Jeffrey Lott

How many times can you go to the Cambodian killing fields and hear the story of the Khmer Rouge genocide? Never enough.

How many times can you remember what happened here, where bone fragments and teeth still surface after a heavy rain, like fragments of teacups and old marbles in my vegetable garden? Were I to till this soil, would I disturb a child at rest, a mother who grieves no more, a tortured man whose only mistake was to wear his glasses as he fled Phnom Penh?

Could I grow heirloom tomatoes in this hallowed ground? And if I did, would the fruit be bitter or sweet?

A superfluous sign says, “Be Quiet.” Could you be anything but silent as you walk these paths amongst the pits where hundreds of skeletons lay, as you pass the Buddhist bracelets on a tree where children’s heads were smashed? It hurts to be here—but nothing like the hurt that was imposed in the killing fields and, earlier, at Tuol Sleng.

Yet as I’ve observed before, this is also a place of great peace: sunshine and water, earth and sky, birds singing in the trees. (Do they bend their songs to blues as souls fly by.

This is my fourth time at the killing fields. It’s required by Tabitha Foundation of all who would come to Cambodia to build houses. Nobody minds, even if they’ve been many times before. For me, it was a chance to confront something I’ve not been able to deal with during earlier visits—going inside the stupa where thousands of skulls are stacked 17 levels high. Each has been carefully examined and catalogued by forensic specialists, and many have actually been identified through DNA and other evidence.

I’ve always avoided this place, merely taking photos from outside. This time felt different to me; for some reason I was ready to wrestle with the evil and embrace the memories that live inside the stupa. I knew I would cry, and I did, and it was OK. I found myself praying (not easy for a nontheist) in the midst of all these spirits, wishing them peace.

In the van on the way back to Phnom Penh, we talked about how many times since the Khmer Rouge atrocities that the world—and our own United States—had failed to recognize and confront genocide. United to End Genocide reports that between 1.7 and 2 million people died during the Khmer Rouge’s four-year reign, mostly from starvation as a result of ideological decisions made by the regime.

Estimates heard here in Cambodia go as high as 3 million—in either case around a quarter of the country’s population at the time. Were this sort of upheaval to befall the U.S., the death toll would exceed 75 million. Would the world come to our rescue?

I prayed, I cried, I lit some incense; I laid flowers at the stupa door. It’s not enough, but perhaps it’s a start—at least for me. And when I come back to Cambodia, as I surely will, I’ll return to the killing fields to grow this seed of peace and to take another step toward heirloom tomatoes and universal grace.

Here I am at the finish line of a 10k walkathon to raise money for and awareness of Nokor Tep, a planned women’s health care center in Cambodia. More than 500 walkers—and a few hardy runners—got up early (we left the hotel at 6:00) to finish the event by about 10:00 a.m., when the morning sun really starts cooking.

I’ve never walked 6.2 miles with a number on my shirt. Our house-building group numbered 19 folks, ranging in age from their 70s to Sam, who is 11. Much of the walk was in semi-rural country just south of Phnom Penh, on the long peninsula between the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers.

We set off with the cheering pack after a pre-walk dance concert by a Filipino performers. The runners were from all over the world, and about half were Cambodians, many of whom had come as teams from schools. I settled into a slow but steady gait around the middle of the pack, but by the end of eight clicks—there were watering stations at each kilometer, marking our progress—I was pretty spent.

We walked mostly dirt paths and back roads with a few paved stretches through  villages. About half the route was shaded and it was interesting and beautiful to get away from the city and see how people lived. I’d brought my camera, but it remained brick-like in my backpack because I knew if I stopped to record each interesting scene, I’d never finish. I sat down just once, around km8, before I made a big effort to finish. I wasn’t the last person in, but my hips, knees, ankles, and feet were glad to have a rest.

A few other photos follow:

Dawn on the river at Phnom Penh

We took this ferry across the Tonle Sap.

Not exactly Coast Guard approved. (I went topside.)

Janne Ritskes’ sister Nancy pumps up the crowd.

