In 1975, the Khmer Rouge emptied the capital of its inhabitants, forcing the people of the city out into the country so that they would learn from the people of the fields what the New Man looked like. Pol Pot’s partisans were not the first to come up with the idea of banishing city dwellers to the country. The verb “rusticate” used to mean to work in the fields or live in the country. But in the eighteenth century, Britons started using it to mean to forcibly send someone into the country—wayward students, for example, or people suffering from certain illnesses. In Revolutionary Cambodia, people were systematically rusticated en masse, until the end of their lives. The city was deemed a cancer of corruption and money, bad in itself and bad for all. Now, once a year, the peasants take their revenge. Thirty-five years after the people of the city invaded their lands, the people of the fields invade Phnom Penh and make it their own. For three days in November, the city puts on the huge street party that is the Water Festival.
What do You think about The Master Of Confessions?
