Before the War: (From left) Mrs. Yar, Thawke Yar, Ted Ngoy, Tek Hout Tao, and Bun Tao pose outside the Cambodian Embassy in Thailand in 1974. Three years later, the Yars would be dead, Ted and Bun would be stateless refugees, and Tek would find himself reliving a single day as he struggled to survive in a Khmer Rouge labor camp.
BY DOMINICK TAO
Even decades after the Cambodian Civil war and the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge, Tek Hout Tao could never escape the guilt of following a friend’s decision to stay instead of run.
The war crept toward Monkol Borei for months. Its proximity was measured by the artillery lines built by the National Army; the closer the mortars and Howitzers were stationed to the city, the more tangible it became. The rounds echoed night and day. At first, they were far-away mutters carried on the wind. But by mid-May, 1975 — shortly after Phnom Penh fell to the communist rebels — the explosions were close enough to see.
It was then that Tek and the city’s other leading men finally decided their lives were worth more than everything they owned. Together, they decided to make a run for the Thai border — a 90-minute drive to the west.
Unknown to them, by then it was too late.
Decades later, Tek would still blame his best friend for convincing him to wait until the war was nearly upon them to leave. He would blame greed for everything else.
That friend was Thawke Yar. Most people simply knew him as “the Boss”.
Yar was the only man in Monkol Borei with more money and sway than Tek. In fact, he was one of the richest men in Batambong Province. His word calmed the other leading men, the mayor, and even the soldiers whom he fed and housed.
If Boss Yar felt it was safe to stay, then it was safe to stay. Tek trusted him with his life, as if he were his own brother. But as the days wore on, Tek began to question Boss Yar’s motives for staying put. He began to wonder if Yar was putting his love for his family first, or his love for his small empire. Even as the Khmer Rouge hijacked his trucks day after day on the outskirts of town, stealing hundreds of thousands of Baht worth of his teak wood harvests, Boss Yar held his ground.
“I have lived through three wars,” Boss Yar said. “Never has one of them forced me from my home. This one doesn’t stand a chance.”
But when the Army could no longer hold its lines, even after Boss Yar had spent much of his fortune keeping their guns loaded and purses full, he made the decision to leave. By then, everyone else had come to the same conclusion.
There was only one road leading from Monkol Borei to to the town of Poi Pet on the Thai border. The line of cars, horse-drawn carts, and families on foot streaming toward this escape stretched on for miles.
But when the would-be refugees reached the crossing, they pooled like a river meeting a dam. Tank barricades surrounded the once grand roundabout. Refuse and feces and abandoned possessions littered the ground.
Boss Yar had bought his way to the front of the chaos. His silver Mercedes grumbled through the swarming masses. Tek, his family all stuffed into his smaller Mazda, followed behind. Tek’s wife, Kuy, mumbled prayers. Tang Jia, Tek’s mother, sat mostly silent and stared out the window.
“I have seen this before,” Tang Jia finally said. “I did not think I would live to see it again.”
Boss Yar did not have any children. But he had raised his sister’s daughter, Yai. She was a tenacious young woman, even at 17. Her wicked and knowing smile tempted most men, though most men tended to regret the day they met her. When Boss Yar’s diesel Mercedes trundled to the final barricade, Yai could not believe what The final obstacle was — or rather, who.
It was one of those men she had charmed, then scorned: a soldier named Poi.
Yai thought Poi was an idiot. For a month, the young man had lived with his fellows in the barn adjoining Boss Yar’s villa. He had tried to serenade her. She told him to eat horse shit. And one day, she tricked him into actually doing so for a favor that was never returned.
And now, the young man, behind a machine gun, was the lone obstacle to freedom. Yai stuck her head out the window.
“Poi!” she shouted. “Put down the gun and let us through!”
“I have my orders, miss Yai! I am sorry!” he yelled back over the din of the crowd.
Poi was sweating, and not from the heat. He was terrified he might need to fire on people he knew.
But he was more terrified of what would happen to him if he fled his post, or broke his wide-eyed stare.
Yai turned to Boss Yar in a panic. Her adoptive father had taken to wearing a fat silver revolver at his belt in recent months.
“Daddy, shoot him! He’s the only one there! You have to shoot him!” she yelled.
She could see the man’s eyes staring ahead. He was contemplating it. But Boss Yar, at his core, was a good man.
“No,” he said. “I will leave that to the revolution.”
After a few minutes, Thai troops arrived to staunch the flow of would-be refugees into their country. There was no longer hope of crossing here — not because of Poi and the remains of the Cambodian National Army, but because Thailand had sealed its border..
Tek remembers the long drive back to Monkol Borei. Just a few weeks earlier, and the caravan could have gotten out at any time. Now, it was only a matter of weeks before the city would be a ghost town — its former inhabitants rounded up and marched to the fields. Or, like Yar, made into one of the ghosts.
Tek remembered silently feeling his stomach well into his mouth. He held back his tears.
“Maybe it won’t be that bad,” he told his wife and kids, hope still lingering. “Maybe it will be for the better.”