The captive's audience

Possibility is a key element in the tale.

Manote Tripathi

The Nation

When the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, Sichan Siv, in his early 20s, knew that being educated posed a grave danger to him and his family. He'd attended Sisowath in Phnom Penh - the country's top French school - and become a flight attendant with Royal Cambodge Airlines, along the way picking up English as his third language, after Khmer and French.

The Khmer Rouge wanted the capital's entire population evacuated to the countryside, the better to launch their agrarian revolution. Sichan threw away his eyeglasses, received his mother's blessings and attempted to cycle his way to freedom.

He was caught, and toiled in a labour camp for almost a year while, as he would learn later, the 15 members of his family - including his mother, sister and brother - were clubbed to death."Run to the Thai border," his mother had told him, "and never give up hope."

Sichan managed to escape in the back of a logging truck. After three weeks on the run and a tumble into a spike-filled punji trap in Battambang, Sichan found himself face to face with a colourfully dressed Thai farmer in Taphraya district.

After another three months in a refugee camp, Sichan was resettled in America. And 13 years on, the proud American became a deputy assistant to President George HW Bush, and still later the US ambassador to the United Nations.

Fate's remarkable twists are now recounted in his autobiography, "Golden Bones".

The book tour brought Sichan to Bangkok recently, and the 57-year-old agreed to an exclusive interview with The Nation. He brims with good health, no doubt thanks to his unwaveringly positive attitude toward life.

"Through the book I want to convey the message of hope," Sichan said. "I survived the Khmer Rouge because of hope. No matter what happens, you must not give up hope - it shows you that tomorrow's always better than today."

"Golden Bones" is a great American story ("In America anything is possible") that begins, unexpectedly, in Cambodia.

Possibility is a key element in the tale. Simply surviving the unspeakable Khmer Rouge terror is hard to believe, from the mass evacuations to the mass bone yards of the "Killing Fields".

Surviving that and ending up in the White House is almost beyond comprehension.

Enter hope - and "golden bones".

On his first trip back to Cambodia in 1992, as a representative of the US, Sichan visited the village of Tonle Bati in southern Takeo province. His friends and relatives who'd also survived called him "golden bones", evoking the old Cambodian expression to characterise his amazing success. 

"In 1976 I arrived in the US with $2 in my pocket. Thirteen years later I was working in the White House.

"This book is a tribute to America and especially former President Bush. I want to thank the US for the opportunities. Opportunity is something many Americans still take for granted - they're still complaining."

Having missed by 30 minutes the last helicopter evacuating people from the US embassy compound in Phnom Penh, Sichan was soon rounded up. He knew it was just a matter of time before he starved to death in a labour camp or was killed.

"I worked 18 hours a day, with one meal a day. Every day when I woke up I knew I was still alive and believed I'd make it to Thailand, to freedom. Hope kept me alive."

One day in January 1976 his captors needed someone to operate a crane. Sichan, who'd never even been on a crane, volunteered. By night he taught himself how to run the machine. "I burned a small candle and pulled the blanket over my head and studied the instructions."

The job produced a chance to join a work party leaving the camp in a truck to collect timber at a village near the Thai border. He leapt off when it was returning to the camp, fully loaded.

"I couldn't jump to the left or the right because the driver or the Khmer Rouge guard would see me. So I dropped off the back and hurt myself, but luckily they didn't see me.

"Then I kept running, walking or crawling through the thick jungle, which was heavily patrolled and full of traps. I fell into one and was seriously wounded, but my height saved my life. The punji sticks struck my legs, not my stomach, and I was able to pull myself out.

"I kept walking for three days, until I stumbled on a farmer. I said, 'Sawasdee' and he answered, 'Yes!' in Khmer. I was shaking, fearing I might still be in Cambodia. He told me I looked Cambodian, so he decided to reply in Khmer."

A Thai border-patrol officer who was born in Cambodia treated Sichan to a huge meal - "I couldn't eat because my mouth was sore" - but had to send him to a jail in Kabinburi because he had no paperwork. The next day he was transferred to the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp in Aranyaprathet.

There, Sichan worked for Care, teaching English and helping his countrymen arrange transfers to another country. Sichan later became a monk at Wat Chana Chaisi in Aranyaprathet, where he learned Thai.

His eventual move to the US, to Warringford, Connecticut, was quite smooth, he said. He took whatever jobs were available, picking apples, flipping burgers, driving a taxi in New York City. Then he earned a scholarship to Columbia University, from which he graduated with a master's degree in international affairs.

That kind of drive and perseverance was noticed while Sichan was working on George HW Bush's 1988 election campaign. Through 1993 Sichan served as deputy assistant to the president for public liaison and deputy assistant Secretary of State for South Asian affairs. When Sichan decided to revisit Cambodia in 1992, Bush, his term by then completed, wrote him a note. It said, "Call me when you are get there. I want to help you through the grief." President George W Bush, in his turn, designated Sichan America's ambassador to the United Nations.

Since 1994 Sichan and his American-born wife have made a regular ritual of their return trips to Cambodia. He spends the rest of each year lecturing about hope and gratitude.

"Being an American is a state of the heart," he said. "Not many people realise how lucky they are to be American."

"Golden Bones", published by Random House, is available at Asia Books.