A Name for One Who Survived : Nineteen years later, a Cambodian woman goes home to honor her family members who died in the killing fields.

She dreamed about salt. She dreamed about rice.

“Rice with salt was the best food you could eat. But back then, even eating dirt or the bark off of trees was good. Anything to fill your stomach. Even pebbles tasted like roast beef.”

Samnang Siv Wilson, 36, once knew starvation intimately.

“I dreamed about a silly sandwich I used to love to eat at my favorite bistro in Phnom Penh,” Wilson said. “It was a beautiful dream about a beautiful sandwich, I could smell it, taste it, but then I woke up and I couldn’t help it, I started crying.”

Nineteen years ago Friday, Wilson was 17 and pregnant when Khmer Rouge communist guerrillas led by Pol Pot ousted the U.S.-backed Lon Nol regime and took over the Cambodian capital. Her parents had arranged her marriage to a member of the Lon Nol military. Her husband, who was later accused of being a CIA spy and executed, tried to persuade his young bride to leave the country. But she wanted to remain with her parents.

“It was very confusing,” she says now. “I never read the newspaper. I wasn’t political. I was young. I ask myself now why was I so stupid. I didn’t even know what communism was.”

For Wilson and other survivors of the Cambodian genocide, April 15, 1975, was the beginning of Year Zero or “the backward years,” the start of a plan to reorganize the country into an agrarian utopia. “If you lived in the city, you were moved to the country,” she recalled. “If you lived in the country, you were moved to another rural area. I was on the streets with hundreds and hundreds of people, looking for my parents. I never saw my family again after that day.”

The reorganization went awry when the guerrillas began a program of ethnic cleansing against anyone with Chinese or Vietnamese ancestry. Doctors, lawyers, Buddhist monks, artists and intellectuals also were purged. By the time South Vietnam invaded in 1979 and liberated the country from the Khmer Rouge, millions had been tortured, killed and dumped into mass graves known as “the killing fields.”

“I had to give birth to my son under the Pol Pot regime. I was totally alone,” Wilson recalled. “Looking back, I don’t know how I survived. Many times I wanted to kill myself, but I didn’t because I wanted to see my parents. I wanted to show my parents how I raised a boy by myself.”

Today, on the Cambodian New Year and to mark Year Zero, Wilson remembers her mother, father, brother and two sisters. All were accused of being CIA conspirators and killed. Wilson will honor them by fasting and becoming a Buddhist nun for a year.

“As I was walking through a minefield (in 1980) to the Thai-Cambodian border, I kept praying to Lord Buddha. If I live, I will become a nun. Since then, I have wanted to go home to honor my prayer.”

So after 14 years in America, Wilson went back to her native Cambodia. Wearing a traditional white sarong, she will kneel and light candles and incense at a rebuilt Buddhist temple in Phnom Penh.

She also hopes to clean up her karma. “I stole food at night. I stole food for a pregnant woman. I stole food for older people. I never treated myself to real food. By doing for people, I gained merit to survive. But I did steal and for that I have to atone.”

Nobel Peace Prize nominee Mohagaosanada, a Cambodian priest, will preside as Wilson makes offerings of flowers and incense, tea and sugar to her parents and to Lord Buddha. After she receives blessings from the monks, birds will be released over the temple, a symbol for the release of bad karma for herself, her family and her country.

Her teen-age son, Simiti Siv, will join his mother in the ordination by shaving his head and eyebrows. Wilson’s only surviving brother, Sichan Siv, who was a special consultant on Southeast Asian affairs during the Bush Administration, also will attend.

“I still think about those times a lot,” Wilson said. “I really don’t know why the Khmer Rouge didn’t kill me.” Her voice trailed off. She grew silent, then smiled. Samnang is a popular name in Cambodia. In the Khmer language, it means lucky.