A Blessing Over Ashes
Adam Fifield
Perennial, 2000
326 pp.
Adam Fifield's A Blessing Over Ashes is
refreshingly unique among books in the Cambodian refugee genre in that it focuses on an aspect
of the Cambodian experience seldom depicted in narrative form: the trials and
tribulations of life after escape from Cambodia's genocide.
For Fifield, escape from the Killing Fields does not mark an end
but rather a beginning to the story of his adopted brother Soeuth. While other narratives conclude with a happily-ever-after ending once the
hero or heroine succeeds in several near-death escapes from the Khmer Rouge,
Fifield's book successfully shows the many impediments that remain to achieving
a truly happy ending. The issues Fifield tackles in his book are universal: among them are the
quest to find one's place in the world, the search for one's roots, and the
pursuit of personal peace. Soeuth's
search for resolution to these deep-seeded existential issues and the authors
eloquence in narrating the process make A Blessing Over Ashes engaging
and inspirational.
Fifield expertly identifies the many complications inherent
in Soeuth's existence and search for a place in the world.
The main complication, however, is that fundamentally Soeuth is alone.
His birth parents and family assumed dead, he is a child refugee thrust
into a foreign environment. As
much as his adopted family, the Fifields, wish to help him, they are limited by
a multitude of personal and cultural differences.
Something as simple and natural as laughing can become a source of
discomfort when Soeuth does it "at the wrong time."
Although one gets the sense that Soeuth appreciates the efforts of
his adopted family, he maintains a certain aloofness while living with them.
Much later in the book, Fifield pinpoints what is missing: "I knew
that they [an Asian family Soeuth would later live with] gave him something we
could not, that comfort, on a rudimentary level, came with sameness."
The author's skill in identifying and lucidly articulating such details
is a big part of why this book is so powerful.
The presence of the author himself in the story is another
strength. The difficulties of
Soeuth's life is highlighted by its juxtaposition with Adam's. In discussing their respective childhoods, Fifield begins:
"In the summer of 1976, when I was four and spending my days in the sandbox
or on the swing set or chasing my dog, Oscar, around the yard, Soeuth was seven
and a child slave in Pol Pot's Cambodia."
The experiences and anxieties of the kid who grew up with "white
middle-class parents in the whitest state in America" provide a stark
contrast to the hardships faced by his Cambodian brother in the Khmer Rouge's
Killing Fields. The Fifield's move
to a farm house, for instance, coincides with Soeuth's relocation to a work camp
far from his family; Adam's distress about an upcoming winter storm is
contrasted with Soeuth's perpetual hunger and search for food.
Fifield adeptly highlights the difficulties of Soeuth's childhood without
demeaning or belittling his own. Nevertheless,
what were genuinely dramatic moments to Adam as a child seem inconsequential
when compared to Soeuth's life-and-death ordeals, making Soeuth's story all the
more gripping.
Although the quest to find ones place in the word is
universal, it is particularly challenging for Soeuth, who goes from having no
family to having two families, but not quite fitting into either.
His soul-searching takes him back to Cambodia, where the family whom he had long believed
dead was awaiting him. Before
he leaves on his trip, Soeuth contemplates the possibility of his remaining in Cambodia and
taking up his family's life of farming. Instead
of fulfilling this idyllic dream, however, Soeuth finds the harsh reality of
poverty and deprivation and relatives who take advantage of his generosity.
He finds people who view him not simply as a brother or nephew or cousin,
but as the rich American who they can milk for money.
Upon his return from Cambodia, Soeuth works laboriously so that he can
send money back to his family. He
is never quite able to appease everyone, and no matter how much he sends, it
never seems to be enough. One
day, he just gives up trying and moves to where they can no longer find or
contact him. As Fifield so aptly puts it: "He had hoped that when he
found his family and his country again, he would somehow know who he was, where
he belonged. But as he continued
his routine of emotionless tasks, he understood that it had all been an
illusion."
Soeuth's search for his place in the world does not end
here, however. Just as he has two
families and does not quite fit into either, he is also a part of two
communities. These two communities
intersect in Long Beach, California, a city bustling with the largest Cambodian
population in America. Fifield
observes: "What we did not, could not fathom was that this new migration
was merely a variant on his last one: Soeuth was still searching for his family,
hoping this time to find them not in one nuclear unit, but rather in the
deep-flowing, culturally familiar currents of the Cambodian-American
community." Alas, Soeuth does not
find the comfort and kinship that he is searching for in Long Beach either. He
returns to the East Coast to live with the family of a close high school friend
and eventually journeys back to Cambodia on a second trip to visit his birth family and make
peace with his past. Adam
accompanies him on this second trip, and with his American brother's help, Soeuth
finds
closure to some of the deep-seeded personal issues that have haunted him since
his escape from the Khmer Rouge.
In contemplating the lack of stability in Soeuth's life,
Adam reflects: "I looked at my brother and he did not look at me and I
wondered how he could take it, being cut adrift of all moorings, living in two
worlds but belonging in neither – and I felt selfishly relieved that the
stakes had not been set so high for me."
Throughout the book, Fifield's observations and thoughts concerning his
adopted brother are poignant and incisive, and he often rewards the reader with
such precious kernels of insight into the personal difficulties that plague
Soeuth. The author effectively
presents the social and existential struggles with which Soeuth must deal by
deftly balancing his admiration and sympathy for his brother with a reporter's
objectivity. While traditional Cambodian
refugee narratives focus on the struggle for physical survival, as concerned
brother and objective observer Fifield focuses on Soeuth's struggle to
satisfy equally important spiritual needs. A Blessing Over Ashes is a gripping
account of personal relationships and a person's quest for the one thing everyone seeks –
happiness. For Soeuth, this is a
goal more elusive to him than for most because he is more alone in the world
than most. Yet, even he is not
completely alone, and with the help of friends and a caring brother, he is
able to find his way home.
Reviewed by Sody Lay
Lecturer, Cambodian American Experience, UCLA
