S-21

[smokingboot]

Writing this is hard.

We had seen the silver pagoda and the royal palace, brilliant and intricate with the four faces of Buddha shining from its tall spire; directly under that spire lies the king's throne upon which he only ever sits once, in order to be crowned. In the sacred act of coronation it is hoped he will be imbued with the four noble qualities of Buddha: Equanimity, Loving Kindness, Sympathy and Compassion.

Then we went to S-21.

If I saw the devil standing before me right now, I would go over to him and apologise for all the sht we place on him, all the times he gets used as a scapegoat, the devil made me do it . What a comfort to have something or someone else to blame! But I suspect that if we traced each image and idea of the adversary backwards from Tom Ellis through Eliphas Levi, from Dante to Bosch, back, back, back before the Books of Job or Genesis, we would find ourselves eventually discarding snakes and goats and looking at a stick figure on a cave wall; the artist might put horns on it or a ring around it to set it apart, but the figure will always be based on the human.


S-21 is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, where the Khmer Rouge kept prisoners for interrogation.They wanted proof that people were working for the CIA. Often the forced confessions were ridiculous: The CIA made me steal a mango, the CIA made me think bad thoughts... but of course names flowed and the torture spread to families. And when there was no torture, the everyday was made horrifying in its pointless cruelty; I will not give descriptions here.

The youngest prisoners and guards alike were teenagers, some of them as young as 14/15. Some were treated just like the rest of their families, others brainwashed. I think it was the king (described as 'both a light king and a dark king' ) who wrote about how young KR recruits were trained by torturing animals. Often their family members were held hostage to ensure compliance. How long does it take, how many heads do you stave in with a metal bar* before accepting that your mother met the same fate a couple of months back at the hands of someone just like you? Bodies were buried in the courtyard, but killing wasn't the actual intention at S-21, indeed the guards went to extreme lengths to ensure suicide didn't happen; no getting out of it so easily for prisoners. That would be the next stop, the killing fields.

It is estimated that possibly 20,000 people passed through this place. Only 12 survivors are known. A couple of these make a living there telling their story. We met Bou Meng (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bou_Meng) I did not know what to do in this situation. That a man should sit like an exhibit among all those horrible memories felt wrong to me, but he and his family must live, and in order to do that, we should buy the book, get it signed, take a photo. I remember taking photos of R next to Bou Meng, saw the heartbreak in my love's eyes, and a kind of blankness in those of Bou Meng. Witnessing the witness. I know no pain like it, but it has to exist. What are we without it?

We wandered, all of us stupefied. Suddenly, of all the trivial things, I recalled a quote spoken by The Vampire Lestat in the eponymous novel:
"The Theater of the Vampires," I whispered. "We have worked the Dark Trick on this little place."

Vampires and Devils and Monsters oh my. Hiding in stories and paintings this truth; it all comes down to us.

I knew I was in the presence of something no words will ever really able to express. S-21 called Strychnine Hill and the Hill of Poisonous Trees, S-21, the most infamous interrogation centre in all Kampuchea. They worked the Dark Trick on this little place all right. Its old name was Tuol Svay Prey High.
Once upon a time it had been a school.


*To save bullets