The Long Way Home

Journalist Catarina Vila Nova travels home from Macau to Portugal via Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Russia.
by

REBUILDING A NATION

It is pitch dark outside. With only the light of the moon to show her the way, Socheathra decides to flee the camp. The decision is taken shortly after her mother died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The girl hasn’t seen the body, but she knows she will never see her mother again after watching her being tortured, beaten and spit on. And she never does.

Her only guide is the river which she follows until rain starts pour- ing down her little body. She finds shelter in a barn next to the pigs, and next to the pigs is where she spends this first night running away. The next morning she is found by the owner of the house who takes her in and feeds her, only to later take her to his mother’s house where she is abused and forced to work at the young age of only seven. She man- ages to escape after six months, but all the families she encounters af- terwards condemn her to the same fate. Eventually, she is able to cross the border to Thailand, finally escaping Cambodia, and is taken to an orphanage in France…

Socheathra’s story is told to CLOSER by her son, Peter Khoy, during a trip to Cambodia where he is shooting a film. The movie is a docu- mentary about the Cambodian genocide and yet, at the same time, it is not, because it is not just about the people who survived, who escaped certain death and torture, but also about those who prospered despite living in a country left in ruins after four very long years, and made it their destiny to rebuild their nation. These are the stories Peter Khoy wants to tell.

“I want it to be for the Cambodian people, for this country. Not just for the Cambodian viewers, but I want to do it as a tribute to the Cam- bodian people and the country. To those who died in the genocide and to those who are still struggling because of it,” he explains.

But more than shooting this documentary for his countrymen, Pe- ter is doing it for his mother. “This is a love note to her and her story and what she sacrificed for me and my family”.

Socheathra’s hardships continued throughout her life. After escap- ing Cambodia following her mother’s death and leaving behind her fa- ther and siblings, she arrived in France where the abuse continued to be perpetrated in the orphanage that took her in. At some point, her father rescued her, and together with her siblings, they started a new life in Long Beach, California, where they still live today.

“My mum has always had hardships her whole life. She got stripped away from her own country as a young child, she never finished school at all, and she never had the opportunity to dream,” says Peter.

Even though Socheathra plays a central role in Peter’s documen- tary, she was not the one who drove him to start this project. The spark was lit during his first time travelling to Cambodia, in the summer of 2018, when, on his first night in Phnom Penh, he entered Blue Chilli, a gay bar.

“It blew me away because I knew the Cambodian culture is very conservative. That was what was ingrained in my mind, so I kept think- ing to myself, how does a gay bar exist in the capital of Cambodia? How is it not receiving backlash? How are there no cops trying to shut it down?” he recalls.

There he met Sokha Khem, the owner of Blue Chilli, and months after returning home, this interaction still stuck with him.

“November 2018 was when I decided I was going back to interview him.”

But then, Peter realized he wanted to do “more than interview him”. “I needed to produce a documentary and talk about the other people in Cambodia who are shaking things up despite this horrendous history of the Cambodian genocide,” he decided.

And who are these people? Besides Sokha Khem, whose dream was to open a gay club in the capital, Peter has also encountered Tuy So- bil who, just like Socheathra Khoy, was a child during the Khmer Rouge regime and managed to flee to Long Beach. However, the raging gang scene of California during that time engulfed Tuy, and the young man ended up committing a series of crimes for which he spent some time in jail. Because he hadn’t acquired his citizenship, Tuy was deported back to Cambodia still in his early twenties.

Back in the homeland that meant nothing to him, Tuy Sobil strug- gled for a while, but eventually decided it was time to turn his life around.

“There was a period in his life when he was kind of broken about the fact that he got sent back to a country he didn’t know. In the very ear- ly stages there was a lot of depression and sadness,” Peter notes. “What he decided to do was open a school in Phnom Penh that would bring kids out of poverty and teach them how to breakdance. He founded this school called Tiny Toones that focuses on taking kids off the streets and giving them a proper education, and it all revolves around dancing,” explains the filmmaker. Tiny Toones has been operating for almost 15 years now and is home to 100 children every day.

Finding a balance between not letting history fade from the mem- ory of the living and moving forward from the horrible four years that haunted Cambodia can be hard, but Peter believes this is somewhat being achieved. But what does moving forward mean in this context?

“Acknowledging it was a thing that happened, we pay respect to the people who have fallen, but now it’s time to not dwell on that,” says the director. With Sokha Khem, Peter encountered a new mentality towards the genocide, which he says is shared by the younger generations whose lives were not directly impacted by the Khmer Rouge regime.

