The Healing Fields

The fragrance of soap. The taste of an egg. To Setan Lee, these were miracles.

In November 1979, after enduring more than four and a half years of agony and horror in the killing fields of Cambodia, he had made it to the Khao I Dang refugee camp in Thailand. And it was heaven.

"They gave us a little tiny bar of soap, like in a hotel, probably not the best soap in the world, probably something they used to clean clothes," Setan recalls. "But to me it was precious. I wanted to eat that soap. For the first time in four years, I got myself cleaned up."

He feasted on whatever food rations the camp handed out: rice, salty fish and, every now and then, an egg. When Setan cooked one for the first time, "I couldn't wait. It was so good."

The camp was a ragtag community of food, shelter and hope: The smoky smells of rice and fish, makeshift tents of plastic sheets, tanks of water and people in line, children laughing and children wailing. Refugees searching posted notices, hoping for news of a sister or a father. Cries of joy from relatives finding each other. Tears of sorrow from those who never would.

By 1980, Khao I Dang was home to some 130,000 Cambodian refugees, the nonprofit Khmer Institute estimates. It was the only camp whose residents were eligible for resettlement in countries outside Thailand or Cambodia.

Among the thousands of refugees pouring into the camp, Setan found his family as they arrived in pairs, or threes or individually from scattered points across the country.

Some never came. Setan's older brother, Monthy, the pharmacy student who had shared Setan's dream of opening a clinic, was dead. Rather than go to Paris as he had begged to do, Monthy had stayed behind to wait for Setan and was taken prisoner. He stood up to his captors and they shot him.

To this day, Setan can barely express the guilt he feels, the grief. But he knows it is nothing compared with the burden his parents carry.

In all, 38 members of Setan's extended family died in the killing fields.

They had so much to mourn, yet so many spared lives to celebrate. Here were his parents, his sisters, his baby brother.

And there was someone else, too. The family had taken in a 17-year-old waif who was alone in the camp. She had no family there, and she and his sisters had become friends. Her name was Randa Yos. Setan took one look at Randa and thought: "Beautiful! There was something about her that I liked to be with the rest of my life."

How to explain love at first sight? Setan tries, but he can't quite find the words. It was this simple: "From the minute I saw her, I knew I was in love with her. I knew I wanted to marry her."

Lord of the universe

Setan also began to meet Christian missionaries in the camp who gave a name to his new faith.

"It was then I came to believe who had saved me from being killed, who had been the one who drew the irrigation system," Setan says, recalling how he had been able to sketch a design demanded by the Khmer Rouge even though he had no idea how to do it.

Then one day in the camp, Setan saw a man he thought he recognized but couldn't quite place. The man was scrubbed clean now, dressed neatly. But the eyes were the same. It was the mysterious stranger from the jungle who had first told him that Jesus Christ is Lord of the universe. He became Setan's pastor, and without hesitation "he asked me to help him start the church."

Every morning, he taught Setan one verse from Scripture. The man had no Bible; he had memorized each verse. In the afternoon, Setan went out among the people in the camp to teach the verse to others. He was a quick study. He had a gift. In this way, he learned Christianity and taught it at the same time. "It was four months before I ever saw a Bible," Setan says. "But I already had become a pastor."

Setan estimates that there were about 35,000 Christians - some who had already been Christians, many converts - in their refugee church, an open-air, haphazard construction of rice sacks stretched over bamboo poles. They called it the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It was in this church that Setan recognized another face among those who came to hear him preach. But this face was from a far more painful time. Sitting in the group of worshippers was the young female guard who had suffocated Setan's friend with a plastic bag for trying to sneak him some food. The young woman cringed when he looked into her eyes.

"This was the lady I hated, I wanted to kill. I felt it so strongly. I wanted revenge," Setan recalls.

"I was praying, 'Lord, take control of me.'

"And all of a sudden, I don't know why, I felt peace. I felt compassion and mercy for her."

He broke into tears as he knelt in front of her and took her hands into his. God has forgiven, he told her. Ask God to forgive you for all you have done. She didn't reply.

"I never saw her again."

Setan also began working for an American Embassy unit posted at the camp. He knew some English from his school days and became fluent almost immediately - "a supernatural gift," he calls it.

But Khao I Dang was only an outpost. Returning to Cambodia was unthinkable. The Khmer Rouge had ransacked the Cambodian banks. Setan's father had lost everything, and his business partner had fled Cambodia and emptied their joint bank account in Bangkok, Thailand.

Setan's arranged marriage to another prosperous family's daughter had been called off. Her family's fortune was safe in another country. Setan had no money. And he was a Christian.

The Lees agreed to start over in a new place.

The United Nations listed the first-world countries that were accepting Cambodian refugees: the United States, Canada, Australia, England, France and a few smaller European countries. The application process was simple: Write a letter to a country's embassy - better yet, write to more than one to increase your odds.

Setan and his family decided to go for broke. It was the United States or nothing. Setan had known Americans at school, had met more at the refugee camp. And he figured it this way: "If you're a slave to the poor, their leftovers are nothing. But the rich - their leftovers are plenty. And the richest is America."

So Setan found a dirty, torn piece of paper and wrote to the American Embassy on behalf of his father: "My name is Chan Lee. Together with my wife and children we have 14 people. We are survivors of the killing fields. We want very much to go to America. If you feel generously, compassionately toward us, please take us to your country.

