Lucky Child

by Loung Ung

  In Monaco, Kim, Aunt Heng, Uncle Lim, Hung, and I pass many hours sauntering in front of the world-famous Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino. When our feet grow too tired, we find a café. Over a big latte, Kim talks about his job making plastic eyeglass frames while I tell him about Meng and Vermont. When our feet are reenergized, we stroll by shops filled with riches beyond reach. As the sun shines on the flawless diamonds in the glass cases and creates prisms of colors on our skin, Kim and I compare stories of arriving in a foreign country with nothing but the clothes on our backs, dealing with culture shock, and learning a new language. By the time we laugh at our shared dislike of snow and freezing rain, I’ve begun to separate him from the Khmer Rouge.

  “Kim, how did you get from Cambodia to France?” I ask him as we sit down for a late lunch.

  “It’s a long story,” he says. Then he laughs and adds, “It’s a bit like an adventure movie.”

  “I love adventure movies,” I tell him.

  As he eats his hamburger and potato fries, Kim recounts his story to me.

  After Chou was wedded to Pheng, Kim quickly left the village and moved to Ou-dong, where he’d searched for a way out of Cambodia to join Meng and Loung. Then one night in 1985, six months after he left Chou, Dara, a friend of Kim’s, told him of his plans to go to Thailand. Dara then said that for three chi gold, Kim could come with him. “You pay the driver half in Ou-dong,” he said, “and when you arrive safely at the camp, they will go to your family for the rest. If you want to go, we leave tomorrow.”

  In the morning, Kim brought nothing with him when he met Dara near their designated bridge, just as he was instructed. He had on an old brown shirt, faded blue jeans, and a pair of green flip-flops. Dara wore loose dark clothes and brown sandals. Around them, life was already bustling with people and vendors going about their business. Young girls walked by carrying baked spiders, and right behind them a man sold French bread in a wooden basket. A live, fat two-hundred-pound pig was tied to the back of a motorbike, its four feet jutting toward the sky. On a side street, young monks in their orange and yellow robes approached a store and waited quietly until someone came out and gave them spoonfuls of rice and vegetables. Once they received the food, they chanted a blessing to their benefactor.

  At nine A.M., a truck ferrying people from village to village stopped in front of them. Kim and Dara climbed aboard, talking to no one. In the sky, the sun moved slowly, burning through the haze and darkening their shadows. Silently, Kim said his goodbyes to Chou, Khouy, and the rest of the family. For five hours, as the truck wound along the red dirt road to Porsat, Kim stared at the vast province and knew that somewhere there he left Pa, Ma, Geak, and Keav. Suddenly, the blood in his veins pumped rapidly to his head, causing it to hurt. The road curved around hillsides, then finally flattened as the truck headed to their next stop, Battambang. There, Kim bought rice and fish and was quickly surrounded by amputees hobbling on wooden legs and begging. Soon the truck took the last twelve riders to a village on the Cambodian side of the Thai border. It was night when Kim and Dara climbed off the truck, their joints aching and stiff. As he stretched, Kim saw nothing but miles and miles of rice fields.

  “Someone will come for you shortly,” the driver said and stuck out his hand. Kim gave him the money. The driver climbed back into the truck and left. For a few tense moments, Kim kicked at the dirt while Dara stared at the road worriedly. Both breathed a sigh of relief when a young man their age arrived.

  “Come, follow me,” the guide told them. They followed him to an empty hut hidden behind thick trees and bushes. Minutes after their arrival, an elderly woman delivered a mosquito net, water, rice, and fish to them and disappeared. After they ate, the friends fell into a deep sleep. When the guide woke them, the sky was dark and clear, the stars twinkled, and the moon shone silver lights on them. Kim wanted to ask the guide for the time but didn’t.

  “Put this on.” He handed them each a pair of old, dark, loose pants and a shirt. While they changed, the guide continued. “Don’t talk,” he said. “I will talk for you. I’ve told the men we’ll travel with that you’re my cousins from the city, here to learn how to work. We smuggle dry fish and other things to sell at the Thai border, and buy medicine to sell back here. It is illegal so we travel at night to avoid the police. You’ll both carry a bag so you’ll look like one of us.”

