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house in Phnom Penh that had been owned by a Vietnamese family. Pa says many Vietnamese families have been involuntarily repatriated, and their homes in Phnom Penh are being sold in a hurry and at good prices.
    For Pa these have been months of frustration entangled in brutal lessons. He has lost two sons, children not touched by bombs but who might have survived if there had been access to hospitals and advanced medical care. Pa has become silent, but out of his silence comes a burning desire. A desire to fight back, not with guns but with the mind—a desire to learn.
    In ways I can never imagine, his desire will come to affect us all.

A Grain of Rice on a Dog’s Tail
     
    P hnom Penh is a city designed for the senses. Everywhere there is activity, sound, and tantalizing smells. Here, people don’t seem to feel the shadow of war creeping up on them. Now it’s the summer of 1972. We delight in the sudden normalcy of human activities. People stroll through the city. Others crowd around the carts of food vendors, jostling for their right to fried noodles, sour yellow fingers of pickled green mangoes served on a stick with a touch of red chili and salt, or crispy, golden fried bananas, battered with flour and sesame seeds. My personal favorite is the pâté sandwich—thick baguette rolls stuffed with three kinds of sliced meat, wafers of cucumber, and green onion or cilantro.
    Phnom Penh truly is a capital city. Everywhere we see markets, pharmacies, restaurants, schools—the normal bustle of urban living. Even though the bus has taken us only seventy miles north of Takeo, following winds up from the Gulf of Thailand, it is a different world.
    Soon after our arrival, we welcome another person into our family. Mak gives birth to a healthy baby boy, whom she and Pa name Putheathavin, who has beautiful, long eyelashes, longer than those of anyone in our family, and velvety tan skin like Pa ’s. We call him Vin, using the last sound of his first name. Similarly, my name is Chanrithy, and everyone calls me Thy or Athy. Ra is Chantara, and we call her Ra, but Pa and Mak call her Ara because they’re older and they can use A before her name. Ry is Channary, Than is Chanthan, and Avy is Putheatavy, but Chea is Chea because this is her special nickname, which means “heal,” but at school her friends call Chanchhaya. Now Pa and Mak have seven children, more than the neighboring families.
    Our neighbors on the right are two Chinese families, quiet and polite people. On our left is a nice Cambodian family, pure and cultured Cambodians, Mak said, with dark skin and large eyes. Across from us lives another Cambodian family, an aunt with her family and a niece who is single and works as a policewoman. Her name is Veth and I am in awe of her.
    Sala Santeu Mook (elementary school) is my school and also Than’s. Colorful flowers in planters stand sentry before each building and around the flagpole, where we uniformly line up to salute the flag every morning and sing the national anthem:
    We the people of Cambodia are well known in the world. We succeed in building monuments. Our glorious civilization and religion, our ancestors’ heritage, have been kept on this earth. Cambodians, stand up, stand up, fight, defend the republic. When enemies attack, we defend, we fight.
     
    Two years after Vin was born, Mak has another healthy baby. He is adorable with dark brown eyes and light skin like Mak , but his face resembles Pa ’s. After his birth, a nurse told Mak that the placenta had been wrapped around his body. This means he will be a teacher when he grows up and will be smart and compassionate. That makes Mak smile, her eyes gazing at his pink face. His name is Phalkunarith, but sometimes Pa calls him Map (chubby) because his cheeks are plump.
    Now I’m eight, forgetting the past with its enemies and bombs. I’ve learned new things in school, among them Cambodian history, which I have to memorize. Sometimes I find it boring because