"That's all I said. Sincerely, Chan Lee. That's it."

He had no envelope. He put the letter in a box along with thousands of others.

It worked. The family was notified a few months later that they would be relocated to Aurora, Colorado, where a local church would sponsor them as part of the resettlement program.

Love and marriage

But young Setan had one more piece of business.

Setan's parents and the church elders - still steeped in the Cambodian tradition of arranged marriages - told him they had a young woman in mind for him. He was starting over in a new country. He needed a wife.

Setan was apprehensive. He had fallen in love with Randa. But he was a good Cambodian. He knew he would be expected to fulfill the wishes of his family and his new church.

"I said to myself, 'Setan, I hope it's the one you like.'

"And it was."

His parents and the church elders had fallen in love with Randa, too. They knew she was lonely and in despair over the loss of her family. They knew she had nowhere to turn.

But Randa, not 18 yet, was torn. "I was too young. I never thought anything about love."

She initially had thought of Setan, four years her senior, as an older brother or an uncle. Loving Brother Setan, she had called him.

She clung to the remnants of her dream to become a dentist. She felt ambivalent about going so many thousands of miles away.

Mostly, she thought of the family she had left behind. It was impossible, she admitted to herself, to risk going back for them. She lamented her decision not to bring them along in the first place.

"I cried every night. I kept hoping they would come to the camp. Every day I would watch, look for them. So many people came. But they never came."

Though she loved Setan, "I wanted to go back home to Cambodia to get my family so many times. But then I thought, 'If I go home, how will I save them?' When I get to a better place, a better time, a better life, I will bring them to the United States one of these days.

"My mind kept going back and forth, back and forth, like two people in my head."

Her sorrow grew as she learned that at least 30 members of her extended family had died in the killing fields.

Then a man in the camp gave her advice. Randa, he said, you have to go on with your life. When you are strong enough, you can come back to save your family.

Randa had found another place to turn for guidance, too.

She initially had started sneaking into Christian church services to learn English.

She was angry, filled with despair. But in church, she found peace. The pastors were kind and welcoming.

Gradually, she became "convicted in my heart" and found comfort in the hymns she learned in English: "We are one in the spirit. We are one in the Lord. They will know we are Christians by our love."

In the Scripture verses she learned, she found hope and joy.

"Before I knew the Lord, I worried all the time," Randa says. "I had a lot of revenge in my heart for the Khmer Rouge, what they did to me, what they did to my family. A lot of confusion.

"Every day I went and learned more Scripture. When I would pray, when I would read his word, I would feel peace in my heart. I stopped worrying."

In the church, Randa also found a safe haven many nights. At dusk, groups of marauding men crashed through different sections of the camp, hunting for teen-age girls and young women. They ripped open the plastic sheets that served as doors, dragged the girls away and raped them. Sometimes they raped the girls right in the tents, right in front of their families.

Some of the young women killed themselves. Some got pregnant. For many, their lives were ruined. Rape was a shame brought on the woman and her entire family. The families were too afraid or ashamed to report the rapes.

Every night, Randa headed for a prayer chain at the church. Men and women from the camp surrounded the young women in the area between the altar and the chairs. In groups of 10 they prayed quietly for an hour while the others slept, then another group would pray for an hour, then another. Each night, the prayer chains - sometimes numbering 100 - prayed until dawn.

"The men wouldn't go into a church or a temple. They would not disturb you if you are praying."

'Quite an experience'

Randa decided to go on with her life. Still a little nervous, she asked Setan to wait to get married until they got to the United States, but her lovestruck suitor was insistent.

On Feb. 2, 1980, Setan and Randa were married by a Cambodian minister and an English missionary in the first Christian wedding ceremony at the Khao I Dang refugee camp. Christians crowded in and around the small rice-sack church to hear Randa and Setan recite their vows. "We hadn't invited them," Randa says, laughing. "But they came anyway."

Unlike Cambodia's elaborate three-day weddings with gifts, music, traditional outfits and mountains of food, this ceremony was simple and short. The English missionary, whom Randa called "my spiritual father," walked her down the aisle and gave her away.

"We had no idea. They said, 'You have to walk down the aisle. Setan will be waiting for you.' Then all of a sudden, the pastor started blessing us and announced we were husband and wife."

The wedding feast consisted of cookies for their unexpected guests.

"It was," Setan says, "quite an experience."

The Lees left for the United States much more quickly than many other refugees. Five months after they had moved from Khao I Dang to a processing center to prepare for their passage out of Thailand, the Lees signed a loan from the Church World Services aid organization for the airfare to their new home: a grand total of $350 for all 14 of them - Setan's parents, their four sons, five daughters, two sons-in-law and a daughter-in-law.

Once the plane was in the air, the 14 Lees held hands, excitement and sadness coming together.

Randa was convinced she would never see Cambodia or her family again.

Yet she and Setan had made a promise in the refugee camp, a vow they carried with them to their new home. In whatever way possible, they would contribute to rebuilding their country. They had no idea how or when, but they were determined.

"We thought about contributing to our people in some degree if there was an opportunity in our lifetime," Setan says.

"We'd been through hell, but then we go to heaven now. We wanted our people to taste a little bit of heaven."

In November 1980, they flew to Denver by way of Bangkok, Hong Kong, Nome and Oakland. Looking down from the plane's windows, they thought the white fields surrounding Denver were salt.

They had never seen snow.