When Broken Glass Floats

“Angka, the organization, suddenly became your mother, your father, your God. But Angka was a tyrannical master. To question anything—whom you could greet, whom you could marry, what words you could use to address relatives, what work you did—meant that you were an enemy to your new ‘parent.’ That was Angka’s rule. To disobey meant the kang prawattasas, the wheel of history, would run over you.”

Angka is the word Cambodians used to refer to the Khmer Rouge. Here, Athy describes what life was like under a dictatorship that attempted not only to control the body but also the mind. Refusal to submit meant death.

“Khmer Rouge are a continent away, and yet they are not. Psychologically, they are parasites, like tapeworms that slumber within you, living passively until something stirs them to life. I was asking these subjects to wake those parasites.” 

Athy’s involvement with the Khmer Adolescent Project means she must ask other Cambodian refugees questions about their experiences. This is traumatic both for the subjects and for Athy herself; it forces them to recall horrific events and tragedies.

“What I don’t know is that there is a world outside Cambodia—a world that will affect me, my family, and Cambodia as a nation. I do not know who owned the guns that night—only that they were aimed at me. It will be years before I begin to understand the causes and effects of war, the political gamesmanship. But by then my family will have become flotsam caught in the heave and thrust of its tide.” 

For most of the text, except for the Preface, Athy’s memories are narrated in present tense. Here, however, she speaks as an adult writer, noting that she did not understand the many forces at work in Cambodia and other parts of Asia at the time. However, she seems to indicate that it does not really matter who or what is responsible, as the effects on her family are the same. This previews the text’s chaotic nature. Athy’s story moves back and forth, ebbing and flowing with no clear pattern or order, which reflects her experiences under the Khmer Rouge.

“People stroll through the city. Others crowd around the carts of food vendors, jostling for their right to fried noodles, sour yellow fingers of pickled green mangoes served on a stick with a touch of red chili and salt, or crispy, golden fried bananas, battered with flour and sesame seeds.” 

Athy describes a brief respite from the war, focusing on food. As a child and as a teenager, Athy is often on the brink of starvation, and she emphasizes this through colorful descriptions of good food.

“There is a kind of magic in my home: medicine. I’m not sure where or how my father has learned medicine, but he does so hoping never to be as helpless as he was during Tha’s and Bosaba’s illnesses. This is very much like Pa. To him, life is a series of problems waiting to be solved.” 

Pa is a problem solver, evidenced here by his decision to study medicine after losing two children to illnesses that are ordinarily easily treatable. Athy is much like her father, and her description of him could just as easily be applied to her. She too sees life as “a series of problems waiting to be solved,” whether that means teaching herself to fish or teaching herself English so she can emigrate to the United States.

“Just as my friends and I challenge each other to sneak in and kick a tin can over to the winning side, so government and grassroots armies have been challenging each other, jostling for a win. Just as neighborhood children size up their teams, picking the strongest players, so the Khmer Rouge has been sizing up their allies. Who to pick? Who can run the fastest? Communist China? Russia? Certainly it cannot be France or the United States. In the midst of all of this, Cambodia has become the coveted tin can.” 

Though the memoir is not necessarily political—apart from the Khmer Rouge, it does not single any entity out for criticism—this metaphor reveals Athy’s true feelings. For her, the powers that caused the crisis in Cambodia were no better than children fighting over a prize that wasn’t really theirs. Cambodia, and the Cambodian people, are helpless to stop this cruel game, and they can only hope that the Khmer Rouge lose interest.

“That’s not the way we greet our elders, especially in a time of crisis. The lack of respect shocks me. Authority is reversed. Guns now mean more than age and wisdom.” 

At the beginning of the Khmer Rouge’s ascension to power, Athy is most shocked by the disrespect they show to others. Cambodian culture is hierarchical in nature, and the elderly are considered the wisest and most deserving of respect. The Khmer Rouge, however, seeks to dismantle this hierarchy, and they begin with the language. They no longer address their elders with traditional titles of respect.

“Though the Khmer Rouge can control every other aspect of our lives, they cannot scrub out our minds, polish away our intellect like an empty brass pot.”

