A feature article in The Cambodia Daily last weekend profiled the life of a typical teenage girl living in the northern provinces of Cambodia, a pretty young student looking forward to leaving the simple, somewhat secluded rural life behind as she moves to the big city of Phnom Penh to pursue her dream of studying accounting at a university; the only unusual part of this story, the only somewhat disturbing part, is the identity of her father -- Pol Pot.
Yes, that Pol Pot, the deceased lunatic leader of Democratic Kampuchea, that bizarre visionary who attempted to create an agrarian utopia, a worker's paradise, and instead launched four years of torture, deprivation and starvation that killed two million Cambodians. He ended up somehow surviving into the late nineties, eventually dying of natural causes in rural Cambodia.
The fact that his daughter is still alive, and contemplating studying at a university here in Phnom Penh is more than a little strange -- it's downright surreal, if only because, up until a few months ago, I was teaching here, and she could very well have ended up in one of my classes.
Think about it. It'd be like Hitler or Stalin's kid coming to class. Come on in, pull up the chair, have a seat. And what does your father do?
I'm not sure how much this girl knows about what her father did. I'm not sure how many other people know her identity. From the article, she came across as being, well, typically Cambodian -- kind and simple and a little naive. There was even a recent picture of Pol Pot in his final years accompanying the article, looking very much like a benevolent, content old codger as he posed with a group of grinning children, teeth flashing white against their dark sin.
There have been a few letters to the paper the last few days, angry letters, in which this young girl is reminded that yes, yes, of course, she bears no responsibility for her father's actions. She is innocent, and deserves the right to get on with her life and become the best person she can. Yet the smiling, harmless elderly man in the photos was the butcher of Asia, and many, many Cambodians were robbed of their own photos of wide grins and white teeth, fathers, grandfathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, slaughtered and starved and their families deprived of mementoes, companionship, life. There were millions of people whose lives were ruined directly due to the actions of father -- and she has the obligation (if not the burden) of understanding who her father was, and what his affect on this land has been. I don't envy her, or her years ahead.
Cambodia is a country that seems to live in the present and draw comfort (and horror) from the past. The future is far-off land that may very well be reached, but getting there is not a priority. The majesty of the Angkor Wat temples is offset by the destruction of Pol Pot's regime, a brutal reign that has put the country back fifty, if not a hundred years. The whole nation is an open sore and a gaping wound; the psychological wounds are not only fresh, but piercing. You live for today and only today, seems to be the strategy, in politics and business and life.
And here is Pol Pot's daugther, somewhat oblivious, it seems, to her father's legacy and impact on her native land. She has a shy smile and dark hair and, most likely, a shoddy bicycle that she uses to ride the uneven, bumpy roads of her village. She was a child of a horror that had finished long before she was born, true, but she is coming of age, and learning about life, and there will come a point in the not-too-distant future when she will more fully understand where her bloodlines run.
She deserves a good life, a fulfilling life. She has the right to go to school, learn about computers, plan for her future. Should she come to Phnom Penh, I wish her many nights of shining stars and cool, comforting quiet as she idly walks along the banks of the Mekong, while the motos buzz past and the monks shuffle by.
But there may come a point in time, too, when five, ten, fifteen, a hundred people in the nation's capital will learn of her true identity. They may treat her with sympathy. They may treat her with malice.
She will not be ignored, of that I'm certain.
And, like it or not, whether it's fair or not, they will be seeking answers. Perhaps a nineteen, twenty, twenty-one year old girl cannot, could not and shouldn't have to provide solace for what they seek.
But they will ask, nevertheless.
And, while she does not have to answer for her father's horrors, she has to, at the very least, be aware of them, in all their inexplicable terror and complexity.
That's quite a task.
"I wish you good luck," is what Cambodians often say, and it's what I say to her.
In the years to come, as Cambodia lurches forward to whatever destiny provides for this land and its people, I think she'll be needing it.
