By the time you are 13, you are skin and bones, literally having no ounce of fat or muscle on you.
You have been sick numerous times, almost to the point of death.
You have seen family and friends die from some sort of disease or be taken away by the khmer rouge never to return.
You have resorted to stealing food just to survive, lying to save your own skin.
You have done things you could never have imagined.
Finally the khmer rouge come for you.
Along with a few of your peers you are taken to a reeducation center.
There you find some of you family.
All considered enemies of the khmer rouge.
You have become so desensitized by this point that you barely acknowledge the existence of you mother and brother.
Your oldest brother is there but is beyond recognition.
After a few days you find out that you father has disappeared.
Most likely taken to a killing field.
By now you know that every time you hear music blaring or a siren, that a small group has been taken to be executed.
The music is being played to drown out the cries and moans of the victims.
In this reeducation center you are held in a large room that was once a classroom.
At night you are chained to 40 other people.
Here in this place your life is worse that before.
You no longer have an identity.
You can barely even remember your own name.
Eventually you are moved to your own 2 by 8 cell made of wood.
All you can do now is await your execution.
Never knowing when it will come.
Your 14th birthday comes, although you don’t remember it.
Shortly after that you begin to notice the khmer rouge soldiers starting to disappear. Their numbers become smaller everyday.
In January of 1979, Vietnamese soldiers come into the reeducation center and inform you that you are free to go.
You are only 1 out of 7 people that walk out of the center.
The rest you find out have all been executed including your mother and your eldest brother.
You other brother did survive and you both start on a new journey trying to find the place where you once lived. Hoping and maybe even praying that you will find your other brother and sister there.
Four months later the two of you find yourselves back in
Phnom Penh.
As your walk your old street all you see is devastation.
The home that you once played in has been burned and all that remains are the concrete steps leading up to the house and ashes.
Where do you go from here?
How will you survive? Where are the others?
Eventually someone offers for you to stay with them as you look for your brother and sister.
You search everywhere. Daily going to the market to see if anyone has heard anything about either of them.
A few months later you are told that someone knows siblings by their names and will take you to them.
Trying not to get your hopes up you follow along and much to your amazement.
It is them! They are alive and looking well!
At last your family has been reunited.
At least the ones that survived.