Athy’s comments here reflect how the Khmer Rouge aim to control Cambodia in every way, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Athy and her family rebel against these restrictions, as do many other Cambodians—silently, holding on in their minds to their education and religious beliefs.

“In Cambodian culture, we try hard to please the spirits of our ancestors. Sickness, bad luck, disappointments—all are often blamed on spirits who have gone away unsatisfied.” 

“In Cambodian culture, we try hard to please the spirits of our ancestors. Sickness, bad luck, disappointments—all are often blamed on spirits who have gone away unsatisfied.” 

“In Cambodian culture, we try hard to please the spirits of our ancestors. Sickness, bad luck, disappointments—all are often blamed on spirits who have gone away unsatisfied.” 

When Athy volunteers to go to the labor camp, she and Cheng, a neighbor from the village where Athy’s family has been living, join forces and look out for each other. Athy uses a Cambodian proverb to explain her behavior, a technique used throughout the story.

“A yearning for the lunch ration pulls us through the morning. The desire for a dinner ration tugs us through the remainder of the day. It’s a circle of hunger. It obliterates everything—the heat, the exhaustion, the loneliness. Every day we slave for the Khmer Rouge in a vast barren field, digging irrigation ditches, hauling dirt in woven baskets. But we’re also slaves to our own hunger.” 

Athy tries to explain starvation to the reader, who may never have experienced the kind of hunger described here. In comparing such hunger to slavery, she tries to convey how it renders one both desperate and exhausted. One way dictatorships like the Khmer Rouge maintain power is by keeping their citizens in a constant state of desperation. People who are only concerned about their next meal are too weak to rebel.

“Is their cruelty a mask, hiding humanity deep within? The world is no longer as black as their uniforms, as white as rice.” 

After meeting a member of the Khmer Rouge who is kind, Athy wonders about her unspoken belief that they are all evil. Her preconceptions are challenged, and she realizes that though the Khmer Rouge commits terrible cruelties, its individual members might not be cruel. This is evidence of Athy’s maturation, a process sped up by the Khmer Rouge regime.

“Agony at the realization that the Khmer Rouge have shaped us, made our tempers brittle and our hunger sharp. Led us to the point where we could be as cruel to one another as they are to us.” 

Athy describes how hunger has affected the family. Her sister Avy had asked their brother for another fish, and Than became angry and threw it at her. His cruelty reflects the effectiveness of the Khmer Rouge’s methods, and their seeming success in breaking the bonds of the traditional family structure. However, while the Khmer Rouge causes them to mistreat each other in their most desperate moments, they are unable to completely break familial bonds.

“Since our mother’s departure, we’ve drawn close to each other, hearts and minds bound by an invisible thread. When we come together from work, we read one another’s eyes, as if checking to see if the other misses Mak or is sad about her. We serve our evening meal of rice and weeds on plates like small adults, passing food to the others, polite, respectful. We keep our thoughts to ourselves, swallowing words. To speak of our fears only reinforces them, opening up a dark path of possibilities.” 

Athy describes how Mak’s death impacts the family. It paradoxically draws them closer even as it isolates them. They are all suffering while pretending they are not; each sibling is afraid of releasing an avalanche of emotion that none of them will be able to survive.

“The sun penetrates through the cracks of my shack. Alone, I curl up, covered by a scarf; my eyes fix upon the fine particles of dust that drift through the morning light. Most of the day, I lie here, staring into the dark until I tire. The next day the sun rises, and my eyes return to the twirling dust, again awaiting the blanket of night. I think, but I’m not sure what I’m thinking.” 

This passage reveals Athy’s emotional state after learning of her mother’s death. She is almost catatonic with grief and fear, laying day after day unmoving and unthinking. Her grief is so immense that she cannot eat or work or even think. Even the Khmer Rouge’s leaders recognize her despair and leave her alone.

“Peaking in the distance between clusters of tall tree branches are palm, and coconut leaves. This vegetation looks pretty, yet there’s a sense of danger lurking in the comfort of this natural beauty.” 

