In The Shadow Of The Banyan

Over the next several weeks, the Kamaphibal work to uncover each resident’s personal, professional, and academic background in an effort to identify enemies of the Revolution. Initially, the group considers any intellectual, diplomat, doctor, police officer, or military officer as a threat that it must eliminate. Before long, it expands the definition of the enemy to include all “modern professions,” including clerks, technicians, taxi drivers, and royal servants.

Meanwhile, everyone must now work: Big Uncle digs ditches while the women gather rice shoots. Due to lingering infirmities caused by her childhood polio, the Kamaphibal allow Raami to stay home and care for Radana, Grandmother Queen, and the twins.

Just as life settles into a routine, a group of soldiers bursts onto the temple grounds and orders everyone to leave their homes. They separate all but immediate family members, forcing Raami to make a choice: she can tell the truth and remain with Mama and Radana, or she can claim to be Big Uncle’s daughter and remain with him and his family. Trusting in strength in numbers, Big Uncle insists that Raami stay with him and the others. But Raami ultimately chooses to stay with Mama. The two groups of family members load onto separate trucks headed for unknown destinations.

After a long truck ride, Mama, Raami, and Radana embark on an even longer oxcart ride. As a lightning storm brews around them, a frightened Raami seeks comfort from Mama, but Mama is asleep. Instead, Raami reflexively moves to the front of the cart to be close to the driver, who shows no initial reaction to her presence. After a few minutes, he hands Raami a bamboo branch to use to goad the oxen. He also tells her a folk tale about the origins of lightning and why she should not fear it.

The oxcart finally arrives at a small, thatched hut occupied by an elderly peasant couple who refer to one another as Pok and Mae. Having never had children of her own, Mae delights in inviting Raami, Radana, and Mama into her home. Pok gently reminds Mae, “They’re not ours to keep. They belong to the Organization” (159).

When Raami wakes the next morning, Mae, Mama, and Radana have already gone to the river to wash up. In their absence, Pok and Raami share a tender moment in which he sympathizes with her misfortune. Raami recalls, “It hit me what he was doing—he was trying to be a parent, to talk to a child as a father would” (169).

Over the next few weeks, Pok teaches Raami how to live like the neak srae, or “rice people.” He educates her on how to avoid leeches, how to catch fish, and how to strategically plant race to avoid inundation during the rainy season. Over time, Raami grows to enjoy spending her days exploring the Stung Khae region with Pok. Though gratified by her daughter’s relative happiness, Mama warns her, “But don’t get lost. Remember who you are” (176).

When monsoon season arrives, Raami spends most days harvesting lotus seeds and catching shrimp and small fish in the rain with Pok. Pok explains that the Revolutionaries, in their zeal to create a bountiful rice harvest, ordered rice farmers to deviate from their usual planting schedule. As a result, they lost many rice paddies to inundation, and Pok fears they will see critical rice shortages come harvest season.

Sharing this fear, the local Kamaphibal announces a meeting to discuss the communalization of the Stung Khae rice stores. Yet the meeting is only a ploy to get everyone out of their homes so the soldiers can preemptively seize everyone’s rice. From then on, each household member receives only one tin can of rice a day, not including Radana whom the Kamaphibal say is too small to count as a person.

About a week later, the Buddhist festival Pchum Ben arrives, which signals to Raami that she turned eight a few days ago. Meanwhile, Mama forces herself to assimilate into the culture of the neak moulathaan, or “base people,” the term Revolutionaries use to describe rural peasants like Pok and Mae. She dyes her clothes dark colors, wears her long hair under a scarf, and adopts the accent of the peasantry. This comes easier to her than most because she grew up on a rice farm. Raami characterizes her transformation as “the reverse metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a caterpillar” (187).

One day, the Fat One, the name Raami uses for the wife of Bong Sok, the local Kamaphibal leader, stops Mama. When the Fat One grills Mama on her personal history, she claims to have been a nanny for a wealthy family. Later, Raami asks why Mama said this rather than stick with Papa’s story that they are mango growers. Mama suddenly erupts into tears: “There’s no Papa! If anyone asks, you have no father. You don’t know him. You never knew him” (190).