Bunrith

Bunrith's Dream
by Chath pierSath

On our way to Boston, in Arn's proud and brown Volkswagen convertible, Bunrith told us about his dream. In his dream, Seng, Arn and I were the characters, interacting with his subconsciousness. Seng wasn't with us, but for Arn and I, this was a good sign that Bunrith was taking our friendship very seriously. It showed that he had remembered and absorbed us into his realm of thought. Usually, he doesn't let other people into his head that easily. He has encapsulated himself from the rest of the world so that he won't get hurt by other people's lies and abuse of his trust. He has been in a very vulnerable position before because he was too honest and gentle. His feminine side commands the way he speaks, behaves, and acts. Others have seen this and exploited him for their own benefits. To this day, he has learned not to trust other people, especially other Cambodians who have done him wrong. He tries to be very selective of the people he is with. He always has something to protect: his reputation, his family's name, his self-worth, his dignity and pride, his inner secrets that he would unfold only to those he trusts with his life.

In the dream, Arn was trying to get honey from a beehive on a tree. I got lost somewhere in his subconscious journey. They were looking for me, worrying and searching, but I was nowhere to be found. Seng appeared the moment Arn had honey and sweetness in his hand.

"It must be the smell, the sweet dew calling, maybe the aroma of a woman's armpits that gravitated him to you, Arn", I said. Arn laughed. We were thinking about Seng earlier in the day before Bunrith had this dream when the subject of women, marriage, and relationship came up in our discussion. I can never relate to it since I like men. Nevertheless, I stay with the conversation and play along, when they think of thighs and breasts and feminine facial beauty, what's good and bad about women and their sexual push and pull to men. Arn, has always been, of course, better with women. He knows how to hook them to his heart. He knows how to flirt, and those female eyes who delight in him will never be able to have his love and commitment. I know that Arn will never be a married man. He's too free, too single to be held down by marriage like most of his Cambodian friends, who got married, got good jobs, and even have children hiding under their wives' skirt. The friends he has, once they're married, they don't hang out with him anymore. Their wives take away all their time.

It was an August's Friday afternoon. Arn and I decided to take off early from work to pick up Bunrith and go down to Boston. Cultural Survival in Cambridge was showing a film entitled the "Tenth Dancer," a story about a court dancer who survived the Khmer Rouge, and is now working hard to revive the dances as a teacher.

The ride on Highway 95 heading south, had never been better with the right company. The three of us rode past green, summer trees. Arn's convertible roof was opened. The wind was blowing and parting our hair. Bunrith was in good spirits. Usually, he would stay with his wife and daughter and hide away in his compartmentalized room to write Khmer poetry to ease his pain. As he was telling us about his dream, his hands spread with his smile. His musical soft voice echoed joy. This was our first ride ever together in Arn's car.

Bunrith and I weren't on the best of terms. When I first started working at the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association, I never liked his short temper and his negative, temperamental attitude. At one meeting, I yelled at him. That drew a curtain between us. He would never say "hi" anymore. We would avoid each other as much as we could. That was how we dealt with our differences. I didn't know what it was that made me so very angry. I guess it was his refusal to contribute to the newsletter that irritated me. His attitude was that if he couldn't get total control over the whole process, he wouldn't do it. Since that outburst of anger I had directed at him, he chose to never talk to me again, until Arn came along and started to be friends with him. Through Arn, I, too, became his friend. It wasn't easy at first.

It turned out that his mother knew Arn when he was little and also his family. His mother knew Arn's parents. They were living in the same village in Battambang province. Arn's father was well known throughout the province. He was the director of a famous public opera company in Cambodia before the Khmer Rouge. This company traveled and performed in villages throughout Battambang and elsewhere in the country on special holidays and traditional events free. I remembered watching its drama every New Year's eve at our village Buddhist temple. That was where we went for entertainment. The temple would sponsor movies and opera and act as the lead organizer of religious and traditional events. Arn's mother was the singer, and I guess Bunrith's mother was, too. That was how they all knew each other while Arn was just a baby. Since he made this connection with Bunrith's family, Arn has been praising and telling me how nice Bunrith was as though I needed to be convinced to be on good terms with Bunrith again.

Arn's perspective of the world can sometimes be angled, twisted, and distorted by his own ideal sense of reality. He sings, with spits, for those Cambodians who have been robbed of culture. His applied science and philosophical passages lie at the center of his heart. He could shut his eyes and ears to the violence and the shortcomings of other people with his own voice humming away old tunes of Sin Sisamouth. I know that he had seen more bloodshed and more death than I have. I know that he was forced to carry a gun at the age of twelve. He told me of those children murdered before him. To still see him become a man of peace and non-violence is amazing. All these years that I have known him, he has been sweet, kind, and self-less in his devotion to others.

In most of our lives, we each have stories to tell. Our childhood has been tied to deprivation and mass murder of our loved ones committed by the most cruel and inhumane regime led by Pol Pot. To this day, we still can't forgive the Khmer Rouge for what they did to us. Yet, we still live with that mad Cambodia in our minds. Arn and I plan to return soon. There's always plenty of things for us to do there. It's all in the dream. We keep hoping that peace will come, and that these crazy politicians will come to grips with reality and stop the madness. I can't understand what their fucking problems are. They're stuck in this cycle of violence, corruption and competition for fame, wealth and power. They're so greedy. How many more lives do they want to take before it all ends? How many more coup d'etats do they have to stake? They're destroying instead of concentrating
on rebuilding the country. At times, I want to say "fuck Cambodia," and never again have anything to do with it. But no. I am Cambodian. My blood is tied to that country. It's where I was born. I miss it. I miss the smiling children. I miss the palm trees, the rice fields, the wide open plain, the monsoon rain and the fruit I used to eat. I miss swimming in the dirty, Mekong River and doing things among my people. But I don't miss the killing, the lawlessness, the pain those men with guns inflict on those innocent people. I don't miss the mass genocide, the starvation and the slave labor of the Khmer Rouge time. I want that country to find itself again in peace, in love and not in hate, and in prosperity. I wish those leaders would see eye to eye and unite for a common cause, and live for one Cambodia. I wish they would stop dividing, staking coup d'etats, expressing their anger with their penis as a weapon. How do you train a monster to become a peace-loving beast? How do you undo the curse, the spell and the generation of war and violence, all the dead buried in one mass graves, the torture, the pain, the scream of bound hands and victims of human annihilation? How do you right what's wrong, and start all over again? The past is still with us, when we close our eyes, we hear exploding bombs in our minds. Our hands reach out to our loved ones as they were being murdered, but could not do anything about it. This world is cruel, and sometimes it's difficult to understand how we have all managed to survive.

Seng, like many other Cambodians, is one of those orphans left to make sense of the world with the horror he had to witness. The Khmer Rouge killed all his family. He had to witness his mother swelled up and dead because she had nothing to eat. Her skin yellowed. Her belly gloated with water. He was left all confused as a child to dig his mother's grave. The night he told me about his childhood, he almost broke into tears. I wanted him to cry, but he held on with deep, sorrowful resistance. That child is still inside of him, questioning the death of his mother and a brother who also died of starvation. He couldn't even cry. Still to this day, he holds on like a tough little man. He can't be more than five feet two. He shakes when someone raises his or her voice at him. His false teeth grit hard, and his body shrivels at any strong, persistent demand and sense of conquest or control over him. He needs love, somebody to hold him like a child again, to tell him that he's safe from the cruelty and the horror of the Khmer Rouge. His body is deprived of touch and love. He coils up alone on his futon bed, dreaming of long hair, white thighs, light eyes and a smile to match his heart. Wouldn't it be nice? There are hundreds and thousands of girls out there. Yet, Seng does not take interest in them. He is very selective. She has to have a mahogany skin tone, a nice Cambodian face, an intellectual and spiritual essence. The woman has to be embellished with a Goddess air of being. There is such a girl recently in his life, who he is striving for some kind of chemical accord with. Sophy, a dancer and a single, and a very bright student at Boston College. She is what he has been dreaming of, but Sophy may not like him. She has been talking to Arn more than him. Arn knew her longer. However, Arn knows that he will never make any move that would jeopardize his friendship with him nor Sophy. Sophy may like Arn more than him.

"How would you interpret this dream?" I asked. "What does the
honey represent?"

