By
Carol DeMent (Guest Blogger)
When
she signed up to host my blog tour, Lisabet asked me about my
experiences with Cambodia—the unforgettable experiences that led to my writing
Saving Nary.
I met my first
Cambodian family when I was in my mid-twenties. I was in a funky
spot—life was turning out to be harder than I had imagined it would
be: I had not met Mr. Wonderful yet, nor made my first million. So I
decided to volunteer to teach English to refugees to take my mind off
myself for a change.
Boy, did it ever. I
was shy, and faced my first class of ten with shaking hands and
knocking knees. And then I looked into their faces, into their eyes,
and saw ….hope. Hope for a better life and a chance to raise their
children in peace. Hope for a full pantry and a secure place to lay
their heads at night. Hope for a future free of bombs dropping,
machine gun fire, and terror at the hands of a torturer.
All of a sudden, my
life looked pretty rosy.
My students invited
me to their home for a meal. We sat on mats and ate from a “table”
made of newspapers spread out on the living room floor. I will never
forget the young woman who held a baby in her arms, telling me in
broken English as tears ran down her face how the Khmer Rouge had
killed her family. Her vocabulary was limited, but she knew the words
she needed to tell her story: gun, machete, dead, torture, starve,
blood.
As I continued to
work with refugees from Cambodia, I heard again and again how much
they had suffered under the Khmer Rouge. In 1984, a major motion
picture, “The Killing Fields”, focused attention on Cambodia’s
tragic history, but it soon faded into obscurity.
Writing Saving
Nary is my attempt to bear witness to that young woman’s story,
told to me so many years ago. In researching the novel, I visited the
refugee camps in Thailand and the killing fields in Cambodia, trips
that only heightened my desire to keep this history alive. What
happened in Cambodia and the consequences of the tragedy there hold
lessons that we would do well to learn, lessons about the abuse of
power, about resiliency and reconciliation, about the human spirit
and the will to strive for a better life.
Thank
you for inviting me to guest blog on your site. I hope you enjoy
reading Saving Nary!
Blurb
A Finalist in the
2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Saving Nary
explores the losses, loyalties and secrets held within families
broken by war and genocide. This compelling novel presents a palette
of unique characters who struggle to make sense of the events that
led them to America, even as they ponder the bewildering culture and
lifestyle of their new homeland.
Refugee
Khath Sophal lost everything when the Khmer Rouge swept into power in
Cambodia: his livelihood gone, his family dead or missing; his sanity
barely intact from the brutality he has been forced to witness.
Now
resettled in the Pacific Northwest, Khath treads a narrow path
between the horrors of his past and the uncertainties of the present.
His nights are filled with twisted dreams of torture and death. By
day he must guard constantly against the flashbacks triggered by the
simple acts of daily living, made strange in a culture he does not
understand.
Then
Khath meets Nary, a mysterious and troubled Cambodian girl whose
presence is both an aching reminder of the daughters he has lost, and
living proof that his girls, too, could still be alive. Nary’s
mother Phally, however, is another matter. A terrible suspicion grows
in Khath’s mind that Phally is not who or what she claims to be. A
split develops in the community between those who believe Phally and
those who believe Khath. And those, it seems, who don’t really care
who is right but just want to stir up trouble for their own personal
gain.
Khath’s
search for the truth leads him to the brink of the brutality he so
despises in the Khmer Rouge. His struggle to wrest a confession from
Phally ultimately forces him to face his own past and unravel the
mystery of his missing daughters.
Excerpt
“Go
back to Cambodia?” Pra Chhay stared at Khath with puzzled eyes.
Khath
nodded. “What choice do we have, brother?” he said. “Our people
are being forced back across the border into the arms of the Khmer
Rouge. My daughters will have no chance now to get into Khao I Dang.
We must go back to continue our search for them.”
