The Tooth

"MASS GRAVE OF 166 VICTIMS WITHOUT HEADS." I stare into the muddy pit. One-hundred and sixty-six. I play with the number in my head. How many is that? How much space does one hundred and sixty six bodies take up? One hundred and sixty six seems like a big number. I move my toes around the ledge of the pit. Wiggle my fingers. Feel my lungs breathe in air, feeling the space one body takes and try to imagine it multiplied by one hundred and sixty six. One hundred and sixty six seems like alot.

I'm hyper aware of my feet methodically crunching the gravel trails that wind through the pits that were used as mass graves by the Khmer Rouge. This is the killing field where thousands of Cambodians were taken for the sole purpose of execution. Thousands of men, women, and children were shot, beaten, bludgeoned, buried alive and hit against trees here. The place is eerily silent, even though there is a faint breeze the trees or grasses don't seem to rustle. No birds chirp. No frogs croak. Its just the chunch of my boots, of my living body, moving through these green fields of shattering death.

I'm staring at a small alter, on it are bits of bones that have been found after the main memorial of skulls was constructed. Forgotten bits and pieces of people. A broken piece of a jaw, a fragment of tibia, a few crumbling ribs. There is a tooth lying amidst these bits. Its a molar. It has turned a shade of coffee brown from years buried in a pit. I stare at it for five minutes. Its just a tooth. I clench my own teeth together, feeling my jaw muscles tighten. The wind gusts again, but nothing seems to rustle. I put my index finger out and push the tooth. Its real, I am assured. I stare at it a bit more, unblinking. My right hand, which seems to have a mind of its own picks the tooth up. I hold it in my palm and stare at it some more, as though I've never sen a human tooth before. I run my fingers over the curves and canyons on the top of the tooth. Feel the jagged and pointy root on the otherside. I twirl it in my fingers and feel the weight of it in my hand.

This tooth was, at one time, attached to a jaw with other teeth, which was attached to a skull, attached to a head, attached to a body. But most of all, this tooth was attached to a life. I try to comprehend whtat this means. This tooth was attached to a life, a life like mine. Still holding the tooth, I think about the life that used to be attached to this tooth. Was the life male or female? Young or old? What passed over the life's tooth? I think about the tooth's first months in the world. It's mother probably nourished the connected life with her milk. Milk must have flowed lovingly over the tooth. This tooth must have chewed alot of food in it's life time. What was the favorite food of the tooth's attached life? Did the life like Cambodian curry noodles and amoc fish? Or did the life prefer bamboo sticky rice and salted pork? What sorts of foods did this tooth chew? Did the tooth's life have a favorite pho stall on the streets of Phnom Penh? Did it like sweets and desserts? Did more coffee or tea flow over the tooth? Did the tooth's life take care of it's mouth? How many hundreds of times did the life carefully brush this tooth, to preserve it's smile?

I ponder thes questions while feeling it's weight. All of the suden, I have a better idea of how much one hundred and sixty six is. It's alot. It's an immeasureable amount of lives. One hundred and sixty six molars just like this one. Dozens of questions to ask about each tooth, each life. I start to get a better feeling about how much one hundred and sixty six is. But what about 2 million? Two million... I try to think of two million teeth like this one. The number is so large, I don't know how to visualize it. Two million molars. Two million favorite foods. Two million despised foods. Rivers of tea must have flown over these teeth.

I place the tooth back on the alter. From this one tooth I now understand the massive scale of genocide. I now realize what genocide takes away: life. I now understand death. What the death of one person means. What the life of one person is. This single brown molar has made me understand more about death, murder, and genocide than the miles of news bulletins I've read on CNN, Fox, NBC at the bottom of the television screen. "One million dead." "Reports of 100,000 murdered." "Ethnic cleansing." But those bulletins meant relatively nothing to me. Numbers. Figures. Statistics. Letters. Words. Moving from right to left. "One million people dead..." That seems like alot of people, I would think to myself, and continue on with my daily business. But now I understand, at least a little bit more. I don't know what a million or 2 million people is. But I know what one is. There was a life attached to this tooth. A life cut short by brutal execution. This molar showed me what is meant by death, and what is meant by loss of life. I still can't visualize 2 million people, but I can visualize one. And to be able to visualize one, is all that matters.