New Year Baby

This afternoon I watched a documentary about a Khmer American woman who comes back to Cambodia with her parents. She came to get answers, they came to face the past and to visit the land of their birth. They had survived through the Khmer Rouge and had a story that is both sad and sadly, common. I had watched a screening of the movie in English in Phnom Penh at Flicks and had asked about it and was able to get a hold of a few copies of it in Khmer... I asked my grandma if she wanted to watch it, I told her it would be sad and wasn't sure if bringing up all these memories again would be very beneficial for a 74 year old woman... but she was interested, as she is with all the information I bring home about the Khmer Rouge.

Basically she hates them. 'Saup, saup, saup.' We watched the film, which is powerful enough watching with a bunch of foreigners in Phnom Penh, but had special meaning for me to share it with my gma... who lived through it and lost 6 family members, including her husband and 2 or more children. She cried at parts and got up to do something in the kitchen during some parts but overall I was surprised that she actually watched at all... I don't think I could have. My little friend Jayp watched too, but he just sat silently in the back of the room.

Sometimes during the movie they would play clips, and my gma was like, 'yes, yes, that's the khmer rouge' (khmai krohom)... that's what we did (cartoon of planting rice), that's what they did (when they showed a cartoon of a cadre hitting and killing a village person)'... she was basically like, 'they'd bash and toss away' (why jaol)...

In the movie, the parents of the woman had been forced into an arranged marriage, this was very common and I know some older couples in this same situation... I asked my gma why she didn't get married again after her husband died... she smiled and said that when they came to get her married again she lied (yee-ay ko'haught) and said that they had just been separated and that he was just not there but she still had a husband...

She has told me a few stories, always with an emphasis on how little they had to eat. Just a little rice for her huge family... she'll hold her fingers together to give me a visual... but even if she was able to show me the actual amount of rice in a bowl and the amount of people it had to sustain, I still don't think I could understand what it was like...

But I couldn't get her to talk too long about it... she had things to do, rice to dry (ha srow), wood to chop... basically she had to get on with her life... she doesn't have time to dwell. If I was exhausted after watching it, I can't imagine how she felt.

This evening at dinner, she played the video of when her children gave her a bon, or ceremony, last feb (2009)... in reverence and veneration. She cried in the video, but happy tears, because all her surviving children were home... and her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren.

I watched the video with her like I have many times before but watching today, I understood those happy tears so much more...