In The Shadow Of The Banyan

As the sun rises and evacuees file into the prayer grounds, there is a sense of normalcy and community. In the corner, Papa scribbles in his notebook. Certain he is writing a poem, Raami asks what it’s about. Papa replies, “I’ll tell you when... when I figure it out” (82).

After bathing at a nearby pond, the family returns to the temple grounds. On the way, three trucks roar past filled with more than a hundred new evacuees. One of them is Mr. Virak, a former student of Papa’s. Mr. Virak, his wife, and their two-month-old infant move into a small room adjoined to the classroom where Raami and her family stays. Later that day, Mr. Virak recounts how his family hid for days in their home as the Khmer Rouge destroyed the town. When the soldiers finally shot off the padlock to their front door after hearing the baby cry, the Viraks finally saw the extent of the destruction in Phnom Penh: “buildings reduced to rubble, vehicles abandoned and burnt, corpses of people and animals alike rotting in the heat, an overwhelming stench everywhere” (92). Virak also reveals that the Khmer Rouge executed Cambodia’s prime minister and other top political leaders. Moreover, the Khmer Rouge only spared the smallest and poorest rural villages from the harsh evacuations.

Stunned, Tata wonders aloud about the logic of these evacuations. Big Uncle explains: “[T]hey keep us fearful and helpless by destroying our most basic sense of security—separating us from family and preventing any connections from being formed” (93).

Days later, a new group of black-clad revolutionaries arrives at the temple. Calling themselves the Kamaphibal, these revolutionaries differ from the others in that they tend to be somewhat older individuals who come from professional backgrounds. Although they use the vernacular of the peasants, they speak in more measured tones than the vitriolic soldiers. After gathering the evacuees, a Kamaphibal spokesman says he wishes to recruit individuals with skills, expertise, and education. Raami thinks one of them recognizes Papa.

Weeks later, a new group of soldiers arrives, one of whom barges into Raami’s classroom and demands that she come forward. When he asks for her father’s name, Papa tries to stop her but it is too late. Without thinking, she answers, “Sisowath Ayuravann,” betraying her father’s royal lineage. Although the name doesn’t register with the soldier, Papa believes it is only a matter of time before the Kamaphibal discovers his identity.

After the soldier leaves, Auntie India aggressively berates Raami for revealing Papa’s name. Papa tells Auntie India to leave Raami out of it before punching the wall and leaving the room.

At dusk that same day, Raami finds Papa alone near the meditation pavilion. He tells her a story about how at the age of 10, he got in a fight with his best friend Sambath, a peasant. When a school guard saw them fighting, he beat Sambath viciously with a club for disrespecting a prince. Rather than intervene, Papa stood by and watched the boy suffer. Papa says, “I’d never been so ashamed of who I was as in that moment” (105). 

With this in mind, Papa resolves to come forward to the Kamaphibal to spare his family. He tells Big Uncle that he will say the rest of the family are commoners and merely his in-laws.

Raami wakes in the middle of the night to find both of her parents gone. She finds them sitting quietly outside listening to a man play a bamboo flute nearby. The song is from a Cambodian opera about a wicked prince who steals away a perfume seller’s wife to be his concubine. The prince denies it, but the truth finally comes out. Fearful that the revelation will lead to a popular revolt, the king orders everyone involved executed, aside from the prince. When the song ends, Raami hears Papa say, “I am both the perfume seller and the prince” (116). He also begs Mama to forgive him and to let him go when the time comes. She turns away. The next morning, the whole community knows Papa is a prince. Later, Raami asks Papa if he ever finished his poem, to which he says yes and recites it to her. Its perspective is that of the old temple sweeper, who has since disappeared and is likely dead at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. 

Having suffered a fever and with no access to doctors, the Viraks’s baby dies. The community holds a funeral service for the infant and places it in a makeshift coffin made out of wood from a school desk. A defrocked monk presides over the ceremony, which ends with the baby’s immolation on a funeral pyre at Mr. Virak’s request.

Later, Raami joins her father outside as they look up to the moon. In light of the previous month’s turnover from the Year of the Tiger to the Year of the Rabbit, Papa remarks that in one of Buddha’s reincarnations, he was a rabbit. An ancient deity named Indra disguised himself as an old starving Brahmin and asked the rabbit if he would sacrifice himself as food. The rabbit built a fire and leapt into it so the Brahmin could eat him, but at the last second Indra seized the rabbit’s spirit and flew him to the moon.

Weeks later, the Kamaphibal return and gather the men for a meeting. Raami watches from afar as a Kamaphibal elder asks for volunteers to contribute their skills and expertise to the revolutionary cause. With no one willing to volunteer, the elder says he will pick a volunteer himself. Raami’s heart sinks when the elder says, “His Highness Sisowath Ayuravann. A prince—a prince and a poet” (133). Fortunately, it becomes clear that at this point the Kamaphibal do not know which of the men is the prince, so Papa stays still. The Kamaphibal eventually leave, causing Big Uncle to believe that they do not even know if Sisowath Ayuravann is in this particular community. Even still, Papa knows they are closing in on him.

That night, Papa tells Raami that if he must give up his life to ensure her survival, he will. He adds that he told her stories to give her wings so she could escape the world’s suffering.