Sunday, May 17, 2009

At the dark end of the street / That's where we always meet

Words fail....

“Sometimes when I sit at home I look at the picture and everything seems fresh,” he said. “I think of the suffering she endured, and I wonder how long she stayed alive.”

Mr. Bou Meng has since remarried twice, but he remains shackled to his memories. “I know I should forget her,” he said, “but I can’t.”

She visits him, he said, in visions that are something more than dreams, looking just as she did when he last saw her — still 28 years old, leaving Mr. Bou Meng to live on and grow old without her.

Sometimes she appears with the spirits of others who were killed, he said. They stand together, a crowd of ghosts in black, and she tells him, “Only you, Bou Meng, can find justice for us.”

[From Survivors Shed Light on Dark Days of Khmer Rouge - NYTimes.com]

In Indonesia, the right wing coup, CIA backed, produced similar stories, but largely forgotten since they were our guys I guess. They don't even teach it to the kids here....the generally accepted figure by historians is about a half million dead.

Some of the heirs to the architects of that horror are even proudly standing for President here in July.

3 comments:

3410 said...

Hi, Simon.

I'm glad you've gone back to black background, but the text is hard to read. Would you consider switching from grey to white?

Simon said...

I've lightened it up a notch..I hope that helps

3410 said...

Thanks. It does!