Pra
Chhay, dressed in saffron monk’s robes and cracked rubber sandals,
stood framed by the setting sun outside the open doorway of the
bamboo and thatch shelter he shared with Khath and five other
families. The odor of too many human bodies crowded into a small
living space hung heavy in the air spilling across the threshold.
The
rectangular shelter was partitioned by side walls into six open-faced
cubicles, three to a side, facing a center corridor running the
length of the shelter. There was no privacy other than what could be
attained by turning one’s back to the open side of one’s cubicle
or crawling inside a mosquito net hung over the thin kapok sleeping
mattresses on the floor. The shelter’s only doors were located at
each end of the central corridor, opening directly to the outside.
With
no way to secure themselves or their meagre belongings, the refugees
lived in helpless fear of night visits by bored Thai soldiers, whose
transgressions ranged from theft to rape. Pra Chhay and Khath
occupied an end cubicle by the door, making them even more vulnerable
to unwanted attention from the soldiers, but because of Pra Chhay’s
position as a monk, they were usually left alone.
As
Pra Chhay slipped his calloused feet out of his sandals, stepping
barefoot into the corridor, a gentle breeze puffed out the hem of his
robes and blew camp dust into the shelter.
Khath
motioned to Pra Chhay to shut the door. Careful not to waste a drop
of the day’s ration of precious water, he barely moistened the
corner of a rag and ran it over random surfaces in their cubicle that
might attract and harbor dust: the wooden altar in the corner, the
cracks and edges of the bamboo slats that formed the walls of the
hut, the straw mats that covered the floor. A squat wooden bench,
left behind by the prior resident, completed the amenities of the
living space.
Pra
Chhay took off his outer layer of robes and hung them on a sliver of
bamboo pulled out from the wall to serve as a peg for clothing.
Turning, he watched Khath rub his cloth over the wooden bench, back
and forth, back and forth, harder and harder, the knuckles gripping
the cloth turning white with effort.
“Khath,
stop it. You will polish our only seat away to nothing,” Pra Chhay
said. “Tell me exactly what you heard today that makes you say we
must return to Cambodia.” The monk settled himself comfortably on
the floor.
With
an effort, Khath slowed his rubbing and carefully folded the rag and
laid it on his lap. His eyes followed the tiny particles now dancing
in the single ray of golden sun that slipped through the crack
between the outer door and its frame. He laced his fingers tightly
together to stop their reaching for the rag as, mesmerized, he
watched the motes settle onto the areas he had just cleaned. The
sight of dust on surfaces where it ought not to be was still
intolerable to Khath, though nearly six years had passed since his
obsession was born on the day the Khmer Rouge killed his wife and
son.
“Silence
that boy,” the soldier had said to his wife on that awful day.
Khieu gathered their son Bunchan into her arms, but how is one to
soothe a toddler who cries from hunger when there is no food? Khath,
Khieu and their three children had been walking for three days in the
heat and humidity, shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other
refugees inching their way out of Phnom Penh by order of the Khmer
Rouge. Already hunger, thirst and exhaustion had thinned their ranks:
the elderly and the ill simply dropped along the sides of the road,
patiently awaiting the mercy of death.
Given
only minutes to prepare for their exodus, the food Khath and his
family carried was gone in a day. After that, they bought, scavenged
and bartered for whatever nourishment they could find along the way.
Now, they stood next in line before a table of grim-faced cadres in
the simple uniform of the Khmer Rouge: black cotton shirts and pants
with kramas, red-checkered scarves, wound around their heads or
necks. The cadres were checking identity papers and quizzing the
refugees about their prior occupations.
Bunchan’s
incessant crying enraged the soldier. “Silence him or I will,” he
warned Khieu.
About
the Author
Carol
DeMent worked in the field of South East Asian refugee resettlement
for seven years, and completed master's level research into
international refugee resettlement policy. She lived for two years in
Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer and has traveled extensively in
South East Asia. Her first novel, Saving Nary, was a Finalist in the
2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
Carol
DeMent will be awarding $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner
via rafflecopter during the tour.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
