A fable

I just read a news-story. I'm not going to give you a link, I'm going to tell you the story:

Kassie Neou was a Cambodian, who was in a Khmer Rouge torture chamber. Likely to be killed soon. Tortured everyday. Guarded by teenagers.

He used to tell stories night after night, sometimes exhausted and bloody from a day of beatings and interrogation, to the teenagers guards - one shift after another. They used to be delighted with the stories - Kassie was lucky he knew Aesop's Fables by heart.

Then came the night when the prisoners were roped together and marched from the building to be killed. Over the loud squeaking of their leg irons, Kassie heard the voice of one of the 13-year old guards pointing to him and saying "I need him. Quick pull him out!"

One of the guards hid him, holding a finger to his mouth for silence. Another prisoner was roped in his place and Kassie was spared.

Kassie is one of the few suriviors of this period of the Khmer Rouge years, where driven by a radical Maoist philosophy that quickly slid into madness, the Khmer Rouge Government turned on its own people, and killed perhaps more than one million Cambodians.

Kassie, was spared. But he was beated day after day and he said he memorized the faces of his torturers, sustaining himself with thoughts of revenge. He swore that when his time came, he would take revenge five times worse than what they were going to him. He was filled with anger and hatred.

Three years later, when finally the Khmer Rouge Government collapsed, Kassie was among hundreds of thousands of people flooding into Thailand. He was at a refugee camp, and over there, he recognized one of his torturers, a young man called Comrade Han.

When they saw each other, Comrade Han turned completely pale and began to shake. Kassie casually asked him, "Oh, when did you arrive?"

Comrade Han could hardly talk because of his fear, but he said "My wife is sick and my baby is dying."

Kassie was one of the few educated people at the camp, and was now working as the administrator of an aid program at the camp. When he saw Comrade Han so scared, and because his baby was dying, Kassie simply took him to a feeding center, arranged for care for his wife and child, and gave him money for cigarettes.

Comrade Han was trembling and had tears in his eyes. He thanked Kassie Neou, who at that moment realized that he'd experienced something stronger than revenge.