Kou: Takmau, 1957

Takmau, Cambodia: 1957

Spirit is everything in Cambodia. Our parents tell us that on the day we are born, our spirit is flying above, summoned to land in that split second of time when our body slips into this world. They choose us; they are our first taste of the air.

We are sewing mosquito nets in the cool outdoor corridor in the middle of our two-story house. I smell magnolias and drying fish.

We are so poor. Pa rides his bike to work in the fields, a few hours journey each way. Sometimes he disappears for days at a time. There is never enough food, and when we are not at school we are working for Mae, endlessly stitching new nets to sell in the local market or in Phnom Phen. We are always waiting for holiday, once a year noodle soup and two new sets of clothes

I am maybe five or six. Already, I am angry at my spirit.

“Why you have to stop here, why this poor family?” I ask. “Why you do this to me? If you had flown a little slower, you would have landed just next door. Look how many things you would have had -- a TV, a car, lots of food.”

Then I look out in the other direction.

“Why you not fly a little slower? Even on the other side, still things would have been a little better. Why you have to land here?”

The sun is setting over the Mekong, the evening chills. The cicadas chat with birds, a dog howls. I can hear my stomach clenching with hunger, so empty it is hard to pay attention to my stitching. The babies begin to cry and Big Brother tries to distract them. Our well-seasoned ears easily weed out the sound of Ba’s bike as he turns into the alley beside our home. Now we can eat.

Everyone loves Ba. He is an artist. “Oh, your father, he so wise,” they say. Our neighbors and everyone in our family come to him for advice. He knows everything. And oh, how he loves to tell stories about Grandpa’s life in China. These are my favorite times. After dinner, I am so tired, still hungry, our sewing is folded away, the babies sleep. Only the crickets chatter as Ba begins to talk. Akmow, our black lab, curls at his feet.

Ba enchants me with bigger-than-life, true fairytales, so rich and humming with life that time and space disappear.

I am no longer just one little girl in a large poor Cambodian family. I am traveling inside Ba’s memories. I am in China, crouching outside a school with other hushed children, secretly listening to lessons only meant for rich young ears. I am dancing in the dark swollen fields, chasing down fireflies, capturing hundreds in a clear glass jar. I poke holes in the lids and read Scherazade by the light of my firefly lantern. My night sky is too rich with stars and moonlight. I sleep.


My eyes snap open as Ba settles me down in the long bamboo bed with my sisters.

“It’s okay. You were dreaming,” he whispers. I stare for a moment into his deep black eyes. I sigh and turn away into sleep. We, four sisters, side by side every night, tiny sardines packed tight in a poreless tin can. So safe.

Kou: Takmau, April 975

First, I tell you story about day our lives change forever. Hot, dusty day, a month before the rains swell Tonle Sap, fill all Cambodia rivers. Perhaps you remember?

Midday outside our house. Mae sleeping in hammock and you laughing, running circles with Amonk. So so hot I cook clams on ground; they just blister in sun.

“You hungry?” I ask Mae. She shake her head no. Too hot to eat.

I always hungry. I watch you play, eat rice and clams. But oh I ache, miss my husband. Kuan not coming home. Two days ago his friend stop by to tell me.

“Something terrible about to happen,” he say. “Kuan want me give you this.” He hands me $20 and Kuan’s army uniform. “Not safe for him here, he leave country.”

What I thinking anyway. Not like no signs. Every night, Kuan and I lie beside each other in bed, listening to battle sounds under covers.

My world so small. Kuan all I think about. I so crazy in love with him. What could be more terrible than this? I scheming how to meet in City. Yesterday, we heard that airport close. Maybe he still here. Maybe not too late.

I jump to my feet, hear bombs and gunfire. Noise too close.

“Gee, what’s going on?”

Across lake see smoke and people running. Mae sit up in hammock. You stop playing, grab at my skirt. More gunshots, bombs. In seconds, Highway just beyond front yard is crowded with people rushing towards Phnom Phen.

Everywhere stench of gunpowder. Things happening so fast, camera going snap, snap, snap, only each picture frozen in slow motion like trapped in nightmare where you scream and no sound.

Gunfire, explosions, smoke closer and closer. Friends and neighbors speed past on motorcycles and trucks.
“Leave, leave!”.

Ba arrive on his bicycle.

“Get in house,” he yell. “Khmer Rouge attack. Hide, hide.”
I grab you and we run upstairs.

“We go to Phnom Phen,” I say. “Why we stay here? Everyone leaving.”

Ba not listen. “We safe here. Enough food for three months.”

I o angry. Want to go with everyone else to City. Maybe Kuan still there. We stay with his family.

But Ba in charge and so we stay.

We lock all doors, close windows. People running by just outside, pounding on the door “Get out! Get out!” Instead, we hide under the bed in the back room.
We here for long time. You want your favorite toy. I run toward front room to fetch it,suddenly hear loud noise. Scramble back under bed. Knock on door downstairs, friend of Ba’s calling up: “Are you still there? A bomb has fallen on your house. Is anyone in there?”

