“But then the fighting and bombing had started. At first the war had been distant and mysterious. Tiny silver airplanes, like fishes in the sky, would fly over us before disappearing into the horizon. Then the bombing had come closer, so close that the bombs shook the soil beneath my bare feet.”

In this passage, Dara introduces the theme The Effects of War on Civilians, describing how the civil conflicts ravaging her country eventually impacted her directly. The violence of the warring factions was first “distant and mysterious” but, little by little, things escalated until the “bombs shook the soil beneath [her] bare feet,” signaling the inescapability of the conflict. This early experience of bombing is one of the many wartime effects Dara and the other civilian protagonists will experience in the novel.

“Soon the Communist soldiers took over the village, announcing that they had ‘liberated’ us...Liberation turned out to be a long nightmare of hunger and misery. And fear—always that cold, silent fear.”

This passage alludes to the years of terror and starvation under the Khmer Rouge regime of the Communist dictator Pol Pot (See: Background). The passage once again speaks to The Effects of War on Civilians: While the soldiers promise the civilians “liberation,” the reality is “a long nightmare of hunger and misery” marked by constant “fear.” In contrasting the empty promises of the militias with the cruel results for ordinary Cambodians, the passage highlights the vulnerability and suffering of civilians like Dara.

“And it suddenly struck me: everyone was part of some family—not the cold-blooded Khmer Rouge version, the state as family, but a living, laughing, loving family.”

The Khmer Rouge had sought to break up families and destroy personal bonds, claiming that Cambodian citizens owed their loyalty only to “the state as family,” not to blood relations or friends.