The Spirit of a Fighter: From Cambodia, Victim of the Khmer Rouge Genocide, to France Then Usa.

By Vannead Horn

THE SPIRIT OF A FIGHTER is a story about a person who was born in one of the poorest countries in the world, Cambodia. In fact, since the very first day of his life, he was not only condemned to be a kid living with a poor family in a poor country, but a kid who was victim of the cold war of the World Powers, the civil war and the genocide perpetrated by his own people, the Khmers Rouges in their famous Killing Fields. In this respect, in 1978 when he was only 20 years old, he was the sole survivor of his loving family of seven. But he, himself escaped from Cambodia and went to France in 1981 with his wife and 6 month-old baby boy. He became citizen of his new adopted Mother Land and started working there, first as a gardener, then as an engineer, and in 2004 he immigrated to the United States of America. In his new land of freedom and dreams, he continued to work as Engineer while his wife operated a Donut shop as the principal investor.
In fact, the book provides details about the personality of a boy who did not want to accept his unlucky destiny by being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. As such, by this book, he wants to show the whole world how such a very poor kid could fight and manage his life from being bullied by his peers in his home country, and how he could survive the Killing Fields of the Khmers Rouges.
Certainly by his own discipline, and aided by a sense of freedoms joy, he sought not only to succeed, but to excel by getting a Masters degree in engineering while in France. A degree he used and helped his three children to understand, love and work hard to be awarded the same degree.
In such a spirit, I, Vannead HORN, the author of this book who has lived in three different continents, would just like to share my story in which I thoroughly describe how love from my family, despite different and tragic experiences, encouraged me to grow, survive and excel in life and built in me a character that was joyous and successful. This power can be found in any family which is nourished in love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524645915

Vannead Horn

My name is Vannead Horn. I turned fifty-eight years old at the end of January 2016. In fact, I was a twenty-year-old young boy who lost his parents and siblings at the end of 1978 in the killing fields of the Khmers Rouges, Cambodia. I succeeded in escaping from my home country to France in January 1981, where I became its citizen by starting to work first as a gardener and then as an engineer with a master's degree in electronics and computers. As time went by, as I felt that I had succeeded in rebuilding a family of my own, I ended up as a man who has lives on three different continents of our Mother Globe (Asia, Europe, and America). I felt it was time for me to open my past and my chest so that I could show my wife, my children, and my grandchildren who I really was and the lovely relationship between my parents, siblings, and me. By having such a wish, I would especially like to send my tender message to heaven so that my parents and siblings know how much I have continued loving them until this very day. In other words, I am infinitely happy and proud of myself as the sole survivor of my lost family, as the invincible carrier and transmitter of their genes, for the rest of my life and beyond. As such, throughout my own book now, I would love for all of my adopted family, brothers and sisters around the world, who read this book to feel, as I do, that our families are very important and supportive to all of us.

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© 2016 Vannead Horn. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/21/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4592-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4593-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4591-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016917441

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Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1

Childhood in the French Company

Chapter 2

New Life in Big Town

Chapter 3

Hobbies and Problems with Mister Tony

Chapter 4

Mother and Father

Chapter 5

The Turning Point of My Life

Chapter 6

Educational Examination

Chapter 7

The Closing Chapter with Mr. Tony, My Revenge

Chapter 8

The Khmers Rouges Attack Kampong Cham, 1973

Chapter 9

New Life at Phnom Penh, Cambodian Capital

Chapter 10

Moving Back to Our Hometown, Kampong Cham

Chapter 11

The End of the Civil War

Chapter 12

Back to the Origin of My Dad

Chapter 13

Our First Khmers Rouges Village, Srong Prak

Chapter 14

The Communist System That Could Not Work

Chapter 15

Fell in Love

Chapter 16

Working in the Jungle

Chapter 17

The Most Precious Gift for My Dad

Chapter 18

The Suffering and Pain of Our Villagers

Chapter 19

Confrontation with a Bad Rural Person

Chapter 20

The Punishment That Devastated My Family

Chapter 21

The Big Irrigation Channel and Dam

Chapter 22

The Massacre of My Parents and Siblings

Chapter 23

My Marriage

Chapter 24

Leaving Cambodia for Thailand Then France

Chapter 25

Our New Life in France and Then the United States

Acknowledgments

Pictures

Vannead Horn’s Family

About the Author

In memory of all Cambodians who were

massacred by the Khmers Rouges.

