have been recovered from the surrounding fields. They are listed by age, the first tier being primarily female ages 15-20. The tiers go up for about two stories, skulls upon skulls layered like a cake. It smells............musty. Kinda sour. I can't describe it. It took me a while to decide if I was going to take any photos, seems rather crass, but in the end I did. Its just that you may hear 8000 but *seeing* 8000 is so different. It makes it real in a way that you can't through words. I guess a picture really is worth a 1000 words.


From there you move out into the fields themselves, surprising small. There are little huts marking the major mass grave sites. There ranged from 115-450 bodies in each one. They are extremely shallow, I have no idea how they put that many bodies into one.


As you walk on the dirt path you begin to notice strange pieces of cloth that look like they are growing out of the ground. Its the bodies and clothing that have not been unearthed, and you realize your walking on top of them. And then you see the outline of a straight white line, its bone. Its small. An arm? A child's leg? Do you really want to know?


And then the teeth. That's what really got to me. Next to that small stump are two browned, intact teeth. From someone. Someone that you may be walking on. The rains come and each time bring up more and more of them. And now they are everywhere, making their presence known, they are still there.


There's this big beautiful tree. Knotted with layers of roots and shading an immense area. When they killed the younger children, they did it by taking them by the feet and whacking their heads against the truck.


Breathe. I had to remind myself to breathe.


An estimated 20,000 people were executed at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, and 9000 have been recovered. The ground it pitted with smaller, shallow, bowls. They are also graves, though smaller and roll like mini hills connecting the mass gravesites.


I felt like I was violating their space. You don't even realize it until about half way through that you area walking on them, that their clothes are being trampled under hundreds of feet per week. Its so bizarre, I really don't know how to explain what that feels like, I can only describe what it looks like.

Later on we went to Toul Sleng (S-21 Prison). The prison from where most of the people executed in the killing fields were taken.


But I'll have to save that for another day. I've had enough for one day.