In Praise of Messy Lives

In Praise of Messy Lives by Katie Roiphe Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: In Praise of Messy Lives by Katie Roiphe Read Free Book Online
Authors: Katie Roiphe
“housewife” on my visa application so as to avoid the complications that would arise from filling in “writer” or “journalist.” He was not calling me a housewife, though for a moment our relation to each other feels jittery.
    The truth is that this exchange would never have happened anywhere else. It involves a way of thinking that is alien to both of us. What is mine. What is his. The misunderstanding surfaces here because of the perpetual marketplace; because female company is so easily, so ubiquitously, for sale.
5
    Our guide in Cambodia is tiny and immaculate, his plaid button-down shirt tucked into black khakis, a belt around his waist. He is so nervous and self-effacing that we pick him out of the crowd of touts who have been waiting on the dock for eleven and a half hours for our boat to arrive. They are all waving signs and shouting, “Taxi! Hotel! Taxi! Hotel!” But our guide seems embarrassed by the idea of having to sell his services. He is wincing with embarrassment. He has the floppy hair of an English schoolboy, and his voice is so soft that we have to lean in close to him to make out what he is saying.
    Early the next morning, he takes us to the abandoned high school, once known as Security Prison 21, where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed thousands of their own people. It is a low, undistinguished-looking cement structure built around a courtyard and surrounded with barbed wire. There are peoplemilling around with cameras around their necks. But it is not a museum the way we have museums; it is not polished the way we expect museums to be polished. There are bloodstains on the stone floors, for instance. There are rusting bed frames where prisoners were tortured. There are wooden bars that they were chained to lying down. There is not enough light. Our guide leads us quickly from one room to the next. He goes out of his way to touch everything with his hands. As we make our way through the courtyard, it feels more like a crime scene that has been blocked off with yellow tape than a museum. The tragedy feels fresh, the air disturbed.
    Afterward our guide drives us to the Killing Fields. Within blocks the stone edifices of the city dissolve into palm-thatched huts on stilts. The pavement gives way to a rough dirt road embedded with stones. Our driver’s silver Timex looks bulky on his fragile wrist as he steers around the larger rocks and holes. It is impossible to tell how old he is—he could be twenty or forty-five. People here tend to look very, very young until all of a sudden they look very, very old. As the car bounces along, we manage to look out the window at the jackfruit trees. I have never seen jackfruits before. They are green and bumpy and scrunched up: they look like women’s handbags hanging from trees.
    The ride takes longer than we expected. We hadn’t really wanted to go to the Killing Fields in the first place. We anticipated the eerie lushness, the indifferent, picnic-ground green common to sites of mass murder. But our guide, in his gentle, unassuming way, was adamant.
    When we finally arrive, as we had suspected, there is not much to see. There are ditches and delicate, drooping trees. There are several clusters of tourists murmuring in cemetery tones. Ourguide calls me “Lady,” as he directs me to the best view: “Lady, you stand here.”
    He tells us that the Khmer Rouge killed babies by swinging them against a tree. He mimes the gesture and says, “They like for mothers to see.”
    At the end of our tour, our guide brings us over to a blossoming frangipani tree and says softly, “Now I will tell you about my family.” The fragrance of the white blossoms fills the air. We lean in closer to hear him. With the wind it is almost impossible to make out what he is saying. It occurs to me that as we were jostled on the dock, with all of the touts trying to shepherd us toward their taxis, our guide had said, “I will tell you about my family’s experiences.”
    Our

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