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Byline: Nathan A Thompson

Finding the tattoo warrior

Finding the tattoo warrior

There was no speedometer. The brakes were as responsive as boiled vegetables and the wing mirrors flapped in the wind. How fast was I going? Hell, I couldn’t even remember if the hired Honda Baja had five gears or six. The world blurred. Scooters and cars fell away. This was too fast. Visions of accidents appeared in my mind, the road strewn with blood and stumps. Must focus. Use all available brainpower. Divert maximum attention to the road. Apart from the small amount of attention needed to headbang to Clutch’s Blast Tyrant album that was being piped into my head at an ear-maiming volume. It was the only way it could be heard over the squealing wind as I drove to Siem Reap to find the Sok Yant tattoo master.

Then the engine cut. No roar, no rattle, just a powerless, dead hunk of metal hurtling through the heartlands of Cambodia. I hit the brakes. Must get this thing off the road before a truck flattens me. I stood looking at the engine as cars flew by. Some kind of vapour was rising. Black oil pooled on the tarmac below.

Fucking, shitting bastard. Or some similarly brutal words echoed from the dry, scrubby trees. A truck tore by, stinging my eyes with miniscule stones. If you had been in a passing car you would have seen a single man, crow-black against the sun and yellow dust, dancing a fiendish jig with the purpose, one can only assume, of trying to bring back to life his stationary, oh-so-stationary, motorbike.

The mechanic arrived two hours later, riding my replacement bike and grinning like a maniac. I didn’t return his grin. It was nearly 3pm, which meant I would ride the final hours of my journey to Siem Reap in the dark on one of the most treacherous, poorly-lit roads in Cambodia. The replacement was a similarly large 250cc dirt bike with squishy suspension and a beefy, liquid-cooled engine. The only trouble was that the headlights were significantly smaller than the Baja, which didn’t bode well. Still, nothing for it but to saddle up. I waved to the mechanic, pressed my thumb to the ignition and snapped the small plastic nob like a Sabbuteo figure. I looked at the mechanic in exasperation. He sighed and began unscrewing the ignition box.

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It was dark. I aimed the bike between two slightly lighter shades of dark which I took to be the edges of the road. There were no motorbikes. No one was stupid enough to ride in these conditions. There were only enormous trucks with blinding headlights. When separated from the safe confines of modern civilization, it’s amazing how quickly one reverts to atavistic superstition. I had been praying to the god of dogs having narrowly avoided two brutal collisions with road-crossing canines. Just carry on, I repeated, squinting into the blackness as silent sheets of lightning slapped the sky.

The bike choked, coughed and rolled to a stop. I would have known it was running low on petrol if there had been a gauge. But there was no time for rage, just a sense of being worn down and defeated. I was praying again. It must have worked. Emerging from a shack on the opposite side of the road came a smiling family bearing bottles of petrol. They filled it up while rabbiting in Khmer, curious of the foreigner and his giant, broken-down machine.

Thanking them, I sped away. I had barely gone a mile when I realised the petrol was of such inferior quality it might ruin the engine. The bike started up its tuberculotic coughing almost immediately. I twisted my wrist and forced more power into the engine. It wasn’t going to last. Then, a real petrol station emerged from the blackness. Between me and the attendant we drained the sick, village petrol and replaced it.

By the time I arrived in Siem Reap, I was singing the first few lines of Ini Kamozi’s Here Comes the Hotstepper over and over again in an attempt to keep the creeping sense of dread from gnawing at my guts (my cheap earphones had packed in and been cast into the dust somewhere around Kampong Thom). It had been hours driving blind on a road to nowhere. It must have numbed by mind because the fear was that I would never reach Siem Reap and I would be cursed to travel this dark road for eternity.

Finding the tattoo master the next morning was comparatively simple. I had already been given his phone number by an American occultist I met at a Phnom Penh meditation group. He was into magic tattoos, acupuncture and studying Taoist grimoires. I called the master and found him outside a large shed among Siem Reap’s quaint, almost Mediterranean backstreets. He wore baggy Thai fishing pants and his muscular body was a mesh of sacred tattoos. His brown skin glowed with sweat in the midday heat. He fixed me with a clear, proud gaze. He had cultivated a moustache that flared up either side of his curled lips like a pantomime villain’s. He took a strand between thumb and forefinger and twirled it.

While it is not difficult to find a tattoo artist who can inscribe mystical symbols on your skin, it is not easy to find someone who practices the whole magical tradition of which tattooing is just one part. “I travelled all around Cambodia,” said the master. “I learned tattooing, mantra and meditation from two main teachers: an old monk and a hermit in Ratanakiri.” He refused to divulge further details. Indeed, he seemed perturbed by my photographs and probing questions. “We want to keep the magic arts secret,” he said.

