They say he has kept his identity a secret to guard against assassins. They say that he liberated us from foreign domination and gave us independence. They tell us Pol Pot makes us work hard because he wants to purify our spirit and help us achieve beyond our potential as farmers. They say he has a round face, full lips, and kind eyes. I wonder if his kind eyes can see us starving.

The first victims are always the children.

Dear gods, Pa is a very devout Buddhist. Please help my Pa return home. He is not mean and does not like to hurt other people. Help him return and I will do anything you say. I will devote my entire life to you. I will believe you always. If you cannot bring Pa home to us, please make sure they don’t hurt him, or please make sure Pa dies a quick death.

The only way to tell if someone is a bodiless witch is by the deep wrinkle lines around her neck. At night when these witches go to sleep their heads separate from their bodies. Dragging their intestines along, they fly around to places where there’s blood and death. The heads fly so fast that no one has ever seen the faces, only their shiny red eyes and sometimes the shadow of their heads and entrails. Once she finds a dead body, the bodiless witch nestles against the corpse all night.

Keav tells me the soldiers claim to love Cambodia and its people very much. I wonder then why they are this mean if they love us so much.

Living life to the fullest involves living it with your family.

In Phnom Penh, it seems that the more money you have, the more stairs you have to climb to your home. Ma.

Why are they doing this, Pa?” Kim asks. “Because they are destroyers of things.

From 1975 to 1979 – through execution, starvation, disease, and forced labor – the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated two million Cambodians, almost a fourth of the country’s population.

Courage is when you dare to be yourself, in whatever ways you want to be – to not be afraid, to just do it.