To all of the victims, including my father, Yu Horn, my mother, Kim Srin Bith-Horn, my siblings, Mhom, Piggy Nat, Tooch, and Paov, whose love and support transformed me into a tenacious fighter. To my parents-in-law, Neak Khem and Yan-Say Khem, I bow my head with my palms joined to express my respectful thankfulness for bringing my wife, Kunthany, on earth to be with me.

Foreword

Mr. Horn presents a life of both personal tragedy and hope with a richness of feelings that draws the reader into the ugliness of the killing fields of his beloved country of Cambodia in which his loving and joyful family is ruthlessly destroyed, as were the families of hundreds thousands of fellow Cambodians. Upon reading it, one’s mind is sadly pulled into the incomprehensible viciousness of the Khmers Rouges. For those unaware of its brutality, this book will help them to see, close up, what it was.

—Jerry Dell Ehrlich, PhD, author of Suicide in the Roman Empire, Plato’s Gift to Christianity, and several other books

Chapter 1

Childhood in the French Company

My first childhood memory dates to December 1961, the best month of the year in Cambodia. At this time of the year, the monsoon brings a cooling breeze from the north, rendering the usually hot and humid air much more pleasant for just a few months. I was born almost four years earlier, but this is the first time I can recall, and it felt as though it was the first day of my life.

On that beautiful moment, I sat with my parents on a bamboo bed under a tree that decorated the front of my house. Our favorite tree offered us shade and the delightful smell of its flowers’ perfume. My mother was telling me a story while sewing our old clothes to repair them. She smiled tenderly and talked endlessly to my dad who, with a cigar in his mouth, was making and fixing cabinetry on his day off. My father was a cabinet worker and carpenter by trade, working for a French company that produced natural rubber in the districts of Chup and Peam Chieang in the province of Kampong Cham.

My Parents’ Strange Union

At the end of 1961, I was only four years old, my mom was twenty-two, and my dad was thirty-two. I learned that my mom was a very smart girl from a family of eight children—four girls and four boys. Like all Cambodian young people at that time, her marriage with my dad had been arranged by her parents and my father’s sisters. My father had lost his dad when he was only one year old and had lost his mother when he was nineteen. My parents told me that, before they were married, they had never talked to or touched each other. Such was our tradition; it was a sign of respect toward their parents’ decision. Almost all elderly Cambodian people consider themselves to have enough life experience for younger generations to be able to trust their opinions and not question the goodness of their intentions. This tendency is especially true when the time comes for their children to start new families. Each side scrutinized the present and past of the potential bride and groom. The examination applied equally to their immediate family and sometimes even their entire extended relations. A Cambodian proverb is Tuk dak kon chow, meul phow sondan. This expression means, Before you allow your children to marry, explore the roots of your future in-law. Parents always think they are right about who will be the perfect spouse for their daughter or son. My parents could not escape our cultural traditions.

Back then, Cambodian people cared only about things that were tangible, things they could see. They didn’t know that genetics could affect health and well-being. If they had known about it, they surely would have asked for blood tests before every marital arrangement. If my maternal grandparents had examined my poor father this closely, they would have discovered that both of his parents had died naturally at relatively young ages, and I am certain they would have judged my father unfit for my mother. But a lot of good things on my father’s side probably overshadowed the little doubt about his longevity, which was shortened anyway by something else, something more horrible than his genes.

Like it or not, I believe my maternal grandparents and my paternal aunts were right to approve of the arrangement of my parents’ union. I believe this first of all because my parents conceived me as a result of their marriage, and, of course, I will always be thankful for that. And secondly, from the first day I can remember, I have never seen my parents argue or disrespect each other. On the contrary, they were deeply in love with each other. Each always cared deeply for the other, and to this day, I rarely have seen such a beautiful and pure love. They were also devoted parents and took care of my siblings and me until the day they died. I miss them terribly. I am proud to be their son. They would have had a long, beautiful life together, but their time on earth was tragically cut short in August 1978. Together they were savagely killed by the men of the Khmers Rouges, led by Pol Pot. And, as if this weren’t tragic enough, all of my siblings were massacred, as were millions of other innocent Cambodian people. I was left to survive, miserable and alone in an incomprehensible world.

