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so the music lesson can be only at night.
    The old musician, he gives me the khim. Wooden instrument with many string, string you hit with a bamboo stick. You sit on the floor and play, and it give a beautiful sound, like heaven. I hit the right string sometime, the wrong string sometime, but always I hit it too hard.
    “Touch it light,” says the old man. “Like hummingbird wing.” Also he says, “You have talent. Work harder.”
    All these Khmer Rouge song are fast song, fast and happy-sounding, and all about the Revolution. About sacrifice. About hard work. About rice. Always rice.
     
    Next day, I work in the field all day like the others, then go to the old man. Three day more only. Three day to learn this thing.
    I almost cry one time, it’s so hard. But the old man, he whisper in my ear. “Learn fast,” he says. “You don’t learn, they gonna kill you.”
    I work very hard now, even harder. This khim, it has so many strings they swim in my eyes and I play very fast, hit one string, then another, so fast I can’t see my own hands going. So fast, so many times, I know all the song in my heart.
    The other boys, they can’t do it. Next day the other boys, they don’t come to class.
    The old man, he spend two more days teaching me. Then one day he say, “Now that you learn the songs, they gonna kill me.”
    I tell him, no, the Khmer Rouge need him to lead the band.
    He just smile, very sad, and tell me all the other music teacher already dead. He’s maybe the last one. The Khmer Rouge don’t want anyone who know the old song. All those old song gonna die out, he says.
    This guy, he save my life, and now he will die. And nothing I can do to stop it.
     
    The next day, he doesn’t come. The Khmer Rouge appear then and say to me, “Come to the mango grove to see the old man. See what we do to him.”
    I say I don’t want to see.
    I don’t know how I can say this. You don’t say no to the Khmer Rouge.
    But it’s gamble. If Khmer Rouge kill me now, they don’t have anyone to play their song. I think for a minute what my aunt say about how to survive—bend like grass—but this time I don’t bend. I stand a little tall.
    They go away, and I just play the song alone. I think of the old man, and I play for him in my mind, scared, but also in that moment, proud.
     
    Other boys come now to the building where I learn music. One more khim player, one guy who can play fiddle call tro sau toch, one guy with a drum, and others with instrument like I used to see when my family has the opera. A new music teacher come, too, not so old, but this guy is like walking dead man. Very sad, like broken heart, nothing living in his eyes.
    We gonna be a band now, the Khmer Rouge tell us. No more working in the field; now we play music all the time. Soon a big meeting is going to happen at this camp, so we have to be ready. Ready to play the song perfect. For high-ranking Khmer Rouge. We have one month to learn.
     
    We practice music every day now, but never does it sound like a song. More like animals all calling out, all different times, and very slow, not like the old music teacher taught. The kid in the band, they all too tired, too hungry to give attention to the song; and this new music teacher, he look asleep all the time, like nothing can make him care. Not even this big meeting coming. And I think: all this work—learning the khim, learning the song—and we all will die anyway.
     
    One night the girl next to me at dinner, she dies. She dies just sitting there. No sound. Just no breathing anymore. All of us, we eat so fast, no one even see this girl. Very quick, I take her bowl of rice and keep eating.
     
    “You,” says one Khmer Rouge to me. “You come with me.”
    It’s nighttime, the other kids working in the fields, big torches burning so they can see. The harvest coming soon, so everyone has to work extra. Except the band. Our job is only to practice more. But this guy says, “Different job for you