Summary

Section 7 contains the chapters “Back to Bat Deng,” “From Cambodia to Vietnam,” “Lam Sing Refugee Camp,” and “Epilogue.”

In “Back to Bat Deng,” the reunited Ung siblings make the journey by foot to Bat Deng, their mother’s home village, where they find their relatives, including Uncle Leang. The relatives were considered base people by the Khmer Rouge and thus lived with less suffering than others, plus their region was liberated by the Youns much earlier than the villages where Loung and her family lived. Life in Bat Deng becomes tolerable, as the girls sell homemade sweets in the marketplace in exchange for rice and the men work to grow vegetables for sustenance. Meng is married to Eang, a young woman of Chinese descent, and one day Eang’s...