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The bar with the U-shaped clampsto lock the prisoner’s feetstill lies on a bedframe wherea sleeper like me always assumesthe freedom of my legs
Non-stop were the interrogationsso that the iron checkerboard-rectanglepermanently sagged
A simple wooden chairbefore this rusting patternof crucifixion
The interrogator:more of a playwright
The interrogated:his Theater of the Absurd
By the end of the interrogationthe prisoner confessed to killingeverybody even his or hertorturer–whose legswere freelike mine
And so the play ends:Who the writer wasWho his never satisfactoryrewritten characters–there are just these simpleprops
And perhaps in a cellin Syria or elsewhere
being used again
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Iron nets–hundreds padlockedand tortured on thesebedframes to leavea concave shape
always a chair nearbywhere the Khmer Rougetorturer sat but withoutleaving any indentations
How light & airywere the killers(who escaped beforethe Vietnameseentered this prison)
How numerouswere the victims(in order to provehow flesh couldbend steel)
Ideologies make bodiesdo strange things
And ideologies can evenmake banalities seemphantasmagorical
just like it seems thatno one ever satin these chairs
to make a bodydo the impossible
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Iron bedframes with padlocksfor prisoners’ hands & feet
Simple wooden chairsbefore each of them wherethe Khmer Rouge interrogatorssat
Close your eyesImagine the classroomswhen this was a girls’ high school–before a regime that erasedeverything about the oldsociety: even the calendar
In 1975 when the Khmer Rougetook power in Cambodiathe year was now declaredto be Zero
All that stands between a torturerand his or her prisoneris a teacher–and his or her questions
Oh get your studentsto question everything
most of all answersthat come quickly
–and with promisesof utopia
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On the walls behind eachbed frame where prisonerswere padlocked for hoursor even days a pictureof one of the torturedvictims but with a pieceof tape erasing their eyes
Victim after victimafter victim–but we are notallowed to seewhatever painor fear or helpless-ness they felt beforethey were going to die
We must be respectful–but are we alsobeing protected?
Un-taped we canuneasily imaginetheir mouths cryingand screaming
But just like I couldnot help them now
Neither could I havehelped them back in1978 or 1979 just likeI cannot help otherslike them today beyondmy outrage & sympathiesas they look out at mefrom my magazine ornewspaper that I openin Paris or New York
Image: originally posted to Flickr as Detention and torture room, Security Prison 21 (S-21), Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia