I've been getting a bit too introspect-y - it took five days from mom's departure for me even to NOTICE that I hadn't had a conversation with anyone since then, and another 2.5 days for me to mind in the slightest - so with the money dad gave me I treated myself to a book in the Siem Reap airport. "The Lost Executioner" is an incredibly well-written account of a high-ranking Khmer Rouge operative. Commander Duch led the prison at Tuol Sleng, site of untold atrocities and the grisly deaths of twenty thousand people in four years. There were seven survivors.
Author Nic Dunlop sounds like he started out a bit like me - he liked to travel and take pictures, and he sometimes acquired odd fixations on things like whales or volcanoes or the Cambodian genocide. I was this way about El Salvador when I was fourteen; I remain this way about the Berlin Wall. (And whales). (And volcanoes). Dunlop was a substantially more accomplished photographer than I, which is ironic because his book contains few pictures but some of the best nonfiction writing I've ever seen.
Commander Duch (according to Dunlop, this is pronounced "Doik" which doesn't clear things up much for me) had aspirations to become a math teacher. He became the next best thing.
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