The Rent Collector

by Camron Wright

The Old Woman and the Elephant by Sopeap Sin The old woman was already weary when the Khmer Rouge soldiers marched her to the work camp at Khum Speu—tired bones, tired mind, tired heart. She didn’t expect to survive long, since others around her—younger, stronger, wiser—were killed or died almost every day. “The educated,” the new leaders of the regime announced, “are a stain on the true worker. Cities are evil. Education and learning is useless and selfish. Money and commerce are corrupt. The strength of a nation is in the working man—not the parasites who live off the laborer! Plant rice for the nation to prosper! Only those working in the fields will eat!” They told her over and over again that she was irrelevant, nothing better than a single grain of rice in a larger communal bowl. “Remove one grain of rice and the bowl is just as full,” they would drill into her. “To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.” It was a holocaust of life but also of common sense and reason. As a child, the old woman had suffered from nightmares—fiendish, gruesome dreams that had caused her to wake screaming, drenched in sweat and fear. However, no matter how awful they seemed at the time, she always took comfort in a truth her grandmother repeated, “Fear will flee. You will always wake up when morning comes.” In the camp, fear stayed. Everything was backwards there, topsy-turvy, upside down. Truth no longer applied, since the old woman’s worst nightmares now played out during t...