Contents

Praise for Late Blossom

Author’s Note

Family Tree

Map of Viet Nam

YEAR OF THE CAT

RIPE FOR SERVITUDE

BEGINNINGS OF LOSS

TAKING SIDES

THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ELEPHANT

ORGANIZED DEATH

SCENTS OF WAR

IMPRISONING A VILLAGE

PEASANT REVOLTS

TO SAI GON

CITY LIFE

VILLAGE REVISITED

THE BATTLE OF NEW YEAR’S EVE

UNCLE NAM’S HOUSE

MEETING THE AMERICANS

REVOLUTIONARY CELL

FAREWELL TO A DREAM

APPLES TOO PRECIOUS TO EAT

FINAL DAYS

ANDREW

ACROSS THE SEA

A NEW LIFE

SAI GON REVISITED

MY FATHER’S STORY

OTHER LOVED ONES

BITTER LEGACY

Major Historical Events

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About The Author

About Monsoon Books

Copyright

Praise for Late Blossom

“A haunting account of a young, indomitable Vietnamese woman’s life and love that describes the two intertwining wars coexisting in Viet Nam -- the the American war against Communism and the Civil war between those supporting the Americans and the authoritarian South Vietnamese regime and the ‘nationalists’ who supported Ho Chi Minh’s struggle to regain independence and freedom for Viet Nam. Ms Lam emphasizes the profoundly negative impact of the ‘strategic hamlet’ program and the US bombing that stirred fierce opposition to the South Vietnamese regime and empowered the ‘nationalists’. Late Blossom also provides extraordinary descriptions of the great events at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the ‘Tet offensive’ in 1968, and the fall of the Sai Gon regime in 1975, illuminating insights into the reactions of ordinary South Vietnamese.”

Desaix Anderson. Charge d’ Affaires, 1995-1997, US Embassy, Ha Noi.

“For me a good book is one that leaves its mark on you. Late Blossom does that. I couldn’t put it down. It’s what I call an accompaniment story, that you read again and again. Like a favourite teen title that you read again as an adult, but as an adolescent at heart.

It’s an exceptional book that describes the war in Viet Nam without obscuring it, with an epic dimension, much like ‘Gone with the Wind’ and the ‘Thibaults’ of Roger Martin, with the same themes of war, sacrifices, bombings and destinies that cross. The characters are captivating and we share the dreams and disenchantments of the heroine.”

Badia Hadj-Nasser, bestselling French author

For the victims of all wars

Author’s Note

On ‘truth’:

Clive James once observed that autobiographies are full of fiction, while novels are full of reality. I would like to address this issue up front. I have tried here to present what happened, simply, directly, and without judgment. It is for the reader to make judgments; a wide range of interpretations is inevitable. Reality is also complex, and I have deliberately left it so. There are contradictions in making sense of things, inconsistencies of behaviour, and moral choices with many, many angles to them. This is what war does to people.

I have tried to make the account accurate within my own complex frame of reference. It is my reality. Acknowledging that all people have their own filters and frameworks, this is as close as I can get to what happened. The conversations and events are as I remember them, or as others have directly reported them to me. Most background facts are drawn from a large literature, given at the end.

On names:

The name of my country, Viet Nam, should be written as two separate words – like Hong Kong, United Kingdom, United States. The same rule applies to all Vietnamese names of cities, towns, buildings, persons, and animals. For example, the capital of Ha Noi, the city of Sai Gon, the port of Hai Phong, the battle of Dien Bien Phu, the street of Cach Mang Thang Tam should not be condensed and written as Hanoi, Saigon, Haiphong, Dienbienphu, and Cachmangthangtam. In the Vietnamese language, each noun, each verb, each adverb, and each adjective carries only a single sound. There are a few names that are not of Vietnamese origin, such as Tonkin and Cochinchina (given by the French) and Dalat and Pleiku (tribal names) and each of these names carries more than one sound.