"Let me finish telling you about it," Bunrith gestured his feminine hand. In his mind, he was still wondering where I was, thinking that I may be lost somewhere all alone. It was nice of him to have shown such concern for my well being in his dream. But even in Bunrith's mind, I was much a loner and he perceived me to be very independent. I don't need a lot to make me happy. I don't need a lot of money. Just enough to survive and meet my basic needs. I don't have that many friends and I don't need a lot of them to make me feel whole and connected or grounded within myself. My universe is centered with self-awareness. My life is balanced by being conscious of my own experiences and what I can learn from all that is good or bad. I like to wander, travel and see things in the world. I like to think of myself as an adventurer, seeking jungles, oceans and streams, mountains and riverbeds for my soul. I don't think I will ever be lonely. Well, loneliness will always be there in my life, but I have learned to cope with it very well. All my life, I have known loneliness, sadness, and sometimes even the urge for suicide. The suicidal part is over, however. Loneliness and sadness will still come, when that child in me feels insecured and vulnerable. I will start sometimes on gray, cloudy evening, while I sit in my apartment, staring through the window and see nothing but concrete. I would be wondering who would come into my arms tonight. My body would yearn for the honey that Arn pulled from a tree. I want that sweetness in my tongue, those bees to give my humanity their secrets of life, and for them to sip away all my bitter sadness.

"The honey," Bunrith said, "was Arn's craving for fame and fortune". Arn laughed, with his humble eyes upon the arriving stars and he would become the brightest of them all. I know that he wants it, the fame and the fortune to be remembered the way Sin Sisamouth as a singer has been to most Cambodians. He needs that sense of recognition from others to validate his existence. He wants to be known, not as a tyrant, but as a hero of the people, a champion of the oppressed, a star of social awakening and a famous Cambodian singer and musician. He may become all of those things one day, so the dream says, with the right ingredients, the right luck, the right time and the right social, economic and political climate in Cambodia. Whoever he will become, I know that he will be on the side of the poor. He will continue to go around recruiting street children in urban slums to become soldiers of peace. He will lead Cambodia, not alone, but with the help from other people, to peace and reconciliation. With him as a leader, Cambodia will take her rightful place in the world once more. Her arts will grow. Her people will be happy. Her politics will unite. Her pride will be shown. Her economy will progress. Her education will be seeded
throughout the land. Then, again, he's a man, a feeble and delicate man who may stay a leader only to a dream. He may not be able to handle reality as it presents opportunity to him to lead a country and a people somewhere for real. It's only a thought, and every leader must make and shape himself to become one.

It would be nice for Seng if Arn were to become the Prime Minister of Cambodia. He can become Arn's steerer of economic policies. He will use his wealth to invest in Cambodia's economy and bring jobs and an improved standard of living for the poor. In Seng's economy, the sweetness of the honey will be shared and equally distributed among all people. That was why, in Bunrith's dream, he came to taste the honey and to find the woman of his dream to share his lifelong fortune. Whoever the woman will be lucky. This man is very honest, very caring and very gentle.

Bunrith, on the other hand, is a dreamer. His life is all but a dream. In his sanctimonious world, he lives with regrets and the thoughts that he could have done things differently with his life. In his house, he sleeps with a woman he does not love. But how many Cambodians really married for love? How many of them sleep in the same bed, but go about alone in their own dream? Making love for most Cambodian men is a concept that does not go beyond penile insertion into the woman's vagina. He climbs, he pushes and pulls, and he spits his semen into his wife, and the wife takes his pain into her womb like every woman should, without questioning and without even voicing the need of her own desire. Maybe her husband can touch her a little more, kiss her, play with her hair, feel her face, lick her thighs and be wherever her sensual nurturing is highest in its form. Usually, the
arranged marriage is controlled by that same monotonous urge of a man, bonded to her by his will and his need to release his sexual appetite. Never mind the woman. She's merely a wife, a household product, a bottom portion of a man's other half. That's how it is for Bunrith. This woman he married was an accident result from his moment of sexual madness. He didn't know anything about masturbation then. All he knew was the feeling that he had to direct his erection somewhere at the first woman he sees right in front of him. He had no control, no experience, nor the discipline to be wise about his sexual urge. It was one of those evenings alone with a girl he thought he loved so he took her to bed by force. He ripped off her shirt, exposed her small, virgin hard breasts and made her take his penis for love. Her moon shaped face was wild with his evasion. She fell to his feet, and that was it. Her virginity fled from the cut between her thighs. It was so bloody that Bunrith was obligated to pay her back by marrying her. If he didn't married her, she would have lost her place in the world. Other people would attempt to violate her with their words. Her reputation would be ruined. Gossips would spread. "Oh, she's a whore," they would say. "He raped her."

