A Story from My Father

To a man who knew love, and chose to show it through devotion rather than meaningless words, but what did devotion mean to a man who lost everything to the ashes of his country’s past? It was an endless question, one that shaped a new kind of devotion I came to understand as a child.

War, conflict, power struggles—within a world filled with agony, he left the only thing he cherished to his daughter. It was the last piece of his dignity. He often described my birth and origin vividly, telling me how he prayed for a daughter on an auspicious day before Preah Ang Dongkhal, one of Cambodia’s most sacred temples even giving names that no one in this world had encountered.

I sat and listened, not fully understanding his quiet cry for his legacy, his story being poured into his daughter.