The scent of departure

riverside view

Morning traffic-quiet

Candles and ice

Nia

I have found relief somewhere between dreams, angry spells in the dark hour before dawn and the oblivion of sleep. When I wake up it’s already 930, late morning by Cambodia’s standards. A text from Koosh greets me good morning.  He offers me some down time and a nice lunch at the new Golden Temple hotel. 

The sun is painfully bright for my sore eyes. But I have released my demons again. They have departed with the night. I notice significant differences in the daily landscape that has greeted me every morning for the past fortnight. Whilst the human traffic on the roads has really picked up, there are no cars and tuk tuks as the riverside roads are blocked off. The Festival has officially started. There are the occasional bicycles and mopeds sneaking in but overall this is a pedestrian’s paradise.

There is no way that you can tell the Khmer what to do.  How do you reprimand or guide a mild mannered and seemingly obedient child? There is no easy or apparent way. There is police everywhere but mopeds sneak in behind the officers. At roundabouts where traffic is still allowed the usual thing happens: cars, mopeds, bicycles turn right instead of following the ‘correct’ flow of traffic on the left and circling the roundabout. The mopeds, which can be the only family vehicle, sometimes carry up to four. I see a moped family:  the father driving, a little boy standing holding on to his shoulders, his little sister held onto the moped securely by the mother, who nearly hangs of it at the end.

This is a walking day for me.  I am not risking getting on a bicycle in the sleepless state I am in. It would not be practical anyway.  It is the day before the big Water Festival celebration and the streets are heaving. It’s time to blend in.   There are food and artisan product stalls everywhere. The closer I get to Golden temple hotel and to the centre the busier it gets. It is just 10 am in the morning. The races are starting at 3 in the afternoon.  There are various riverside VIP platforms set up for the governors, politicians, businessmen and celebrity visitors in Siem Reap for the celebrations. There are other smaller platforms but most of the crowd is taking its place at the riverside.

I enjoy the hustle and bustle but am grateful when I arrive at the quieter hotel location.  At the hotel I sit by the poolside, first I snooze in a hammock waiting for a massage I booked. Koosh joins me for a tea. It is nice to feel his sincere compassion. I have not spent much time with Koosh but (I hope he does not mind me saying) I can see he is a sensitive and reflective person but also a survivor. I appreciate his company today.

The next hour is an experience: during my energising jasmine oil massage different parts of my head tingle as the skilled masseuse squeezes the hidden tension out from the different nooks and crannies of my body. When I walk out I feel that the hours of sleep I lacked have been handed back to me. Koosh and I enjoy lunch at the hotel restaurant balcony. I am crazy about the ginger and fish Khmer dish. Ginger is one of my favourite ingredients to cook with and this dish recipe is coming with me to nourish many friends and family.

More wandering in the streets of Siem Reap is in place as the flocks of people become denser. There is loud music of all kinds at the VIP platforms, the roadside and small side streets. There are Khmer BBQs everywhere.  The human and moped traffic has gone beyond the definition of busy. This is what congestions means. People are hanging off the bridges cheering at the oncoming racing boats.  As we catch a couple of boat races , I witness the childlike enthusiasm of the Khmer when in celebration.

I spend some time roaming on my own getting a couple of presents and books. I literally breathe in the colourful celebrations and festive noise like precious air. I can attempt to describe images , and sounds of this place , I could perhaps add a couple of  my really bad photos to accompany words but I still have not figured how to effectively describe scents and aromas. Stop and think how a scent makes a place or a person unique to you.  When in Sardinia I looked around to face landscapes that seemed so familiar to me but when I closed my eyes the disctinct aromas of the place were so uniquely Sardinian that a new memory and special place for this land was created in my heart. The same is happening today. Like an obsessed recorder of the scents of lands and places I store the ingredients of the Siem Reap concoction in a special place.

When I meet the boys (Phalla and Koosh) it is getting dark and the city has transformed into a massive fairground. The traffic and human congestion is alarming at parts. At times we don’t move for 10 minutes or more. This gives me more time to look around and spy on the place that I am about to depart from.

At one of the beautiful bridges of Pokambor avenue we pause as if in anticipation. There I meet Nia whose intelligence sparkles in her eyes. Nia chats in exceptionally good English. She is there with her mother for her festival and has just returned from a break in Vietnam. The boys are circling us excitedly as Nia is an exceptionally beautiful girl. It is quite funny to see this very human side of my two friends. As we talk, an explosion of fireworks begins from a boat in the middle of the river . It is six thirty in the afternoon, and one thirty in Greece. My grandmother’s funeral has just begun and by this strange coincidence I take the liberty to make the celebration of her life part of this year’s Water Festival in Cambodia.