Bunrith envies the freedom that Arn and I have to love and create the romance we deserve. He has to think about his daughter and a wife who he pities more than he loves. He has to think about his family and ways he can safeguard its name. He can't be running free, though his heart wants to. He must take full responsibility for what he has done, and be the man traditions expected of him. To be free, he must find other way like writing poetry to go beyond his self-imposed prison wall, and think of a love he will never be able to taste as sweet as the honey. Yet, with this tragic emblem in his fate, Arn has made him the man of Cambodian culture. In the dream, Bunrith is Minister of Culture who writes his way out of troubles. He will make dreams for other to turn into reality. "Where was I?" so they wondered. I am a homosexual on his solitary path. In the dream, I eventually found where everybody were and tasted a little bit of the honey, too. I am a traveler, a free man always on the move. My journey is long, and I don't think I will ever settle to a life of marriage and family. I want to find a lover to share my eternal bliss, who can travel and be with me wherever I will be. If I don't find that man, then it would not be a big deal. I would just go on with my private ceremonies, tears, joy and outrage and celebrations. I will write and put Arn, Seng and Bunrith in history, and see if they can make a difference in the way they love Cambodia. Whereas, Arn will continue to live with disappointments in the Khmer people. He doesn't take negative reaction to his first recording CD very well. The music is very traditional. He opens the CD with a flute lullaby. Some Cambodians don't like that. Yet, the flute is the symbol of our Khmer soul. When I first heard that sorrowful, melancholy sound, I burst out crying. I had to run out of class. Then, I was in college, taking an Artist and Human Rights course. We were watching this video on the Children of War, which I later found out that Arn co-founded the project with Judith Thompson. This was a year before I met Arn in person. In 1994, we went to Cambodia to serve the same organization, CANDO (Cambodian American National Development Organization). In Cambodia, we never hung out with each other because we were too busy doing our own things. I was never with any of the CANDO volunteers anyway, because I was more into doing things with the local people. Some of the volunteers were too annoying for me because of their
attitude and their Americanized manner. I had no time for their bullshits.

Who would have thought that Arn and I would meet again. When I came to New England, we started on a path together and we became like brothers ever since. Arn is very gifted in music. He can sing almost like Sin Sisamouth. He can also plays various musical instruments, which he learned to do during the Khmer Rouge. The flute was what kept him alive. I would never thought that the Khmer Rouge would indulge themselves with music. But they did, and Arn was forced to entertain them.

Here he is now, trying to entertain an audience of Khmer in Lowell who often are very critical and hard to please. Most people like foreign beats taken from Thai and Chinese. Being a lover of Khmer music and tradition, this does not make it easier on him. Since we have known each other, he has been like a crusader to save Khmer arts, music and traditions. Why do Khmer dishonor other Khmer and reject what is so much a part of them? What war, what lies, what pain and suffering that they endure for them to feel such shame? There's a sense of that shame - the shame of being Khmer, and to reflect on what is being Khmer. For two decades, Khmer have been killing Khmer. There's no sign of it stopping any sooner. Arn has to understand, and he has to accommodate their criticism, and find a different niche to artistic expression that they can like. I often suggest that he create something new, innovative and pioneer a genre of his own. He must engage people with music that means something to them and relate to their own lives, to provoke them to think and to question about their own social, economic and political and even cultural conditions in America. I want Arn to become a social artist, one who sings about issues, but at the same time, sings about love and heartache. I can't sing, but I am an artist in my own way. I see and feel, I think and write, therefore, I am an artist. I wish I could have his gift, but everyone of us is endowed with a special talent that is different from other. This is why we need to work together to grow and get things done.

Arn cannot become the folk artist, the voice of the oppressed or the custodian of the poor unless it moves him to do so. I cannot tell him to become this and that. He has to be moved toward that direction on his own. So far, Arn is only trying to be like Sin Sisamouth, a man of many voices. Sin Sisamouth embodies the male in every Cambodian man. His voice, the love he expressed in his songs, the broken heart, the heroic theme he brought out through his voice, that tender and fragile state of being Khmer, what it means to be alive in a world that was about to become a battle ground for many years to come. Sin Sisamouth was famous during the 50s, 60s and 70s. When the Khmer Rouge came, many believed that he was killed, and made to dig his own grave in Tuol Sleng, a high school turned torture prison. Sin Sisamouth's legend lives on. Nobody has ever matched his voice. Every artist has his or her unique contribution to a time or a period. As an artist, you have to find your own niche into the world of your audience. It's a little harder to move into Cambodian territory since most of us have all been shattered by the Khmer Rouge experience. People still feel unsafe and private in their regards and reception toward others, toward their own tradition and arts.
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