  The guide walked them toward a group of nine men, all of them muscular and thin. He then slathered mud on his body and instructed his charges to do the same. Kim scooped a handful of mud and spread it on his face, neck, arms, and all over his clothes. The rotten smell made him want to gag, but the guide whispered, “Stinky mud is good mosquito repellent.”

  The guide slipped a bag on Kim’s shoulders. Instantly, the straps dug into his flesh, causing him to stagger backward.

  “Just follow my steps exactly,” the guide quietly told them. “We have to go fast and pass the Khmer Rouge territory before it gets light.” Kim sucked in his breath in fear at the mention of the Khmer Rouge territory, as he’d heard many stories of people who’d been kidnapped, butchered, and killed there. Guided by the moonlight, the group walked single file in silence. Time passed slowly, and with each step the bag grew heavier and heavier on Kim’s back.

  “We are now approaching the Khmer Rouge territory,” the guide whispered to Kim and Dara. “For the next three hours, we have to be on our guard and be absolutely silent.”

  Kim nodded and followed him. Above them, the moon dipped in and out from behind the clouds. The wind blew playfully, rustling the branches and leaves. Kim’s ears picked up all the noise and tried to decipher whether each sound was friend or foe. Occasionally, his mind wandered and dreamed of a future where he was living with Eldest Brother and going to cooking school.

  Suddenly, a stench of putrid flesh assaulted Kim’s nostrils. The group was silent as they stepped over two dead bodies lying facedown in the path. Kim cupped his hands over his nose and mouth and held his breath, but marched on. A few feet in front of them, a dead cow with its front legs blown off obstructed their path. The guide carefully stepped off the beaten path onto a grassy patch of land. Kim followed his exact steps, his eyes only briefly resting on the cow’s protruding bones.

  By the time the sky lightened, the group had safely made it through the Khmer Rouge territory. Kim’s shoulders felt like someone had pounded his muscles with a mallet. When the group stopped to rest, Kim dropped his bags and was lying on the grass when the guide approached him and Dara.

  “You go with new guide.” The guide pointed to a thin man in his forties with gray teeth. “I hired two boys to take your bags. Thank you for carrying the bags.” He smiled and left with the group.

  “I take you camp,” the new man told him. Kim and Dara nodded. “But day, night, sleep here.” The guide handed them each a package of rice and fish wrapped in banana leaves and took them to a hut outside the village where they rested for the night. When the sun came up, Kim woke to find his shoes had been stolen. He and Dara followed their new guide in bare feet for two hours before they finally stopped. Kim looked up and his throat closed. Across the worn road, on the other side of a small field of grass, a six-foot-tall barbed-wire fence loomed into the sky and stretched around a camp where Kim imagined thousands of refugees lived in their makeshifts huts, wooden houses, and tents. To Kim, the camp looked like a magical lost city where hopes and dreams could be reborn.

  The guide pointed to a barely visible trail. Kim’s eyes scanned the slightly crushed grass that led to some dense bent shrubs where there was a small crawl hole hidden under the fence. The guide then pointed out some red signs with skulls and bones in the field surrounding the trail.

  “Stay on trail, no land mines,” the guide whispered. Kim nodded, his stomach turning.

  For forty-five minutes they waited in the bushes by the road until a border patrol jeep drove by. The guide pulled his charges down lower into the bushes, but not before Kim saw one of the Thai soldier standing u
p, his hand on his rifle. When the roar of the jeep faded into the jungle roads, the guide yelled, “Run!” Kim leapt from his position, his heart pounding in his chest, his bare feet cut up by rocks and splintering wood. He ran. Once he reached the barbed-wire fence, he slid under it like a snake in the grass. When he climbed out of the crawl hole on the other side, he could not control his smile. Right behind him, Dara and the guide entered the camp in the same way. He felt so strong, as if his body could hop many times its height, like a grasshopper.

  “Slow, act normal, like you belong here,” the guide cautioned him, and led Kim to a hut owned by a woman and her daughter. Now that his job was done, the guide disappeared with Dara. In a few days, one of the guide’s men would go to Khouy to collect the rest of their gold.

