Music Of The Ghosts

Revisiting The Killing Fields

The Cambodian Civil War in the Seventies resulted in the most savage genocide in history, when followers of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge killed millions of people, imprisoned and tortured many more; several—mostly children—died of malnutrition and disease.

The mass graves of the massacred population were uncovered over time, and called The Killing Fields, by journalist Dith Pran, whose experiences were was turned into a disturbing film by Roland Joffe. There have been a few other books on the Cambodian horror, but few and far between.

Vaddey Ratner, who escaped from Cambodia as a child, wrote In The Shadow of The Banyan and now a second book, Music Of The Ghosts that takes the story forward to modern-day Cambodia, still reeling with memories of the past.

The protagonist is thirty-seven-year-old Teera, who had made a miraculous escape from Cambodia, along with the only other survivor of her family, her aunt Amara. They rebuilt their lives in America, but could not shake off their tragic history.

After Amara dies of cancer, Teera receives a letter from a man who calls himself Old Musician, and tells her he has a few musical instruments belonging to her father, that he would like her to have.  It takes Teera months of coming to terms with her sorrow and mustering up the courage to go to Cambodia, to confront the loss of her roots and the never-ending grief of losing her family.

The story unravels through the memories of Teera and the Old Musician, and events in the present, which include a romance with Dr Narunn, who understands and shares Teera’s pain. It is not easy for her to go to places that were once familiar and now only have echoes of torment.

The taxi driver who takes her around, the wise monk at the temple where Old Musician lives, an orphaned child, a family of survivors finding joy in their togetherness—everything adds to Teera’s understanding of the past and the enriches the experience of her return. She notices and embraces again the Cambodian way of life, wanting to shake off the tag of foreigner in the country of her birth.

But she sees, through an outsider’s eyes, “Shantytowns fight for their inch of land against sprawling residential estates and hotel grounds, against sprouting American-style shopping malls and Chinese-style row houses. Open sewage canals — clogged with plastic bottles and bags, the blackened water a hothouse for diseases heaving in the heat and dust — hem the streets boasting modern clinics and pharmacies.”

It may be a little repetitive and the prose too florid at times, but it is a very moving book. (In a scene that raises goosebumps, a mother whose children have died before her eyes, screams for their faces to remain uncovered, so that the people who dropped the bomb can see what they have done.)

The Holocaust is never allowed to slip out of the minds of the world—there are books, films, documentaries, TV shows and plays; the tragedy of Cambodia should not be forgotten either, the unimaginable suffering of the people should not be in vain.

Music Of The Ghosts

By Vaddey Ratner

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 336