My beautiful wife. She is number 331.
I know that he has spoken the words hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, to visitors such as myself. Yet the words fall from his lips as if he spoken them for the very first time.
The words belong to Bou Meng, a Cambodian man who appears to be in his early fifties, maybe late sixties, it’s impossible to tell — he carries in his frame a blend of the bloom of youth and the “I’m old as dirt, I’ve seen it all” of age.
Bou Meng is sitting at the table before which I stand, and he holds open the pages of a book so that I can see, on the left-hand page, the photograph of his wife. The number 331 is printed on a badge that hangs from her neck. His words continue to echo in the quiet room.
My beautiful wife. She is number 331.
I know if I should choose to stare at the photograph for an hour, he will gladly hold open the book for those sixty minutes. Well past an hour, should I desire more time. There is no sign of tremor in his fingers, no evidence of trembling of the book. Only stillness. He is as composed as a photograph. His eyes re-capturing a memory. His face serene, punctuated with an occasional wrinkle. His smile rises soft as whisper.
My beautiful wife. She is number 331.
I bend down, hands pressed on my thighs, to read the caption beneath her photograph, knowing too well the gist of what I am going to read. My heart begins to feel heavy. Before I begin reading the small print, I lift an eye to see if Bou Meng’s countenance has begun to fail. But the eyes, the wrinkled serenity, the whispered smile are one and the same.
I look at the caption beneath the photograph of his beautiful wife, number 331.
Ma Yoeun, Bou Meng’s wife, Ma was arrested, tortured and killed on August 16, 1977 at S-21, the notorious prison where at least 14,000 prisoners were tortured and killed.
August 16, I think. In five days, another anniversary of her passing. Anniversary number 35.
His words continue to hang thick in the air.
My beautiful wife. She is number 331.
Or maybe he has spoken the words again, I’m not sure. All I know is I am not yet able to meet his gaze.
I try not to look at the photograph on the facing page. I want to believe it is a young Bou Meng. But I know it isn’t. I look. I read the caption beneath the photograph of the man. I shake my head.
The photograph is of the commandant of S-21, the man responsible for the arrest, torture, and killing of Bou Meng’s wife.
I force a sigh, shake my head, steel myself, and lift myself up from my crouch and smile as hard as I can into those eyes, those wrinkles, his smile. I hear myself say, “Very beautiful. A remarkable woman.” And barely a syllable late, I add, “Ma Yoeun.”
The young Cambodian woman standing beside him begins to translate my words into Khmer, but as soon as Bou Meng hears “Ma Yoeun,” he says, “My beautiful wife.”
“Number 331,” I find myself awkwardly adding, to fill in the silence, and suddenly I’m afraid my speaking THAT number will add sorrow to the subtraction of his wife from his life. But Bou Meng’s smiles grows, he nods his approval, and says, “Yes. Number 331.”
His wife — Ma Yoeun — was killed at S-21. Which is where Bou Meng (sitting) and I (standing) now find ourselves. S-21, the former prison, has been turned into the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. So that we might learn. So that maybe this time, when we say “Never again,” the words will take root.
Which they won’t. We WILL forget. The pages of the book he holds will close and the spell of Ma Yoeun’s gaze, coupled with that of her husband, will be broken. We will forget. That is what we do best. There will always be another Cambodia. Bosnia. Rwanda. Darfur. The Bambuti. The Rohingya. Ad nauseam. Never again. Until the next time.
I feel my shoulders sag beneath a day heavy with the broken promise of “never again.” Only a few hours earlier, I had visited Choeung Ek — seventeen kilometers south of Phnom Penh and the site of a 1970s mass grave, nearly 9,000 Cambodians killed and buried in a longan orchard.
(See Taxonomic Hierarchy, photograph)
Choeung Ek is but one of many “killing fields” found throughout Cambodia, a result of the genocide carried out by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge between 1975-1979.
Two million Cambodians were killed. 25% of the country’s population disposed of in longan orchards and other killing fields. The guide at Choeung Ek quietly told our group that, to this day, a heavy rain will sometimes stir to the surface of the soil fragments of bone and clothing. Pieces of lives still anxious to be found. To be seen.
The 200 foot tall Buddhist stupa at Choeung Ek is filled with more than 5,000 skulls. An impossibly high stack of skulls. The sight of the tower … all of those skulls … an orchard that once upon a time was known only for the fruit it bore … acres of fallen longan rotting on the ground …
Standing inside the stupa, my heart missed more than one beat. My steps fell uncertain. I thought of the Tower of Faces at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. My feet turned to stone at the very moment that I wanted nothing but to flee.
I left Choeung Ek and its orchard of longan and skull to visit S-21. Perhaps too soon. The age-old question of whether to rip off the bandage in one swift pull, or to pull off the bandage a bit at a time over a period of days. I might have saved S-21 for the following day, or the day after that. But I had decided to swallow all of that suffering over a period of a few hours. Prolonging the suffering seemed to serve no one.
My beautiful wife. She is number 331.
The weight of the day is getting to me. And yet.
I see Bou Meng is still smiling at me. A smile both gracious and graceful. A smile brimming with love, for her, for me, for all of us.
And I cannot stop staring. And through the course of my staring, I feel the weight of the day begin to lift.
August 11, 2012
Tuol Sleng, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
“Bou Meng,” by Huy Vannak (Amazon https://amzn.to/3bm1U86)
POSTSCRIPT. More than 14,000 Cambodians were killed at S-21. Only seven survived. Bou Meng was one of those seven. Ma Yoeun was not. When Bou and Ma were arrested, their children were taken to a Khmer Rouge “child center,” where they stayed, until they finally died of starvation.
As I finish writing this piece on this Sunday morning, anxiety hits me hard. I wonder if Bou Meng has survived the seven and a half years since I met him in August of 2012. For a moment, I am flat-out too scared to Google his name. I lost Mom in February of 2019. I do not want to lose Bou Meng this February morning in 2020. The first anniversary of Mom’s passing, February 23, is approaching all too quickly.
But selfishness and desperation compel me to search. I want — need — to know that Bou Meng and his smile, as well as those haunting words that I still hear as if for the first time … I need to know that his eyes, face, smile, words continue to work together to fill the world with grace.
They do.
Bou Meng is alive, nearly 80 years old now. A picture on his Wikipedia page, taken on April 26, 2018, shows him at the same table at which I found him, still telling visitors about his beautiful wife Ma Yoeun. Number 331.
My spirit lifts. I would very much like to see Bou Meng again and tell him how much he and his beautiful wife mean to me. I hope I can return to his table at S-21 so that we might share a few more words. Before time catches up with us and it is too late for such sharing.
In Huy Vannak’s book about Bou Meng, there is a photograph of the seven survivors of S-21. Bou Meng, the smallest of the seven, is third from the right. Vannak’s book details how Bou was mistakenly thought to be dead. An article in the January 4, 2002 Phnom Penh Post reported that Bou Meng died in 1997 or 1998.
But Bou Meng is not that easy to kill. When Bou learned that people thought he was dead, he returned to S-21 and announced to Cambodia and the rest of the world, “I am still alive.”
I feel a sense of peace descend upon me, descend upon this Sunday morning. I know there is no need for me to hurry. Bou Meng & his beautiful wife Ma Yoeun will always be in the world. Longan fruit does not die. Rebirth is but a moment away. Out of great sorrow blooms love. And alongside the love, the smile of Bou Meng, arising from the soil, replenishing a longan tree. Still alive.
For Bou Meng, his beautiful wife Ma Yoeun, and their Children
Crestview Hills, Kentucky, U.S.
February 9, 2020