An Absent Sister

Back in 1961, I was like a small child waking up from a very long sleep as my brain began to understand my surroundings better and better, and I felt as if I were the only child of my parents. But when I was four, I actually had a six-year-old sister who did not live with me. She lived with my maternal grandparents in Kampong Cham, which was twenty-four kilometers away from where my parents lived. This distance wasn’t considered very great in a developing country where people commonly used cars. But with only an old bicycle as a means of transportation, my dad could not afford the two daily round-trips to bring my sister to Kampong Cham for school, which was the closest school to us. For this reason, my sister lived with my grandparents. Because I saw her only occasionally, I had only distant, vague memories of her, and it took me some time to realize who she was to me. My three brothers did not come along until later, and thus, for a while, I lived a simple and quiet life with my parents as their only child.

Luckless Lady, the Hero of My Life, My Lovely Mother

Growing up, little by little, I found that my mental abilities were cultivated by the extraordinary manner in which my parents had defied their circumstances. At some point, I learned from my mother that she sometimes resented being a smart person in the skin of a woman living in a male-chauvinist environment. My grandparents put all of their boys in school. But following the Cambodian culture of their time, they did not allow their daughters, except for my mom, their youngest daughter, to attend school. She had the privilege of getting an education until she reached the age at which my grandparents thought she could use her knowledge to flirt and establish relationships with boys. It was very common for Cambodians to think that way, and as a result of this awful belief, my poor mom was forced to quit school and stay at home just before she finished middle school.

All of my mom’s brothers finished their studies and later in life secured highly ranked government jobs. All of them acknowledged my mother’s intelligence and said that if my mother had finished school as they did, she would have been at least as successful as—or more so—than they were. But she was stuck at home with her parents. However, as she was a smart, young girl, she helped them run their businesses and got to interact with people with different backgrounds from all over Asia. She dealt with the Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Laotian, and the Khmer-Islam communities and became fluent in all of their languages.

I always found it horribly unfair that my very intelligent mother was not able to use her full potential just because she was born a female. However, had she gone to school and found work with the government, as her brothers did, she probably would not have married my father. But unlike many other Cambodian women who did not question their gender roles at that time, and even though she was always deeply in love with my dad, my mom also found the fact that she was supposed to stay home completely ridiculous. As she raised me, she proved to be such a strong and opinionated woman. She always believed she was as capable as any man; her conviction meant she was quite ahead of her time in Cambodia. To make up for the injustice she suffered as a little girl and for the poor judgment of her parents when they did not allow her to finish school, my mother began by sacrificing the presence of my sister. She forced my grandparents to take care of their granddaughter. In this way, her little girl could attend school at Kampong Cham town and, she hoped, have more opportunities in the future than she did.

An Ingenious Mother Homeschools Her Unique Child

I had practically no other kids my age to call playmates. Every evening and anytime my mother had some free time, she was the one who played with me. She was truly my best friend as I was growing up. As I grew older, on the wonderful occasions we had time together, she taught me everything she knew, from the Cambodian and French alphabets to solving small algebra problems. I did not care that our playtime did not actually consist of games. One of the things I enjoyed most was drawing the strange things she made me trace, letters and numbers, guiding me with her hand. Her instruction helped me to memorize them so that later I could redo them when she asked me. She teased me with her big laugh when I could not remember what she had previously shown me. She treated me like a king with her big kisses and immense admiration when I won the game. Her teaching methods were extremely efficient. I never really felt like a student. Instead, I liked to consider her my best and inseparable partner for games.

By nature, I was a stubborn little boy when I could not perform correctly what my mom taught me. I had a bad attitude. I always asked her to give me more exercises until I could find the correct solution. And I did so, because every time my answer was correct, I received her kiss and praises under the proud glance of my father, who was never far away from us during each of our games. I hated hearing my mother say I was wrong. But she always reassured me that it was okay to make mistakes and that I was already doing great for my age. Thanks to my mother’s methods, when I was five-and-a-half years old, I was already able to understand, read, and write in Cambodian and also read in French. A few months later, I could do basic arithmetic calculations. I don’t feel I missed anything by being homeschooled at that age.