“It’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s so sad when you truly think about it because so many people’s lives were lost, and to think that your entire country has been sent back to the stone age because a lot of knowledge disappeared through the course of those four years. I would understand why certain Cambodians would feel a little embarrassed that their own country decided to turn on them. It’s not anger or complete disregard but accepting that it happened. What can we do to look forward to make this place amazing?”

DON’T LEAVE US”

“Don’t leave us. Please visit Sri Lanka. Help us to build up”. The mes- sage strikes you immediately as you lay your eyes on it. The black back- ground against the green wall of a bathroom located in one of the most touristic places of the country which, these days, is fairly empty, echoes the cries of an entire nation.

Terrorist attacks have a far more lingering impact on the places they happen in than the most immediate destructive effects. Apart from the obvious casualties and the shattered and forever-scarred lives of the survivors and victim’s families, attacks such as the one that happened on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka in 2019 have a devastating impact on the lives of people who directly rely on tourism to make a living and survive.

Almost two months to the day that over 250 people lost their lives, the feeling that something horrible happened in this country still lin- gers. In big cities such as Colombo and Kandy, guards armed with rifles can be seen all over the place, as well as in police stations. In the small towns, I come across an almost deserted country, filled with empty ho- tels, guest houses and restaurants. Almost every local person I meet complains about how the tourists disappeared since the attacks, while all of them reassure me that “it’s safe now”.

Overall, these two weeks in Sri Lanka have shown me a spectacular- ly diverse country with big cities, small towns, nice beaches, luxurious mountains and a beautiful countryside with the most kind-hearted peo- ple I have encountered in my life, who will go out of their way to make sure you have a great time in their country. Because they depend on it.

A GLIMPSE OF THE LIVING GODDESS

The most surreal experience of my life happened in the capital of Ne- pal. The Nepalese believe in a goddess who is incarnate in the body of a baby girl and stays with her until she reaches puberty, at which time she moves on to another girl. This child, who is normally only two years-old when the goddess chooses her, cannot touch the ground like common mortals, and always has to be carried in the air and is never allowed to leave her house, except on special occasions. Today I got to see this liv- ing goddess. She lives in a house located in Kathmandu Durbar Square – an impressive site with ancient temples seriously devastated by the 2015 earthquake – and appears twice every day: once before 2pm and then again after 4pm.

There I was today, at Kumari’s house, slightly after half past three to wait for the goddess. And I was not alone. As I flipped through the pages of my John le Carré novel to kill time until she arrived, people slowly started gathering in the inner courtyard of the house. Sudden- ly everyone was told to rise and hold their hands together. “Put away your phones, no pictures allowed!” someone yells. The little crowd that has gathered is a mix of tourists who, like me, stayed there out of curi- osity not knowing what to expect, and devotees longing to catch just a glimpse of her.

Minutes passed and we were all standing and staring at the window from which we were told she was going to appear. The first movement we saw came from an older woman – her mother, perhaps? – indicat- ing she was coming. Then the moment arrived. One could have easily missed it, but the gasp of the devotees wouldn’t have allowed it. Dozens of people gathered their hands up in the air in prayer while crying “the living goddess!” and staring at this little girl with a very strong and deep look on her face. Her hands were pushing the balcony as she balanced her little body to look down at us. She was dressed in full red, her eyes painted black and her dark hair pulled together in a very tight bun. Only her eyes moved, no expression or sign of emotion was shown on her face.

It lasted no longer than 10 seconds. As suddenly as she appeared, the living goddess just turned her back on us without as much as a wave or a nod of her head, as if we were invisible. Just like a child fed up of playing, who just wants to go back inside. A guide told me she was just four years-old; I heard another saying she was six. Either way, not old enough to realize what her life means to other people. As I exited the courtyard back to the square, a sense of incredulity washed over me. What had I just seen? Who decides to strip a little girl of her childhood and tell her she’s a living goddess so that a couple dozen of people can see her twice a day for 10 seconds? What does this do to a human being? Living goddess, are you aware of who you are?

ON THE TRAIN TO MOSCOW, I MET A MAVERICK SOLDIER-BOY…

Mikhail (not his real name), is 21 years-old. The past three years in the Russian Navy have certainly given him the body of a man, but his face still resembles that of a child. A blond child with deep blue eyes. I meet him on the Trans-Siberian train from Vladivostok. My stop will be the last one, seven time zones and an entire country away, Moscow. He’s leaving the train tomorrow to go back home for a well-deserved holiday after the hardships he faced on board the navy ship that took him to places like the Philippines, Japan and Sri Lanka.

