As she skipped along the footpath paved with broken bricks with her baby in her arms, Nhai sung out loud to the sky, the trees and anyone else who cared to listen. There was something magical and carefree about the morning sky today, and she made her way happily back towards the house, singing all the way.
Then suddenly she caught herself as a painful memory stabbed her like a pang of guilt. She stood in the shade underneath a kok ta kop tree and thought for a while. What am I doing skipping down the road like a teenager? People will think I'm mad. I have a family now and a job as well. Responsibility bore down on her with a sudden weight, as she thought about her job.
Nhai stroked her baby's hair as she reflected for a while. There were some days when the responsibilities were too much, when she would rather work a normal office job. But those days were few and far between, she checked herself, as she wiped that thought from her mind. Her job might be dangerous, but she was saving lives every day.
She worked clearing unexploded ordnance, the deadly legacy of a nine-year war the world never knew about. And now she was the head of her clearance team. She was in command of the lives of those around her as they fought to make the land safe for the villagers to farm.
Nhai sat down with her baby on a wooden bench in the middle of the yard. She looked up into the sky above the kok ta kop tree, its deep green leaves filtering the light. She watched the fairy floss clouds that floated past, pushed by a gentle breeze. It was hard to imagine that death rained down from such a peaceful place.
She thought back to six years ago, when she and her family lost her mother to one of those bombs. Her mother, a respected village elder and the woman who brought her into the world. The memory was as clear as day now, just like it happened yesterday. It was in the middle of June, under a cloudless sky, bright blue and perhaps a little harsh. Nhai was carrying a bag of food across the north side of the rice field when the sound of an explosion was heard coming from the west. Water droplets glittered in the air, and smoke drifted across the fields.
Nhai stood frozen to the spot, gazing over to the place where the bomb had exploded. Spot fires burned all around and an acrid smell was filling the air. She wondered if her father had detonated the bomb to clear the bamboo forest that bordered the rice fields and clear more land to farm. Then she started over in the direction of the bomb. She quickened her pace as she headed toward the edge of the rice field, with butterflies in her stomach.
The butterflies in her stomach turned to stone, when she reached the spot and saw her father holding her mother in his arms, her bodily hanging limp and covered in blood. Her father's face was contorted with a mixture of anger, urgency and fear, tears streaming down his it. He was shouting at her but his words sounded like they were coming from a mile away.
She just stood there staring; her legs jelly and about to collapse underneath her. She reached out and touched her mother, covered in blood a deep red the colour of a late afternoon sun. Her skin was burnt in places and the smell was stronger now, a mix of burning hair and a sickly sweet odour. Both of her legs were broken and the blast had torn her stomach open, her intestines spilling out onto the ground.
Her father's voice came back to her now. “Nhai, your mother got hit by a bombie! Go home quickly and get Uncle Pheng. Bring a motorcycle here. We have to get your mother to the hospital.” Nhai started screaming, until she thought her lungs would burst. “Somebody please help my mother. She's been hit by a bomb,” she screamed in vain.
The other villagers in the fields had dropped their tools and were coming running. They knew by now it wasn't just somebody blasting tree stumps or building a farm dam, it was one of those days that everybody prayed would never come. They swept Nhai's mother up into their arms, and started carrying her back to the village. Alas, half way back across the fields her broken body gave in. Caught by the full force of the blast, she never stood a chance against such a deadly weapon.
Her mother's funeral was held at the remote village temple. They had to wait a few days until all their relatives arrived, traveling from far and wide to come and pay their last respects. Nhai remembered the day well. Stricken with grief, people were crying and shaking their heads. How many people must keep on dying so many years after the war had ended?
Nhai managed a small prayer as she knelt beside her mother's coffin. “My dear mother! If your soul is alive, please watch over us and keep us safe from danger. I don't know what to do now that you are gone!” But a quiet determination burned in the back of her mind as she watched the flames of the funeral pyre, the smell taking her back to the smoking rice field.
Her baby's cries woke Nh ai with a start. She rocked her baby, letting the precious life in her arms wash away her dreams of death. “Cha! Cha! Go back to sleep in the cradle!” Nhai hung the cradle to a branch of the tree and whispered “Close your eyes, I will sing to you to sleep.” She went inside and placed some firewood under the soup pan, and came back to sit at the bench. It was afternoon now and the sky was a dark blue that told her rain was on the way. It reminded her of the first time she had gone to apply for a bomb disposal job.
The people in the villag e had shaken their heads at her, some with doubt, some with derision. “A woman should behave like a woman,” they said. “Bomb disposal is not a woman's job.” Who should be so ambitious, they whispered, besides she's had barely any education. Her own father had told her to withdraw her application, telling her it was shameful and that she should apply for a different job.
She wouldn't, she had told him. She would apply and reapply until somebody gave her a chance. And she stuck to her word. She applied for every job she saw advertised, and every company she had heard about. For a long time her letters went unanswered, but then one day someone gave her an interview.
“Do you know how many times you have applied for this job?” the man asked her. She told them that, yes, she had applied four times. She told them that she knew it was a dangerous job, but there was nothing else she wanted to do. “Bomb disposal means risking your life every second. If you do not learn all the things that need to be learnt, you could die very easily. Even then you are not in control,' the man told her with a stern look on his face. “Even if I die, I won't regret it,” she replied vehemently.
They told her that since she was so determined they would give her a ch ance. The villagers' doubts began to evaporate, when she told them she was to leave for the city to start her training programme. And since that day, Nhai never looked back. She studied hard, and took everything in. It seemed like yesterday when she left her village, Nhai had thought at her graduation ceremony, as she hugged her fellow students before they were sent off to their respective assignments. She had graduated top of her class.
Time flowed like water under the bridge, she thought as she sat in the garden. The bomb might have killed her mother, but it had given her a different direction in life. Had it not been for the bomb, she would more than likely be still working in the rice fields. There was no shame in that, she thought, but fate had chosen a different path for her, and now she was managing a bomb disposable unit, making life safer for villagers across the country.
A knock on the back door brought her back from her thoughts again. It was one of the people from her team. “Nhai, we've found another bomb not far from here,” she told her. “This one is a big one, and the project director wants you down there. We don't know how to disarm it without your help. Nhai stood up slowly and looked at her younger sister who was working away silently on silk weaving loom. “Somphou, please look after your nephew! I have to go to work. I will be back as soon as I can.”
As she walked out the door, she offered a silent prayer to her departed mother. Today I am going out to destroy one more of those horrible things that stole your life away, she told her, and I thank you from that. Today I am doing what I was born to do, and may your spirit watch over me and protect me from danger. Death and destruction have given me hope and opportunity, and every life that I might save is a blessing to you.
By Sengphouxay (Latest Update September 3 , 2011)
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