pretty and was
nicknamed ‘the Beauty Queen’. It was a standing joke among the students in Paris that, whenever Sâr looked morose, he was pining for his lady-love. Whether or not that was so, there was a solitude about him which others sometimes interpreted as loneliness.
That first year in Paris, he applied himself to his studies and, by his own account, got ‘
quite good marks
’. He narrowly failed the year-end exam but, along with other borderline cases, was allowed to sit it again and passed, which meant he could go on to the second year.
But then, in the summer of 1950, a series of events occurred which would change the direction of Sâr’s life. Towards the end of June, the magazine
Khemara Nisut
announced that the Khmer Student Association was offering its members a choice of two trips abroad during the summer holidays. One was a month-long camping tour in Switzerland; the other, participation in an ‘international labour brigade’ to help with post-war reconstruction in Yugoslavia. The Swiss tour would cost 22,000 francs (about 70 US dollars); the trip to Yugoslavia was free. For Sâr, there was no contest: ‘I didn’t have money, so I couldn’t do as the others and go to Geneva, or to the sea or the mountains, and have a holiday there . . . A group of us poorer students went instead to . . . . Zagreb, [where] we worked building a motorway’
The train journey took forty-eight hours, with lengthy stops and no food to be had — a foretaste of the penury ahead. Nghet Chhopininto, who went with a brigade to Sarajevo a year later, remembered being hungry all the time they were there. The midday meal at the work-site was never enough. Sometimes they went to local restaurants and showed the cooks drawings of the food they wanted. But there was little to be had there either. On the other hand, it was exhilarating to be part of such a massive effort of national reconstruction. ‘Everywhere . . . resembles an enormous building site,’ one of Sâr’s companions wrote later. ‘This effort is even more estimable because the force and the faith of the people, united around their leaders . . . allow them to win successive victories, aware that this is a question of national independence.’ Foreign volunteers were expected to do manual labour three days a week, from 6 a.m. until noon, and could spend the rest of their time in cultural activities and sports. Chhopininto and a colleague ‘got lucky with the local girls’, as he put it, which also helped; and he left with happy memories of the camaraderie that came from working together with young people from many different countries.
Not everyone reacted in the same way. Huot Sambath, who had arrived in France a month after Sâr to study international relations and later served as Sihanouk’s Foreign Minister, decided that ‘the western countries’ [postwar] difficulties were being resolved very fast, [whereas] in eastern Europe,
the people lacked everything and their lives were not happy at all.’ Like other Cambodian intellectuals, he wrote, he was concerned for Cambodia’s future: ‘There were only two ways to walk: communist or liberal. I had already seen all the facts . . . so I chose the liberal way’
Sâr was still a year or more away from making that kind of judgement. But Yugoslavia evidently made a favourable impression on him, for he went back there the following summer for a
camping holiday
.
Back in Paris for the start of the new academic year, he faced other, more pressing concerns. Somonopong had returned home after completing his studies, which left him with nowhere to live. It was then, he recalled, that ‘I came into contact with some progressive students . . . I often stayed with them, and little by little they influenced me.’
One of these
‘
progressive students
’ was Ieng Sary, who arrived at the beginning of November 1950. Sary had obtained the first part of his
baccalauréat
(albeit at the second attempt) in
nicknamed ‘the Beauty Queen’. It was a standing joke among the students in Paris that, whenever Sâr looked morose, he was pining for his lady-love. Whether or not that was so, there was a solitude about him which others sometimes interpreted as loneliness.
That first year in Paris, he applied himself to his studies and, by his own account, got ‘
quite good marks
’. He narrowly failed the year-end exam but, along with other borderline cases, was allowed to sit it again and passed, which meant he could go on to the second year.
But then, in the summer of 1950, a series of events occurred which would change the direction of Sâr’s life. Towards the end of June, the magazine
Khemara Nisut
announced that the Khmer Student Association was offering its members a choice of two trips abroad during the summer holidays. One was a month-long camping tour in Switzerland; the other, participation in an ‘international labour brigade’ to help with post-war reconstruction in Yugoslavia. The Swiss tour would cost 22,000 francs (about 70 US dollars); the trip to Yugoslavia was free. For Sâr, there was no contest: ‘I didn’t have money, so I couldn’t do as the others and go to Geneva, or to the sea or the mountains, and have a holiday there . . . A group of us poorer students went instead to . . . . Zagreb, [where] we worked building a motorway’
The train journey took forty-eight hours, with lengthy stops and no food to be had — a foretaste of the penury ahead. Nghet Chhopininto, who went with a brigade to Sarajevo a year later, remembered being hungry all the time they were there. The midday meal at the work-site was never enough. Sometimes they went to local restaurants and showed the cooks drawings of the food they wanted. But there was little to be had there either. On the other hand, it was exhilarating to be part of such a massive effort of national reconstruction. ‘Everywhere . . . resembles an enormous building site,’ one of Sâr’s companions wrote later. ‘This effort is even more estimable because the force and the faith of the people, united around their leaders . . . allow them to win successive victories, aware that this is a question of national independence.’ Foreign volunteers were expected to do manual labour three days a week, from 6 a.m. until noon, and could spend the rest of their time in cultural activities and sports. Chhopininto and a colleague ‘got lucky with the local girls’, as he put it, which also helped; and he left with happy memories of the camaraderie that came from working together with young people from many different countries.
Not everyone reacted in the same way. Huot Sambath, who had arrived in France a month after Sâr to study international relations and later served as Sihanouk’s Foreign Minister, decided that ‘the western countries’ [postwar] difficulties were being resolved very fast, [whereas] in eastern Europe,
the people lacked everything and their lives were not happy at all.’ Like other Cambodian intellectuals, he wrote, he was concerned for Cambodia’s future: ‘There were only two ways to walk: communist or liberal. I had already seen all the facts . . . so I chose the liberal way’
Sâr was still a year or more away from making that kind of judgement. But Yugoslavia evidently made a favourable impression on him, for he went back there the following summer for a
camping holiday
.
Back in Paris for the start of the new academic year, he faced other, more pressing concerns. Somonopong had returned home after completing his studies, which left him with nowhere to live. It was then, he recalled, that ‘I came into contact with some progressive students . . . I often stayed with them, and little by little they influenced me.’
One of these
‘
progressive students
’ was Ieng Sary, who arrived at the beginning of November 1950. Sary had obtained the first part of his
baccalauréat
(albeit at the second attempt) in
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