Underage Registration for School

Then, miraculously, in September 1963, when I was only five years and nine month old, our village opened its school, which had only one classroom—for first grade. Unfortunately for my sister, she was starting the second grade that year, which meant that she had to stay with my grandparents to go to school in Kampong Cham town. As for me, even though I was younger than six years old and thus not old enough to be registered, my mother was dying to put me in our village’s school because she believed my aptitudes could even surpass those of a first grader. But she had to fight for it. The schoolteacher said that I looked much too young and he had already turned down children that looked bigger and thus older than I was. He explained it that way because the first classroom was supposed to be open for children aged seven and eight, and at that time, many families that wanted their children to attend the school did not have birth certificates to prove the children’s age. Therefore, in an effort to estimate their age, the teacher asked them to try to reach their left ear with their right hand, arm overhead. If they did not succeed, they were considered younger than seven years old and were not allowed to attend school. In comparison with the other non-admissible kids, the fingers of my right hand were even farther away from my left ear, and it was even more obvious that I was not seven yet. But my mother insisted that I already knew how to read and write and that I deserved to attend his class. When he heard my mom’s contention, the teacher laughed out loud with a trace of contempt. But when my mother didn’t back down, he asked her to accompany him inside the classroom, along with me, while the crowd waited for him outside. He then held out a book to me and asked me to read the first page. With the courageous attitude my mother always taught me to have when confronting difficult situations, I took the book and opened it. The letters on the page were so big and easy to read, as the book was written for first graders. When I finished, he asked me to turn the page and continue. Effortlessly, I continued to read. The teacher looked at my mom, smiled at her, and nodded his head with astonishment. In spite of this, he did not stop there. He went to his desk and grabbed a book. This time, it was a big romance book of around three hundred pages. He asked me to open it randomly in the middle and read one page. I did as he asked and began to read fluently again. I was not afraid at all to read such a book, as I had just finished a series of twenty-seven short books. The series was about a war story, and my mom had bought the series before I was born. She told me that I was named Vannak after the audacious and ingenious military chief in the story.

At my fourth line, the teacher asked me to stop reading. He then asked me to go to the blackboard and to write in Cambodian I enjoy studying at school: Khgnom Chang Rean Naov Sala. As I was writing, he watched me with approval, and when I finished, he invited us to leave the classroom with him. He said nothing while walking toward the door. We stopped in front of the folks who were waiting for the teacher while I was reading and writing inside the classroom. He explained to the parents whose children could not be enrolled that he had to give priority to older children first because he did not have enough room for everybody in the classroom. He also explained to the parents that their children could reenroll once they reached the age of seven. But then he said he was making an exception. He had decided that he was going to take in the youngest and smallest boy there, and he proceeded to point his finger in my direction. Immediately, the parents started complaining as they looked at me and waited for an explanation from the teacher. He replied that I was an exceptional kid who possessed all the knowledge he would teach his students this whole school year. He then made up another excuse on the spot, something my mother did not say at all. He said he had to take me in because my mom needed him to make official the knowledge of my homeschooling. The crowd believed the teacher right away because he instantly became a trustworthy figure of authority as a teacher in this small village. They also watched me with admiration as the teacher spoke, and after the explanation, they began to leave.

I looked up at my mother and smiled at her. She smiled back at me, and I could tell how proud of me she was. Right before we left, I’m not sure why I did this, but I told the teacher that in addition to teaching me how to read and write, my mother had also taught me to count and do some calculations. This time he believed me right away and said that I would have to show him later. My mom expressed her gratitude to him, and I bowed my head with my palms joined to say good-bye. I pulled my mother’s hand and walked hurriedly to my house, which was a ten-minute walk from school.

The Happiness with My Father

I could not wait to see my father, who I knew would be back from work. Around 150 yards away from my house, I suddenly left the hand of my mother and ran with the speed of light, yelling and calling loudly for my dad. We lived in a house on stilts about 2.5 meters high, with an empty space on the ground and without any walls. The main structure of the house was supported by twelve wood columns. At first I did not see my dad on his chair under the house where he used to rest instead of staying in the house, which was much hotter than ground level. I continued to run and yell, thinking he would be in the house on the first floor. Then finally, as I was still running, I saw my dad jumping hurriedly out of the house without using the stairway.