This description of the landscape reveals how much Athy’s experiences have changed her. Her family has been betrayed and mistreated by their own neighbors and countrymen, and the landscape here is a metaphor for how she is literally unable to trust her country. Danger lurks everywhere.

“‘Follow the river by its winding path, follow the province/state according to its country.’ One must adapt to one’s situation to survive. And I’m adjusting to my new environment, a world where formality and politeness are not a necessity—indeed are banned. Instead, cruelty is the law by which the people are ruled, a law designed to break our spirits. In the name of padewat (the revolution).” 

When Ra brings Athy to the warehouse where Barang gives them food, Athy is so hungry that she forgets all her table manners. Instead, she devours the food like an animal. She notes the irony that the Khmer Rouge wanted a revolution to improve Cambodia, but they’ve reduced their people to mere shadows of themselves. She ironically uses a Khmer Rouge saying, “in the name of padewat,” as a blessing while eating.

“‘I’ve been praying for the harvesting season to come so that we can have more rice. But when it comes, the rice ration is still the same, still little. When life continues to be this terrible, Athy, bang just wants to die. I…’ Chea wipes away her tears. ‘I just want to close my eyes and die. If I live on, life doesn’t have meaning. No meaning at all. Except to live for that day just to have more rice, and that’s all.’” 

Chea’s confession reveals the limits of human survival. Chea believes there will be no respite from this way of life, and she despairs of ever feeling anything but hunger. Her inability to look forward to the future foreshadows her death. Once people believe there is no hope, they give up. Athy comes close to this point after her mother’s death, but she never articulates this despair.

“Year Zero was the dawn of an age in which, in extremis, there would be no families, no sentiment, no expression of love or grief, no medicines, no hospitals, no schools, no books, no learning, no holidays, no music: only work and death.” 

This chapter begins with a quote from a magazine about the Khmer Rouge. They considered the year they took over Cambodia to be Year Zero, representing a complete destruction of traditional Cambodian culture and society. The Khmer Rouge believed they were resetting Cambodia and beginning a path toward a utopia. Ironically, their Year Zero actually represented the emptiness of their vision. No one wants to live in a world where there is nothing but work and death.

“At thirteen, the nascent adult in me realizes that Cambodia is a nation that houses the living dead. Around me there are starving, overworked, and malnourished people. Death is rampant, as if an epidemic has descended on the villages. Yet Angka is nonchalant, doing nothing to stop this plague. Death is like leaves in the autumn, readily falling from a soft touch of the wind. I wonder who in my family will be the next victim.” 

Athy’s frank description of her beliefs at the tender age of 13 reveals the effects of the trauma she has suffered. This passage comes right after Chea’s death, which hit Athy almost as hard as her mother’s death, making her hard and cynical. She is no longer afraid to consider whether anyone else in her family will die. She wonders only who it will be next.

“A marriage sanctioned in such an evil way will never bear fruit. Even though I’m young, I can’t imagine that babies will be produced by these men and women who are made up of bones and sheets of skin, whose physical appearance reminds one of the living dead.” 

The Khmer Rouge’s hypocrisy is highlighted in this section. They insist they want the young people of Cambodia to procreate, but they don’t take care of the children for whom they are already responsible. Furthermore, Athy notes their warped logic: How can people who are starving reproduce?

“On this day, every child, woman, and man looks more relaxed. On their sallow, sunken faces, beaten by the sun, I see hope. Their eyes glow. A few smiles emerge from behind the tired faces. I steal glances at those who are smiling. I wonder if they are experiencing the enormous sense of freedom I feel, as well as the indescribable emotion that bubbles inside me.” 

This passage relates Athy’s reaction to the news that the Khmer Rouge have been defeated. It also represents Athy’s suffering and that of other Cambodians. There is no joyous celebration, no physical expression of relief, only a “few smiles.” The people have been brutally traumatized, both emotionally and physically, and their quiet celebration reflects this.

“But I know myself—I will get up if I should fall. I always have. My mind relaxes.” 

In the refugee camp Athy reflects on her teacher’s admonition to persevere through struggles. She realizes that she does not need such lessons. She has never given up, and now that she is safe from war and on her way to the United States, she knows she never will.