It was now the beginning of June, and while government troops had launched attacks to reclaim Oudong, this one calm night afforded Tun an opportunity to extract his daughter and Om Paan from the city.
As requested, Roeun had brought along another cyclo driver, someone they could trust, a “comrade brother” in the network of insurgent sympathizers and collaborators, which, in the past year or so, had expanded to include a staggering array of people, from powerful government ministers and influential bankers to policemen and military officers to street sweepers and maimed beggars. Tun, with Sita still in his arms, climbed into one cyclo, while Om Paan settled into the other with their belongings, the bundles hidden from view beneath her feet. Tun turned briefly for one final look at their home, a tiny dark recess among rows and rows of other tiny dark recesses in the night’s catacomb. He had no regret leaving it now. His daughter was with him. He’d endured his trial, bartered a part of himself, for this reunion.
As they knitted their way through the familiar streets, passing well-known sites and landmarks, the city enveloped them in an eerie silence, as if it were empty, inhabited only by shadows, and Tun recalled the evacuation of Oudong, in which the entire population of the town was herded like animals to resettle in a makeshift commune deep in an uninhabitable forest. He and his small unit of soldiers had arrived at the tail end of that evacuation, when the town was nearly emptied. He heard talk that the same thing could happen to Phnom Penh in the event of their victory, though he always dismissed it as rumor. The city’s population—perhaps more than two million now—was simply too big for such an undertaking. Even so, the momentous silence unsettled him, gave him a premonition, though he knew not what it was.
Tun wrapped his arms tighter around his daughter, one hand cupping her face. She’d given way to sleep, relaxing against his body. He could hardly believe he was holding her. He would do it all over again. For her, he would endure an ordeal far worse than what he’d gone through at the forest encampment. Yet, how could he possibly explain what had happened, why it had taken him this long to come back?
For some weeks—maybe a whole month, maybe less—he had not been allowed outside that hut. From one day to the next he would sleep, wake, eat, shit, breathe his own foulness and ruin, all within the dark confines of the mosquito-infested thatch. Food and water were slid under a gap beneath the door. There was no discernible schedule. A day or two could go by during which he would receive neither, and he would have to rely on the grasshoppers or crickets that found their way into the hut, the raindrops he’d managed to collect in a cut section of bamboo. He had no means to wash, except during a storm when rivulets of water pierced the roof. Most days he festered in the heat. On nights when it rained without pause, he shivered. He was given no blanket, no mat or mosquito net, no hammock, nothing, not even a kroma. The only essentials at his disposal were those he’d brought with him from home. To his surprise, they did not confiscate these belongings. He resisted the urge to ask for anything, fearing they would take what little he had away or, worse, end it all for him. In any case, there was no one to ask. He would hear voices, laughter, and shouts floating from the middle of the encampment. Methodical plinks and echoes of target practice. Sometimes even singing, an out-of-tune but boisterous chorus of young male voices. But the area surrounding his hut was always silent save for the din of the jungle.
A soldier would come and go, mutely delivering the scant meal, walking around the hut checking to see that nothing was amiss, and Tun would detect only a partial silhouette or bare feet circling the ground, the sleek outline of an AK47 or a pistol pointed downward nonchalantly from a hand. The closest he received to an explanation was when a voice once said, “This is not a punishment. The Organization needs proof, you see.” He thought it might be the battalion commander, but it sounded like someone older, more solemn and somehow cultivated. In any case, Tun silenced his rage, quelled the urge to claw his way out like an animal. At times, his hunger for human contact was so great he wished that it were punishment, that a soldier would just come and beat him, shout threats and abuses. A punishment would’ve been simple and clear, and Tun would’ve known for certain that he was still alive.
One day the door finally swung open. It had been unbarred from outside, by whom or when, Tun had no idea. He suspected it was a test. So he remained inside, glued to his corner, bracing for death, his impending execution. But no one came. Two days later a figure walked in, the intense sunlight from behind making the silhouette appear porous, spectral. A hallucination, Tun thought. Then the figure said, “Comrade, your trial is over.” It was the same voice that had spoken to him days earlier. “The isolation was necessary. You’ve proven your loyalty. You will now join the rest of us.” The figure stepped forward to reveal a man who looked to be in his late forties, with, as Tun had surmised, an educated manner to match his speech.
Comrade Im was the leader of the encampment, a high-ranking cadre with access to the Central Committee, the core leadership of the Communist Party, or, as it was now more commonly referred to, the Organization. These extreme measures had to be taken, he later told Tun once it was clear that Tun could be trusted, his inviolable allegiance to the Organization demonstrated. The revolution, Comrade Im went on to explain, was entering a period of intense radicalization. Those joining the movement must be made to understand that they were soldiers, and soldiers must embrace suffering and hardship on every front. It was easy to teach new recruits to handle guns, pull the pins of grenades, launch rockets, but far more challenging to teach them discipline and loyalty. Often it proved impossible. In the case of loyalty, it was not a trainable skill at all but a character trait that had to be coaxed out of people by putting them in a trial such as the isolation Tun had endured, with no explanation given whatsoever, except the vague knowledge that this was the Organization’s design. Initially, it had not been so strict. Newcomers were allowed outside the hut, so long as they stayed within the marked perimeter. Some even took to planting vegetables and herbs while being “broken in.” Now, with the war intensifying, there was no room for question, for doubt, for sentiment. Only absolute devotion. Those who tried to defect were invariably executed.