This article is featured in the Nov. 9 issue of the Magazine.
I was born in Cambodia in 1970. My father back then, he was like the village chief who oversaw the whole province. He was a man who helped everybody. When the Khmer Rouge came for him, nobody would say where he was.
When I was 10 years old we were in a makeshift camp made up of refugees. The war was going on and off. A bomb hit one friend who was a good 50 feet from us and wiped out his entire family. My father told me to grab onto his shirttail. He told me, whatever happens don't let go. It was showering bullets left and right. Holding onto my father, it was like a force field.