In silence, I understood, and I remembered

To keep you is no gain, to kill you is no loss. Under the rules of the Organization we were reduced to this dictum. How was I to live by such words? With so many carted away on the tiniest pretense, how could any child believe she would live beyond this day, this moment? How could she hope for tomorrow? In a world of senseless death, I didn't see the purpose, couldn't grasp the meaning. If this was our collective karma, then why was I still alive? If anything, I was as guilty as those who survived and as innocent as those who died. What name then can I give to the force that carried me on? With each life taken away, a part of it passed on to me. I didn't know its name. All I could grasp was the call to remember. Remember. I lived by this word.  

After that day at the rice fields, I no longer feared guns because I no longer feared death. The brigade leader continued to threaten me. But I never answered her. Instead, silence took root in my blood. I became deaf. I became mute. I thought only of the work in front of me. Standing in the paddy, I planted the rice shoots. When eating, I could only think of eating. In sleep, I thought of nothing else. Hunger made my body frail. Many times I was punished for being too lazy. Without rice, I lived on leaves and small animals found in the mud. The tiniest I would swallow at once. Sometimes I would be punished, though I could never know when. It was futile to worry, to think of tomorrow. The life I'd once known was gone, and with it, the people. There was nothing to say, no one left for me to speak of, so I chose not to speak.  

Still, I saw. Still, I heard. In silence, I understood, and I remembered.

--Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan (2012)