The crude wire fences sheltered the village from the ghost children of the forest beyond.

Now a seemingly peaceful and tranquil landscape littered with the ever accommodating though reserved locals, Missa would never have thought that the poor village has seen through such a devastating event-not of the war, unfortunately, because to have been suffering from the war would have been just another recounted tale of hapless victimhood-because she had never accounted or thought to expect the wilful self-destructive tendencies of the people she had ever faced.

Missa had been trekking along the trail leading through from the small town to the Cambodian countryside, with much foolishness I fear to add, never heeding to or even hearing of warnings of unexploded landmines all around. Having wandered into one of the bare and harshly pieced together wooden houses in search of tea, she was met with the woman of the house who had been sick and could not join her husband to the plantations that day. Her belly was swollen with a seven month old pregnancy.

The tea was sipped in silence and appreciation; Missa never having learnt the local langauge enough to hold a conversation but the amiability has been enforced with eyes that met and resultant smiles. Like most weather-beaten women, her hostess had crows' feet whenever she grinned agreeably though she never gazed full into Missa's face for too long-like a swan who has swam up to the outstretched palm and quickly turned away at the last minute from fear and distrust, or just plain shyness.

Having wandered out of the house after much curtsies of thanks, she noticed the entire area encompassing several similar looking wooden houses on crude stilts surrounded by wire fences. Clothes of varying sizes, but ostensibly that of children were draped intermittently along the fences, and old though they were, they looked comfortable and well-worn with their faded colors, the long of the pants and the sleeves of the shirts swaying lazily in the hot wind. They hung expectantly as if awaiting the childish and impatient tug from the wire fences to be donned on, untattered if they are lucky, the bodies of children in a haste to continue with their play.

But play there wasn't. The village was empty of children. Missa pointed to the fence and gestured low down to her hips, querying the whereabouts of the children by outlining their small statures. The lady shook for a moment and did Missa notice a chilled breeze through her skin?-no-that would have been odd, chilled breeze would never take the place of the hot wind in that part of the world, or so Missa thought.

The lady hobbled back into the thatched house-only now did Missa notice her limp which had not been apparent before when they were sitting or walking slowly-and emerged with a black and white picture of  boy with a tattooed body. He gazed blankly at the camera, as if taken from a bygone age similar to the stern countenances of our grandparents connoting sobriety. The tattoos on his body were mesmerizing: a geometrical pattern of a temple-like structure imprinted across the chest, which Missa, upon staring harder, realised it to be resembling that of a breastplate. There were sun-like patterns on each of his forearms followed by long lines of inscriptions of words. At the bottom of the picture Missa realised it was inscripted: 13 Feb 1953-24 June 1968. He died when he was 15 years old.

Missa looked up and saw the clothes fluttering again-strongly this time-along with the renewed wind, as if to fly away but was pinned back by the sharp hooks protruding on the wire-like fences and saw and understood the silence of the clothes caught by the fences of each house. But Missa, looking for sorrow in the lady's eyes after having imparted such a painful revelation to a stranger, saw only joy, or what she perceived to be joy as easily recognized from the upward curve of the lady's lips. The lady took the picture back and hobbled painfully back into the house.