  That first night, Kim’s dream of freedom was crushed as the sobering facts of refugee life were explained to him. When he left Cambodia, he hadn’t known that the camps were closing and that Thailand was accepting no more refugees. Yet each day, hundreds of refugees continued to arrive. Many were caught, put in jail, and then trucked to the border of Cambodia and Thailand. There, they were forced off the trucks by the Thai authorities to march across the Dangrek Mountains and fields littered with mines, where starvation, disease, bandits, and Khmer Rouge soldiers lay waiting. Kim heard that many did not make it home and that many of those who did make it home faced shame and poverty. Oh, how naive he’d been to think that all he had to do was tell a refugee worker about his family in America and he’d immediately be allowed to join them.

  Five months later Kim was still waiting for his passage to America. Protected by the woman his guide had introduced him to, he would often be forced to hide three feet under her hut, silently sucking in hot air through a porous bamboo bedpost, ingeniously lined up above the hiding place. The space was completely black and not much larger than the width of his shoulders. Locking his fingers together, Kim would pull his knees close against his chest. Above him, hidden under another three inches of dirt, a piece of thick plywood with a small circular hole in the middle covered Kim’s hideout. On top of the plywood sat a heavy bed with four bamboo bedposts. One of the posts was punctured with holes and positioned on top of the plywood opening. Straining his neck, Kim would place his nose at the hole and desperately inhale air, forcing himself to stay calm.

  After fifteen minutes, he’d be completely drenched with sweat. He longed to massage his neck but he dared not move, too afraid to make the tiniest noise. Above him, half a dozen Thai soldiers marched through the hut, their feet heavy with military boots. The footsteps moved around the room to check behind the curtains, crates, and under piles of clothes in search of illegal refugees. As the Thai soldiers moved around, Kim concentrated on staying calm and totally silent.

  “Let’s see your papers,” barked the Thai soldier in his broken Khmer.

  “Here they are, lord.” The hut owner scurried over, her steps soft and quick. Kim pictured her presenting the papers, holding them out with both hands to show respect. He could hear three other pairs of foot steps, all quiet and soft.

  “One, two, three, four IDs,” the Thai soldier counted. “Four refugees living in this one hut.”

  “No one else is here,” another Thai soldier reported after he’d gone through the house.

  “All right. Let’s move on.” As the Thai soldiers left without even the smallest of gesture of farewell, their footsteps shook loose the dirt, which fell over Kim’s head and body like falling ashes. The dirt mixed with his sweat and melted into his skin, making him feel even more grimy. He longed for a shower but all he could do was wipe his hands over the mud.

  The seconds stretched into eternity, until he heard no traces of the Thai soldiers’ steps. But still he knew he had another fifteen minutes of sitting in his hole just to be on the safe side. Kim imagined the sun setting over the camp where hundreds of thousands of fires were being built for cooking the evening meal. His stomach growled at the thought. How many more months would he need to hide waiting to live his dream of a new life?

  The hut owner lived with her nine-year-old son and her thirteen-and nineteen-year-old daughters. Every day, Kim felt grateful to this kind and compassionate woman. He knew that if she were caught harboring an illegal, whether dead or alive, she and her family would face the same punishment as Kim. Though she knew the risks, the woman still chose to help him, a stranger. When Kim asked her why she was doing it, she told him that she’d lost her husband to the Khmer Rouge and now lived only to fight for a better future for her children. She confessed that as soon as she’d helped her children find safety, she would shave her head, become a Buddhist nun, and devote her life to the gods. Until then, she would pave her way with good karma by doing good deeds and helping her countrymen.

  Even though he had nothing to offer them but his word, Kim promised the family that he would repay them when he received money from Meng. For the first few months, Kim lived with the family and shared their food like he was one of them, with no letters from America or signs of payment in sight.

  During the day, Kim was free to walk around the camp, make friends, and play volleyball with his neighbors, as long as he didn’t wander too far from his hiding place. Once a day, the Thai soldiers tried to surprise the refugees with a search at an unspecified time. But the refugees always helped one another, and somehow a warning was sent from one location to another, allowing Kim and the other illegals to go into hiding. At night, while the woman shared her bed with her two daughters, Kim slept next to the son and thought about his own family.

