“There were all there, watching over us, keeping us out of harm’s way. We had nothing to fear, Milk Mother always said. As long as we remained within these walls, the war could not touch us.” 

This reflects Raami’s extremely sheltered upbringing as the daughter of a prince. For eight years prior to the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror, Cambodia suffered a civil war that killed an estimated 300,000 people and destroyed 20 percent of the country’s property. As bad as conditions grew after the Khmer Rouge took over, the lived experience of the vast majority of Cambodians prior to 1975 included far more hardship that Raami’s cocooned existence.

“Others abandoned us long ago at the first sign of trouble. And now so have the Americans. Alas, democracy is defeated. And our friends will not stay for its execution. They left while it was still possible, and who could possibly blame them?”

The United States played a controversial role during the Cambodian civil war and the lead-up to the Khmer Rouge’s takeover. Starting in 1965, the US targeted North Vietnamese troops stationed in Cambodia with bombing attacks. Yet the strategic benefits—or lack thereof—of this campaign with respect to the Vietnam War aside, the attacks destabilized much of the Cambodian countryside, causing between 50,000 and 150,000 Cambodian deaths. Scholars like Ben Kiernan argue that this destabilization was one of many factors that led to the Khmer Rouge gaining widespread support in many areas of Cambodia.

“To mourn then, I thought, is to feel your own nothingness.”

The act of mourning appears in many different ways by the characters. There is so much loss and death that at multiple points in the narrative, Raami will mention not having time to mourn.