It’s been over a year of darkness, and I am longing for the light of a new dawn. The memories of what brought me to this place are so surreal. It seems like it should have been a dream, but all is still there every morning when I awake. This reality is so difficult for me and those around me. They hate you for what you did and are doing, yet, for some reason I can’t. Is it because of how much I love you still, or is it because I believed in you, who you were, and who you could be? I am sure that after many therapy sessions, it will be decided that it was a combination of both. I still can’t believe you did this to me, the person you said you would never hurt. You have cut me a thousand times by what you have done. The scars will always be visible to me, running long and deep. I want to believe that they will heal and be less visible in time. I have so many doubts, I see all that you did every time I look in the mirror, a skeleton covered in flesh, hardly resembling the man I once was. The only thing you didn’t damage was the compassion and love that resides within me, still able to be seen through my eyes. Should I thank you for at least leaving me this, probably not.
The lies, the untruths you told the police, not to mention the money you paid, to have me arrested. All you did, caused me to spend the last year in a Cambodian prison, fighting for my innocence. Even now, I defend you because I know you didn’t do this on your own. You may have pulled the trigger, but your puppet master created you and pulled the strings. You were just a toy that could be manipulated for his enjoyment, once I was out of the way, he left you to fend for yourself, once I was released on bail just a few months ago, he left the country. A prison is an interesting place and while there I learned so much about you, and what he did to you and your brother. The atmosphere you put me in allowed me to arrange all the pieces of your puzzle and see the complete picture of you for the first time. Now, the tears are still being shed but not so much for you anymore, for the people I came to know and who became an extended family. I can never forget what you did. The man I came to know and loved had a beautiful caring heart. I could see it when I looked into your eyes. I wish you would have confided in me and told me about the life he created for you: the misdeeds you were doing and the illness he gave you, physically and mentally. I still feel your tears as they strike my shoulders, hearing you repeating, “I’m sorry, I should have told you the truth.” The person you refer to as your master raped you and your brother, pimped you out, and he made you extort money from your tricks through making videos. Forced you to blackmail others. Your actions provided me with the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of others. To see what the real world was like for many people living in a third-world country. Other men have been incarcerated for false charges and being unable to pay the authorities. At the age of 58, I am realizing the truth to the saying, “Everything has its price.” You thought being in prison would kill me, that I would die, and with my death the truth of what happened, and the truth about your owner and what he was doing. I am very much alive and stronger than before.
The men of block D, cell #9 were just twenty-three of such people who taught me so much about the Cambodian judicial system. Hearing their stories and predicaments motivated me to fight for them once I was free and back on safe soil. Each one of them is unique and all of them, together, took care of me. We in the West are so fortunate that we don’t always take the time to appreciate all that we have, not just the material. The stories of Baut, Boy, Chantha, and Vin are just four raindrops in the lake of injustice.
Baut was only 23 years old and arrested for using ICE, the drug of choice here in this Kingdom of Wonder. So many stories about this miracle drug, each one similar, and the power it has can make you forget about all your troubles. The drive provides you endurance and strength to perform, sexually and while on the job. Baut told me that when you have no hope ICE makes all your problems disappear. You forget that you don’t have a job and that it is almost impossible to earn a decent living. You don’t care that you have no money to buy food for the family. You forget all your troubles. He didn’t receive many visitors and no packages because his family lived so far away from the prison. Yet, he still smiles every day. He accepted that this was his lot in life, and he couldn’t change it. He was sentenced to fifteen months. As I write this, he should be free to be with his wife and child again. The sad realization is that with drug use, most end up back in prison.
Boy was 35 and his crime, he cut down a tree that wasn’t his. He was sentenced to five years but reduced to twelve months. Boy’s family fled Cambodia during the civil war in the ’80s, though Khmer, was born in Thailand. He can’t read the Khmer language, only the spoken word. He attended a Thai school but dropped out after the sixth grade to work and help his parents. Boy was the cooker for our cell and a very good one at that. Each morning he would rise early, gather any wasted plastic bottles we had in the cell, to build a fire for boiling water. He did this to ensure that another older man and I would be able to have a cup of coffee. Once the coffee was ready, I would feel him gently pulling on my foot, a wake-up call for me to join them. He would then gather the ingredients from the various eating groups and proceed to prepare them for cooking. Measure out the rice provided by our families and friends. Takedown the preserved salted meats and fish that were hung the day before. In addition to these daily duties, he watched over our most valuable provisions, ensuring cookies, noodles, cocoa, and candies that had been brought to me were secured. No one, in my whole time there, ever stole from me. Evidence of mutual respect was always on display.
Kevin was a cellmate of mine from almost the very beginning. He arrived a day after me and was freed two weeks before I was granted bail. His crime, someone posted a Voice of America video to his YouTube channel. For this, he spent six months in prison and lost his job with an NGO. He would eventually become our cell team leader, we weren’t referred to as prisoners or inmates, but rather we were referred to as members. This was not a club med or timeshare by any stretch of the imagination. Unless of course, your idea of a holiday is sleeping on the floor with 23 others, in a space the size of maybe 18 x 9. If so, your amenities include a squat toilet, (make sure you put a flip-flop in the hole at night to prevent unsavory critters from coming to visit), and a trash can to fill with water for your bucket showers. PS, make sure you put a cloth over the hose to catch the little pieces of metal; once inside your body they can cause a lot of discomfort and do considerable damage. There is no extra charge for the bacteria and the multitude of infections that can fall upon you. As a bonus, each guest gets a complimentary case of scabies, with a side of staph infections.
