The first thing my grandmother, Dara Vichea, learned about survival was how to keep walking.
She was still a child when Cambodia's long crisis began. At first, war and political upheaval seemed like something happening somewhere else. Her family still had a home surrounded by banana trees and rice fields. Neighbors still visited one another. Children still played in the dirt. Meals were still shared around the same table.
They believed tomorrow would look much like today.
They were wrong.
Dara lived with her parents, Kiri Sokha and Mali, and her aunt, Vanna. They were an ordinary Cambodian family trying to live through extraordinary times.
Then the war came closer.
Aircraft appeared overhead.
The sound of distant explosions became familiar.
Soldiers passed through villages.
People began whispering about families who had disappeared.
At first, Dara's family tried not to listen.
Fear was easier to ignore when everyone around you was pretending everything was normal.
Then one afternoon, an old woman named Soriya called Dara aside.
Soriya placed a tiny golden lotus into her palm.
The pendant was warm despite the cool metal.
Dara stared at it.
"What's this?"
"Something your family must keep."
Dara looked up.
"Why?"
Soriya's expression changed.
"Because one day, people may try to take everything from you."
Dara closed her fingers around the pendant.
"Who?"
Soriya looked toward the road.
"Anyone who wants you to forget who you are."
Dara didn't understand.
She would later wish she had.
April 17, 1975
The Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh.
At first, people thought the fighting was finally over.
Some were relieved.
Then the orders came.
Everyone had to leave.
The Khmer Rouge claimed the evacuation was temporary, but it was part of a plan to empty the cities and place the population under revolutionary control. Families were told they would only be gone for a short time. Many believed they would return home within days.
Dara's family gathered what little they could carry.
Mali held tightly to the family photographs.
Vanna carried food.
Kiri tried to keep everyone together.
Dara tucked the golden lotus beneath her clothing.
Her fingers trembled as she fastened it around her neck. She could feel its hard edge against her skin, a small reminder of the life she was being forced to leave behind. She wanted to ask where they were going, when they would return, and why the adults looked so frightened. But the questions caught in her throat. Even at her age, she understood that fear had changed the way everyone spoke.
Then they joined the enormous stream of people leaving the city.
The streets were filled with frightened families.
Children cried.
Parents searched for relatives.
People carried bags, blankets, cooking pots, photographs, and whatever pieces of their former lives they could save.
Dara looked back at her home.
For one aching moment, she imagined running back inside, hiding beneath the table, and waiting until the soldiers disappeared. She saw the doorway, the familiar walls, and the banana trees beyond the yard. Mali called her name, and Dara turned away with tears burning her eyes. She didn't know she would never see it the same way again.
They walked.
Days became weeks.
The Khmer Rouge emptied cities and forced millions of people into the countryside. Under Democratic Kampuchea, families were often separated, private property was abolished, religion and independent political life were suppressed, and people were organized into work units or cooperatives. They labored for long hours with little food, while disease, exhaustion, and executions claimed countless lives. Speaking too openly could be dangerous.
Dara learned to watch everything.
Who was nearby.
Who was listening.
When to speak.
When to stay silent.
When to lower her eyes.
When to run.
She remembered that Kiri always rubbed his thumb against the handle of his hoe when he was worried. She noticed that Mali stopped humming while she worked, because songs attracted attention. Vanna taught Dara to count footsteps behind them without turning around. These small lessons became more useful than any words about courage.
Survival wasn't always about being brave.
Sometimes survival meant becoming invisible.
Sometimes it meant giving away your food to someone weaker.
Sometimes it meant pretending you didn't see what happened.
And sometimes it meant holding someone's hand and refusing to let go.
Dara held Vanna's hand whenever the family passed a checkpoint. Vanna's palm was rough from work, and she squeezed twice whenever Dara needed to keep her eyes down. Years later, Dara would still remember those two squeezes more clearly than the soldiers' faces.
For nearly four years, Dara's family endured the Khmer Rouge regime.
They lost people.
They lost their home.
They lost the life they had known.
But they remained together.
That mattered.
