“Do you know why we call it “szoon”?”
- Danae Hendrickson
- Feb 23
- 3 min read
From the desk of Legacies of War’s CEO “KOUL-mander in Chief”, Sera Koulabdara
“Do you know why we call it szoon?”
My uncle asked without looking at me. He stood beside the hospital window, eyes fixed on something far beyond the parking lot below. The trees were moving in the wind. Birds landed and lifted again. He did not see them. He was somewhere else.
Before I could answer, he spoke.
“It’s because you are nothing there. Nothing to your keepers. Nothing to the world.”
Szoon.
The Lao word for zero. Nothing. Emptiness.
It is what we call refugee camps.
The word pressed against my ribs and stayed there.
The past few days had drained us. My mom, my uncle, and I had been living in the hospital while my aunt, his wife, waited for heart surgery. The air smelled sterile and heavy. Machines kept rhythm with anxious beeps. We were exhausted from holding our breath. Exhausted from fear. From not knowing which way the doctor’s face would turn when he walked in.
“Oyyy, you don’t have to tell her anything. She doesn’t need to know. What good is it?” my mom said sharply.
She has never liked my questions. Especially the ones about the war. Mother believes some stories should stay buried because digging them up only brings ghosts into the room.
Upset, she left.
I knew I should have followed her. I should have chosen her side. But I stayed seated, rooted in place.
I was frozen, paralyzed because my uncle was no longer in that hospital room.
He was twenty years old again.
He began telling me about 1971 in Laos. About driving trucks for his uncle, a man connected to the CIA during the American Secret War. He transported sacks of rice to storage facilities run by the “Aii, Nong”, the Pathet Lao. Rice was not just food. It was power.
One day, on his delivery route, he saw them.
Hungry villagers standing at the roadside. Southerners like him.
Their clothes hung loose. Their faces were sharp with hunger. They did not even reach out. Hunger had already taught them that begging did not guarantee mercy.
“I couldn’t drive past them,” he said quietly.
He gave them a few bags of rice. Enough to quiet the burning in their stomachs for a short while. Enough to risk everything.
He knew what it could cost him. He did it anyway.
He delivered the rest of the rice to its destination and said nothing. That night, his friends found him in a panic.
“They are charging you with theft,” they told him. “You have to leave. Now.”
The word theft. As if feeding the starving were stealing. As if compassion were a crime.
At twenty years old, my uncle ran. He fled across the Mekong River into Thailand under cover of darkness. He left behind his home, his language spoken freely, the land that had shaped him. He left without knowing if he would ever see his family again.
That is how someone becomes szoon.
Then you lose your name and become paperwork.
Then you become a body inside a filthy, fenced perimeter.
Then you become a number: Zero.
In the hospital room, my aunt lay down the hall with wires taped to her chest, waiting for surgeons to hold her heart in their hands. My uncle remained at the window, the same man who once chose starving villagers over his own safety.
They tried to reduce him to nothing.
But a man who risks his life to feed the hungry is not nothing. He is proof that even in a place called nothing, humanity survives.
While in camp, he witnessed starvation, beatings, rape and other cruelties from guards. They rationed survival with precision.
“They gave us just enough to keep us alive,” he said. “They profited from the rest.”
Not enough to live. Just enough not to die.
As he spoke, the hospital room felt smaller. The beeping machines sounded different. Survival has always come at a cost in our family.
My uncle continued on passionately. Watching the news now, seeing other wars unfold, he worries about civilians who will end up where he once stood. Behind wire. Waiting to be counted. Reduced to nothing.
He stopped when my mom returned.
I must have looked chalk white. My hands were cold, pressed in a prayer.
He gently patted my shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” he said with conviction. “Your aunt will come out of this strong. She’s a survivor. She’s been through much worse.”
Much worse.I knew what he meant. I nodded.
My mom closed her eyes and whispered, “Sathu.”