Sun setting. We still under bed when we hear someone kicking open downstairs door. We so quiet, even Amonk know no make noise. We hear people knocking things off shelves, throwing things around rooms. Now they climb stairs. Three pair shoes enter. Rubber shoes made from tires. Khmer Rouge. We so quiet as they move through room, throwing open cabinets, scattering everything on floor.

But Ba too tall. One of soldiers see his feet.

“Get out, get out from under there,” he order. We crawl out. We so frightened. I hold you in my arms so tight.

Three rifles point at us.

“Do you have guns here? Any army hiding in house?”

You sit on floor, playing with roll toilet paper while Ba talks.

"No, no, we not army. Just let us stay here. No problem."

Soldiers say we have to leave. No time to take anything with us. We not safe here. Americans going to bomb city. We leave now. In three days things safe, we return.

Out. Out. So quick we wrap clothing in sarongs, Ba stuffs big suitcase. We pushed at gunpoint out onto street. Soldiers everywhere. Now everyone rush away from Phnom Phen – cars, trucks, tuk-tuks overflowing with people, bicycles and motos carry whole family. Gunshots. Small boys in big black clothing scarves wrapped around heads carry guns as big as they are. Their eyes crazy with power. Bombs explode, gun battles rage. Fear so heavy you can smell it.

“Go, go, go.” Armed soldiers alongside road urge us onward, only allowing us to stop to drink from large buckets of water sitting along road.


We walk all night. Hundreds seeking shelter under trees when bullets come too close.

Ba, Mae and I take turn carrying you, your little feet tire so quickly. I so angry at Ba. Why he not see this? Why he not take us away sooner?

Finally, morning. Rest in small farm. Farmer come over with food for you. Banana leaf wrapped around sbrown rice and tiny dried fish.

Do you remember that morning, Shrey Mom, that tiny offering food? It meal for four of us.

I still haunted by way that farmer look at us. He know what in store for us. He sorry. Oh, how I hate that man because when I look at him I know. I know old life over. Life never again be normal. I know this, but I no idea three days really mean four years.

In that moment it just like they say happen before you die. My whole life flash fast before my eyes, like star shoot across sky. Like that for you, Shrey Mom? When you die, your star not have long to travel. Only five year. In my death moment, path 24 year long. My life slip away in second, not enough time even for me to reach out and capture even tiniest picture. It all gone before I finish one breath.

Kou Tree

Oh, the world you would have known, Shrey Mom. There are still times now, thirty years after you left us, when I look up from whatever I am doing and search for some sign from your spirit. Is that you, that slight soothing pressure on my face? Are you hiding in the clear fresh water I use to clean my client’s feet? Did you slip into that little girl’s giggle? For just a minute, she sounds so much like you.

So many times I ask my husband, “Where are the spirits of all the children who starved to death during the Khmer Rouge? Are they still waiting in Cambodia for their families to come home? Do they know we are here in America?”

He says he does not know. I never tell him how I wait for you. How I worry.

The women who come into my salon, Shrey Mom, carry huge leather satchels that probably cost more money than all the rice we harvested during five years at Pou Chrey. Sometimes they bring their children with them, pale little children in fancy soccer uniforms and hundred dollar sneakers. They will never know the joy of playing a simple game of Leak Kanseng in their dirty bare feet. The dogs that wait for them in cars much grander than the Anghar tanks go to special shops for shampoos. Akmow would not be welcome here, with his dusty black coat and half an ear.

What stories I could tell you about this strange world of America, daughter. But there are no words in the Khmer language to describe such things. It is like a story I once heard about a very old tribe who had never seen a boat before. And so, when they looked out over the ocean, where many, many enemy boats were arriving, they only saw the water. What did they know of something besides a bird that could float?

As much as I want to tell you about my life in America, things are so very different here that there is no space in your little mind for you to even imagine their existence. I can tell you that I own a small shop in a very, very rich town in America, that I clean people’s hands and feet and paint their nails different colors. Sometimes I grind fake nails for them and paste them on their fingers. Every day fancy women come here and I put rich creams on their faces to make them look younger or use hot wax to strip hair from their body. Not sexy in America to have hair on your body.

I do these things to make them happy but they are not happy, Shrey Mom. Always they have problems. I am sorry with them. I remember to ask them how things are when they return. But deep inside, as I bend over their hands, I am saying to myself: “You think your life is a sad story? You have everything. A home. Food. A job. Education. Why you so sad?”

Sometimes I think, “If only you knew my story. You would understand what sorrow really is.” But I say nothing. They are my customers and I have bills to pay.

I will tell you what their lives remind me of, though. It is another story. Some Buddhist monks came to the largest city in America, a city bigger than twenty Phnom Phen's with buildings that rise so high into the sky you cannot see where they end. The monks went every day to a famous building where very important paintings and other art is kept, and they carved a very, very big and beautiful sculpture. It took them weeks and weeks to finish. The sculpture was so big it was the size of a small rice field. When they were done they just left it there, and pretty soon this beautiful piece of art started to melt. The days were too hot. But the monks had known all the time that what they had worked so hard to create would not last. They had done it this way on purpose. They had made the sculpture out of butter.

This is what America is like, Shrey Mom. It is not a real place. What they call beauty here is just what they use to cover up what is real. It will not last.

But the story of our lives? Ah, this will never melt, this will last forever. Yes, this is the story I will tell you