Word: lien
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...terror which confronted Lien and her brothers was more phantom than graphic, since few people were actually executed before civilian eyes. But the three recall clearly: the sudden and permanent disappearances; people's belongings strewn along roadsides; the distinct, revolting stench of corpses which wafted into the camp from the neighboring woods; and the rumors and stories passed along by chance witnesses of the Khmer Rouge's but cheering...
...WEEK BEFORE THE Khmer Rouge takeover Lien had acted as bridesmaid at a girlfriend's wedding. The ceremony took place on a sunny morning as friends and relatives arrived with presents and money-filled envelopes. Instead of the traditional pink Cambodian dress, the bride wore a western-fashion, white, wedding gown. At the reception afterwards, the guests plowed through cakes and cookies and drank tea and Coca-Cola...
...labor camp a couple years later, Lien spotted the bride-in-white's mother by the sound of her voice; she had withered beyond recognition. The woman sadly but tersely informed Lien that the girl had died, along with her new husband. The bride had been premonitory in her choice of attire: Cambodians customarily don white for funerals...
...December 1978 the Vietnamese launched a massive invasion of Cambodia, by then renamed "Democratic Kampuchea." Cambodians welcomed the conquest of their homeland by their historical neighboring enemy, just as they'd embraced the Khmer Rouge only a few years earlier, Lien credits the Vietnamese with rescuing her from certain death: the flux and confusion accompanying the incursion allowed her and her brothers to escape one night across the reedy, mountainous border into Thailand. Behind in the camp they left a cavernous pit, which Lien had learned was to be a mass grave for the workers...
...lived inside refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines. Although they were no longer terrorized, they continued to sleep in the dirt and catch colds while less hardy escapes succumbed to the squalor and despair. Some refugees gobbled down food with a hunger that caused shrunken stomachs to burst. Lien watched one man groan and writhe after eating several bowlfuls of rice; he died that evening in his sleep, by his wife's side. According to Lien, he had simply become "too hungry...