Cambodia is a country that is far from healing the wounds of its recent and violent past. People still leave in great fear that horrors similar to those of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge might one day befall them. Even younger generations born after the end of the genocidal regime carry this fear in their hearts and minds. And it is because of this fear that it is hard for Cambodians to give clear-cut opinions on just about anything, no matter trivial it might be.

In Cambodia everyone avoids talking about the Khmer Rouge or the war that followed the 1978 Vietnamese invasion. Nevertheless, a few days ago I had a brief and unexpected conversation with a gentleman that has always given me the impression of having an enormous self-confidence, the kind that is available only to those who have lived through extremely hard situations.

In a rather unusual moment of spontaneity, my acquaintance told me that the value of peace is truly understood only those who have lived in the jungle and from what it provides. Another man that was with us interrupted to note that my interlocutor had spent 16 years eating fruits and the occasional wild game in the jungle. As a matter of precaution I limited my response to an anodyne “it must have been a terrible and difficult time.” My acquaintance smiled and told me that he knew what I wanted to ask. He then told me that he spent all that time fighting against Pol Pot’s army.

Still playing cautious, I uttered that people who live in societies that have been at peace for a long time sometimes do not know how to value peace in a way that is not abstract. He laughed and said that it had not been the years of fighting that reminded him of the value of peace. Neither had the corpses nor the many moments of hunger he endured.

It was a friend of his who reminded him of the value of peace. One day, while they were on patrol, his partner stepped on an anti-personnel mine that tore a leg off. While his friend was undergoing surgery (or what could have passed for surgery in a war zone where doctors had less than the absolutely and minimally essential tools) and unconscious, my acquaintance worried about the severe depression his friend would fall into upon waking up to discover he had lost a leg.

My conversation partner told me that his friend became, after waking to find himself an amputee, filled with happiness. “How is that possible?” I asked before my acquaintance could continue his story. His friend was happy because he would no longer have to fight, because he would not have live anymore with the fear of being captured and tortured by the Khmer Rouge, who probably would have ensured he died a slow and painful death.

These powerful reasons were not, however, the main reason behind my acquaintance’s friend’s happiness. His happiness stemmed from knowing that his family would visit him to take him home.