Vop, keep trying! You don’t want to die here, do you? You’ve been able to survive after being on the precipice between life and death many times. You must live!
The image of my five children popped into my mind. Yes—I must live!
I don’t know how long exactly it took me to reach the edge of the village. I knew that my five children were waiting patiently for me at home—I could imagine their dirty faces and skinny arms waving at me. I kept crawling. Maybe someone would see me if I made it just a little farther. I pulled on bushes to drag my body. Thorny plants punctured my hands. The grass beneath me was wet and slippery. I felt so cold. My teeth chattered. My body was wet. I had no clothes on. I could feel the cold spreading and worsening the pain from my groin. Exhausted, I couldn’t go any farther and collapsed.
In the silence of the night, I heard the sound of a church bell. It seemed like people were coming closer. I knew that some villagers went to church early to attend morning mass.
God have mercy—they saved me!
I was only half conscious. I saw a white sheet and heard quick footsteps and hushed whispers:
“It was damaged. We must amputate …”
I heard the sound of scissors opening and closing, and knives clanging against a metal tray.
Even in my half-consciousness, the pain was inevitable.
When I’d confronted death before, I had tried to survive. But now I wanted to die. I wanted to die because of the gossips, the judgmental looks, and my family’s cold attitude. The injury that deprived me of my manhood and the fact that I’d been stark naked in the cold night were the reasons they all made fun of me.
In the hospital, they thought I was a grotesque being, even among the other unfortunate and deformed patients. The other patients moaned and complained and demanded things from their relatives and the doctors. But I had to cower in the corner like a strange animal caught by a hunter. I was surrounded by curious people who made remarks and pointed at me. Every day, my oldest daughter brought me food. The expression on her face looked cold. “Dad, please eat!” she’d bark at me. My wife never paid me a visit. I hated her frigid demeanor. I had done nothing wrong. Who would listen to me if I tried to explain? I wanted to shout, Let me talk! But nobody wanted to hear my side of it. Meanwhile, the village gossips exaggerated my story. They said I was worse than a promiscuous man who had his ears cut off for messing around with another man’s wife. In their eyes, the promiscuous man deserved his punishment. It was the same thing in my case—they thought losing my penis was a well-deserved punishment.
I knew that I couldn’t take much more of this, that I must speak up. I didn’t want my children, all girls, to bear the burden of my disgrace. I didn’t want other people to think badly about my family.
But how could I defend myself if nobody would listen?
I remembered a painful life lesson I’d learned during the war. For an entire month my battalion had been surrounded by the enemy. Soon we ran out of rice and salt. There was nothing but chili powder. We ate the roots of wild banana trees and continued to fight the enemy. But boiled banana tree roots without salt were bitter and tasteless. After a few days, we couldn’t stand to eat them anymore. If we tried to eat the banana tree roots, we vomited. So we started to starve. We desperately craved rice and salt. Our bodies turned haggard like those of drug addicts and our limbs swelled with fluid from edema. Our cook finally came up with the idea of using the chili powder on the banana tree roots, but the following day everyone in our battalion was constipated. We went into the woods to empty our bowels, sitting there for hours so that our rectums became badly irritated. We didn’t eat anything else after that, despite our hunger. We didn’t want to waste precious time and energy and experience more pain.
One day, I chose a private spot in the woods to go to the bathroom. Almost an hour passed, but I was unable to go. Suddenly my legs froze—I heard footsteps approaching, and the sound of someone pushing back leaves. I thought it might be a commando, so I panicked and hid in a thick bush. But it turned out to be my battalion commander. He stopped right in front of my hiding spot.
Did he think I’d done something wrong? Had he followed me because he thought I was exchanging information with a spy? I held my breath. The commander looked around. Then, from his shirt pocket, he pulled out a small paper package wrapped in plastic. Craning my neck, I saw that it was a package of salt. The salt grains were almost as big as kernels of corn. I gulped, swallowing my saliva, which was tasteless and somewhat fishy. The commander looked around again to make sure he was alone; then he placed a grain of salt on his tongue and closed his eyes. I also closed my eyes and tried to imagine the taste of salt. But it didn’t work—my throat was dry and my mouth felt hot. My thoughts turned suddenly to a fellow soldier who had died only a few days earlier. He’d been severely wounded and had lost a lot of blood. Before he died, he begged for some salt. Everyone in the battalion had cried in that moment, even the commander. But look at him now! Later, I told the head of our platoon what I had seen in the woods. That same day, I was called into the battalion command office where I reported everything in detail. Everyone