Back to Vin, he was a great leader. He ensured everyone was provided for, and that all food groups were equally divided so no member had to just eat the provided fish head soup and lowest quality rice. Vin was a college-educated, artist, writer, and all-around good guy. While we were speaking one day it was discovered that his best friend was also a friend of mine. Strange things happen, I guess. We would spend endless amounts of time discussing the importance of education and the political climate throughout the world. So much misery is overlooked by foreign governments, all in the name of the almighty profit and what is in it for them. He would often say how he dreamed that after all this was over for us, including Chantha, to be able to work together for sustainable change. He was and is so wise, well beyond his years. Now that we are both out, we chat just about every day. The difference is that he was free, I was just out on bail, waiting for justice to be served. Each day I began to realize that this was Cambodia, so the chance of justice was slim to none. The darkest of circumstances can carry some bright light, and that was the people I met and if it wasn’t for the lies and false charges, I never would have met them.
Chantha, oh my god, Chantha. He too was by me since the day I arrived, taking care of me from the first moment we met. He would bring me candy, noodles, and iced coffee and this was before we were in the same cell. From the instant our eyes locked, I knew he had a beautiful soul and was a caring person. During the time we were in prison, Chantha’s wife gave birth to their third child. Each morning he would look at a photograph of his family, say a prayer, and smile. This was his motivation to fight. He owned a farm and worked for an NGO until false charges were filed against him. Like me, those who want something you have can go a long way to get what they desire. In his case, a father and son who also worked for the NGO wanted his job, no problem. The son’s wife filed charges that Chantha raped her. Now he was facing a similar fate to mine. Though we were completely innocent we had to fight the charges on appeal. Chantha was the first person to explain the full process and how it all comes down to arranging a package, (money,) for the court. Chantha was given a job in our block, to keep a record of the health of all the members. He would relay information to the infirmary and try to secure medicines. It was almost impossible to get medicines from the infirmary, the correction officers sold the medicines on the black market. To get medicines that were needed, Chantha would get word to his wife, and she would deliver them in a care package. To be given this job he had to pay a sum of a hundred dollars to the correction officer in charge. To supplement the medicines needed, Vin and I would also rely on medicines and bandages supplied by our friends who brought care packages. Soon, others within the block knew that if they had an ailment they would come to see us for bandages, medicines, etc.
From what Chantha told me of his parents and siblings, though all seem to be truly amazing individuals, he is most like his father. Chantha told me his father was a teacher yet he managed to survive the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. He did this because he was able to build ox carts, ox carts that the Khmer Rouge desperately needed. Having that ability not only allowed him to survive the killing fields but enabled him to employ ten other teachers, thereby saving their lives as well. Chantha inherited his father’s mechanical skills, he was the person who taught me how to make an oil burner out of a sardine can twine out of an empty bread bag, and a water filtration system. Our dates of appeal were only two days apart so maybe, with some hope, we can all be together again, on the outside, and begin discussing how to facilitate change to a broken system. To plot how we can seek change and hope for those less fortunate than us.
These four individuals and so many others changed my life forever. They taught me about overcoming adversity. The need to fight when you don’t want to fight anymore. That compassion exists everywhere if you are willing to look. That even in the darkness there is light. They made me a better person.
Once out on bail, I wasn’t free and still felt incarcerated. I was actually under house arrest. Afraid to go anywhere, that I would be rearrested and put back in prison. The guilt I felt for being on the outside was unbearable. I would start crying and shaking while riding in the tuk-tuk. I would go grocery shopping and find myself crying while standing in front of the Coke display. Fear had taken hold; constantly thought I saw the people responsible for trying to kill me. I was told it was normal for someone with PTSD to come to terms with what happened.
Today I sat on the terrace of my friend’s house, friends who had taken me in until I was free and able to leave for the USA, it would no longer be safe for me to live in Cambodia, the place I called home. The sun was shining and the sky an eye-piercing blue. Birds chirping, roosters crowing, butterflies meandering and fluttering through the air. It was all a reminder that I survived and was breathing. People kept telling me to be thankful that I was still alive, but was I? The heat and warmth of the sun still left me freezing like ice inside. I knew that I would never be the same person I was, that man had met his peril. Though they didn’t physically kill me, they succeeded in killing the person I was. On that day I noticed a sprout breaking its way through the surface, a new beginning waiting to burst out, a new life being born. The clouds appeared to be drifting away, a fresh and glowing dawn would soon be on the horizon, for all of us.
John Ganshaw: After 31 years in banking, John (he/him) retired to follow his dream of owning a hotel in Southeast Asia. This led to many new experiences enabling John to see the world through a different lens, leading him to write his story through essays, poetry, and a yet unpublished memoir. John’s work has appeared in Native Skin, Rats Ass Review, eMerge, Post Roe Alternatives, Fleas on the Dog, OMQ, Disabled Tales, Unlikely Stories, and many others. Nothing is as it seems in life, and experiences are meant to shape us not define us. Live for hope, truth, and adventure, which provide the stories that need to be written and told.
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