So in Kompong Thom, separated from his family, Sokhon dreamt again, fiercely, feverishly. In his mind’s eye, he saw that they were still alive. He had to believe this because a reality without them was not one he could accept. He pictured countless moments of reunion, imagined all the possible ways in which they could survive, promised himself that once they were together again he would beg Le Conseiller for forgiveness . . . He rehearsed the words he’d say to the man who’d been like a father to him, who’d given him everything—We were all caught up in the war, you see. The American bombing shook the very foundation of our existence. Cracks and fissures appeared everywhere, and as you said, our hopes and dreams tilted on the precipice. Yet, had I heeded your counsel and paid close attention, I would’ve seen what you saw—that the politics of anger and hate only hastened the rupture, consuming the last remnants of stability we had. I’ve betrayed my education, my talent. I betrayed our family. I betrayed you who loved and nurtured me as if I were your own son. How can I begin to express . . .
Sokhon dreamt. Even as the nightmare around him spun out of control. He hoped. He yearned for his wife and daughter. Then, one day he was awakened to reality, finding himself shackled to names and lives he barely knew, while the fate of his own family remained unknown.
“You say I am in here because of you,” he told Tun in one of their earliest whispered conversations through the wall. “You named me. But others did as well. I appear in multiple dossiers, the chief interrogator assured me, and therefore I could only be guilty . . . Do you know he studied law and literature, our inquisitive comrade? A former classmate of mine. Wrote a brilliant essay on the literature of justice, examining the feudal system of crime and punishment through the lens of classics like Tum Teav and Thmenh Chey. And now, years later, here we are, on the other side of that brilliance. You and I held captive to his blinding logic.”
Even if Sokhon absolved him of blame, Tun remained certain of his culpability. He recalled now that, while feverishly scribbling down names of people he’d known, he had thought of Channara, had been on the verge of declaring her name out of longing, but something had stopped him, as if even in pain his heart had known to keep her secret, to protect her. Instead, he’d written down her husband’s name. How many times had he wished Sokhon dead, wished the man had never lived at all? There was no doubt in his mind. His confession alone would’ve led to Sokhon’s arrest, concluded his fate.
At the start of November, a couple of months into their incarceration at Slak Daek, the two men were hauled from solitary confinement and shoved into a chamber with a dozen or so other prisoners. No longer blindfolded and shackled in place—but with their legs and arms still bound in chains—they could see and drag themselves about. Faint traces of words in Pali and Sanskrit floated across the plastered walls, like half-uttered prayers. Someone said they were inside the compound of a temple, and this had once been a classroom where little monks learned to read and write, memorized the sutras. Amidst the stench of shit and urine, blood and sweat, intractable excretions of pain and fear, it was impossible to believe the room had been anything other than the bowel of hell. “A temple?” Sokhon scoffed in hushed indignation, he who’d been a monk in his early youth. “What kind of name is Slak Daek for a place of worship?” Tun made no reply, having learned that like any alias it hid a dreadful truth.
“Choke on metal” was not only the meaning of Slak Daek but in the prison it was their daily staple. Confess, or do you want to choke on metal, you rotting maggot! Slak Daek was filling up, they overheard the guards saying, and the single cells were needed for those yet to endure their first sessions with the chief interrogator. They couldn’t see beyond the room, with the windows boarded up, the double wooden doors locked and always guarded, as evident from the echo of footfalls pacing the pathway outside.
Tun didn’t want to see, didn’t want to know. As it was, the sight of the other victims filled him with renewed horror. Every prisoner was bruised, bloody and broken, festered by wounds decaying to the whiteness of bone. Flies alighted on their open sores, intoxicated by the freshness of flesh. One prisoner could hardly breathe, his back against the stained floor, mouth agape and eyes glued to the ceiling, pupils permanently dilated. Two of the prisoners—one looking no more than sixteen, another perhaps in his early twenties—had no nails on their fingers and toes, their hands and feet splayed with abscesses. Former guards of the prison, Tun recognized. It could mean only one thing—they had failed to follow orders. A middle-aged man heaved in one corner like a chained beast, his residual heft suggesting he’d been eating well until only recently, until he was caught and starved like the rest of them. Tun felt certain the man had been a cadre of some rank. Occasionally, the prisoner would lift his head, turning it slowly in that exaggerated gesture of the blind, his eyes so swollen that he seemed to have no eyes at all beneath a giant throbbing forehead. A sightless monster. They were all becoming monsters through the monstrosity they endured.
As for Sokhon, Tun could barely look at him. Both men became suddenly hesitant toward each other, as if the wall between their former cells—the physical barrier—had precipitated their profound intimacy, and now without it, they were doubly vulnerable, doubly at risk, each suffering not only his own torment but the other’s. It took a long moment to finally look each other in the eye. And, despite the violence done to them, it was painfully clear that each was a life—heart, breath, and soul—still pulsing beneath the landscape of injuries. Tears welled up in Tun’s eyes and a second later spilled forth from Sokhon’s. They were connected in ways they couldn’t begin to describe, individually shattered but together somehow whole.
The cycle continued, unremitting. Every day someone was towed out for interrogation and, hours later, brought back more devastated than before. A victim was left alone only long enough to recover the energy to withstand further interrogation. If suspected of faking weakness, he would be deprived the daily cup of watery gruel. On a night that might’ve been Tun’s or Sokhon’s turn, a pair of guards burst into the chamber, as another pair stood with flashlights guarding the double wooden doors. They began kicking the immobile prisoner sprawled on the floor. “Time for another talk, you useless cur. Get up! What?—We can’t hear you. Oh, His Highness wants us to carry him on a dais!” The prisoner, his eyes still glued to the ceiling and unblinking, began to convulse, chest contracting, the valley beneath his protruding bones dipping and rising, until his breaths turned to hiccups. One of the guards kicked him again and marched out of the room, followed by his partner. They couldn’t risk being blamed if the prisoner were to die in their presence. For the rest of the night, Tun and Sokhon and the other inmates listened to the man’s hiccups, the soft rasping more horrifying than anything they’d heard inside the prison. In the morning, he finally died. Two days passed before guards removed the swollen corpse. They were not the same guards.
Afterward, Tun sought a quiet corner by himself, trying to calm his heart—a sudden, unreasonable convulsion of hope. As if sensing something out of the ordinary, Sokhon shuffled beside him, chains clanging. They crouched in silence for a moment, then Sokhon said, barely a whisper, “I don’t want to end that way.”