/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS: Sihanouk, Monarch and More

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jul 26 2005 (IPS) - Cambodia’s retired King Norodom Sihanouk gets special mention in an on-line publication that dabbles in news about the purveyors of chaos.

Keeping him company on ‘Sobaka,’ which describes itself as ”your on-line outfitter for worldwide mayhem,” are a mix of druglords from Burma, warlords from Afghanistan and rebel leaders from Chechnya.

It is not too difficult to understand why the 82-year-old Sihanouk earns such distinction, placing him in a league beyond the grasp of most South-east Asian political leaders, and certainly above the reach of the more staid monarchies dotting Asia.

After all, the turns in his life since being crowned king in 1941,when he was only 18 years, has given new meaning to the word dexterity. He became king twice, abdicated twice, was named prince twice, became a prime minister twice and, to round it off, served one term as president.

Apart from holding a world-record for the sheer number of political hats he has worn, Sihanouk can also lay claim to being an aesthete. He has been a film-maker, song writer, a painter, saxophonist and a crooner of ballads by Tom Jones.

It is no wonder Sihanouk became an instant hit among the hordes of foreign correspondents who flew into South-east Asia for stories about the Vietnam war and the conflicts that grew out of it, as in the destruction of Cambodia. And Cambodia’s most colourful royal did not disappoint the visiting scribes.

Yet, what was often left unanswered amid all the political song and dance that Sihanouk entertained the world with was for whose benefit was it all for – himself or for a country struggling to remain an independent nation?

Fortunately, a new book that has made a quiet entry into the world of South-east Asian political literature helps to fill a part of that void. And quite rightly so because it has been written by the irrepressible former monarch himself.

‘Shadow Over Angkor,’ which contains the memoirs of the former king, is being published in English for the first time. The translator of the 295-page volume is Julio Jeldres, a Chilean national who has been a Sihanouk confidant since the early 1980s, serving as his private secretary and was later made an ambassador.

And in writings, too, Sihanouk does not fail to entertain, even though the narrative may be wanting in literary flair. He achieves this through a first-person account that is not flat and sterile like the tone that is standard fare in the writings by royalty in the region.

Hence, he can poke fun at his maternal grandfather, who had ”sixty-odd mistresses,” or his father’s conquests of pretty ”Khmer or foreign maidens living in our capital, but also in Saigon and Hanoi.”

And he can, likewise, raise questions about the possibility of him being a ”degenerate” or a ”mad man” due to the marriages between cousins,half-brothers and sisters in the Cambodian royalty before him.

Sihanouk’s early years reveal the special world the French had created for the local elites and the ruling class in its three former colonies – Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

And recalling that time of innocence, what comes to Sihanouk’s mind is the camaraderie among young students from Indo-China, his falling in love with his French teachers and where ”politics were left on the doorstep.”

But from there on politics takes over and Sihanouk tries to present himself as his nation’s saviour, keen to see it advance after the departure of the French and determined to keep it neutral in a Cold War atmosphere brought into relief by the looming war in Vietnam.

The theme that emerges during this period lays the groundwork for the message Sihanouk wants to convey through this book: that he loves his country and its people – in particular the ”little people” -deeply.

Nowhere is that conveyed better than at Cambodia’s descent into chaos and carnage in 1970, when Sihanouk is ousted in a coup, followed by the relentless bombing of Cambodian countryside by US planes, the genocide during the Khmer Rouge rule and then the Vietnamese occupation.

The importance of being Sihanouk comes through this phase in his life, which is spent in exile in the company of the Chinese communists in Beijing and the Stalinists of North Korea.

More than any of the military strongmen or dictators who ruled Cambodia he was always sought-after during the various attempts to restore peace and normalcy to a bloodied nation.

And the choices he made during these long sad years for Cambodia were with the people’s interest at heart. ”Those who know me know that I have too high a concept of my rank, of my historic role and of my duty towards my people,” he says in a chapter to defend his hostility towards the 1970 coup leaders.

He disagrees with those who accused him of mounting a struggle against the new leaders of Phnom Penh in a ”spirit of revenge” in the same way he dismisses those charging him of being guided by his own self-preservation and importance.

The analysis Sihanouk offers in tackling the political challenges before him – such as the complex relationship he had with the murderous regime of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge – reveal a man who refuses to be defeated. His secret weapon during such times appears to be, among other things, his capacity for ridicule.

In doing so, ”Shadow Over Angkor” also brings to the surface the, at times, humourous way in which Sihanouk saw the great game of international politics being played at Cambodia’s expense.

He is tickled, for instance, when a ranking U.S. government official reacts with horror when told that the Cambodian royal had mixed the money given by Washington with cash from North Korea’s coffers to fund a trip to the United States. ”It was very funny and I did not cease to laugh,” he writes.

Yet if Sihanouk was hoping that this book would help put to rest questions about his true motives on Cambodia’s national stage, then it falls short.

For he is too central a figure in the tragic story of his nation to appear untainted. There have been too many deaths for one man – even a former king – to come out smelling like roses.