  Every week, he borrowed money to send letters to Meng and Aunt Heng in France. He wrote about life in the refugee camp, the family he lived with, and the growing risks of getting caught by the soldiers. As the human smuggling trade became more sophisticated, and more refugees were smuggled into the camp, the Thai soldiers began stepping up their searches. Kim’s hand shook as he described how a friend suffocated to death while hiding in a metal water tank; he’d run out of air because the soldiers questioned his host family for too long. Now every time Kim crouched in his hole and allowed himself to be buried, he feared this would be his fate as well.

  In his third month, Kim had received a letter and three hundred dollars from Meng. When he saw the money, he’d thrown his arms in the air, yelped with happiness, and promptly paid the host family for their protection. That night, the dark hiding hole hadn’t felt so suffocating. While the soldiers had terrorized the family above, Kim heard Meng’s voice telling him to hold on and be patient because help was on the way!

  But then two months went by, and with each passing day the hiding hole became more cramped as the Thai soldiers took longer and longer to complete their searches. One day, lifting his mouth to the bamboo post yet again, Kim got a mouthful of falling dust instead of the air he so desperately needed. He felt his chest constrict and explode into a stifled coughing fit. Kim’s head flashed white with pain. His breath shallow, he started to scratch at the plywood to get out. Kim had heard the soldiers leave what seemed like an eternity ago but the family still had not returned to rescue him. He raised his arms and pushed at the wood with his open palms, but the trap door refused to budge. With all his might, he pounded his fist at the wood but succeeded only in showering himself with falling dust. Realizing that his efforts were useless, he thought of his family.

  Please, Pa, don’t let me be buried here, he pleaded silently. Don’t let me die alone. Just then, Kim heard the unmistakable sound of spatulas digging him out from his grave. Minutes later, they moved the bed and pulled out the plywood. Kim burst from the hole like a drowning rat.

  “The Thai soldiers were very careful today,” the woman told Kim.

  “Yes, very long. Thank you,” Kim rasped, kneeling on his knees, thankful he was safe for another day.

  That night, he clutched Meng’s letter in his hands and called out to him. “Eldest Brother, please come soon. I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.”

  The next d
ay while he was playing volleyball, a man dressed in civilian clothes came looking for him.

  “Kim Ung?” the man asked, but sounded as if he already knew it was Kim. His pronunciation of Kim’s name gave away that he was Thai.

  “Yes?” Kim replied uncertainly and approached. For a moment, Kim’s knees almost buckled with fear that the man might be an undercover patrol soldier. He glanced to his right and left and wondered whether or not he should run away. But the man was much older than Kim, had a slight build, and didn’t have the menacing look of a patrol soldier. And he was alone.

  “Kim Ung,” the man repeated under his breath, almost as if he were confirming the name to himself. He then reached into his pocket and fished out a letter and a picture. He looked at Kim and then at the picture again. Satisfied, he put the picture back into his pocket.

  “Kim Ung, your aunt in France has sent me to get you. Come with me now,” the man announced, then turned and left without waiting to see if Kim understood.

  Kim’s knees went weak as he followed the man out of the volleyball court without as much as a word of explanation. As he snaked his way out of the camp, he said silent goodbyes to his new friends, the woman and her family, and the camp. In front of him, the man walked on, the afternoon sun casting long shadows behind him. Stepping on his shadow’s head, Kim bravely marched onward to the next leg of his journey.

  When the sun lowered in the sky, the man led Kim out of the camp on a hidden foot trail not guarded by Thai patrols. For the next three hours, Kim kept pace with the man as he wove in and out of roads, trails, and villages until they arrived at their destination. From there, he was passed from one guide to another and finally made to wait without an explanation by the roadside. After an hour’s wait, a green military jeep came to a stop in front of Kim and his guide. Through the glass windows, Kim saw that the driver wore large gold-rimmed sunglasses, a green military uniform, and a hat befitting a high-ranking official. The rest of the jeep was shut out by heavy green tarp wrapped all around its body. After a few words, the guide lifted the tarp in the back and motioned for Kim to climb in.