Vietnamese heads of state were referred to as “Emperors” before China’s millennium-long domination. Under the Chinese, they were known simply as “Kings of An Nam” – rulers of the peaceful south. However, at the beginning of the Nguyen dynasty in 1802, Gia Long broke away from the Chinese influence and proclaimed himself Emperor of Viet Nam. Domestically all Vietnamese rulers adopted a full Chinese style imperial regalia. The line of emperors came to an end with Bao Dai, who abdicated in 1945.

Following the country’s reunification in 1975, a number of street names in cities and towns were changed. For example, Tu Do Street is now Dong Khoi Street, Thong Nhat Avenue is now Le Duan Avenue, Cong Ly Avenue is now Nam Ky Khoi Nghia Avenue. Streets named after Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French and who had once been considered as “heroes” by the ARVN regime were removed in 1975. Streets and place names in French have also been renamed, with the exception of those few honouring the individuals who had made great humanitarian contributions, such as Dr Pasteur, Dr Calmette, and Dr Yersin.

On poetry:

Vietnamese people, not only scholars, often express their emotions in the form of verse. Those who compose poetry include farmers, fishermen, housewives, soldiers, factory workers, pedicab drivers, street hawkers, a girl on the bus, a beggar at the temple…

On anonymity:

Several names of individuals in this book have been changed in order to protect their identity. Names of my home village, the local garrison, and the province have also been changed.

Frequent abbreviations:

VIET MINH – Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi. League for the Independence of Viet Nam (Nationalist force during the French War).

ARVN – Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (American-backed regime in the South).

NLF – National Liberation Front (Nationalist forces in South Viet Nam during the American War).

VIET CONG – Nationalist Force, labeled as Vietnamese Communists (term used by Americans and ARVN regime).

USAID – United States Agency for International Development.

Family Tree

Map of Viet Nam

YEAR OF THE CAT

Little caged bird,

Who will send you across the sea,

To flee your cage to find freedom?

I was born in the Year of the Metal Cat, 1951. Every twelfth year, according to the Vietnamese lunar calendar, is a Cat year. An astrologer once predicted that my life would change significantly during each such year.

And so it turned out.

In 1963, the Year of the Water Cat, my family left our ravaged village in the Mekong Delta for the capital city of Sai Gon. We had tried to escape the cruelties and dangers of war. In exchange we now lived in one of the poorest sections of Sai Gon, at the end of a narrow dirt alley, in a small house with mud walls and an earthen floor backing onto a bamboo grove and a cemetery.

The shock, after my rural childhood, was intense. Most of the houses in my new neighbourhood were run down and only a few could afford electricity. The rest of us still used kerosene lamps. Out on the main road, about half a kilometre away, were rows of electrified street lamps and, farther along, larger houses, French colonial in style, with spacious gardens, all equipped with electricity. There, at the intersection where the main alley began that led toward our house, an old man with a long white beard managed a herbal medicine shop, a big Chinese woman ran a barbecue restaurant, and clusters of food stalls sold French bread, noodle soups, and various types of sweets. Nearby stood two giant metal containers where the whole neighbourhood was supposed to deposit its garbage and where one or two beggars could often be seen sifting for usable items.

The main alley itself was mostly paved but nearly all its branches – the smaller alleys that wound their way between houses – were unpaved and turned into muddy swamps during the monsoon season. The front yards were uniformly tiny, but many held a fruit tree – a breast-milk tree, for instance, or a guava, or a water-apple – and young children managed to find room for hopscotch, jump rope or chopsticks tossing.

On the way to our house was a large French bakery. More than half its employees were young men who worked mostly at night. Because of the heat from the burning charcoal ovens, they sweated terribly, in their shorts and sleeveless shirts; every morning the entire neighbourhood was filled with the aroma of their freshly baked bread. Each morning we also heard the voices of traveling street hawkers selling breakfast food – French bread sandwiches, sweet glutinous rice, beef and chicken noodle soup, crawling cakes (banh bo), and falling cakes (banh lot).