He was five foot ten and very muscular, which was tall for people who were born and raised in Cambodia. He was a really strong, athletic man, but in that moment, he looked panicked. After the jump, he ran in my direction and opened his arms to receive me running into them. Once in his arms, I could not talk to him because I was completely out of air after my sprint. He held me firmly in his arms and, in a frightened voice, asked me what had happened. After hearing my screams and seeing me run to him, he assumed that something bad had happened to me. While I still could not speak, he saw my mother walking toward us with a big grin on her face. When he realized how glad my mom was, he pushed me away from him to have a better look at me and saw that I was also smiling from ear to ear. Finally, my mom told him what had happened at school earlier for my registration. He exploded with joy and grabbed me with both arms and lifted me up in the air. He was so happy and told me how much he loved me and how proud he was.

Later that evening, sitting on the floor around our meals for dinner, my mom asked me to tell the story and describe how I felt meeting the people and the teacher at school. I started talking animatedly, gesturing with my hands, telling my dad that the teacher did not believe my mom at first and how impressed he was by the time we left. My parents were listening and laughing. They had to remind me to pause and eat some food, the same way my wife and kids tell me nowadays when I tell them those stories during dinner.

That night as a reward, my parents gave me special a gift. It was my very favorite place to sleep, which was right between them in their bed, and especially in the arms of my dad. Indeed, my dad’s arms were my safe haven. Because every time I got sick and every time I woke up in the middle of the night with nightmares, my dad always took me in his arms to make me feel better. No evil could reach me when I was with him. And thus, when I was a little boy, I imagined that my secret hiding place from monsters was inside of my dad’s chest, and they could not catch and eat me when I was there. Monsters with their big red eyeballs and long, scary teeth could not break through the shield made by the walls of my dad’s torso. His heartbeat became the sound of a magic drummer he used to dissuade all of those wicked creatures. I had a wild imagination. But on that unforgettable night, it was not the same at all. There were no monsters to defy. Instead, it was just a night of pure happiness in the arms of my parents.

My First Day at Public School

After registering three days later, school began on a Monday of that September. On that special day, I felt like my mother prepared me for a long trip to wonderland. I wore a beautiful outfit I used to wear on special occasions only. My school bag was filled with all new stuff, such as my two new notebooks and an eraser that smelled so great to me. My dad wanted to accompany me for my first day of school, but unfortunately, he was retained by a very important meeting with the French director for his promotion, for which he had been waiting so long. Before leaving us, he knelt down in front of me on his right knee, grabbed my two shoulders, and said I looked very handsome in my uniform. He encouraged and advised me about many things. The most important things he repeated to me were that I had to concentrate in class and respect and be very courteous to my teacher. He then smiled and said that he and I were heroes that day. He would get his promotion, and I would jump into my new chair in the classroom as the youngest and the smartest kid at school.

After my dad left, I told my mom it was time to go. Then I saw my mother preparing another bag full of food. Dying to be at school, I asked her agitatedly why she was preparing the food. She said that it was for me in case I became hungry at school. I was in disbelief, and I told her that I did not need to eat during break time. Lunchtime was between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., which allowed me to come back home with enough time to eat. Despite my explanation, my mother did not listen to me. Finally, hand in hand, we walked to school with my school bag in my free hand and my anti-starvation kit in my mom’s free hand.

That lovely day, although the landscapes of our village were identical every single day, I felt like I was walking in a dream where everything was more beautiful than before. The quickset hedges in front of every house were so green and lined up in a perfect row. Beautiful red and yellow flowers adorned them. Birds seemed to be agitated because of the abnormal movement of people in every corner of our village. They flew nervously and sang louder than usual. Dogs barked noisily with excitement. I saw students, wearing uniforms just as nice as mine, walking with their whole smiling family. The atmosphere and smiling faces reminded me of the Cambodian New Year festivities. When we arrived at school, I observed that nobody had brought food except for my mother.

