Man in the Fields

The man in a blue shirt rakes leaves out of the hole in the ground, creating a pile in the very middle. The pile keeps getting smaller because of the afternoon wind, which also carries the laughter of children from the elementary school just beyond the field’s fence. Still, he rakes, the tines occasionally catching on a few scraps of cloth and white chips that emerge from the dirt.
He wipes sweat from his brow, tired from the maintenance work.
But it’s more than maintenance work. So much more.
Sok is standing in the middle of a mass grave.
He works at the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center in Cambodia, a killing field where more than 10,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge during Pol Pot’s regime in the 1970s.
Of those killed, 8985 bodies were exhumed. Sok witnessed the excavation in the early 1980s and continues to work at the site, where victims’ clothes and teeth are still in the ground. He puts his rake down and looks at the group of pale, sweaty students. He stares at a sign near one of the grassy depressions.
“Please don’t walk through the mass grave!”
Before the excavation, Sok witnessed the Khmer Rouge and the suffering it caused. He suffered, he says through a translator. The 53-year-old is missing his right forearm, which he lost in 1973 during a Khmer Rouge bombing.
He shifts his eyes toward a banyan tree. Khmer Rouge officers threw babies against the tree while their mothers watched, our tour guide tells us.
Holding his rake in the crook of his elbow, Sok uses his one hand to count the number of family members he lost during the regime. Nine. Most died from starvation.
He nods to the people listening and continues raking. He’ll keep working at the site, on preserving the memories of those who suffered.
Who suffered like he did.