When Broken Glass Floats

Athy and her family, along with hundreds of others, are taken into a forest where they are directed to build huts in which they will live. They spend their days working, preparing fields to plant yams and yucca. Although they are initially given a small ration of rice and pork, eventually the food stores run out, and they must scavenge for food. They mainly eat boiled leaves, leaves that before the Khmer Rouge were routinely used to feed livestock. Athy’s mother notes that now they “are worse than pigs” (121). When they can, they also eat insects, tadpoles, toads, mice, and rats. Athy observes, “Food is food. Anything, everything tastes good—even the smell of roasting crickets makes stomachs rumble with desire” (121).

In addition to malnutrition and starvation, Athy and the other newcomers to this labor camp suffer from edema caused by starvation. Everyone also suffers from infectious diarrhea, usually caused by a lack of sanitation and poor hygiene. In such close quarters it is almost inevitable that people will get sick. Athy’s three-year-old brother Vin gets very ill, and all they can do for him is try to keep the flies from feeding on his sore bottom.

Athy’s sister Ry takes Vin to a nearby hospital, though there are no real doctors there.