Cambodia Tears

A girl, about five, sculpted sand hills with her wet hands, then with her best Godzilla imitation she stomped all over an imaginary populace.  A group of boys, all elbows and knees, giggled and yelped a few meters away, kicking up sand in their whirlwind before jumping into the gray waves. Next to us, a group clinked their beer glasses and passed around bowls ladled with soup.  One of them, a girl, stirred the hot pot and licked her lips; her friend pointed his camera towards the horizon.

It was the end of a Saturday on Ocheteaul Beach, and YuppieNomad and I sat on beach chairs next to low table, waiting for the sun to set. Vendors with grilled squid, salted prawns and fresh durian cried out for last calls.

The humanity – all of its festering gore and incredible meanness lay opened in Cambodia.  The violence of the inescapable "why?" is terrible. Why are there so many? So many men without faces, without ears and eyes and noses, arms and legs and hands missing – why do so many children beg for food in rags, their collarbones sticking through the holes in their shirt – why do so many grandmothers and grandfathers crawl around with begging bowls – why do children rifle through garbage dumps and play in sewage, why?

Why, after I saw all the skulls piled four stories high, walked over the white bits of bones lodged in the dirt, and peered at the thousands of photos of the executed, stacked in rows and crammed in the rooms where they were killed – why did I feel all of the humanity seep away from me?  Why had Cambodia become another curiosity, a historical note, a blurb of analysis... and the faces I saw indistinguishable, memories of abstract horror in black and white?