Synaptic

During our Introduction to Sustainability course, students explore their connections to the natural world around them in several assignments. In this piece, Allyna tries to understand her father’s longing for his native Cambodia. She does this by describing how she experiences Cambodia as a visitor. Her detailed descriptions allow readers to see what she sees as she wrestles with the country’s painful history and the scars it left on her family. Her central question asks how her father loves Cambodia (home) despite the war-ravaged bodies of his family and friends that are buried beneath the surface.

-Dr. Paulina Mena, Dr. Shelley Bradfield, and Dr. Sue Pagnac

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No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.

-Warsan Shire

Home. If I had a penny every time my father said the word home, I’d be richer than Bill Gates. Although I am not speaking of the home he comes to after work every day. Not the ranch-style house in the south side of Des Moines, but his home–home in Cambodia where his work schedule would vary on the seasons and the birth rate of the cows. Home, where winter was hotter than summer days of Iowa, winter where needing any sort of long-sleeved top was deemed unnecessary. I would close my eyes, imagining what warmth I would have felt in the foreign heat despite the coldness of Iowa prickling at my skin under my coat. I found it strange how my father would mention a home thousands of miles away, but did not see the home he had created here in America—though, I suppose a home he loves was different from the home he had created.

It was eccentric for my middle-school self to pack sweaters on a trip to Cambodia, but I assumed I would need them since we were flying from the winter storms of Iowa to summer paradise in Cambodia. It caused some clothing catastrophes. I can easily recall the scorching weather against my skin that seeped through the seams of my jeans when I stepped out from my aunt’s grand home, one she built off the money my father had sent from his hard work in America. Right away, a cow and her two calves steer their heads in my direction, then slowly turn away as they stroll through the rest of the unnamed neighborhood. What I found rather peculiar here in Cambodia was how, unlike in America, there were no such things as addresses. Instead, it was a sequence of lefts and rights.

My father’s home was nothing like the one he told me in his stories – farms, war, landmines, and whatnot. Instead, what stood in front of me were marble homes with a vast open land, stretching out before you could even reach the front steps. Its large white beams held a balcony that allowed anyone to graze their fingers against the humid surface. When I raised my hand to cover the light of the sun, my skin glowed and a warm golden aura would embrace my palm. Light would pour through the gaps between my digits and in a way, it reminded me of my father. My father resembled the warmth and brilliant rays that held me on the coldest days. He was my sun that I would often find myself looking upwards at in a daze. Perhaps it was just the relationship of father and daughter, but even so, I do not think he realizes just how much of an enlightening person he may be in my eyes. His light guides me through the dark, the same way his words would encourage me to plow through anything that stops my own light. My father was such an empowering individual that I could not help but be enchanted by every thought that crossed his mind. I believed that whatever he said, it was nothing but the truth. My father’s story reminds me that, “Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person” (Adichie).

I recall traveling to Cambodia for my very first time expecting rurality to cover the entire country where life was a struggle to bear through, but this peaceful life my family in Cambodia had lived was nothing like the story my father had informed of. There was air conditioning in each room and functioning cars that naturally occupied the space in the living room with no sort of barrier that separated the room from the outside. The biodiversity underneath my sandals was a great assortment that thrived graciously. The grass was still wet from dew, coruscating underneath the blistering rays of the heat. The flowers embraced the front gates as if they were the barriers themselves–preventing any form of intrusion with their captivating violet and yellow ombre. I cherished this home my father had loved so much, inhaling the fresh air that felt so light compared to the air in America where the flow of traffic stained my lungs with black smoke.

I would lean against the car window with intrusive thoughts on how many lives rested underneath the dirt road my family and I traveled on. A thought would often haunt me: Why does he love home so much when home became a graveyard of his friends, his family, and childhood? War took his home away. It created too many awful memories and yet here my father was – recalling all the precious memories of his home. From smiling at the naked children jumping into creeks, to the way cows would cause an upstir in traffic. He smiled at everything as if the lives underneath us were nonexistent.

