Light in the darkness

Light blinked across the inky surface. A cluster of fireflies, I thought. Always somewhere there was light, and, though transient, it flashed all the more brilliantly because of the surrounding dark.

Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

With that powerful image near the end of In the Shadow of the Banyan (2012), first-time novelist Vaddey Ratner suggests the hope within little Raami and her once-delicate mother that allows them to survive those years in which the Khmer Rouge destroy Cambodia in their mindless quest to create a perfect country.

In her autobiographical novel, Ratner tells of  an elite family in Phnom Penh as the rebels take over the country. Seven-year-old Raami's father is both a prince and a poet. Her family has always had servants to do their work. They are exactly the kind of people the Khmer Rouge wants to purge. She, her parents, little sister and the entire extended family are sent to a rural area and put to work, mostly in rice fields. Little Raami, although crippled by polio, must work, as well. Despite promises by "the organization," the provided food is woefully inadequate. Raami eats insects when she can catch them.

Gradually the family is separated. She will never learn what happens to her father. Some people are killed. Others die from hunger or disease. Those with the guns, most of them little more than children, don't seem to care.

For all its terror and suffering, this is a beautiful novel full of beautiful language, beautiful metaphors and beautiful ideas. It took Ratner half a lifetime to write this story of her early life, most of it true. She must have despaired of ever getting it all down on paper. Yet hope stayed alive, a light in the darkness.