Rocking slowly in his hammock, an old farmer named Saloth Seng remembered the sunny holidays when a much-loved schoolboy dressed all in white came home to this tiny village by the river.
It was his little brother, Pol Pot."He was a very polite boy; he never caused trouble," Saloth Seng recalled on Tuesday, in words that were repeated by another brother and a sister who still live nearby.
But the years since then have been filled with trouble. Saloth Seng, now 85, is one of his brother's many victims, and love has turned to anger. Like millions of other Cambodians, he was driven from his home during Pol Pot's four years of brutal rule from 1975 to 1979. And like many others, he lost a son among the more than 1 million people who died during those years.
"He hurt me," the old man said as a rainstorm rattled the banana leaves that surround his wooden house. "He broke my heart. He made me stop loving him."
Pol Pot was obsessed with secrecy, and it was only in the last year of his rule that his portrait was made public. It was then that his siblings learned that it was their brother who was causing their suffering.
Pol Pot's sister, Saloth Roeung, 81, round-faced and smooth-skinned like her infamous brother, had not heard of the show trial 10 days ago at which Pol Pot was denounced and sentenced to life imprisonment by his fellow Khmer Rouge guerrillas.
"Someone is carrying him; is he sick?" she asked, when shown a photograph from the trial in her brother's jungle hideout in the northern town of Anlong Veng.
"Old, old," she said, smoothing the photograph with her fingers. "He looks sick. But he deserves whatever he got. The good receive good; the bad receive bad."
The son of a farmer, Pol Pot - who was born Saloth Sar - was sent at the age of 6 to live with relatives in Phnom Penh, 90 miles to the south, and his sister and brothers said they had never known him as an adult.
But they struggle with the knowledge of their intimate connection with the man who brought so much misery to their country.
"I have cut off that piece of my flesh," Saloth Seng said. "I feel that Pol Pot and I live in two different worlds. I feel nothing for him."
His sister said: "I am not happy that I share even a drop of his blood. If our parents were alive today, they would be very sad."
Saloth Roeung said her grandchildren refer to their great-uncle dismissively as "a-Pot," which means "the despicable Pot."
Pol Pot's sister recalled seeing his photograph in 1978. "It was a shock to realize that it was not `Pol Pot' but my brother," she said. "I was speechless. At first I was angry. How could he do such a thing to the people? But I didn't say anything to anybody. I was ashamed."
Saloth Seng said he shared the news with his brother. "We were surprised," he said. "We said to each other, `This is not Pol Pot; this is Saloth Sar!' "
The man who is reviled as one of the mass killers of the 20th century was born in this muddy village, the eighth of nine children of Pen Saloth, a prosperous farmer with 22 acres of rice land and a comfortable tile-roofed house.
His mother, Sok Nem, was described by his biographer, David Chandler, as widely respected for her piety and good works.
Pol Pot's birth date is uncertain, reported variously as 1925 and 1928. His sister and two brothers - his only surviving siblings - appeared to confirm the earlier date on Tuesday, saying he was born in the year of the ox, or 1925.