An American Dream

The year our son turned two, a Cambodian family moved in upstairs. They came off the plane that had brought them from Thailand, each carrying one paper shopping bag, the husband and father holding a very small boy by the hand. They spoke enough English that the group from our church who met them could shepherd them out of the Philadelphia airport into the van that awaited them. On the way to the van, the welcoming committee passed the baggage claim, assuming there was more luggage to pick up. But the family made it clear that what they owned was in the bags; there was nothing else. 

My wife and I lived in a beautiful old Victorian house that had been converted decades ago into three apartments. The neighborhood had been quite fashionable in the 1880s, a place where many German immigrants lived after they had established themselves in America, hence its name “Germantown.”  But in the 1950s and 60s, the neighborhood went downhill. Most of the Germans relocated to the suburbs. Almost everyone living in Germantown in 1980 was African-American, and most of the old houses were rundown, as ours was. We were on the second floor. Our new friends would be living in the small third-floor apartment. 

When our church decided to host Cambodian refugees, the Vestry rented the vacant apartment above ours, partly because it was very cheap, partly because my wife, Carol, had put her teaching career on hold while our son was young. She would be a stay-at-home mom with enough flexibility in her schedule so that she (along with another stay-at-home mom and ex-teacher) could provide the primary care that the family would need as they adjusted to life in America. She would be right downstairs to help whenever our new friends needed it. 

The entire congregation embraced Sarou, Sokun, and Peter. The Nops needed basically everything. The church had collected some things for them. So they had all the furniture they needed, the appliances, pots and pans, dishes. There was a pretty large supply of used clothing for them. But we had badly misunderstood their sizes, so most of it had to be taken away. One example. Peter was two, and we had provided clothing for him appropriate for that age in America. But Sokun had been malnourished when she carried him, and Peter was malnourished for several months after he was born. So he was the size of a one-year-old. None of the clothes waiting for him came close to fitting.

We had so many misunderstandings like that as the Nops became familiar with us and we with them. The best example (a funny one, I think) centered around Sokun buying groceries for her family. A government agency (I have forgotten which one) provided money for basic necessities, like food and shelter. About a week after the Nops arrived, Carol and Ginny took Sokun to the local A & P. They explained, as best they could, how much money she had to spend, then gave her free run of the store, wanting to allow her as much autonomy as they could. When they lined up to check out, Carol happened to look in the cart. She was shocked to see shrimp and lobster. We did not eat shrimp and lobster!  No one in our church ate shrimp and lobster! They were luxury items, and most of the young families in our church were living very close to the poverty line, themselves. 

Carol and Ginny took Sokun away from checkout, being as unobtrusive as possible, not wanting to embarrass her, and wheeled the cart back to the meat counter. There they pulled out chicken and  hamburger and showed Sokun how much less they cost compared to the food she had chosen. Only then, huddled around the cart, did they learn that Cambodia was flush with seafood. Shrimp and lobster were as cheap as dirt. Chicken, on the other hand, was a meat reserved for very special occasions, since it was very expensive. Sokun had not bothered to look at the price. She knew what cost what at home and had chosen accordingly. It was a “teachable moment” for all concerned.

There was one other reason the church placed Sarou and Sokun in the same house as Carol and me. We had spent the two summers before they arrived in America in one of Wycliffe Bible Translators’ summer linguistic programs. During that time, we had interacted with Cambodian refugees as part of our training. So we knew basic Khmer words, phrases, and simple sentences. We could say “hello,” “goodbye,” “thank you.”  More importantly for our interactions with Sarou and Sokun, we knew three simple sentences: “How do you say _____?” “Please repeat _____.”  “I don’t understand ______.”  Those sentences really helped Carol and Ginny as they tried to bring Sarou and Sokun into the English-speaking community. But even with those helpful “crutches,” communicating was exhausting for us. I can only imagine how puzzling and discouraging it must have been for them. How relaxing it must have been for them when they could retreat to their apartment and speak their own language to someone who understood it—and who also knew the struggles each of them faced with English. 

We were struck by how brave Sarou and Sokun were. They embraced their new culture and all that they had to go through to fit in. I never heard them express pity for themselves—even in the most vexing circumstances. But it wasn’t until they had lived in Philadelphia for six months that we truly appreciated just what they had been through. Sokun was quicker at picking up English than Sarou, and one day in a women’s gathering at our church, she was able to let people see what her life had been in Cambodia. 

In a very calm, quiet voice, she told a chilling story. During the worst of life under the Khmer Rouge, Sokun came down with an illness that required hospitalization. One day while she was lying in bed, nurses ran into her ward and told the patients that the Khmer Rouge was outside the hospital. All of them who could walk were urged to flee immediately, for the Khmer Rouge had come to kill all “defectives” as part of their program to create a Marxist paradise in Cambodia. Sokun pulled out her IV and fled the hospital in the bedclothes she had on. She had no time to grab anything. She ran as best she could into the jungle, out of sight of the gun-wielding children who carried out these cleansings. As she stumbled along, she could hear the gunshots that signaled the end of the lives of those who were unable or unwilling to leave the hospital. 

