Chapters 1 and 2 Summary

Chapter one: Dara hears a cowbell, and urgently asks her mother and brother (Sarun), with whom she's traveling in a rickety cart, whether they too heard it. When they say they didn't, Dara points out that the sound came from the west - the direction of Nong Chan, the refugee camp to which they're headed and which, to this point, they've been unable to find. Dara's first person narration then shifts into the past, describing how she and her family suffered as under the dictatorship of the Khmer Rouge and how all the young men, including her brother, were sent away to work camps and her father was killed. She also comments on how the Khmer Rouge described itself as the "family" of the people, and on how she was confused as to how the violent and greedy soldiers could possibly...