 I went to Cambodia this time with friends, met other friends, and we said a million things, over and over. The same sentence, or sometimes entire exchanges, bore repetition a million times. Cambodia feeds you a script.You cannot turn here, coming from America, without having something to comment on.
The heat, the dust, the dirt, the pollution.
The language, the people, the manner of dress.
The food, the fruits, the roads, the cars.
The moto-doups.
You don't need time to discover Cambodia. In one day, Cambodia will throw herself at you, assault your five senses, and if you were prey to a sixth, that will be replete as well.
I love this land. I cannot say country because I don't believe the current state of our land fully qualifies us for any moniker remotely indicating a nation or state operating under anything passing for a governing body. But this land, however naked of order, and this people, however maltreated and squeezed of her humanity, this land and this people remain the cornerstone of that thing I venture to call my soul and I adore this corner of earth that saw the beginnings of my life, of the lives of my loved ones, even as she also saw the end of so many others. Choking as I was in her dust and drowning as I was in the filth of her multitudinous sorrows, I can still see the city that was my first remembrance of childhood. Back then, 20 or so years ago, she was just a ghost, lately resurrected, her boulevards empty of a million footsteps. But she was my Phnom Penh, and since I knew no other, her broken walls, her scarred columns, her defunct bridges were simply the order of things--an accommodating, if weary, playground for children whose parents were not much more than ghosts themselves. Today, I can spend a week and not list all the changes that 20 years have wrought on Cambodia's capital. But my seven year old self with her seven year old eyes carried with her a faint but eternal picture of my last Phnom Penh, and on any given evening, from my house by Kirirom's Theatre, I can still find Vimean Aekareach  , and from there, the Royal Palace, Chan Chaya  , the riverside onto Chrouy Chongvar...and I have my city back again. |