We all arrived twenty-five minutes early. The school was built in the middle of a space about six hundred square meters in the center of our village. It was surrounded by a bamboo fence, which was there to prevent domestic animals from destroying the vegetable garden located in the backyard. The garden would be used for students to learn how to grow plants. Our unique classroom was made of wood, a brown zinc roof, and white walls. In front of the edifice, there was a Cambodian flag at the bottom of a tall pole. A small round garden with red and yellow flowers surrounded the pole. To reach the classroom, we walked through a small gate on a dirt track under the branches of two big trees that stood on each side of the track and offered shade over the playground area in front of the school courtyard. There was no grass in the play area; it was a clean surface. As the school’s gates were not open yet, people were waiting under the two trees, chatting with excitement. At 7:30 a.m. exactly, the door opened, and the teacher came out and asked people to approach him. After greeting people with kind words, the teacher solicited the crowd to move back several yards and began to call the name of each student. He asked us to come forward and stand in front of the flagpole in two orderly rows: one for the boys and one for the girls, with the smallest kids in the front of the line and the tallest in the back. We were asked to line up perfectly with our left hand on the shoulder of the fellow student standing in front of us, arm stretched out. When my name was called, I left my mom’s hand and walked to the front of the boy’s line. People began to laugh as I walked, but I was not scared to be the youngest and the smallest of the class. What made me uncomfortable was that nobody laughed when the other kids walked into the lines. I turned my head to look at my mom, who was encouraging me. I kept walking with my head held high. In comparison with my smallest classmates, boy or girl, the top of my head barely reached their shoulders.

Once all the students were called, the teacher moved into the round garden where the Cambodian flag was. He explained that every morning before class, we had to sing our national anthem and raise our flag to the top of the pole. He then invited all of us, including the parents who knew the lyrics, to sing with him. He began to sing with a few parents while slowly lifting our flag to the top. It was the first patriotic song that I had heard. This is the first verse translated in English:

Heaven save the king

Give him happiness and glory

We, servants of the king

Want to stay under your shade of glory

Of those who have the bloodline of those who built temples of rock

May rule the Khmer land high and renowned…

When the song was over, the teacher called the students into the classroom where two rows of workbenches that seated four pupils each had been installed. Each row had four of these workbenches. The workbench was a one-piece wooden structure with a combined table and bench. There were no backrests. Consequently, the students had to use the workbenches behind them to lean back. The students sitting in the back rested their backs against the wall. For the table part, we had a flat area of about five inches and the inclined part about twenty inches, with the lead angle of about twenty degrees. On the table, there was a space reserved for a small bottle of ink. Of course at that time, we still used wooded pens with metal nibs that we had to dip into ink each time we had to write. Right underneath the table, there was an under board that formed a drawer, which allowed us to store our school bags. The boys had to sit on the left side of the classroom and the girls on the right side. The teacher had enrolled a total of sixty-four students: thirty-three boys and thirty-one girls. The tallest students got to sit in the back row, and the shortest ones sat in the one closest to the blackboard where a one-foot-high platform was placed.

Because the right and left rows only had thirty-two seats, one of the boys had to sit on the right side of the classroom with the girls. Of course since I was the thirty-third boy to take a seat, as I was the shortest one, I was that boy. Again, when I was called and walked to my workbench, all of the other students laughed quietly, and even some of the parents smirked, watching through the window. I knew that my mom was watching me, but this time I did not turn my head around to find her reassuring face.

Cambodia was a country in which both genders were to be separated at a young age. Young men and women could not flirt freely in front of strangers without being considered badly educated, females in particular. Monks could not even touch or be touched by women, because the simple action could jeopardize their consecrated and spiritual goal.

As my dad was a monk himself before he got married with my mom, one day he revealed to me with big regret about how he refused to put his hand on the chest of my grandma when she was dying. Because it was forbidden by the order of the monks. The monks could not touch a woman’s chest. After battling her illness for three long months, on her last day on earth, my grandma wished for her son to touch her. She begged him affectionately while she fought to breathe before she closed her eyes for the rest of eternity. When my dad told me about this sad day, he said he hated himself for behaving like an ungrateful son who acted as a dimwitted person and refused the last desire of his lovely mom. He spoke to me about what he had done and ordered me never to follow his behavior with my own mom even though I wanted to become a monk like him later in life. I did not know if the Buddhist’s rule actually allowed an exception between a monk and his own mother or if it indeed forbade all female touch. But I knew for a fact that I would never leave the precious person who created and raised me without surrounding her with my embrace.

