Spice. Robert A. Webster

      He stood up, looked over at the mirror above his sink, and smiled.

      “Old and rough looking, just like me,” he said and chuckled to himself as he rubbed the dark patches under his eyes. He put the seedpod back into the box along with his bible, closed the lid, and placed it on a shelf.

      Taking a folder from the bedside drawer, he put the old leaflets alongside sheets of printed out instructions, directions, and information that he had found on the internet. He hoped they would help him with his quest, and he would take them along with him the following day on his flight to Phnom Penh.

      With his thoughts in turmoil, many things went through Ravuth’s mind. ‘Would I be able to find the village and are my family still alive? Maybe Oun now has a family of his own. Would they remember me?’ His stomach then churned and his eardrums popped as the plane descended.

      2002. Cambodia felt unfamiliar to Ravuth Eggleton. He landed at Pochentong International Airport in Phnom Penh and after getting glares from the customs officials after looking at his UK passport, he caught a taxi into the city. He smiled as the warm air and familiar smells of Cambodia brought back fond memories as he looked out of the taxi’s window. They drove past large modern buildings and small open food restaurants filled with smiling Khmers eating and chatting.

      He checked into a hotel recommended by the taxi driver on the Riverside. During the time Ravuth lived in Cambodia, apart from the short, unnerving visit to Koh Kong, he had never left his village, so knew nothing about the country he used to call home. Having been a long time since he had spoken Khmer, he struggled to speak or understand his native language as the taxi driver spoke to him.

      Arriving mid-afternoon, his plan was to visit the registry and records offices in the Council of Ministry buildings on Confederation de la Russie. But first, he wanted to get a taste of home. He left the hotel and went into the first open-air Cambodian restaurant, ordering plates of Cambodian food.

      “Ahh,” Ravuth sighed with pleasure as he crunched on fresh Cambodian vegetables. He smiled, ‘Beats pot noodles’ he thought after living on Pot Noodles and any other dehydrated food that he could cook with his kettle in the B&B. He spent the rest of the day contacting various departments and making appointments for the following day.

      Ravuth went out in the evening and strolled along the Riverside. The large, still, Basaac River glistened, and Ravuth watched the lights of small boats as they flitted back and forth. He had brought some pounds sterling with him and after the bank teller advised him to use US dollars instead of the Cambodian Reil, he exchanged his cash to USD. ‘I will use my bank card when that’s gone,’ he thought. He hoped he had more than enough in his UK bank to cover any costs he might incur.

      Tourists and locals walked up and down the pavement, while noisy tuk-tuks and moto-dop taxis drove up and down looking for customers. The noise of the big city at night made Ravuth feel uncomfortable

      He saw several Khmer and foreign-owned restaurants and watched Khmer touts and beggars approaching foreigners, who tried to ignore the nuisances. He sat in a restaurant, ordered a meal and a beer, and after finishing his food, he returned to his hotel room and sifted through his information for the next day’s meetings. Realising the first obstacle he had to overcome was to find out his family’s name. Living in a small village, the family’s details only got recorded at the local Sangkat (district council) and they issued family books to each family as a record. His father took care of all those details as none of the family could read or write, Ravuth was unaware of his family’s surname or real date of birth. He realised it would be a hurdle after spending the next day shunted around different offices and achieving nothing.

      Over the next few days going through the archives, his search came up fruitless. He spent the evenings walking along the Riverside and a few hours at an internet café before returning to his hotel. His week in Phnom Penh disheartened him because he had uncovered nothing. Ravuth had hardly spoken to anyone, since the Khmers seemed standoffish and cold toward him, considering him an outsider who had escaped the Khmer Rouge. The foreigners also ignored him, assuming he was a tout wanting to sell Killing Fields tours or sexy massages. He felt alienated and lost and kept himself to himself, concentrating on his seemingly impossible quest. He looked at the records of the genocide museum at Tuol Sleng. Surprisingly, the Khmer Rouge that had controlled the central provinces kept meticulous records; including photographs of any unfortunate individual that came through the hellish place. Ravuth sifted through every photograph, knowing the demise of the individuals whose emaciated images now stared back at him. He felt relieved that his family were not amongst the victims of this nightmare. Ravuth had studied several articles on the website about the atrocities committed by Pol Pot and his indoctrinated band of murderers. Now that he was in Cambodia, the facts became a lot clearer and realised that his parents were probably dead, but hoped Oun had survived. While alone in his hotel room, he tried to imagine how that terrifying period could have affected Oun and remembered his brother’s happy, smiling, grimy face as they played and went on adventures.

      Haunted by the horrific images he had seen over the past few days, Ravuth spent long sleepless nights at the Phnom Penh hotel, with both happy memories of his childhood and turbulent and frightening thoughts about the possible demise of his family.

      An administrator, who saw Ravuth’s daily pilgrimage to her offices, handed him a piece of paper, giving him information about the province offices where his family would have gone through.

      “Maybe they can help,” she said, “all the people from that area went to that commune to be processed. Perhaps they would know where your family were sent from there.”

      Ravuth looked at the address and cringed.

      “Would you like me to make you an appointment?” asked the woman.

      Although unnerved by the thought of returning to Koh Kong, Ravuth took a taxi to the border town the following morning for his appointment with the head administrator. The journey took almost eight hours in an old Toyota corolla with the air conditioner not working and the four stops by the rivers to await the floating pontoon to ferry them across, Ravuth felt uncomfortable. However, speaking with the driver throughout the journey, slowly his understanding of the Khmer language returned.

      He went to see Ny Ngem, chairman of Dang Paeng Sangkat, the commune offices that covered the Koh Kong province during the Khmer Rouge period.

      Ravuth and Ny’s English speaking assistant, Rom, went through records. The problem was that there were many unnamed villages and sporadic residences, so the only records that the Khmer Rouge had noted down were the number in the group, the destination camps, and the surnames. Unlike the meticulous records kept in Phnom Penh, these were sketchy. After a few days of mundane searching, Ravuth realised this was not the way forward and fed up with having to pay the chairman daily coffee money, as he liked to call his back-handers. He felt he had no other choice but to pay, after noticing that ever since he arrived, the Cambodians did nothing without money, especially from foreigners, which he now was.