Half an hour later the scent of fireworks is added to my night of departure.

The darkest moment

I wake up hot and bothered. I found out that my grandmother has died  three hours ago and I am in Cambodia.

This is my darkest moment.

I make no effort to open my eyelids. They are sealed with dried teardrops. I am angry.

I keep my eyes shut. I think about my grandmother: My hands are exactly the same shape as hers: an exact replica. Even the way I raise my left eyebrow is exactly the same. I think about her life and all she has been through.  I have talked about the crimes that nations commit against themselves and I have been challenged and troubled by accounts of history here. But my family, my grandmother, my father experienced the cruel civil war in the Greek mountains not long after Second World War. I can see my grandmother hanging from her leg, a thick rope holding her upside down beneath the walnut tree in the middle of the yard at the mountain house. Hanging desperately there for days, the rope cutting deeply into her calf and healing into her flesh; being questioned as to the whereabouts of my grand father.  I used to play on that same yard in the summers. She used to sit there, watch me and laugh whilst crochetting, ousting bad memories from my secure and happy playground. When at peace, she even sat them down to dinner around her table under the same walnut tree where they questioned her, those same people. They were family after all, that’s what civil war does to families. In the same yard she had said good bye to my ten year old father hiding behind the outdoor oven pushing him away into a forest to save his life. I hid from my brother behind that same outdoor oven when we played hide and seek. The  outdoor oven where we used baked non yeast bread and spread the butter she freshly churned on warm slices before taking a greedy bite.

I keep my eyes shut.

I see her walking down the cobbled street leading to her house, young, beautiful and proud with her long brown wavy hair (exactly like mine) falling on her shoulders: stubbornly walking away from her young husband because he is late for dinner and she was worried about him. They are young lovers and trouble has not started.

I see him handing her a bunch of field flowers telling her he’s late because he had to pick these up for her, grubbing her in his arms (the cheeky chap he was).  

I see her love, laugh, cry holding her dying newborn in her arms, whilst breastfeeding its surviving twin.

I see my father lost in the mountain forest: a boy crying alone thinking he will never see his family again. I imagine their reunion.

I see my father resting a hand on his father shoulder when all their modest fortune is gone, embezzled by a cunning relative. I see him carry  a saddle bag up the mountains , working to help the family.

I think about how he lodged with monks to go to school after disaster hit the family. Waking up at 4 every morning to chant with them, prepare their breakfast, and go to school, return to cook for them and collapse into sleep. Happy, loving and caring. Never bitter, always proud independent and empowered. No complaints, no major handouts or external assistance. 

This is the wonderful family I come from, with their humanity their faults but the strongest record of dignity , selflessness and self empowerment I have ever encountered. I am sure that there are many similar stories in Greece, here and all over the world but this is my father’s.  And I have not even started on my mother’s family tale: one of uprooting , refugees, poverty, Balkan wars and farmers battling the elements and the prejudice of their new homeland.

There are different continents, cultures, nations and historical events; but war, pain, torture, humanity, family, community, love , emotions and dignity are universal. And the knowledge and acknowledgement of your family’s roots, your countries historical contradictions and political turmoil can make you perceptive to experiences of other nations. I am not the naïve and ignorant descendent of people who have lived in luxury and comfort all their lives or who erased the past (not that I have anything against comfort, peace and indulgence. I am privileged and my child if I ever have one might be too).

I am not ignorant:  so today I am irrationally angry for the moments that I have been treated or viewed as an ignorant ‘rich’ westerner.  I don’t want to be understanding and insightful right now. I am irrationally angry at  people who have allowed themselves to be conditioned and reliant on handouts,  people that have not had the pride that my family had. Maybe it’s unfair because the conditions might have been better socially even at harsh times in Greece than they are for example here. But I told you this is my darkest moment, I will not apologise for its rawness and contradiction.

Eyes shut, on the eve of my departure, after the loss of my grandmother, I am haunted by my own demons and I am second guessing my presence here. My dad’s community did fine without anyone coming over to teach them or help them, did they not? Or maybe they did not because none of us is still there…They had no income making opportunities if they stayed at their village.

A moment of anger at myself for being here giving to people I don’t really know, helping myself grow and gather experiences has exploded and I am facing up to it.  I should be by my father, holding his hand, being his daughter, returning all the love and care that he has given me all these years. Being there for him at the moment he has lost his mother.

His voice three hours earlier was soothing. He knows my guilt, he has lived away from his parents , he does not mind . I know he does not.  And he had never felt sorry for himself or bitter at his lack of wealth when he was young. My dad sure misses me but he does not mind that I cannot be there now. But I am deep in darkness and, right now, I mind. I am angry at myself. For not being able to give love and support to my father right now.