When Broken Glass Floats

“The world has become a landscape of light and shadow. Around me, a human river flows crazily out of control. People are running everywhere. A sobbing woman carries a bundle of clothes and a child, slowed by the weight of her own terror. I am stiff in fear and shock.” 

Athy describes a nightmare in which hostile forces invade the United States, just as her homeland, Cambodia, was invaded by the Khmer Rouge. She describes chaos and disorder, which she witnessed repeatedly as a child growing up under the Khmer Rouge.

“Angka, the organization, suddenly became your mother, your father, your God. But Angka was a tyrannical master. To question anything—whom you could greet, whom you could marry, what words you could use to address relatives, what work you did—meant that you were an enemy to your new ‘parent.’ That was Angka’s rule. To disobey meant the kang prawattasas, the wheel of history, would run over you.”

Angka is the word Cambodians used to refer to the Khmer Rouge. Here, Athy describes what life was like under a dictatorship that attempted not only to control the body but also the mind. Refusal to submit meant death.

“Khmer Rouge are a continent away, and yet they are not. Psychologically, they are parasites, like tapeworms that slumber within you, living passively until something stirs them to life. I was asking these subjects to wake those parasites.” 

Athy’s involvement with the Khmer Adolescent Project means she must ask other Cambodian refugees questions about their experiences. This is traumatic both for the subjects and for Athy herself; it forces them to recall horrific events and tragedies.