When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge Paperback Read Online Free PDF

brown, and now are dangling.
    Pa holds my hand as we climb the stairs. When we get to the top, there is no door. Metal spikes stick out of what used to be the walls of the bedrooms and the balcony. The floor of the living room is partially gone, exposing the downstairs room. Pa holds me back from moving any further. The sofa, the glass cases holding crystal and engraved silver chalices, the pictures, and everything else in our house are reduced to ashes. Where the television set, radio, and record player once stood there is nothing but charred debris.
    When Pa takes us to the backyard, the pond is dried up, its beautiful water lilies and green lotus and trey pra , the catfish we used to feed, are dead. The trees once bowed with the weight of fruit are wilted and brown. Our house is dead, and I ask my father to take me away.

B-cinquante-deux
     
    The New York Times
July 18, 1973
“Secret Raids on Cambodia Before ’70 Totaled 3,500”
     
    BY S EYMOUR M. H ERSH
    Washington, July 17—United States B-52 bombers made at least 3,500 secret bombing raids over Cambodia in a 14-month period beginning in March, 1969, Defense Department sources disclosed today…. Military sources did confirm, however, that information about the Cambodian raids was directly provided to President Nixon and his top national security advisers, including Henry A. Kissinger.
     
     
    T here is a story about the life of Buddha in which a mother carries her dead son to him draped in her arms. The woman has heard that he is a holy man who can restore life. Weeping, she appeals for mercy. Gently, Buddha tells her that he can help save her son’s life, but that first she has to bring him a mustard seed secured from a family that has never experienced death. Desperately she searches home after home. Many want to help, but everyone has already experienced a loss—a sister, a husband, a child. Finally the woman returns to Buddha. “What have you found?” he asks. “Where is your mustard seed and where is your son? You are not carrying him.”
    “I buried him,” she replies.
     
     
    As a young child, I had never known loss. I never envisioned my family without our home. But the Vietnamese invasion changes that. My brother Tha becomes ill. The mischievous boy who climbs trees like a monkey has come down with a fever. My mother sits up with him at night, dabbing his face with cool, damp cloths. But he is not getting better.
    Pa gives Tha some medicine, but nothing changes. Tha can’t move or pee and just lies in bed, breathing slowly. He sleeps a lot and his face has turned white. When Mak and Pa try to talk to him, he squeezes his eyes open, eyelids fluttering, but he can’t talk.
    Mak is desperate. At one point she seeks a spiritual adviser. The answer is simple: at some point, Tha has peed on someone’s grave. That is why he cannot pee or speak. The angry spirit steals his spirit as retribution. Without an apology, Tha surely will die. My mother racks her brain trying to think of where the offended grave might have been—perhaps in Phnom Penh, during our brief stay there. By now she grasps at any explanation, any thin hope.
    With the city abandoned, there is no medical help available. Pa has to get a doctor from far away to help Tha. The doctor gives Tha shots and removes a catheter and hose from his medical bag. Pa motions with his hand, telling me to stand away from Tha’s bed while the doctor tries to get his pee out. Tha groans. Pa and Mak are twin mirrors of distress.
    After the doctor finishes, he and Pa go outside and I walk over to Mak, who sits by the bed. Mak feels Tha’s stomach and gazes into his eyes. Mak strokes his hair. I want to touch his hand to comfort him. Then I hear a click sound, and suddenly Tha’s lips slowly widen into a smile. “ Mak , Tha is smiling!” Than exclaims happily, standing at the foot of Tha’s bed. We all smile.
    Mak says gently, “Than, koon , let your older brother hold your toy gun for a second,”