Geoff Ryman's Cambodian Tales, Part 1

This week's Omnivoracious guest, writer Geoff Ryman, has expressed an abiding interest in Cambodia through three major fictions: The Unconquered  Country, "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" (short story), and his latest US release The King's Last Song, the only one of the three not to include an element of the fantastical.

As Ryman told Locus in 2006, "My next book...is a mainstream novel set in Cambodia. It doesn't have a chapter set in the Khmer Rouge era, because that's been beautifully done by people who lived through it, so why do it again? In this age of post-colonialism and appropriation, why am I writing a novel of Cambodia? Number one, you have to write about it. The alternative is just to ignore the Third World and pretend it isn't there. Number two, there's the international culture. If it hasn't happened already in Cambodia, it certainly has in India, and it's going to happen in loads of places. The educated--they're going to join us, and they're going to write about their countries. The whole thing will become less of an issue. We're going to get some fantastic post-colonial science fiction, written in English. A book like Ian McDonald's River of Gods indicates there is a future for these other countries and subcontinents, these huge tracts of Earth. And if there's a market when we do it, there'll be a market when they do it."

Ryman talks about his Cambodian experiences below the cut, in the first part of three entries...

                   

Stories. Cambodia. Later. (Part 1)
Geoff Ryman

I'm sitting in the back of a car with my friend Ran, a Patrimony Policeman. We're driving through Banteay Meanchey province, the town of Sisophon far behind us. The landscape in April is even hotter and drier than in Siem Reap province. This far west, people accept Thai money. I've bought sandwiches from the Lotus Cafe back in Siem Reap (it is what, 2001? And the Lotus is still thriving. ) I discover that Cambodians don't eat sandwiches.

We go to Banteay Chhmar temple so I can see the Jayavarman-era bas reliefs. Later, Ran takes me to an old ruined wat. A monk seems to live there, or at least, he crouches in the shade. When we walk through the ruins of ancient temples, hardly marked on the highways this far from the tourist routes, Ran takes hold of my elbow to stop me tripping over stones. In the car he tells me about his many wars. He tells me a story about a boy whose legs were blown off, and who committed suicide by drinking too much water. 'Don't tell my father,' the boy had begged. He meant not to tell his father he had killed himself. One story that ended up in The King's Last Song.

2007. My friend Rith and I like to go exploring in the countryside. We decide to see the fresh water dolphins on the Mekong. We do. Nearly round heads and tiny snouts. They glide up and out of the water, and then disappear again for long minutes, popping up again far away...or not at all. Rith takes over from the punter. He stands on one leg and steers the rudder with the other. He has one long oar to power the boat, which he pushes and pulls back and forth while balancing. I'm suddenly aware how strong he must be though no longer young. I learn this part of his story. During the Pol Pot era, he was a fisherman. Later, after the war for ten years he would punt vegetables up from the South into Phnom Penh. Since then he has been to university and got a research job. But he still can punt.

Later, in a motel room we watch a movie. It's one of the films that Sihanouk directed in the 60s. He was to a certain extent a movie star in Cambodia. He was not bad looking and half way to being a good actor, and he had the money to make them. It's strange to watch his movies now; in each one of them there will be footage promoting the beauties of Cambodia in the 60s. A state holiday in a new stadium full of happy people, unaware of the incalculable tragedy that awaits them all. In small white terraces, beautiful Cambodia women dressed like Audrey Hepburn meet spivs with TV show hair in sunglasses and white jackets. Villas look out over bays, sports cars drive around the Independence Monument on nearly empty streets that are lined with stone carved streetlamps and beds of flowers. In the countryside, cheerful peasants perform traditional dances for their prince.

Always in Cambodia, the sense that that country still exists, somewhere.

This particular movie is about another beloved prince played by Sihanouk. He is facing a disloyal general who wants to take over. I wonder if this isn't a reference to Lon Nol. The general's fortune-teller tells him he will die. The fortune teller is taken out and made to dig his own grave before we hear from a distance, one lone gunshot. Rith says 'That's what happened to my father.' Rith is Sino-Khmer, one of the targets of the Pol Pot strategy of cleansing and retraining, so I imagined his father was killed by Khmer Rouge. No, he says, his father disappeared under Lon Nol. I want to ask him: is that how your family survived? Why you were allowed to be a fisherman, when so many were not? But I find I don't want to ask.

Tomorrow, part 2...