Ready, set, go.

NOTE: This post has no other pictures. I try not to photograph what I am about to describe.

The taxi ride into central Phnom Penh from the airport is typical of most Asian capitals like Beijing, Bangkok, or Hanoi. The trip takes about 45 minutes; there’s a choking amount of traffic; and there’s  evidence of growth and modernity. But unlike Beijing, Bangkok, and Hanoi, there are no modern highways. Unlike Beijing, Bangkok, and Hanoi, there are no high-rise buildings or construction cranes. Unlike in Beijing, Bangkok, and Hanoi, there’s little increasing prosperity.

Phnom Penh has no elevated or limited access roadway that whisks a visitor to the city. Instead, you squeeze through surface streets crammed with wheeled vehicles—motorbikes carrying all manner of human and material cargo, tuk-tuks and trucks piled high with pillows. beer, or morning-glory stems. You even  the occasional horse cart. Cars and trucks are a minority of these conveyances and they are at a definite disadvantage in these teeming, potholed, trash-strewn streets.

As in Beijing, Bangkok, and Hanoi, the streets are lined with all sorts of enterprises. The typical arrangement is a two- or three-story, row-style building, around 10 meters wide. These are storefronts, restaurants, warehouses, or mini-factories on the ground floor and living quarters above. Block after block, these enterprises spill out on the sidewalk, with tables, goods, and people flowing together in an endless stream of commerce and daily life. It feels very alive, but very poor.

Yet in Phnom Penh, something’s different. A film of dust—should I say dirt?—covers every untouched surface, tree leaf, and empty lot. It coats the children barefoot in doorways. Piles of uncollected trash and debris await a clean-up that never seems to come.

Some blocks have a powerful sewer smell. On others, stretches of pavement or sidewalk are crumbling or torn up, as if a reconstruction project was begun but never completed. Shot through this scene are islands of modernity—spiffy signage, gleaming glass, spotless showrooms, and brightly lit Smile mini-marts. But in the end, you see that millions of people live among piles of sand and rocks, heaps of litter, and collections of bent metal.

At one point, my frustrated taxi driver—constantly distracted by both his dispatch radio and cellphone—stops at a toll house and hands a couple of small bills out the window. Finally, I thought, we’ll get moving on a toll road. But the next few kilometers are the same impossible tangle of weight and wheels—except that this section was truly a construction project. New curbs were being installed to connect sidewalk to street, and the existing road had been reduced to rubble by machines. We lurched left and right to avoid the worst of the tire-wrenching abysses that awaited.

I wondered where the tolls had gone and how long the road had been deconstructed in this way. It looked like it had been months; even the modern road machines parked in vacant lots look shabby and idle, covered with the same brown dirt that tinges bricks, brothels, and hungry boys.

To be sure, Phnom Penh has a more modern heart—a capital city with greensward boulevards and government ministries staffed by well-dressed Cambodians with their own motorbikes and cars. Fine restaurants serve these functionaries and tens of thousands of NGO workers who have come to the aid of this poor country. We ate last night in just such a restaurant—although in our case it was one called Friends, a little NGO of its own that trains restaurant workers, pays a fair wage, and has mentored hundreds of young Cambodians who would otherwise be scratching out a living on the street.

I’m not sure what draws me back to Cambodia. Perhaps it’s because, of all the people I’ve met in my travels, Cambodians on those streets to the airport—and in the rural village where I will go tomorrow—are the people who break my heart. And a broken heart is an open heart. Here in Cambodia, my heart opens wider than anywhere else in the world. It opens with anger, with love, and with transformation. Cambodia changes me as I seek to affect small changes for its people.

The Unitarian Universalist minister David Owen O’Quill asks the question: “Who is it for whom your heart breaks?” This is the central question for an engaged religious life. And as I return to Cambodia for a fourth time, I find this country answers David’s question.