When I thought about my paternal grandma who successfully raised her three children alone with dignity as a very young widow, about my mother who could not pursue her studies as a young girl despite her desire to do so, and about my sister whom I did not have a chance to be with frequently, I walked to my seat next to all the other girls without hesitation. I felt no shame as I sat down close to my teacher and the blackboard.

When everybody took their seats, the teacher asked the students to stand up. He explained that any time he walked into the classroom for any reason and at any time, we had to stand up to greet him. In particular, every morning after the national anthem, when he took his place behind his desk, we would have to stand up. We had to salute him with both hands joined together on our chest, bow down our heads, and say, Chumreap Suor Lok Kru: Hello, respectful teacher. Then we could sit when he allowed us to. We would also have to make the same gesture every day before leaving and say, Chumreap Lear Lok Kru: Good-bye, respectful teacher. After the explanation, it was now time for us to practice our first Hello, respectful teacher and we all chanted it together. When all of us sat down with his permission, I saw that all the parents standing outside the classroom were very satisfied with our first well-mannered lesson. It might be hard to picture such practice in this day and age, but it seemed normal for us. We just followed tradition and tried our best to be polite, reverent, and grateful toward our parents and all elderly people in our society.

After this first lesson, the parents began to leave school one by one, except for one of them—my mother. She stayed behind the window to watch and listen as the teacher talked to us. When break time arrived, we all went out of the classroom for our first recreation as students. My mother came to me with a bag of food and asked me if I wanted to eat something. I was ashamed of my bag of food when some of my classmates began to talk to each other and laughed with their fingers pointed at me. I refused repeatedly when she asked me again and again to just take a bite of anything. It was in such manner that I began my unforgettable first day of school with my mom, as the smallest and youngest student who sat with the girls and who could never die of starvation.

At the end of the day when my dad was back from work, he bought me a toy that my mom immediately criticized and objected to. It was a plastic handgun that could make a noise with the roll of a firecracker. My mother tried to tell my dad that I should not use a gun as a toy, even a plastic one. But as I loved it so much, before my dad could agree, I begged my mom and convinced her to let me play with it. I told her that I should have my own toy gun if she wanted me to be more like her hero Vannak, the ingenious and audacious military chief in her books whose name I shared and was given to me by her. Since my dad had just gotten a promotion with a bigger paycheck as chief carpenter in his company, and because this was my first day of school as a little outlandish hero, my mother had no choice but to allow me to be a spoiled boy for a day.

I trusted and loved my dad’s gift. But my mom was also right for challenging my dad’s idea of a new toy. She was afraid of what could happen if I started playing with a toy gun at such a young age. She didn’t want me to grow up viewing guns as fun things to play with. But I honestly never saw my new favorite toy that way. It was always just a toy to me; it was not a violent object. And as I got older, I always understood the power and dangers of real guns because my parents made sure that I knew. More than half a century later, I think that I’m right in my assessment. My dad would have been proud of his choice if I could tell him that the plastic pistol was always my most favorite toy.

For the rest of the year, as I went to school, my mom had more free time, and she helped my father by bringing in extra revenue. She grew bean sprouts and sold them in the market every morning, after getting up at 3:00 a.m. to prepare everything with the help of my dad. That same year, they were able to buy a brand-new bicycle for my dad and a beautiful radio for my mom.

From then on, my parents were so busy every day I went to school by myself.

Lovely French Director

One day on my way to school, I saw a Jeep driving in my direction, with a white man sitting in the passenger seat. Right away, I thought that man was the French director. In fact, my dad had told me the director always travelled with his chauffeur in a Jeep. My dad, who didn’t speak or understand French, had a lot of respect for that man. The chauffeur was his translator. My dad never told me what the name of the translator was. The company had a few highly ranked Cambodians who worked in the same building as the director. They all could speak French. All of them graduated from the prestigious French high school, Lycée Descartes, in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. My dad admired them for their high level of education and their ability to speak French fluently. My parents, who did not have the opportunity to reach a high level of schooling, always dreamed that one day their own children would reach and go beyond the level of these managers. In fact, their rapid successful career in the French company highly inspired my parents. Because of their highly ranked positions in the company, those young managers were offered free rent, concrete with tiled roof housing that included plumbing, electricity, and running water.