She was safe, at least temporarily. But she was very weak, was bleeding from her arm where she had torn out the IV, and was completely disoriented in the forest. She did not know what to do.  At that moment she remembered an incident from her childhood. There was one Christian in her village. Each day as the children passed his home on their way to school, he would say the same thing:  “If you are in trouble, call on the name of Jesus Christ, and He will help you.”  That was all Sokun remembered. She had no idea who Jesus was. But in her desperation she called out “Jesus, help me.”  Within moments a person walked out of the jungle, treated her wounds, gave her water and food and pointed out a path that she could follow. She couldn’t remember if it was a man or woman. The person said nothing. He or she appeared, provided for her, and disappeared back into the jungle without a word. Sokun gathered herself from the ground and stumbled up the path toward she knew not what. She had no memory of how long she wandered in the jungle alone. But at some point she came out of the jungle and was escorted into a refugee camp in Thailand run by The Lutheran World Federation. There she sought out Christians and soon became a follower of Jesus, herself. 

All these decades later, I have very little memory of what Sarou and Sokun told us about their time in the refugee camp in Thailand. I do know they were there long enough to meet, fall in love, marry and have a baby boy, Peter. They were there long enough so that Sokun had become pregnant again before they came to America. I cannot remember how the connection was made that sent them from Thailand to our neighborhood in the USA. (But I assume The Lutheran World Federation was responsible for that.). Perhaps they didn’t tell us much, did not see the need to share much of that experience. Perhaps I just wasn’t paying enough attention. More likely, my memory is defective.

I should have chronicled Sarou and Sokun’s story a very long time ago, while we still lived downstairs from them and saw them every day. But I have waited more than 40 years before feeling compelled to relate what I can remember from their early years in this country.  So I have only the vaguest memories of their first two years in Germantown (before we moved to Tennessee in 1983) and know almost nothing about the years since then. 

But I do have one other very vivid memory, though I was not present at the actual event, just heard it related by our Rector and two members of the Vestry of Atonement Church. It became apparent to us, almost from the first day they were in America, that Sarou and Sokun were very hard workers, extremely motivated to make their own way. In fact, Sarou had to be convinced to enroll in English language and job training classes—and accept government assistance while he did so. He wanted to do whatever work he could do (lawnmowing, dishwashing, handyman jobs) to support himself, his wife and their two young boys. But our group convinced him that he should accept assistance and finish his training classes. I remember my wife telling him more than once that he should think of the financial support as a kind of “loan.”  He would have many years to “repay” the government after he secured a job and—like every other American citizen—paid his taxes. Reluctantly, he agreed. He spent two full years in various programs before he secured a job with the City of Philadelphia and was able to go off of assistance.

Only a couple of years after he started full-time work, Sarou came to our rector, said he wanted to speak with the vestry. At the meeting, he made it clear that he and Sokun wanted to buy a house. From watching tv, speaking with his coworkers, talking with folks in our church, they understood that to be fully American, to fully participate in The American Dream, one should own a house—not rent. Our rector explained to Sarou that homeownership was difficult and expensive. How expensive?  Well, John said,  you would need to qualify for a mortgage, prove to a bank that you earned enough so that you could make monthly payments for years. Also, you would need thousands of dollars for a downpayment. How much?  John estimated that to purchase even a modest home (one in need of significant repair and remodeling) a person would need $10,000.00.  Sarou handed John a paper bag filled with cash, and asked if it would be enough. The vestry members counted out the bills and discovered, to their great surprise, that the bag contained a little more than the $10,000.00 needed for the downpayment. How had they accumulated that much in such a relatively short time? Sarou’s answer: he worked a lot, and he and Sokun saved most of what he earned—in a paper bag in their tiny apartment. 

Last summer, about 40 years after this incident, Carol and I were able to visit Sarou and Sokun in the home they had purchased in 1983. They were very pleased to show us around, and we were very impressed with the house, with them, with how far they had come. It was hard to think of them in 2024 as the people we had met for the first time all those decades ago in the Philadelphia Airport. We were so happy for them, so proud of what they had accomplished, so grateful that we had been privileged to participate in some small way as they made themselves Americans. 

As I might have said, we thought about Sarou and Sokun fairly often over the years. We often would tell others the stories I have related here. I even had some sketchy notes in a folder about the Nops’ long journey to full participation in the American Dream. Sarou and Sokun fleshed out for me what I had learned in my history classes, but had not taken very seriously: that (with the sad, shameful exception of Native Americans and Afro Americans) we are a nation made up almost entirely of people who had voluntarily left a native country for the chance at a better life in The New World. 

Over the decades, I would occasionally come across the notes about Sarou and Sokun in my writing folder. I would think about committing something of their American journey to paper. But it never went any further than that: thinking about it. But I felt compelled to sketch out a bit of the Nop’s immigrant story in these first few months of Trump’s second term in office. His policies toward immigrants seem even more draconian than they were four years ago. His lies about immigrants seem even more outlandish than the ones he told then. I felt I needed to allow the Nop’s story to show other Americans what the overwhelming majority of immigrants do when they come to this country, what they become, what they show folks like me about what America can and should be.  Perhaps stories like this, combined with thousands of others much like it, can help bring America to its senses, help us live up to the dream upon which this nation was founded.