Simply Divine

If I stand back in my lounge room, through the window I can see this pagoda, Wat Prayou Vuong and some of the modern buildings with the neon billboards that are springing up. When I came to check out the apartments available for rent in this building, there were 3 others to choose from, but I picked my place for one main reason.

The pagoda.

It fills up nearly the entire big glass window and it's like watching a grand work of art come to life daily at different times with varying shades of colour and light. The sun sets behind the pagoda, which is the time I love it the most, against the background of pinks and oranges.

When I want to see even more of the world around, I lean out of my window. There is a patchwork of tin roofs directly below me at the base of the pagoda. Under the roofs exists an urban village with a thriving community and daily bustle. There are perhaps 200 one and two room houses in there in which entire families live. There are also tiny shops that sell noodles and fresh fruits like papaya, pineapple and sour green mangos eaten with a combination of chilli, salt and sugar, a couple of tea houses, a hairdresser and a laundry. People usually live upstairs and the shopfront is on the ground floor.

A lot of life is lived out in the laneways. I see kids bathing and splashing about in big plastic tubs, women sitting on low stools outside their houses chatting and chopping vegetables and meat, men playing cards and drinking beer. The aromas of the cooking done in steel buckets that have been improvised and turned into coal cookers wafts up to my open window. Sometimes I hear arguments. There is one loud voice that always appears in the heated exchanges. I've never seen this lady but can feel the force of her fury even at a distance.

At 10:30 every night, a man walks through the laneways playing a rhythm with two sticks. It's the same tune and time every night. In the early days when I would be reading in bed and hear him, I'd check the time. It was and still is always the same. I haven't yet discovered what his tune and wandering through the street means. I've thought perhaps he is the recycling man and is letting everyone know to put their plastic and paper out ready for collection. Or maybe he's there to remind the kids it's time for them to go to bed. Before I leave I will find out. For now I like to imagine the possibilities and the tune is a comforting part of my routine and feeling at home here.

Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism were the key religious influences until the 13th century when Theravada Buddhism became the main religion of Cambodia. More than 90% of the country's population follow it.

In April 1975 Phnom Penh was evacuated by heavily armed Khmer Rouge soldiers who marched into the city and forced the residents to walk out of their homes and jobs and literally emptied out most of the city overnight. Phnom Penh became a ghost town. Soon after, there were no monetary transactions or telephone and telegraph services and there were frequent electricity and water shortages. Artists, free thinkers & intellectuals were singled out as enemies of the Pol Pot regime and executed. Books were burned and religion was abolished.

Estimates of the number of people who died in this genocide vary vastly. Conservative figures suggest that at least 1.7 million Cambodians lost their lives during this period while the U.N has stated that the real number of deaths is closer to 3 million people.

Pol Pot eventually fell to Vietnamese forces in 1979.

Those who hadn't been executed or died of hardship or starvation in the farms where people were forced to labour to fulfil Pol Pot's vision of a return to an agrarian society and self reliance, returned to their home towns.

The village below my window surrounds the pagoda on all sides like an embrace. It is what the survivors must have so desperately needed after enduring the brutal years of the Khmer Rouge era. These houses were built at that time when people could finally return to Phnom Penh. They clustered together near the pagoda to restore their faith in humanity and the divine.