For Mikhail, just as for any Russian boy or girl, the first year in the military is mandatory. The last two were his choice, even if not a truly independent one. He tells me he has been promised a comfortable and stable life, with a good salary and nice (or at least decent) food. “I’ve been lied to,” he confides in me with the help of Google Translate. None- theless, he is immensely proud showing me pictures of the massive ship he navigated through Asian waters.

His 10 years of learning English account for nothing nowadays, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s not on purpose, in order to stop people from leaving the country and prevent them from truly communicating with the foreigners who visit Russia and to get a sense of what’s hap- pening outside the borders. However, that is not the case for this young man. He’s not afraid of talking to me about politics in his country, or of criticizing Putin’s government. More than that, he wants me to learn. He keeps asking me what else I want to know. There’s so much more I wanted to learn from him but sometimes – most of the time – Google Translate is simply not enough.

For Mikhail, the past three years gave him only one certainty: “I want to leave Russia. But it’s not easy,” he laments. I ask him if he’s alone in this thought and he very widely exclaims “NO!” I tell him I had the sense that Russians liked their president. He explains to me, again, through the help of Google Translate, that Vladimir Putin did good things for this country after the fall of the Soviet Union, but that for the past 10 years people have just kept getting poor. There are no jobs and no one is happy with the state of things. Elections?

“They exist, but they are fake. Putin always wins. Even after he’s re- tired, he will still have more power than the president that comes after him”.

This entire conversation happens in the middle of our third class carriage on the Trans-Siberian railway, with close to no privacy and sev- eral people sitting around us. Most of them are interested in this strange looking foreign girl talking to this Russian guy (apparently many of them think I’m American, Mexican or even Indian, Mikhail tells me). When I dare to ask questions in English instead of writing them on Google Translate, I feel myself lowering my voice as if I’m afraid people around us will listen to what we’re saying.

At one point in the conversation the police pass through our car. Mikhail tells me everything is fine, no need to worry, as he senses me getting tense and nervous. After they pass by us he dares to say these words out loud: “Bad police”. I ask him to elaborate and this is what comes through Google Translate: “The police only work for money. Ev- eryone in this country is corrupt, the police, the teachers, the doctors”. I look surprised. He simply laughs, shrugs his shoulders and with a smile says: “Welcome to Russia”.

FAREWELL BELOVED COMMUNISM

Russia is a tale of two countries. For six days I have seen an entire coun- try revealing itself from the window of a train. Outside, the scenery slowly changes from forests to mountains to plains, interrupted here and there by the smallest towns made up of wooden houses. The month is July, late July, so the framing of the window is always green and blue. The dark green of the pine trees and the lighter shade of the grass from which thousands and thousands of yellow and purple flowers sprout. The blue is of the sky, the riverbeds and Lake Baikal, where the sun sets as the train is passing by. Sometimes in life you’re lucky enough to have such perfectly timed moments as this one.

On board the Trans-Siberian, days pass by slowly as the scenery outside seldom changes. Inside the car, where foreigners are a minority, Russians unpack their lunches and dinners, cutting cucumbers, toma- toes, bread and sausages on top of newspapers and washing down their meals with tea. Time acquires a new form inside the train. Bonds are made. You wake up and suddenly the person who was sleeping next to you for the past two nights is no longer there. At the next stop a teenag- er comes in and takes their place. And the routine starts all over again. Strangely enough, a routine is created. Wake up, have breakfast, read, talk, have lunch, play cards, chat, go to sleep.

On board the Trans-Siberian, Russia is anything else but what one would expect and imagine. A country where nature reigns and small towns are nothing more than just that. On the morning of the seventh day, the train finally arrives at the capital city and a new country reveals itself. Moscow is as cosmopolitan and modern as any other European capital. Here, capitalism has come in strong and communism no lon- ger exists. Traditional streets with beautifully preserved antique build- ings are nowadays occupied with American diners and fast food chain restaurants, boutique shops and fast fashion. In the heart of the city, on these particular days, Red Square is occupied by World Boxing Day. Not far from here, where loud music and boxing classes take up all the avail- able space, near the Bolshoi Theatre, stands Karl Marx’s statue. And I can’t help but wonder what he would make of Moscow in the year 2019.

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