Walking barefoot outdoors was rather common in Southeast Asian countries, and I would often find myself doing exactly that to answer my own pondering questions. I was trying to understand why my father had loved Cambodia so much despite the horrible memories home had. I remember the first time my foot touched the orange-stained sand in which many species of insects had inhabited. The sand dipped under my weight as if making room for another species inhibiting its grainy walls. My toes curled and the sand began to climb the gaps between my toes and ultimately leaving a warm, bristling sensation. I walked, dipping my feet into the nearby creek, flinching at how brisk the water was. The tiny bits of sand dispersed and traveled into the tide like blood cells through capillaries. Over in the distance and beyond the creek was an open land – untouched, and it stretched beyond the horizon from what I could see.

At the time, my cousins’ chatter synced with the chirping of the laughingthrush birds. Their white winged eyeliner left streaks of their presence within my peripheral vision as they flew past. The beating of their rounded, feathered, and chocolate-tinted wings contrasted against the beryl sky; there was not a single cloud in sight. The laughingthrush is a common bird in Cambodia and other regions of tropical Asia (“Beauty of Birds”). These unique birds are categorized under the Leiothrichidae family of Old World passerine birds and are diverse in size and coloration so seeing an identical bird is very unlikely. Their vocals were like a banshee amongst the land–a discord that I found soothing in the moment. Everything seemed so surreal. It was as if these laughingthrushes were singing to me about what nature was– a mixture of beauty and dissonance that want to disagree with each other, but ended up orchestrating a euphonic tune. The balanced synchronization was suddenly disrupted when the cool water crashed and the screech of my playing cousins intruded my thoughts. I blinked, and a war flashed on that open land. Again, I asked myself: Why does he love home so much, when home became a graveyard of his friends, his family, and childhood?

I wondered how many lives lay underneath the new soil of the land. How many fathers, mothers, and friends rest underneath the soles of my feet. I wondered if my uncle, aunt, or cousins rest here on this battlefield. Even so, above their corpses was a beautiful field of staggered grass with different shades of green illuminated under the sun. The breeze carried a calming chill down my spine as well as a whiff of new life and scents of various flowers.

I learned to place my palm against the breathing soil, feeling the heartbeat of those who were lost on this land, fleeing or fighting a pointless battle. War was a horrible, but natural occurrence that destroyed lives of all kinds– humans, animals, and even the dirt that brought forth new life. It truly is upsetting to know that what lies underneath is the result of what humans are capable of, specifically the destruction humans can cause. It is misleading to see this scenery. It is easy to forget the war of greed and gore, so I implore humanity to consider this battle a lesson to learn and realize that their brutal actions will always leave a trail within the soul of nature. “But if we woke up to our place in the world, we would see the amazing intricacy of nature and our part in it, and the amazing damage we can do” (Farell 33). My hands grazed the sharp grass, feeling their moistness and soft hush sound they made upon brushing against each other. It was quiet here and it truly reminded me of how much of a graveyard this land can be.

Nature is an interesting topic to bring up. I, myself, was never the type to take time to explore the wonders of the outdoors; however, I learned that nature of all life moves in a peculiar cycle. Although fatality and cataclysm take the lives of living things, life will always seem to return and brush away any trace of hurt and sorrow. Nature was calming, and peaceful, like a strum from a guitar that created the perfect chord. My father’s home was without a doubt beautiful, and his connection with the land of Cambodia was strong, that not even painful memories would hold him back. His entire life was dedicated to coming back home after leaving, and to abandon that connection was like abandoning a part of who he is.

My father had accepted the new life and dealt away with the mass pain of watching his home fall into darkness. When he smiled, yellow stained teeth showing, it was the brightest I had ever seen when he was home. He was the sun that nurtured me as his flower of a daughter, leaving the war behind to bring me into this world.

It is bewildering to assume that home is structural, but I see that home is a feeling. The feeling of rejuvenation, history, and connection. In Cambodia, I felt the life of the land that made my father the man that he is. I felt as if I understood him more. Nature helped me understand what made his home, home, but it was not only his. I let his home be mine too.

Works Cited

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story,” TedEd, 2009, https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en.

Farrell, James J. “The Nature of College,” Milkweed Editions, 2010.

“Laughingthrushes.” Laughingthrushes. Beauty of Birds, Avianweb LLC, 2020, https://www.beautyofbirds.com/
laughingthrushes.html.