Never Fall Down

Arn’s group is in chaos after Sombo’s desertion, and Arn decides to escape to Thailand. He is lost in the jungle for weeks, resorting to animal-like behavior to survive. He contracts malaria, passes out, and hallucinates that his dead family is calling out to him. He thinks he is finally dying and welcomes death because he will no longer be in pain. Then, like a scene from Alice in Wonderland, he sees a white rabbit that beckons him to cross a river. He reaches the edge of the jungle, and though he is afraid to run out into the open field for fear of bullets, he knows that across this real or imaginary river is Thailand.

With the last of his strength, Arn wades chin-deep through the river: “the body I see in the water, so pale, so thin, like only bone, like bone of dead boy in the jungle” (150). Finally, he is able to crawl out onto the bank to safety, where he passes out again from exhaustion.

Arn wakes to the sound of girls giggling and putting herbs on his wounds. In his fevered state, he thinks they are his sisters or angels. A voice through a bullhorn tells all refugees to come out of hiding and go to the refugee camp. Arn thinks it is a trap and tries to stop the girls as they run toward the voice. But instead of gunshots he hears a Cambodian love song from before the war playing over speakers.

The song is coming from a bus full of Cambodian refugees like him. As he rides to the refugee camp, he looks out the windows and sees Thai people wearing all colors of clothing, not just the black pajamas of the Khmer Rouge. Everyone on the bus is joyfully singing along to the love song, and despite their off-key voices, it is the most beautiful sound Arn has ever heard. He is shaking and cold, still weak from starvation, and still shell-shocked from the war, but he feels his heart swelling until he can hold back no longer: “Something inside me break open and I taste salty tears on my lips and hear my voice, my own voice. Singing” (155).