by Chanrithy Him
Increasingly, recent news have highlighted students from disadvantaged backgrounds who topped their
classes and earned scholarships. From observing
people in my life, those who grew up with less privileges seemed more determined
to do well than those who did not experience prolonged hardships.
Perhaps adversities are not as
pernicious as they appear though they are always known for poor timing. Often described as
metaphorical waves that sweep over us and render us powerless, to wave riders, board and wind surfers, they are gifts of nature for learning tricky manoeuvres and new overcoming tactics. Perhaps we too could learn much through adversities to emerge with new life
skills and aspirations. Therefore, to adjust is merely learning how to ride the episodic wave
and surf on its power – what you certainly could not do on calm waters.
For about four years from April
of 1975, the Khmer Rouge brought intensive waves of human displacement and
unthinkable suffering throughout Cambodia.
Seen through the innocence and resilience of a 10-year-old, When
Broken Glass Floats chronicles life before and after the Khmer
Rouge. As a child, her innocence sees
the outcome of cruel inhumanity rather than the gory processes and details that
are kept away from children, and her resilience makes the renewability of the
human spirit admirable.
Deprived of family contact and food, and shrivelling with
untreated infection from drinking undrinkable water and eating inedible food in
the harsh fields of forced labour, she wrote:
Hunger doesn’t make me modest. I continue to gorge on the food. I feel
Pok’s eyes watching us – I don’t care. I’ve unlearned Cambodian table manners,
all the cultural rules. Today these things don’t apply to me. I’ve learned to
well, adjusting to today’s scarcity...one must adapt to one’s situation in
order to survive. And I’m adjusting to my new environment, a world where
formality and politeness are not a necessity – indeed are banned. Instead,
cruelty is the law by which the people are ruled, a law designed to break our
spirits. In the name of padewat (the revolution). Even though he works for the
Khmer Rouge, Pok doesn’t have a heart of stone like them. The goodness in him
has lifted my spirit.
What I like about this memoir is that it’s not just another survivor’s
account of hardship under the Khmer Rouge, using words as an ‘incantation to make things right in my soul’.
There are times when I’ve
denied my own memories, when I’ve neglected the little girl in me. There would
always be time to grieve, I told myself. I pushed down memories in pursuit of important
things. Education. Medical school. I wanted to make a difference in the world,
to do good deeds, fulfil a child’s wish. There would be a time for memories, but
I never anticipated it, never sought it out. There would be a time.
As I sit in the eerie
glow of my computer screen summoning up the past, I know that it is time. I
invite the memories back in, apprehensive but hungry for them. In trying to
understand my drive to tell others what was scorched in my mind, I recognize my
fortitude and ambition, which are rooted in the people who gave me life – my parents.
Convinced that good must come through even painful
experiences, Chanrithy Him emerges with dignity, compassion and continues to
champion for the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] for
children of war.