Word: pham
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...shirt over my head, and they hit me with something hard. I felt the men coming over to lift off the shirt. But I was still conscious. I heard the boatmaster order another man to cut my throat. (Here Loc interjects that he was powerless to help. Pham offers no consolation...
...moment they took the shirt off my head, they saw that I was conscious, and that tears were on my face. I did not know what they were thinking. Then someone said: 'Pham, do you want to live?' And I said: 'Yes, of course I want to live.' So they untied me and took me into the cabin...
...solitary boy; the logic of it; the low-whispered plotting; the appointment of the assassin; the blow; the raising of the shirt and the surprise. But then what? What, in fact, were those men thinknig that held them back from murder? Mere pity? Or was it the recognition of Pham's tears as their own, the knowledge that the boy was not weeping to save his own skin, but theirs, that he was weeping for all those who did ever, or will ever, or do now devour their young? Jubilee is suddenly noiseless. No sawing and drilling. No amplified announcements...
...Pham was told to eat for strength, and he did. But he remembers thinking that if the people on the boat ran out of food again, he planned to jump overboard. He is afraid of the boatmaster still. Thanks to Pham's testimony, the boatmaster was jailed by the Hong Kong authorities. Pham is terrified that the man will be released and come after...
...part, he feels no hatred for the boatmaster whatever, only disapproval. He understood the necessity of eating the dead boy, and he observes that the fear of starvation may have driven the boatmaster to behave with unnatural cruelty. Unlike the Cambodian children, Pham acknowledges that there is the capacity for good and evil in everyone...