In the Shadow of the Banyan

by Vaddey Ratner

For my mother In the memory of my father, Neak Ang Mechas Sisowath Ayuravann

“There will remain only so many of us as rest in the shadow of a banyan.” “A prophecy, I know.” The prophecy, Papa had explained that day long ago when Om Bao went missing, said a darkness would settle upon Cambodia. There would be empty houses and empty roads, the country would be governed by those with no morals or teaching, and blood would course so high as to reach the underbelly of an elephant. In the end only the deaf, the dumb, and the mute would survive.

Familial closeness was against the teaching of the Revolution, said the camp leader. It eroded the communal structure and lessened productivity.

It was now 1977, the camp leader had said. I didn’t know what startled me more—that there was a specific time, a month and a year, to this perpetual darkness, or that a life and a world I once knew had vanished entirely in the span of only two years.

Crying was against the teaching of the Revolution.

A story, I had learned, through my own constant knitting and reknitting of remembered words, can lead us back to ourselves, to our lost innocence, and in the shadow it casts over our present world, we begin to understand what we only intuited in our naïveté—that while all else may vanish, love is our one eternity. It reflects itself in joy and grief, in my father’s sudden knowledge that he would not live to protect me, and in his determination to leave behind a part of himself—his spirit, his humanity—to illuminate my path, give light to my darkened world. He carved his silhouette in the memory of the sky for me to return to again and again.

Bury me and I’ll thrive as countless insects I bend neither to your weapon nor will Even as you trample upon my bones I cower not under your soulless tread Or fear your shadow casting upon my grave.

For all the loss and tragedy I have known, my life has taught me that the human spirit, like the lifted hands of the blind, will rise above chaos and destruction, as wings in flight.

“To keep you is no gain, to kill you is no loss.”