SHOPPING CART
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Elizabeth Becker returned to Phnom Penh in 1978 with Malcolm Caldwell, a British lecturer on Southeast Asia sympathetic to the Khmer Rouge revolution, and Richard Dudman, another American correspondent. On their last day they interviewed Pol Pot; that night all three were threatened by Cambodian gunmen and Malcolm Caldwell was murdered.
I cleared the table and was asleep by 11:00 p.m. My bags were packed and waiting near the door of my room on the first floor. When I awoke a few hours later my thoughts were confused. Why were dogs knocking over the garbage cans outside my apartment? But I was not in Washington. I was in Phnom Penh and it was the middle of the night. The crashing noise couldn't be garbage cans. I hadn't seen one in the city, had I? I jumped out of bed and heard another sound that made my stomach drop. The sound was familiar but it wasn't a garbage can; it was gunfire, and near enough for me to smell cordite as I pulled on my jeans and went out into the dining room. I heard a moan. I opened the door from my bedroom and stepped out just as a young man barged in from the back door. We met in the dining room and stared at each other. He looked strange to me: his clothes seemed different, he was wearing a hat shaped like a baseball cap, he was Khmer, and, my God, he had two belts of ammunition strapped across his chest, an automatic rifle slung over one shoulder, and a pistol in his hand, and he was pointing the pistol at me. I thought he looked more frightened than I felt, and I felt as if my body would burst from fear. I yelled: "No, don't shoot." I ran into my bedroom, shutting the door but forgetting to lock it. I kept running, into the adjoining bathroom, and jumped into the bathtub. I lay stomach-down inside the tub. I wasn't thinking, I was moving by instinct, and some part of me remembered advice during the war years when I was told that the tub was a porcelain fortress and the best protection any house offered from stray bullets. The young man didn't follow me. The tub was under the stairwell, and I could hear the young assailant tear up the stairs, his arms and ammunition jingling. The lights were out, and it was black. I heard the shots. I couldn't count them. Maybe half a dozen, maybe more. Then the sound of feet running down the stairs and then silence. For one and a half hours. I stopped thinking of Cambodia; I would go mad. I thought of other places, other people; for some sixty minutes I escaped in my mind. I could not imagine what was happening. There was an enormous thudding sound. Then the crash. Glass, broken and splintered, heavy footsteps in the front living room, clomping up the stairs, a heavy object carried down, then up the stairs. Then footsteps in my bedroom. The steps came close to the bathroom door. I watched the knob turn--it was Mit La, someone I knew, one of our aides who spoke no foreign language. I was still on my knees. He looked at me quickly, a gaze to see if I had been hurt, and he turned away. I asked in my pigeon Khmer about the American man and the English man, about Dudman and Caldwell. "Fine, fine," he said. I grabbed his arm and asked him to stay. He turned on the lights and told me not to move. And then he left. I was alone with the whir of the air conditioner and no idea what was happening. I could have gone to the bedroom, but I stayed crouched in the bathroom. Were the people rising up? Would I be considered one of the enemy? Had the Vietnamese attacked? Finally I remembered what I had been fearing all along, that I was trapped in the country during the invasion. No, that didn't make sense. Unless they thought we were... no, we were Caucasians, we couldn't be mistaken for Khmer Rouge officials. I had to stop thinking again. And wait again. After forty-five minutes I heard a familiar voice. Prasith, with his mandarin manners, was knocking at my bedroom door, calling me. I came out trembling, asking about the others. Dudman was fine. Caldwell was dead. Shot dead. Nothing else in the city, only Malcolm Caldwell had been murdered, no uprising, no coup d'état, no Vietnamese invasion. They brought Dick Dudman downstairs so I could see him and then asked the two of us to go upstairs and witness the assassination. There was Malcolm, lying on the floor in his pajamas, blood on his chest, his long auburn hair wild around his face. His eyes were closed. And at the threshold of his room was another body, a young man clothed in black who looked like the boy who had pointed his pistol at me. What was he doing there, dead, sprawled across the floor? And where had Prasith and the guards been all this while? No answers. Please, gather your things and leave immediately, Prasith said. A young girl was waiting in my room, and we threw some papers I had left out into a suitcase. |
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PAPERBACKISBN 978-1-89162-000-3 Pub date: 10/20/98 Price: $23.00/27.95 Canada 5-1/2X8-1/4 624 pages Carton Quantity: 30 Asian Studies, History Selling Territory: WORLD EXCL. UK & COMMONWEALTH Pub history: Simon & Schuster hc; Touchstone pb
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