What’s incredible, preposterous, is the fortuity of his situation. How is it that he’s come to be given refuge at a temple, a place whose belief and way of life he once shunned, whose inhabitants the soldiers of his espoused revolution disrobed and annihilated?
If karma is as he understands—the certainty that he’ll pay for his crimes—then a temple is the last place he’d expect to be offered a home. How then has he arrived where he is, given sanctuary by men whose brethren his soldiers murdered? What wrinkles or variances in the laws of karma have delivered him to this enclave of mercy, when his actions should’ve warranted him a punished existence?
At the fall of the regime in the early days of 1979, upon his release from Slak Daek, he headed for the jungle—to nurse his injuries, to hide his shame. For some months he existed in complete isolation, until he could bear it no longer. If he must live out the remains of his days, then he would do so in the company of humans, not the ghosts that had followed him there, the mutilated faces and mangled screams of those slaughtered in Slak Daek. So he emerged from the forests and returned to the world of the living, what was left of it. He went to a village where he knew no one, where no one would recognize him behind the scars of his shattered self. There he built a quiet life, and for many years earned his keep through music, playing the instruments, mostly at funerals and spirit-invoking ceremonies. It was during one such occasion—the funeral of a village chief—that, in a newspaper used to wrap his payment of fried fish and rice, he came upon an article describing the calls to establish a tribunal to try those responsible for the “crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime.”
Khmer Rouge—he tested the words on his tongue, seeing himself as others would see him if they knew his past. He searched the oil and spice stains saturating the newspaper, turning the once solid-black letters diaphanous, but he did not find his name.
How was he to consider himself? he wondered, letting the flies feast on the rice and fish fallen to the ground. A victim or a perpetrator? He’d believed in the cause he was fighting for, and then, without warning, was shoved into that hellhole for a crime against the Organization, a crime he wasn’t aware of but was made to confess again and again. He was a traitor, his torturers had wanted him to admit, a viper slithering and scheming in that insidious ksae kbot, that endless “string of betrayals” to which his name was bound along with hundreds—thousands—of others. You can corroborate, the interrogator would inform him coolly. Or you can lie there on the tile floor, chew your own tail, like the snake that you are, until there’s nothing left, except your head—and the traitorous thoughts you hide there! A padded club would land on his temple, his head clanging and buzzing, blood flowing out of his ears, pushing against his eyes. So what will it be? Live or die? Over and over he’d chosen survival, some part of him foolishly believing his life was still worth something, that he still had a life.
Now, years later confronted with his own culpability, he realized all that had remained then was his conscience, the only possible source of truth worthy of his sacrifice. But he’d betrayed that too.
He wiped away the grease and food bits from the newspaper, folded it neatly, and slipped it into his pocket. It was clear what he had to do. He left his quiet village and came to Phnom Penh. If there was to be a tribunal, he was prepared to turn himself in, be among the first to come forward and face the condemnation of his people and the world, not because he wished to set a moral example for others, but because he believed the initial wrath would be unsparing, merciless. They would be seen for what they were—monsters. They would be convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and thrown in jail to rot and die.
Here he caught himself. Jail? After what he had endured in Slak Daek, jail would be a farce, a travesty not only of justice but of punishment itself. What inhumanity could he be made to suffer that he hadn’t already endured in those macabre cells? He had only to think of it to recall each pain in its intensity and realness, as if somewhere in his skin, amidst the complex, regenerative structures of his cells, hid the contour of his torturer’s sadistic malice, twitching and thrashing like a whip, inflicting new lesions upon the old.
Imprisonment, lifetime or otherwise, would be all too light a sentence compared to what he had already known in Slak Daek, too small a reprisal for the magnitude of his crimes. What about death then? What was left of his despicable life that could recompense for the lives he’d taken and the countless more he must’ve unwittingly harmed or destroyed? Death would be an even easier escape.
Besides, the very fact he’d lived through Slak Daek meant death had rejected him. It had spat him out, as if it found no niche or nook in its vast storehouse of offenders for one as vile as he, as if death only obliged with its punctuality those who understood the value of life.
If there was to be any justice, he was convinced he would have to mete out his own punishment. Just as well, he thought. Since that initial appeal he’d read in the newspaper, there was still no tribunal. In the meantime, one by one, Pol Pot and some of those most responsible had died. Others, like himself, were quickly growing old, and before long would be too feeble to stand trial. When it became obvious the tribunal would not happen for many more years, there was only one place for him to go.
Finally he faced it, sitting one morning on a street corner outside the wall of Wat Nagara, a temple on the edge of the Mekong. It was at this temple that Sokhon had immersed himself in meditation, the life of a young novice. It had once been his beloved childhood home. A group of novice monks, returning from their alms walk at dawn, encountered the Old Musician playing the sadiev and, out of pity for a disfigured, homeless elder, offered him food from their alms. That evening, having sought the permission of the abbot, the same group of novices invited him to spend the night on the temple grounds, away from the stench and filth and danger of the streets. They offered him the wooden cottage belonging to the temple sweeper who had recently passed. Stay as long as you like, the abbot told him. We could use a musician. So he stayed, fed and clothed by a daily tenet of generosity, protected by a shared belief that a temple is where one quietly seeks ablution and forgiveness, where peace of mind may be found through silent reflection. Who among us, dear old man, has not been touched by tragedy? the abbot asked, sensing the weight of his affliction. Who among us does not bear the burden of survival? The other monks echoed, Whatever your transgression, you’ve paid for it with your injuries.