Do I have to travel halfway around the world to have my heart broken? No. There are plenty of people for whom my heart breaks right in my own city of Wilmington, Delaware. Or near where I work, in Chester, Pennsylvania. In any and every city in the United States and the world, there are such people. But Cambodia is a holy communion of heartbreak. For me, it’s the body and blood of heartbreak.

The Quaker writer and teacher (some call him a theologian) Freeman Palmer writes in his essay “The Politics of the Brokenhearted”:

There are at least two ways to picture a broken heart, using heart in its original meaning not merely as the seat of the emotions but as the core of our sense of self. The conventional image, of course, is that of a heart broken by unbearable tension into a thousand shards—shards that sometimes become shrapnel aimed at the source of our pain. Every day, untold numbers of people try to “pick up the pieces,” some of them taking grim satisfaction in the way the heart’s explosion has injured their enemies. Here the broken heart is an unresolved wound that we too often inflict on others.

But there is another way to visualize what a broken heart might mean. Imagine that small, clenched fist of a heart “broken open” into largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one’s own and the world’s pain and joy. This, too, happens every day. Who among us has not seen evidence, in our own or other people’s lives, that compassion and grace can be the fruits of great suffering? Here heartbreak becomes a source of healing, enlarging our empathy and extending our ability to reach out.

This is the experience I find in Cambodia—a deep draught of compassion and grace, of being “broken open” to the largeness of life.

The Siam has its own private launch that plies the river.

In Bangkok, I stayed at The Siam, with a capital “T.” As grammatically offensive as the upper-case article seems to this crusty old editor, in this case it just be a pretension fulfilled. In 2011, I wrote a profile of The Siam’s general manager for his alumni magazine (not Swarthmore’s). He liked the piece and extended an invitation to stay when next in Bangkok. I don’t forget an invite like that!

At the time, my profile subject (who will remain nameless here) was beginning construction of this “urban luxury resort” on the [name] River. His is an interesting story, from a first experience of Southeast Asia as a college student to post-college years bumming around there, mostly in the Malaysian archipelago. His little scuba diving school—he is a certified instructor—turned into a place for divers to crash.

Then someone told him about the Cornell School of Hotel Management and he decided to make a career of “hospitality.” I’ll bet he disdains that word, for The Siam offers more than howdy-folks, set and stay a while. It is by far the most luxurious and perfect lodging experience I’ve ever had. (Granted, I’m a Doubletree sort of guy, but I’ve stayed in some really nice hotels on other peoples’ dimes.)

The Siam is beautiful. Every detail, every service, every moment is perfectly designed. The rooms are more than rooms; they are retreats. Mine was long, high-ceilinged space that was artfully divided into a living room with a view of the river, a large bedroom, with comfortable office space between the bed and the three-room bath. A giant tub (no cheesy Jacuzzi here) and separate tiles shower and toilet. The décor was historical, with interesting collections of Siamese memorabilia and artifacts such as two vintage dental chairs (a little macabre) and a fabulous ceramic miniature horse and cart. The food was impeccable and impeccably served. And the hotel had its own scheduled private launch service to various points along the river. It could not have been nicer.

Of course, even with all my Hilton HHonors points and Star Alliance miles, I felt a little out of place. Yes, I’d been brought up into a country-club life and I’d stayed in great hotels before, but I’m not used to—or immediately comfortable with—the level of service that The Siam offers its regular—and with the highest rack rates in Bangkok, very wealthy—clientele.

Upon arrival, I met my personal butler, Gup, who showed me to my suite and explained some of the amenities. He arranged for a massage before dinner. (It was the best massage I’ve every had, of course.) When I discovered that I had once again neglected to pack a reader for my camera memory cards, the butler went shopping for me and brought one to me. In the dining room and at the lovely dockside bar on the river, the wait staff knelt each time they approached to give me a menu or take my order.

For its regulars, The Siam is just another extension of the privileged life. Nothing is left to chance here, and I thank and congratulate my host on achieving his dream of a luxury urban resort in the heart of Bangkok. But it’s so otherworldly as to make the gulf between the lives of its patrons and the rest of the world even more apparent. As if it weren’t already.