Where are you from?

Such a loaded question… so much history… so much pain of memories wanting to forget but never forgetting. No wonder my parents never went into details. 1. They didn’t want to and 2. they couldn’t show me. People, me included, have this delusional idea of what it’s like to be a refugee. Oh yea! You think, you pack your suit case and you get all your valuables and pictures and nostalgic thingy ma bobber. It fits right into your suitcase and you lug that thing all the way to wherever life takes you. WRONG! On so many levels, WRONG! Trust me, you couldn’t be MORE WRONG! I was so wrong.

You take nothing. You leave everything! You RUN for your lives! Why? Because “rumor” has it, the Khmer Rouge is coming for you. You’ve been warned. You will be enslaved on farms to work until you die. Or, they’ll just execute you just because. If they think you’re trying to escape, they’ll just shoot you. If you don’t look Cambodian enough, they’d shoot you. If you don’t speak Cambodian, they’d shoot you. Honestly, they don’t give a fuck! NOPE! No fucks given. So in this scenario, you don’t have time to pack. Somebody could be coming for you right now. Actually, maybe you have time to get food because who’s with you? I’ll have to confirm that with my mom. I guess I forgot to ask her that question, “Did you pack food?” In Mom’s situation, it was her parents and all her siblings who were as young as 6 months old. In Dad’s situation, he was mid 30s and he had saved some young kids who didn’t know what to do but run as well. He was with some of his family too, his mom for one.

So, this is kind of the gist of where I’m heading with all of this, the reason why I didn’t know my past for so long. Just to give you a little world history before I continue on my family’s history… Cambodia was taken over by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Google it. It fucking sucks. And not to “ruin” the ending but no one gets justice for the victims. How shitty is that? I’ll get to that moment one day… the day Pol Pot was captured.

So, where are you from? Thanks to Jake (it means uncle younger than your dad), Dad’s 2nd youngest brother, I finally learned where my family came from. And, thanks to technology, I REALLY got to see it for the first time. You see, when my parents pointed to the map, they pointed to a general area, Cambodia, for real. Not their fault, really, because back in the days, we used paper maps. One day, I found a world map at school and I took it home and showed it to my parents. I asked them, “where are you from?” You can’t exactly zoom into a paper map like you do Google Maps. Maybe with a magnifying glass but that really just makes the words bigger. How do you translate Cambodian words into English? You can’t because Google Translate doesn’t exist and my parents didn’t know English well enough to translate Cambodian to English. So, answer, Dad lived in the city. Mom lived on an island.

Actually, Jake took me through it all. One night, Mom asked him to sit down so I could learn about Dad and write his eulogy. I waited all my life to know this… ALL MY LIFE!

Dad was from Kampong Thom Province but his family grew up in the city, Phnom Penh (formerly known as Krong Chaktomuk Serimongkul). Yea, tell me they know where that is on a map. Not like my parents could type it in Cambodian and have Google search. Technology is amazing!

Mom and I were amazed. Mom was not educated. She’s an island girl. She worked her whole life. She can read a little Cambodian but not much. Not until I was in middle school did she take ESL classes at the local high school. Zooming in on her island was amazing. Mom said, she didn’t realize how small it was and how close it was to the mainland. Mom is from Koh Ta Kiev, a true island girl. Also, to point out, Mom’s side of the family always said they were from Ream. You can search Ream all you want but there was no Ream island. No wonder we couldn’t find it. But, the general area they lived was considered Ream, I suppose. There was a Cambodian Ream Naval base?

I have not shown Mom pictures of Koh Ta Kiev or Ream current day. She thinks there’s nothing there and why would she want to go back to nothing? I will show Mom because I’m seeing a couple resorts and a restaurant called Yum Yum. Yum! Never have I ever wanted to go back to Cambodia. Honestly, going to the restroom by digging a hole in the ground seems disgusting especially if EVERYONE was doing it. But, now I have this feeling of wanting to know Dad’s life and where he had been, where he was from. It makes me want to be there with him on those summer holidays when he left Phnom Penh for Koh Ta Kiev back in the 1970s.

“See?” Mom said. “Dad is from the city. Mom is from the island.”