Pol Pot by Philip Short Page B

of the coveted scholarships.
    *
    In the end it had been easier than they had thought, for there were only twenty final-year students at Russey Keo; not all of them passed their exams, and of those who did, not all wished to go abroad. The same was true at Sisowath and at the Public Works School which Mey Mann attended. Under the protectorate, the French had so neglected higher education in Cambodia that in the late 1940s, fewer than a hundred students a year left secondary school with the requisite qualifications. The problem, whatever Chhopininto may have thought, was not so much a paucity of scholarships as of candidates. That was especially true in the technical field, where even the humblest posts were filled by Vietnamese because of the lack of trained Cambodians. To the Democratic Party leader, Chhnean Vâm, and his colleagues, remedying this state of affairs was an essential part of the struggle for independence.
    Even with those caveats, Sâr had become part of a minuscule élite. Although the numbers were rising, fewer than 250 Cambodians had been trained abroad since the beginning of the century, including those sent by their families without government support.
    On the eve
    of their departure, King Sihanouk granted the new bursars an audience amid the opulence and glitter of the palace’s Khemarin Hall. At the age of twenty-six, he was only two or three years older than they were, but already had four wives and eight children. Sâr and the others stood in line, self-conscious in their new suits and ties, waiting to be presented by a palace official, who handed the young King an envelope for each of them. It contained 500 piastres (equivalent to about 30 US dollars), an appreciable sum in those days, enough for a student to live on for a
    month. Mey Mann, who was there, too, remembered feeling ‘very happy and proud. For all of us, it was a unique opportunity. Very few young people in Cambodia had the chance to travel like us.’
    Many of those present that evening would later become influential figures on the Cambodian Left. Some were destined to have exemplary governmental careers. Chau Seng, an ethnic Khmer from Ieng Sary’s home district of Travinh, across the border in Vietnam, became Sihanouk’s Cabinet Director and, later, Minister of Education. Toch Phoeun would head the Public Works Department. Phuong Ton would go on to be Rector of the Royal University.
    Others were agreeable but uninspiring youths, for whom even their closest friends could not imagine much of a future. Sâr was one of these. The only thing that distinguished him from the others was that his upbringing had been more eclectic than theirs. Like them, his childhood had been steeped in the legends and superstitions of the countryside and in the moral suasion of the
    cpap.
    But, unlike most of his peers, he had gone on to a Buddhist novitiate; to catechism at a Roman Catholic primary school; adolescence in Phnom Penh amid the royal harem; a middle school imbued with the values of Vichy France; the Lycée Sisowath, where he had been surrounded by some of the most gifted young minds in the country; and finally, Russey Keo, among student carpenters and boilermakers, tinsmiths and lathe-workers. One might call it a motley training for life or, if one wished to be kind, a variegated education.
    However, it gave Sâr one great advantage. He was able to communicate naturally with people of all sorts and conditions, establishing an instinctive rapport that invariably made them want to like him. In this, he was helped immensely by what Mey Mann called ‘Sâr’s famous smile’. Many years later, Mann still wondered about the smile. ‘He never said very much,’ he remembered. ‘He just had that smile of his. He liked to joke, he had a slightly mischievous way about him. And there was never the least hint of what he would become after.’
    Sâr’s smile was too open to be enigmatic, too striking to be merely a mannerism. One of Sihanouk’s