I heard the news on Monday. If you just look at the global websites, you'd probably miss it. Maybe you'd wonder why there were so many people in white, and maybe if you were looking, you'd notice the black fabric going up along Norodom, the flags at half-mast. By this morning, living here it would be hard not to know -- to find on the internet, it takes some digging.
By Monday night, my Facebook news feed was overflowing with pictures and comments. Profile pictures were being changed, pictures were being shared lightning fast.
The news is this: one of the most towering and most beloved figures in Cambodian history, the King-Father Norodom Sihanouk, died Monday in Beijing. He was 89. His biography is long and fascinating, but I won't go into it here. I will say that King Sihanouk was a controversial figure to say the least, known as a hero of independence and for making the very ill-fated decision to support the Pol Pot regime and the Khmer Rouge in its beginning stages. And yet, despite being somewhat responsible for the profound suffering of the Khmer people --
They love him. Adore, even. The news of his death was received with overwhelming grief and mourning. The pictures on my Facebook honored him, a shrine was immediately set up in front of the Royal Palace, and today when the King-Father's body came home for the final time, hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to greet him.
I know that because I was trying to get home right about when the coffin arrived and found myself completely blocked in. I couldn't take Norodom because it was closed, I couldn't cross Sihanouk, and to get to Monivong on the other side would involve crossing Russian Blvd, and that was closed too. I biked up and down the city, trying to figure out what to do.
I could have just parked and stayed. I did want to see the coffin, and be a part of the event, but there was something holding me back. Maybe it was just in my mind -- things often are -- but the fact is, Norodom Sihanouk was not my King-Father. I didn't -- and still don't -- know that much about him. I didn't live his choices. I never saw him on TV, or met him, or heard anything about him. I see how much his death means to the people around me, but I can't, and don't know how to, relate.
That wasn't why I didn't just park and watch though. The real reason is that I didn't want to be another spectacle. I didn't want it to be about the one lost Barang, didn't want people to wonder what I was doing there. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't, but in some ways, I almost felt like I would be turning what was for thousands of people a sincerely grievous occasion into a sightseeing opportunity, and that just didn't feel right.
As it turns out, in my wanderings, I saw the top of the golden Phoenix float go by, which I later learned held the body. I saw the monks, and probably if I had stayed put, seen the actual coffin. But I just couldn't be a tourist about it. If I had lived here several years, maybe that would be different and maybe I would have been the only one to see myself as a tourist -- but I couldn't do it.
I don't understand why he was so beloved, but I know what I saw and the thousands of people who cared enough about his death to stand in the streets for hours just to welcome him home for the last time. So, to the King-Father Norodom Sihanouk, wherever you are now ---
I hope you sleep well.
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