No Smiling

Rather than no smoking signs around the Tuol Sleng Museum, there are no smiling signs, or at least, that's what they look like. But there is no need for a reminder not to smile here. As Security Prison 21, this former high school was the place where approximately 17,000 inmates met torture and death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s.

I spent the morning wandering past countless photos of the inmates and guards, which the Kmher Rouge took as part of its fastidious record keeping. Most striking was that the photos of the two groups were so similar. In fact, many of the guards later became inmates. Many were just children. Everyone was Cambodian.

All but seven inmates of S21 died, many of them at the Killing Fields of Cheung Ek, now a peaceful green space and monument. Walking past human teeth in the soil there this afternoon, it was sobering to imagine the hopelessness of Cambodia in that era, more so to think that mass killings have happened so many times in history. I'm glad to live in a place where there is reason to smile.