Then the world changed again.
In late 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge lost control, and Phnom Penh fell in January 1979.
The regime was collapsing.
But Cambodia was not suddenly safe.
War continued in parts of the country. Hunger and disease remained widespread. Thousands upon thousands of desperate people began moving toward the Thai border, joining an already immense refugee crisis. Thailand established camps and border settlements, but conditions were crowded and supplies were limited, and fighting near the frontier made the journey dangerous.
Dara, Kiri, Mali, and Vanna joined them.
They walked west.
Toward Thailand.
Toward a future none of them could see.
Dara carried almost nothing.
But beneath her clothing, she still had the golden lotus.
The journey to the border left her exhausted and frightened. Each step felt heavier than the last, and she began to wonder whether hope was only another burden people carried because they had nothing else. Yet whenever she felt herself slowing, she reached beneath her shirt and touched the pendant. Its presence reminded her that she was still Dara, still part of a family, still moving toward something instead of simply running from the past.
When they finally crossed into Thailand, Dara expected relief to feel like joy.
Instead, it felt like emptiness.
She was too tired to celebrate. She could only stare at the unfamiliar land, clutching Mali's hand and trying to understand how a place could be safer and still feel so uncertain.
Thailand: Two Journeys to Safety
When Dara's family reached Thailand, they entered a world they barely understood.
They were refugees now.
The word felt strange.
They had once had a home.
A village.
Neighbors.
A normal life.
Now everything depended on finding food, staying together, and waiting.
Dara felt grateful to be alive, but gratitude did not erase her fear. She woke at night expecting to hear shouting or footsteps. She worried that someone would separate her from Kiri, Mali, or Vanna. Even the quiet frightened her because she had learned that danger could arrive without warning.
She watched her parents stand in lines for food and listened to adults speak in low voices about documents, camps, and the possibility of resettlement. Thailand was safer than the place they had fled, but it did not yet feel like home. Dara kept the golden lotus hidden beneath her clothing, pressing her palm over it whenever loneliness threatened to overwhelm her.
But Dara's arrival was not the family's first journey to Thailand.
Before Dara, Kiri, and Mali crossed the border, Vanna had already been forced to make the journey with her two children: a thirteen-year-old son and a nine-year-old daughter. Their father died before they could reach safety, leaving Vanna to protect and provide for them alone.
Vanna never spoke about the moment she learned of his death unless someone asked directly. Instead, she kept his old scarf folded inside her clothing. When her son asked whether his father would meet them at the border, Vanna had to turn away before answering. She remembered the boy's face afterward: his jaw clenched in imitation of an adult, his sister's fingers knotted in the hem of Vanna's shirt.
After his death, Vanna remarried a fellow refugee who was also trying to escape the Khmer Rouge. Together, Vanna, her children, and her new husband searched for a way out of Cambodia and toward Thailand. Their journey happened before Dara's family made it across the border, so Vanna carried the weight of her children's fear while trying to keep them alive.
The children were old enough to understand that their father was gone, but too young to understand why the world had taken him from them. Her son tried to act brave for his younger sister, while the girl stayed close to Vanna and watched every adult's face for signs of danger. Vanna's new husband helped them move forward, but grief remained part of the family they were trying to rebuild.
When they finally reached Thailand, Vanna and her children arrived carrying little more than exhaustion, memories, and one another. Her son refused to sleep near the camp entrance, and her daughter kept asking whether the border could be crossed again from the other direction. Vanna answered by placing both children beside her and promising that, for that night, no one would be taken from them. Their survival became the first thread in the family's refugee story. Later, Dara, Kiri, and Mali would arrive by their own dangerous route, and the two journeys would become part of the same family history.
It was in Thailand, after these journeys, that Dara's life took another turn.
She met Nary and Narin.
Nary and Narin were not Dara's parents or siblings. They were another young Cambodian couple among the refugees, frightened and trying to build a future from almost nothing. Their story would soon become connected to Dara's through their son, Neak Mean.
