No Beginning: I Don’t Know Where I Was Born

I want to start with something that surprises a lot of people.

I don't know exactly where I was born.

Most people can answer that question without thinking.

Maybe they were born in a hospital.

Maybe at home.

Maybe in a village they've known their entire life.

But for me, the answer has never been clear.

When people ask where my story began, I honestly don't know what to tell them.

And that's the first truth of my life.

My story starts with uncertainty.

I don't remember my father.

At least, not the way most people remember their parents.

I have only one memory of him.

Just one.

My mother took me to see him when I was very young.

I can't remember where we went.

I can't remember what we talked about.

I can't even remember his face clearly anymore.

But there is one thing I still remember.

He had only one arm.

Someone later told me he lost it during the war.

At that age, I didn't understand what that meant.

War was just a word adults used.

I didn't know what it could take from a person.

That was the first time I saw him.

And it was also the last.

After that, it was just me and my mother.

She raised me alone in Phnom Penh.

Life wasn't easy.

My mother sold sugarcane juice on the street.

That's how we survived.

I don't remember every detail.

I don't remember what we earned each day.

But I remember the feeling of those days.

The heat.

The noise.

People moving through the streets.

The sound of everyday life all around us.

Back then, I didn't think much about how hard she worked.

Children don't see those things the way adults do.

To me, she was just my mother.

I didn't understand the sacrifices.

I didn't understand the worries she carried.

I didn't understand that every glass of sugarcane juice she sold helped put food on the table.

Looking back now, I understand a lot more.

She wasn't working hard because she wanted to.

She was working hard because she had no other choice.

She had a child to raise.

And that child was me.

Then came 1997.

I was still young, but I remember that life began to feel uncertain.

People were moving.

People were adjusting.

Everyone seemed to be trying to find a way forward.

My mother made a decision.

A decision that would change both of our lives.

She took me to Poipet.

Near the border.

At the time, I didn't know why.

I didn't know what was waiting for us there.

I didn't know that one decision would shape much of my childhood.

I only knew that we were leaving.

And sometimes, when I look back at the beginning of my story, that's what stands out the most.

Not where I was born.

Not a hospital.

Not a village.

Not an address.

What I remember is movement.

A mother trying to build a life.

A child following her wherever she went.

And a future neither of us could see yet.

In the next episode, I'll tell you about my grandparents and the life we had after arriving in Poipet.

Because that's where some of my earliest real memories begin.