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The ancient art of Sak Yant is a mystical tradition that some say has its roots in pre-Angkorian warrior culture. The symbols used are a mix of Vedic gods and incantations in old Khmer script. When a master tattoos the skin he transfers magical power into the symbols. The most common charms bestow protection, persuasion and sexual magnetism. Take a look at any older Cambodian man, anyone who fought in the war, and you’ll more than likely find faded charms woven into the skin in the belief that it makes the wearer impervious to bullets.

By now, three students had arrived. Fit young men covered in tattoos, some blurry and messy where they had been practicing on each other. “I want to keep the tradition alive,” said Sim So Tum, a young man with a tassled head of hair whose chest bore a line-drawing of the Buddha with spells tumbling out in the eight mystical directions. “My grandfather had the knowledge and power and I am inspired to carry on his work.”

The master pulled out a book of spells that he had created himself, amalgamating the knowledge he had learned on his travels. He and his students pored over the pages. I could have chosen my own design, but it is culturally more appropriate, when dealing with a master of magical arts, to defer to the teacher.

He pulled out the gun and started inking my back. He could have used the traditional bamboo method – where the skin is pieced with a sharpened bamboo needle. But that would have taken longer and been less accurate. He assured me that the power would be the same. “It’s all transferred from the master,” he said.

The return drive back to Phnom Penh was better. In the daylight it’s easier to avoid dogs and see potholes coming. Both shoulders stung with the new tattoos. The symbol for the divine mother was on the left side, the side associated with compassion, while the father symbol was on the right side, associated with wisdom. The archetypal power of the mother and father flowed through my arms and into the bike. I flew home.

Posted on May 14, 2015May 14, 2015Categories FeaturesLeave a comment on Finding the tattoo warrior
Golden fortunes and magic ink

Golden fortunes and magic ink

The size of the compound couldn’t be assessed from outside. The translator and I wondered around the blinding white wall. There was a red marble plaque imposed like a huge blood clot on the whiteness: “Neak Okhna IM BROS” was spelled out in gold letters; either side were etchings of Tevodas – Cambodian angels – scattering metaphorical flowers.

Okhna Im Bros (“Okhna” is an honorific meaning “excellency”) is the most powerful Kru Khmer in Cambodia. “Kru Khmer” is a catch-all term for spirit mediums, herbalists and hocus-pocus merchants that lurk on the outskirts of the Cambodian imagination.

Im Bros is a spirit medium, fortune teller and healer to the Cambodian elite. He counts royalty, governors and army generals among his clients. Even legendary monarch Norodom Sihanouk had his fortune told by this master soothsayer.

20141222_102029Im Bros was striding around an echoing hall, the entire back end of which was taken up by an alter brimming with Buddhas, grinning Angkorian kings and Brahmic deities with swarming arms. On the floor were a number of silver trays containing offerings of fruit, candles and $100 bills.

Im Bros wore a single white waistcloth revealing a web of magical tattoos that covered his chest and arms. He greeted us with a traditional sampeah gesture, pressing his palms together. The translator couldn’t bow low enough; he’d never met someone of such high status before. Indeed, he only agreed to the job after being assured a number of times that we were definitely expected by the shaman.

The walls were covered in dozens of framed photographs hung haphazardly like a drunken man’s stamp collection. Most were of Im Bros meeting dignitaries and officials. It was these photos he turned to first.

He talked in a confident patter. “I paid $100,000 for this school,” he said, pointing to one photo,“ and $1.5 million for this hospital.” The translator was so overcome with humility he could barely render the tycoon’s words in English. “This is why I’m Okhna; this is why I’m respected,” Im Bros repeated throughout the monologue.

After listing his achievements he moved on to a section of the wall where the photos were faded. One showed a fierce teenager wearing a head scarf and brandishing a machete. “This is me when I first became a Kru Khmer,” he said. “I was 14 years old.”

“I joined the army when I was 15,” he continued, pointing to the next photo showing the same young man in combat gear. “I became known as ‘the young trooper Kru Khmer’ because the spirits allowed me to heal injured soldiers with magic water.”

Im Bros was a fighter in the Khmer People’s National Liberation Armed Forces – an anti-communist militia opposed to the Vietnamese-backed government of the ‘80s. They were loyal to Son Sann, a former Prime Minister under Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Im Bros was a skilled army man. “Eventually, I led a task force of 75 soldiers,” he said.