All the people living in our village were actually employed by the same French company, and we were also offered rent-free housing. However, our houses were made of wood with a zinc roof, and we did not have electricity or running water. We did have two points of public running water where we could shower, do the laundry, and bring water back home; it was a fifteen-minute walk. In the village, other than Buddhist Cambodians, a quarter of the people were Vietnamese, and another quarter was Khmer-Islam. As my mom was already fluent in both foreign languages before moving there, she was very well known and appreciated. She was the only woman in the village who knew how to read and write in Cambodian and read in French. She was also the woman who had raised a very young boy who already knew how to read, write, and do basic mathematical operations before the school opened.

In our village, we had one hospital that was managed and owned by the company where all the doctors and nurses were French. Even though it was far away from the big town of Kampong Cham, people spoke highly of our hospital with its exceptional quality that compared to the legendary hospital of Phnom Penh called Calmette. I was born in the hospital of our village. My parents often joked with me that my destiny would somehow be linked to France because the first person who ever laid hands on me, even before my mother, was a French nurse who helped her give birth to me. In truth, as Cambodia was a French protectorate and colony for ninety years, Cambodian people loved the French culture and especially loved its high level of education. All of the Cambodian people who had obtained highly ranked jobs were trained in France. When a Cambodian man (almost no women at that time) got the opportunity to continue his studies in France, he became famous. He was valued and respected by all people in his town. My parents were among the people who had the crazy dream to have their children pursue their studies in France. My poor parents, since they believed that I was brilliant at the very beginning of my life, would have sacrificed everything they had to push me to the top.

When I saw the Jeep that was transporting the French director, I instinctively saluted him by joining my palms together on my chest and bowing my head in his direction. Doing the same thing every morning in class for my teacher, I automatically considered the director as a respectable old person who was even more valuable than my teacher. Suddenly, the Jeep stopped in front of me. I was surprised and a bit afraid, but a second later, I was delighted when I realized the director was smiling, and he saluted me back with the same gesture. Without hesitation, I saluted him three more times. He then told the chauffeur to tell me in Cambodian that he really appreciated my gesture and was pleased to come across such a polite boy for the first time. He asked what my name was. After he tried several times to pronounce my first name, thinking of how my mother would have encouraged me, I told the chauffeur that I could write my name in French for him if he would like me to. Amazed by what the driver translated for him, the director handed me a piece of paper and his ballpoint pen. I wrote him my first name in French, which he then read and pronounced better. He asked me if it was good enough. Excited, I nodded my head several times until it almost fell off my shoulders. He pocketed the piece of paper, smiled, and said good-bye. I watched as they drove away on the road and into the rubber tree field. During that amazing meeting, the only word I understood from the director was Sok when he pronounced it and gestured to the driver to move forward. I assumed that Sok had to be the name of our translator. I was so happy about the encounter and the way the director had treated me when he saluted me back. Older folks in Cambodia never saluted younger people with Chum Reap Sour, especially very young children.

After that memorable meeting, instead of continuing my walk to school, I ran back to my house where my dad was about to leave for work. He was stunned when he saw me back, but before he could ask me, I told him that I met the director. He responded by smiling and joked that he already knew who the director was. He asked me to confirm with him that the director was indeed tall like a giant, white like cotton, hairy like a chimpanzee, and had a pointed nose, long like an elephant. Agitated, I kept saying no and said again that I had just talked to the director. Eyes wide open, he continued to tease me by asking me whether I had really chatted with the director in French. Again, I said no and told him that uncle Sok, the chauffeur, was my translator. In the Cambodian culture, we call everybody uncle, aunt, brother, sister, grandmother, or grandfather, even strangers. When he heard the name of uncle Sok, the chauffeur he knew so well as the translator, my dad finally stopped joking and asked me seriously what happened. After having explained the encounter to him, he was happy and proud of me. He was glad that my teacher, my mother, and he had taught me such good manners and wasn’t surprised that the director had treated me so nicely.

From that day on, I left my house ten minutes earlier every morning to wait and salute the director, who always saluted me back with a big smile, without stopping his Jeep. After I told my story to the few classmates who