Nary carried her own quiet grief. She had survived by learning not to expect too much from the world, because every hope seemed vulnerable to being taken away. She kept a small scrap of blue cloth from her mother's dress tucked into her bag and touched it whenever she felt herself beginning to trust someone. She had once dreamed of becoming a teacher, but after years of displacement, her more immediate ambition was to learn enough English to read every document placed in front of her before signing it.
Narin tried to appear steady, but Dara could see the strain in his face and the way he measured every decision against the needs of the people he loved. He repaired broken sandals and cooking pots in the camp for extra rice, refusing payment when children brought him things to fix. At night, he practiced writing his name on scraps of cardboard because he believed that a man who could sign forms and understand officials would have a better chance of protecting his family.
Neither of them knew what that future would look like.
They certainly didn't know that their first child would be born in Thailand.
In 1980, while living as refugees, Nary gave birth to a son.
The birth was difficult, and afterward Nary was too exhausted to speak. She held the baby close, afraid that even this happiness might disappear if she loosened her arms. When she looked at his face, she felt love rise through the fear, fierce and immediate. For the first time, she was not only trying to survive for herself. She was responsible for a life that had never known the world before.
They named him Neak Mean.
To his family, his name became a symbol of something they desperately wanted for him.
Abundance.
Prosperity.
Nary held her newborn son against her chest.
She studied every small detail of him: his closed eyes, his curled fingers, the soft rise and fall of his breathing. Tears slipped down her cheeks, but she did not wipe them away. They were tears of exhaustion, fear, gratitude, and love all at once. She whispered his name as though saying it could protect him. Then she repeated it more firmly, determined that the first thing he learned from her voice would be a name chosen with hope rather than fear.
Narin stared down at him for a long moment.
He had imagined becoming a father, but not under these circumstances, in a refugee camp far from the home he had lost. The sight of his son filled him with wonder and terror. He wanted to promise that nothing bad would ever happen to him, yet he knew too well that promises could not stop war, hunger, or loss. Still, he reached out and touched the baby's hand, making the promise silently before he spoke it aloud.
The baby was tiny.
The world around them was uncertain.
But for the first time in years, they allowed themselves to imagine something beyond survival.
A future.
A home.
America.
Nary felt hope returning, fragile but unmistakable. It frightened her almost as much as despair had, because hope gave her something precious to lose. She looked at Narin, and in his tired expression she saw the same longing: a place where their son could grow without learning to fear every stranger, every empty bowl, or every sudden noise.
She also felt a stubborn need to prepare him for that future. She began saving the cleanest scraps of paper she could find, imagining that one day she would teach him to write his name. If America gave him a school, she wanted him to enter it knowing that his story had begun with more than hunger and war.
They didn't know when they would get there.
They didn't know how long it would take.
They didn't know what they would have to endure before they could leave Thailand.
But Narin looked at his son and made a promise.
"Your life will be different."
His voice shook. He wanted the words to sound certain, even though certainty was something the war had taken from him long ago.
Nary nodded through her tears.
She pressed Neak Mean closer and closed her eyes. For a moment, she let herself believe that the future could be kinder than the past. She did not know whether America would welcome them or whether they would ever truly belong there, but she knew she would carry her son as far as she had to.
Neak Mean slept peacefully in her arms, unaware of the war his family had survived or the journey still waiting for him.
And somewhere nearby, hidden beneath Dara's clothing, the golden lotus began to glow.
Dara looked down.
For the first time in years, the pendant was warm.
Not with the heat of the sun.
Not with the warmth of her skin.
With something else.
Something alive.
She closed her hand around it.
The sight of Nary holding Neak Mean stirred something deep inside Dara. She had spent years believing survival was the only gift she could pass to the next generation. Now, watching the baby breathe, she felt a different responsibility taking shape: to protect the memory of what had been lost and to help this child inherit more than fear. She thought of Soriya's warning and of the names that had vanished from her own childhood. She wanted Neak Mean to know those names, even if he grew up speaking another language and living beneath another sky.
The journe
ys to Thailand had brought the family through different paths, but they had not brought them to the end.
The journey was not over.
It had only begun.