After a Vietnamese offensive in 1985 caused the KPNLAF severe losses, Im Bros scarpered and headed for Phnom Penh. Tales of the “young trooper Kru Khmer” had by then reached the newly appointed Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was recruiting the country’s best young talent to be part of his inner circle.

“I met Hun Sen in 1985,” Im Bros said. “Even then he recognised that I was not only a powerful Kru Khmer but I had a heart for developing Cambodia.”

Im Bros immediately started donating to help fund Hun Sen’s political and developmental efforts. In return, he became friends with the PM and first lady, Bun Rany.

“Hun Sen said I was the best Kru Khmer in Cambodia,” Im Bros said, pointing to a number of pictures of him with the first couple. When probed about the details of his private sessions with the PM, Im Bros declined to comment.

It’s likely, however, that if Hun Sen does seek Im Bros’ advice, it would be to locate auspicious dates on which to hold important meetings or to petition Cambodia’s powerful ancestor spirits for help. “I leave my body and the ancestor spirits take over,” Im Bros explained. “When I return I don’t remember anything; only the client hears their message.”

Im Bros also practices traditional medicine. “I make herbal tinctures to treat chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease and high cholesterol,” he said. “Most of my clients see a doctor, but when modern medicine doesn’t suffice they come to me.”

Purveyors of ancient remedies, like Im Bros, have long learned not to tackle scientific medicine head on; instead they occupy conceptual fringes, just beyond the last outposts of quantum theory. There they set up colourful stalls under the banner of “complementary therapy.”

The shaman rustled through some correspondence and produced an x-ray of a fractured shin bone. “When people come and see me with a complaint I often send them to the hospital to get tested,” he said. “This person wouldn’t have known they had a fractured shin-bone if I hadn’t sent them to the hospital.”

“When the doctors made a cast I had them add some of my tincture to the mixture,” he said. He produced a second X-ray showing a restored shinbone. “This was the result one week later,” he said and grinned.

Im Bros was at pains to separate his practice from what he called the “ignorant superstition” of countryside folk. It is a problem in Cambodia that results, on average, with the slaying of four so-called sorcerers every year. Indeed, in April 2014, a mob of 600 people savagely stoned an alleged sorcerer to death.

“This is pure cruelty,” Im Bros said, shaking his head. “People spread rumours of sorcery because of some personal vendetta. If a person really is a sorcerer then arrest him and let him be brought to trial.”

Cambodian law doesn’t recognise sorcery as a crime. “The law should be changed,” Im Bros continued. “This would allow people who have been accused to defend themselves in court and not fall victim to mob rule.”

Sometimes rumours can swell and burst into New Testament-esque scenes like the one I witnessed last year when reporting on a 2-year-old boy who was claimed to have healing powers.

“I can’t comment on the powers of any other Kru Khmer,” said Im Bros when asked about the event, which attracted more than 4,000 people to a nearby village. “However, I know you must train for many years to become a powerful healer.” He became animated, gesticulating left and right. “How rich did that family become charging people to see the magic boy? It’s merely business and not true magic.”

As if to demonstrate his authenticity, Im Bros whirled back to his files and pulled out a bamboo cylinder. Inside was a piece of red cloth covered with faded symbols and Sanskrit incantations. “My grandfather gave me this before the war,” he said. “He was also a Kru Khmer.”

The shaman laid the cloth carefully on the tiled floor in between trays of offerings. “These are spells to bless people with health and good luck,” he said, pointing to the tantric inscriptions. “I have tattooed some of them on my body because these scrolls are too rare to risk taking with me when I travel.”

Looking from the ancient spells to the trays stacked with offerings, it was clear that being Cambodia’s most famous Kru Khmer was a job with many perks. “I don’t charge a flat fee,” he said. “Clients pay what they like. And because Kru Khmer is not listed as an occupation by the state, all the cash is tax-free.”

The next family of well-heeled clientele entered and began bowing. The translator tugged at my arm. “We should go, these are important people,” he said.

Before leaving, I bowed in front of the alter and left a cash donation. If there’s one thing Cambodians love, it’s their religion. Their weird, haunted religion.

Im Bros nodded approvingly. “Thank you for coming, and I entreat you to write only the truth; don’t make things up like some journalists,” he said. I glanced from my scrawled notes to the sycophantic translator – a certain amount of poetic license might be needed to lash all this together. Would an accidental untruth – a mistranslation perhaps – result in horrible misfortune?

The magic man grinned. “Always tell the truth,” he said, “and nothing bad will happen.”

Posted on January 15, 2015January 15, 2015Categories FeaturesLeave a comment on Golden fortunes and magic ink
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