Only a small child when the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975 and soon made her an orphan, Theary Seng has two enduring memories from that time in Cambodia’s tortured history.
In one, she had fallen asleep in the arms of her mother only to wake up to find her gone. “It was my first spiritual experience,” she said, “when I knew without anyone telling me that my mother was not on this earth.”
The other is a sensory memory.
In full: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/06/world/asia/cambodia-genocide-theary-seng.html