Phnom Penh '94-'95

After the GIs left Saigon I returned to Southeast Asia as a reporter for Army Times. For a while I lived in a rooftop apartment on Jawaharlal Nehru Street in Phnom Penh with Steve Hedder, a young stringer for Time, and his Khmer wife Davi. With us were the twins, pretty, playful girls of sixteen perhaps who spoke reasonable English. They were the people with soft hands that Pol Pot would kill. 

*At night the smell of charcoal and *flower trees drifted from neighboring roofs and people murmured in Khmer. Reporters–mostly stringers–lay on the roofs in a fog of gin and Nembutal and listened to the rockets whistle in from the swamps. When the KR took over, Steve and Davi got out. The twins didn’t. I don’t know how they died. 

I will be told I have a bad attitude. You bet I do.