I grew up in a beautiful field. The low vegetation was dense, the soil was rich, and the sun called us all up out of the earth and dared us to grow tall. For a long time I grew in peace. My branches continuously stretching farther, reaching toward the sun, my roots digging deeper into the dark soil and all around me flowers bloomed in their season. It was a beautiful corner of the world, my own little paradise.
Until…
One day a truck pulled up the dirt road that lead to the field and stopped. A few men stepped out and began to investigate the field. They walked about the grounds, walked right past me, and then returned to their truck and drove off.
The next day more trucks and more men came. They worked feverishly for days digging massive holes in the earth, clearing the field, and laying waste to the beautiful field. For the life of me I could not figure out their intensions. Their faces were somber, their muscles tense, and few words were spoken.
After ravaging the field, setting up a few small structures, and hanging sound systems in my branches they left and stayed away for a few days. The skies grew gray and stayed that way all week. My leaves quivered in the wind and I sensed something dark was on the horizon.
The trucks returned. More this time. Many more trucks and many more people. Men, women, children. They were forced out of the vehicles, some dragged, by the men I had seen digging the deep trenches around me.
Nothing could have prepared me for the horror that followed.
People were cuffed and chained to the floor in the building known as ‘The Dim Room’ due to the lack of light. I couldn’t see in, but there were always moans and desperate screams escaping the walls. Their cries were greatly drowned out by music playing through the speaker they had hung in my branches and in the surrounding trees.
Over the next several weeks I watched as trucks came, dropped off people into the room, and drove off again. In the mean time men kept in chains were marched to a certain pit on the far side of the field. They were lined up and told to kneel. I felt the soft vibrations through the soil as, one by one, the soft flesh on the back of their neck was met by an unforgiving blade and their heads detached from their hopeless bodies. The men in uniforms then kicked the body into the massive pit and the heads were collected for reasons I can only guess at.
Next they pulled out the women and children, stripped them down to their fair bare skin and marched them to the pit that had been dug next to me leaving some of my roots exposed. I watched in helpless horrification as women and children were corralled like cattle for the slaughter at my trunk. The naked women were bludgeoned or shot and then fell amongst my roots. The children, Oh God, the children! Babies torn from their mothers clutches were barbarically smashed against my trunk. I could feel their blood, tears, and brains ooze down me and stain me forever. Their cries were so shrill and then they were so silent. Again and again children’s heads were bashed mercilessly against me. Their tiny lifeless bodies were disposed of in the pit with their mutilated mothers.
Eventually the uniformed men stopped coming and the murders came to a stop, but I now live and continue to grow with the knowledge that the decaying bodies of mothers and babies are nourishing my roots. I cannot change that. I live on, but my life now is a sad memory. A warning. I am a place of mass pain and regret.
Many people visit this place now. Tears fill their eyes as they gaze upon me. Knowledge is a great weapon against future violence, but I have no escape. Sometimes I look forward to the day I, too, fall, decay, and pass my nutrients on to another.
Based on the events that took place in the ‘70s at The Killing Fields – Phenom Penh, Cambodia.
