The Gate: A Memoir

Great writing as well.

I bought The Gate half a year ago but have put off reading it because I knew it would be depressing. However, since I’ll be living in Cambodia next year, I want to know something of the Khmer Rouge period. Bizot describes certain events of his imprisonment and the entrance of the Khmer Rouge into Phnom Penh lucidly with heartbreaking lucidity that stays in the mind.It is difficult to determine to what extent America’s role in the events of the region might have contributed to the Khmer Rouge revolution. The CIA (I suppose) had helped stage a coup d'état against Prince Sihanouk and installed pro-U.S .General Lon Nol as head of the new republic. The country fell into complete dependence upon American aid. It was the complicity of those people seduced by American money whom the Khmer Rouge despised, although in their fanaticism they associated anyone educated, who wore glasses or fingernail polish, as traitors to Cambodia.North Viet Nam used America’s coup as a pretext to invade, presenting themselves as liberators. The Khmer Rouge considered themselves at war with American Imperialism, or at least used that as their justification for their revolution. Of course, there are those who claim that if America had persisted in the Viet Nam war to victory, at the cost of merely another 20,000 or so Americans, the genocide would have been averted. Maybe, but given that the royalty in Cambodia had a history of soaking up wealth and doing very little for the people, the country was sufficiently stratified for an ambitious scoundrel to arm the peasants and stage a revolt. At any rate, when Viet Nam invaded to oust the Khmer Rouge from power, The United States, rather than recognizing Viet Nam’s regime, continued to recognize Pol Pot as the legitimate government. Expediency always wins out over morality, sanity, and long-term effectiveness in foreign policy.Bizot’s friendship with Douch, the Khmer Rouge leader who eventually helped him get released, against others who were convinced that he as a CIA spy and wanted to execute him, is especially interesting. Douch, capable of brutally torturing people whom he perceived as enemies of the revolution, was devoted to achieving democracy in Cambodia, with a sort of perverted innocence that gave “his still-youthful face the gentle expression of a cherub . . . the same childlike characteristics in the faces of all revolutionaries.” One can see that same seeming innocence in photographs of young Nazis in Germany singing songs around a campfire.When the Khmer Rouge arrived in Phnom Penh and forcefully evacuated the entire populace, supposedly to escape American bombing, Bizot describes young anti-American French people who lauded their arrival, and even dressed like the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries. Many of the worst atrocities of the past couple of centuries have been caused by democracy-loving with a sense of brotherhood to peasants trying to impose their values on people who live in an entirely different reality. It takes very little sophistication to use a machine gun, but a great deal of civilizing influence to understand that people in different social strata are fellow humans. I just happened to read a novella by a science fiction author of the fifties, Black Man’s Burden, that presented that idea that social evolution must revolution, if the revolution is not to be staged by a power-hungry psychopath.

Since I met the author in Chiang Mai a decade ago -- when he somewhat reluctantly described his experiences as a prisoner inside the infamous Khmer Rouge M13 prison camp commanded by "Douch" and gave me a copy of the safe-travel pass written for him by a North Vietnamese officer during the first of Bizot's many brushes with death -- this was the one great book I impatiently awaited. As it turns out, "The Gate" is far more powerful than I could ever have imagined. Readers will find it painful to read through their tears, but will be unable to lay the book down. As John Le Carre writes in the foreword, "Now and then you read a book, and, as you put it down, you realize that you envy everybody who has not read it, simply because, unlike you, they will have the experience before them." The brilliantly written introduction shows how little the world has changed since the historic disaster in Cambodia. In contrast to many Frenchmen, Bizot saw the Americans as allies in 1970, but recognized an "inexcusable naivete" in the Americans, and he comments, "I do not know what to reproach them for more, their intervention or their withdrawal." As for the French government of that day he comments, "... fear of appearing to support the Americans so froze minds that nowhere in Europe were people free enough to voice their indignation and denounce the lies (of the Vietnamese and Cambodian communist revolutions)." In one of his verbal duels with his interrogator, Bizot questions the insane logic of the revolutionary, asking if the Khmer Rouge cadre did not see that the revolutionary line was just a trick constructed using basic Buddhist traditions to deceive the people and itself, just as it used the name of Sihanouk as a mask. For me there will never be another book quite like Bizot's to come from a Westerner. Bizot is a man who lives life his way, thinks his own thoughts, follows no man or no government blindly. A true citizen of the world. Fortunately, Cambodians have recently started writing their own stories, and it will truly take river of ink to record the horrors they have experienced. New books by the Documentation Center of Cambodia (dccam.org) go into great detail on the barbaric tortures used at camp M13 and at Tuol Sleng, tortures which even Bizot could not have dreamed of at the time he was held there.

This was my second copy (don't know were the first had gone) and I was deeply moved and fascinated to read Bizot's memoir for the second time – more so than the first time. It's not a 'thriller', but more of a reflective meditation on being taken captive and living day by day not knowing if you are to be executed. That's the first half. The narrative then moves to 4 years later where the author takes a role in helping manage and then evacuate the French Embassy in Phnom Penh to Thailand after the Khmer Rouge had taken the capital city. All the while his wife is marooned outside the city and he has no idea whether she is alive.If you are a fan of Le Carre you might like this, not least because that author of fiction graciously describes Bizot's work as 'the real thing'. If you have had any connection to Cambodia you may also be moved by this.An important facet of the book is that during his initial captivity, Bizot's gaoler is the infamous Comrade Duch who went on to become the executioner of c.20,000 of his fellow Cambodians. Bizot struggles to try to develop an understanding of how the idealistic young man who held him prisoner in 1971 became the mass murder of 1975. No easy answers are found. If you are interested by this last point then I recommend you move on to Bizot's Facing the Executioner, a more comprehensive attempt to understand Duch, including court transcripts from his trial. As I'm writing, Duch is still in prison for his crimes. Most of the other Khmer Rouge monsters are now dead.

Before you read this learn something about the 2nd Indochina War (1960-75) to get some context. Read on its own this is a classic but knowing what underlies it moves it close to a Shakespearian tragedy. Bizot was the only westerner released by the Khmer Rouge. He also was able to communicate constructively with them when they occupied Phnom Penh. In doing so he could save a few but condemned others to a gruesome death. The struggle between saving yourself and saving others has consumed him in later life. No wonder John Le Carre was the first to declare this a classic.

Hard hitting book, some difficult to read. If you have visited Cambodia, this is a great book to attempt to understand the background of the politics of this country....

Bizot writes quite beautifully at times and there are some interesting and exciting sections of the book.

Wow! I loved this book so much. Such a balanced insight into the Khmer Rouge regime.