WEBVTT

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I'm going to read a long
poem called "Tuol Sleng,"

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and Tuol Sleng was formerly
known as Chao Ponhea Yat High

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School.

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And during the
Khmer Rouge regime,

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it was turned into Tuol
Sleng, the torture prison.

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And today, it's a museum,
Tuol Sleng Genocide Memorial.

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So having to navigate
that space with all

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of its different histories
has been quite an experience.

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I went to Tuol Sleng for the
first time with my nephew.

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His mother had arranged
a whole field trip

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just so I could go to all these
different sites, including

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Tuol Sleng, the Choeung Ek
Killing Fields memorial site,

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and also the Royal Palace.

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So she thought it
would be fun to go

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with my nephew and his
neighborhood friends.

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And so I think that I needed--

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I felt like I needed to be
strong for these young people,

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the next generation,
who may have been

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aware of the history that
took place but maybe were not

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quite aware.

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This poem is
happening in sections,

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so I might pause a little bit.

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"Tuol Sleng."

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"Street houses and
shops, dirt roads

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gathered with rocks, and
above, gray palm trees.

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Vendors with machetes
on blocks of ice,

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a wagon of green coconuts,
hand-cranking machines

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for sugarcane.

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In the same place, did
they kill Yuos Samon?

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We know they dented metal
bed frames, chained prisoners

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in schoolrooms.

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Before the slow act of
torture, each prisoner's photo

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was taken with a film camera.

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Flash.

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And now the screeching
wagon wheels

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hauling green coconuts,
stalks of sugarcane nearby.

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I come here with my
six-year-old nephew, Ratanak,

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and two neighborhood girls.

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My nephew sprints
down the halls,

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ducks his head into
every classroom,

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then off again as though he
hears a school bell ring.

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"You see that boy
running in the halls?"

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a tourist asks another tourist.

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"Does he have any
respect for history?"

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Alone inside a
classroom, instead

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of desks, a bed frame, its
metal slats rusted, a hammer

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and some chains at the corner.

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The floor flecked with blood
and the walls the color.

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I walk to the chalkboard, a
small piece of chalk still

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there, a scribble of Khmer on
the dusty board and numbers.

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I can't understand
anything but the numbers.

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Meanwhile, in the
courtyard, a boy

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plays as if on a playground.

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Rope hangs from a
high wooden frame.

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Below, he fills an urn with
water, takes someone prisoner,

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and bobs his head with rope.

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He plunges the head, and the
legs struggle upside down.

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He is just a boy.

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In Lancaster, by the
cornfields one afternoon,

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to the clopping of a horse's
hooves across the way,

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I thought of Tuol Sleng.

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In family portraits, I'd
blink at the flash of a camera

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and not be able to see
after inside a lighted room

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without red invading my eyes.

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That same flash
capturing the smiles

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of my surviving relatives.

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Before Samon was
murdered, my aunt says,

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he had been studying at West
Point with other lieutenant

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generals of Lon Nol.

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But maybe it was Fort
Worth, not West Point,

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or, like many foreign
troops trained on US soil,

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Fort Benning.

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No way of knowing, except
for this photograph,

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each man smiling
around the table,

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a white man at the head, a
blonde, curly-haired girl

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sitting in his lap.

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This picture of my uncle hangs
in my grandmother's house.

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He turns to look at us.

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A boy runs through the
halls of Tuol Sleng.

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His narrow footprints turn
it back into a school.

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He checks every room
for the other kids.

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He sits on a chair and waits.

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When I walk in, he
whispers, ghost.

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The bell rings, and off he goes.

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Still, my nephew
speeds down the halls,

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peeking his head
into every room.

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Ratanak, I call
out, stop running.

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Stop, I say.

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Don't make me count.

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He knows, but he doesn't
know, one, this was once

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a torture prison,
now a museum, two,

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though to him, it's just
an old school, which

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is why he is
running, which is why

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inside a sepia-toned
cell, three, he's lost

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and waits for me.

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Visitors to Cambodia,
who wander around

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with crushed limes in
their sugarcane drinks,

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can say people of this
country suffered so much

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but are so happy.

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Years later, alone
in Phnom Penh,

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I think of my uncle,
whom I did not

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know, and imagine him
returning from the US taken

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at the airport.

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And I think of how
my mother, washing

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dishes bordered with gray
flowers, sobbed over the sink

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and spoke.

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"I don't know what
happened to my brother.

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His wife and sons pleaded
with him to come home.

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So heartbroken,
your grandmother,

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when she learned the news
about my brother hoping,

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all of this time,
he'd been waiting

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for us in another country, only
to find out that he died alone.

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Of all the photographs at Tuol
Sleng, not one of my brother.

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That day we couldn't find
his face, we just went home."

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I explain to Ratanak, the
tourists are here to stroke

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black-and-white photographs
of tortured prisoners.

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They press closer to look at
a picture, a handcuffed boy

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leaning toward them.

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Walking slow around the prison,
they crouch in cramped stalls

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and shut themselves in
to imagine what horrors.

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They walk around
the metal bed frame,

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cover their mouths at rusted
chains, the hammer and toolbox

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in the corner, the floor
stained and the walls the color.

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They cry.

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They write on the walls "Never
Forget," signing their names.

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Now they have been here.

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They buy books from the
souvenir shops and silk

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scarves in crema
and handmade purses,

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but we come here to
look for someone.

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The boy is still
inside a classroom.

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He raises his hand to answer
the teacher's question.

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The teacher offers him
a turn at the board

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and gives him a piece of chalk.

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His back is turned to
the other students.

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Now the teacher is a soldier.

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Now the boy has
chains on his wrists.

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Now he's smacked in the face.

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Now his glasses break
on his nose bridge.

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Now he pretends he cannot spell
or count how many teeth knocked

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out.

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Already, the tourists have
forgotten while sucking sugar

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from cane as they head
to the Royal Palace

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for the rest of their tour.

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But I still stand by the prison
entrance with the apparition

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of a boy who cannot point
to me where my uncle died.

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Look at them shaking
their heads at Ratanak.

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I turn around to find my nephew.

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He is running again.

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The girls follow him, and
now I chase after them

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into the schoolyard."

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