Rich Sons

One afternoon in Phnom Penh, over many cups of coffee, he told us about one of the rich sons of Cambodia, who, in a moment of irritation, had opened fire on a crowd.

Rich sons, it is said, are never punished. Here was the test. A crime so heinous, committed before dozens of witnesses; the rich son slouched in the courtroom, looking bored and wearing sunglasses. Even the cynics thought he might not get away with it.

So it seemed until the morning the judge announced the verdict. There'd been a break in the case, he said. This boy was framed: now the real villain had been found.

As proof, the judge held up the perpetrator's passport. The passport was real, made late the night before for a man who did not exist.

(The testimony of witnesses counts for nothing. The witness of the poor is a bill of minute denomination and subject to constant devaluation.)

The man who did not exist was sentenced to life in prison. A terrible sentence, which no one likes to think about.

The lives of imaginary men are unspeakably long, their suffering almost unimaginable to those of us who die more easily.

The verdict: innocent people, gunned down in a market, leads to the imprisonment of an imaginary man, pulled into creation only to suffer, to serve on behalf of the rich son who walks, with his sunglasses, back out into the sun.