Dith Pran is a New York Times photographer whose experiences in his native Cambodia inspired the movie The Killing Fields.Associated Press file
March 27, 2008
His experiences were inspiration for Killing Fields
WOODBRIDGE, N.J. — The world knows him as a powerful voice for the ghosts of the Cambodian Killing Fields, but Dith Pran speaks barely above a whisper now.
The man who survived starvation, torture and Pol Pot's murderous children's brigade is now fighting a new war from a hospital bed. This time the enemy is even more relentless: pancreatic cancer.
Friends and family say that if anyone can win this battle, it is Pran, 65, once described as a survivor "in the Darwinian sense," whose story was the basis for the Academy Award-winning 1984 movie The Killing Fields.
Pran says he intends to beat the odds, but ultimately, "this is my path, and I must go where it takes me."
The healthy, round-faced man who danced at his son's wedding just last fall is now a gaunt 118 pounds. The only time in his adult life that he weighed less was when he staggered out of the jungle on the Thai border in 1979, malnourished, covered in scars and suffering from malaria.
But with typical Pran grace, he refuses to despair about his medical odds — "I know how to recover from adversity." He plans to use his condition as a platform to campaign for early cancer screening. It is also a time to reflect on an extraordinary life well lived.
"You or I could never have survived what Pran has. And he is still one of the nicest people I ever met," said former New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg, 74, who insisted on sharing his 1976 Pulitzer Prize for covering the war in Cambodia with his translator, assistant and friend, Dith Pran.
"Pran saved my life, nearly at the cost of his," Schanberg added, as he bustled around Pran's hospital room, talking to staff, taking notes, reading messages from the legion of friends Pran has acquired in his 30-year photojournalism career.
In 1975, Schanberg and other journalists were eventually granted safe passage to Thailand by the Khmer Rouge rebels who had seized power in Cambodia. Pran was forced into the countryside, where he spent more than four years in conditions that destroyed more than 1.5 million people — nearly a third of his country's inhabitants.
They were killed because they were connected to the former government, because they were intellectuals or doctors or lawyers or teachers. People were killed by the Khmer Rouge because they wore glasses, held hands, gave rice to their dying children or just because.
It was in this environment that Pran lived by hiding his intelligence, education and his strength. He withstood beatings and torture, disease and malnutrition. Fifty other members of his family, including his father, three brothers, sister, nieces and nephews, did not survive.
Pran says he is not a religious man but he has a Buddhist sense of destiny. "It was right for me to stay behind for Sydney, even if it means I am on this path now," he says with quiet dignity. "I want to save lives, including my own, but Cambodians believe we just rent this body."
His experiences were inspiration for Killing Fields
WOODBRIDGE, N.J. — The world knows him as a powerful voice for the ghosts of the Cambodian Killing Fields, but Dith Pran speaks barely above a whisper now.
The man who survived starvation, torture and Pol Pot's murderous children's brigade is now fighting a new war from a hospital bed. This time the enemy is even more relentless: pancreatic cancer.
Friends and family say that if anyone can win this battle, it is Pran, 65, once described as a survivor "in the Darwinian sense," whose story was the basis for the Academy Award-winning 1984 movie The Killing Fields.
Pran says he intends to beat the odds, but ultimately, "this is my path, and I must go where it takes me."
The healthy, round-faced man who danced at his son's wedding just last fall is now a gaunt 118 pounds. The only time in his adult life that he weighed less was when he staggered out of the jungle on the Thai border in 1979, malnourished, covered in scars and suffering from malaria.
But with typical Pran grace, he refuses to despair about his medical odds — "I know how to recover from adversity." He plans to use his condition as a platform to campaign for early cancer screening. It is also a time to reflect on an extraordinary life well lived.
"You or I could never have survived what Pran has. And he is still one of the nicest people I ever met," said former New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg, 74, who insisted on sharing his 1976 Pulitzer Prize for covering the war in Cambodia with his translator, assistant and friend, Dith Pran.
"Pran saved my life, nearly at the cost of his," Schanberg added, as he bustled around Pran's hospital room, talking to staff, taking notes, reading messages from the legion of friends Pran has acquired in his 30-year photojournalism career.
In 1975, Schanberg and other journalists were eventually granted safe passage to Thailand by the Khmer Rouge rebels who had seized power in Cambodia. Pran was forced into the countryside, where he spent more than four years in conditions that destroyed more than 1.5 million people — nearly a third of his country's inhabitants.
They were killed because they were connected to the former government, because they were intellectuals or doctors or lawyers or teachers. People were killed by the Khmer Rouge because they wore glasses, held hands, gave rice to their dying children or just because.
It was in this environment that Pran lived by hiding his intelligence, education and his strength. He withstood beatings and torture, disease and malnutrition. Fifty other members of his family, including his father, three brothers, sister, nieces and nephews, did not survive.
Pran says he is not a religious man but he has a Buddhist sense of destiny. "It was right for me to stay behind for Sydney, even if it means I am on this path now," he says with quiet dignity. "I want to save lives, including my own, but Cambodians believe we just rent this body."
No comments:
Post a Comment