Killing Fields

Gary and Marta and I rented bikes from the center of town to make our way to the Killing Fields, the place where those retained in S21 were slaughtered. The bike ride to the fields was difficult with my crappy rented bike with no front brake and slow moving gears. When I arrived, I thought the fields possessed the same silence as Auschwitz. This is hard to explain. The trees grow beautifully, the grass grows, the beez buss, yet it is a place lacking in something. What looks like weak basil plants push up from the ground on top of each of the mass graves. Graves of headless individuals, graves of women, graves of children, graves of men fill the area. A bright white stupa playing blues music, stands in the center of the fields, and is filled with over 6000 skulls catagorized by gender and age, displaying the brutality of blunt force trauma. The bottom of the stupa starts with the youngest victims.

After seeing the photographs from the victims, my headache almost prevents me from walking through this place. I light a stick of incense at the stuppa for a dollar, hoping to give the souls of the dead some of my respect.

I am sitting at the edge of the fields. A river runs behind me and trees grow in front of me. Some trees are even documented as those with purpose. These were the trees from which loudspeakers hung, playing music to prevent the neighbors from hearing the moans and screams of their dying people. The biggest of these was called the tree of magic. Its roots dug deep into the earth, giving nature a type of permanence that humans see themselves as lacking. Huge butterflies flap everywhere, often in pairs. They seem to be protecting the grounds, bringing me back into the moment when I lose myself in thought. They are infusing life in their surroundings and thus guarding the memory of the death that hangs in the history.

As I reflect, I realize that I was wrong about the silence. It isn't emptiness that rests here. It is trial after trial, soul after soul. It is so much, in fact, that it all compounds on top of itself. Like a diamond being made due to extreme pressure, or a fossil being made through time, this place has emotional sediment that has compiled to form the rocks, the foundation of life in this area.