Like the majority of houses in the area, our house had no running water when we first moved in. We had to either carry what we needed from the neighbourhood well, or pay Mr Tu, the water carrier, to do it for us. The well was usually crowded with teenage girls and women who laughed and giggled while drawing their water. Near the well rose a huge breast-milk tree (vu sua) that provided permanent shade over the entire area.

Life in the city was different. The sweet cooling breezes we had known in the countryside were now replaced by permanent tropical heat and humidity, and the peace and tranquility of our delta village by the raucous noises and pungent smells of city life. Our new neighbours quarreled loudly, day and night, and shouted profanities at each other; rival hawkers argued and fought; motor scooters smoked and putt-putted; three wheel pedicabs, called cyclos – clattered and rang bells; radios and televisions chattered and sang. And from the distance, as the years passed, came the encroaching sound of gunfire.

Now it was the spring of 1975, the fateful Year of the Wood Cat. I had just turned twenty-four, and although my father still worked for the same government transportation ministry where he had been employed since 1956, I had become the leading breadwinner for my parents, four brothers and a sister. I now worked as the personal assistant to a deputy minister, arranging meetings for foreign businessmen with senior government officials and heads of Vietnamese companies. My office was located in the heart of Sai Gon, on the ground floor of a lovely colonial building on Tu Do Street, known under the French as Rue Catinat. It ran from the Notre Dame cathedral down to the Sai Gon River. Near my office, standing prominently on the same street, was the familiar statue in black cast-iron that overlooked Lam Son Square, once known as Place François Garnier. It depicted two soldiers holding their guns and pointing them, ironically, at the House of Representatives on the opposite side of the Square. For many years, Lam Son Square had been the focal point of public protests against the American-backed regime.

Tu Do Street itself was filled with offices, art galleries, boutiques, theatres, fashionable restaurants, and three of Sai Gon’s five-star hotels. All of the buildings were built in the French colonial style – with red tile roofs, French doors and windows and French tile floors in black and white or floral designs. Rows of evenly spaced trees on either side of the street also gave it a French flavour. To judge from photos I had seen in magazines, Tu Do Street could have passed for a Parisian thoroughfare. Most of the French restaurants in the area remained open in the early months of 1975, like the Aterbea, run by a Corsican who was still able to get fresh strawberries from Dalat, and there were several cafés in the French style, such as the Brodard across from my office, with tables on the sidewalk and a zinc bar within. The Givral Patisserie was a few steps further away. Each morning, the fresh aromas of Viet Nam’s famous coffee from Ban Me Thuot and Givra’s freshly baked croissants wafted up along the street. Further along toward the river was Maxim’s, considered the best French restaurant in all Indochina. A few steps from my office, not too far from Notre Dame Cathedral, were the grand hotels like the Continental and the Caravelle in Lam Son Square, the Rex on Le Loi Boulevard, and finally the Majestic down on the river front itself. But that spring, even though the centre of Sai Gon kept some of its bustle and there were people who still fooled themselves into believing the war could never penetrate the city, the noose had begun to tighten around us.

On 27 March 1975, the Saigon Post carried the headline “Reds Take Over Tam Ky” (a provincial capital seven hundred kilometres to the north). The newspaper reported half a million refugees in Da Nang, where Northern troops were fifteen kilometres from the outskirts of the city. It said that a thousand refugees had been killed while fleeing the Central Highlands, and an overloaded ship, with three thousand refugees aboard, had gone down in a storm near Hue, the old imperial city. Route 7 from Pleiku, the paper reported, was the scene of a “long, bloody evacuation,” and this latest Northern offensive had generated, all in all, nearly one million refugees. While Northern troops continued their advance toward the capital, South Vietnamese government officials were pleading for the warring sides to observe Article 11 of the Paris Agreement and avoid retaliation and mistreatment of individuals who had cooperated on either side. Signs of crisis were all the more visible on the city streets. There were more hawkers than ever, selling whatever they could get their hands on, and heavily made-up bargirls searching desperately for foreigners. Meanwhile, our well-dressed Caucasian visitors had been quietly slipping away, leaving the city to be fought over between the khaki-clad Americanised army of the Republic of Viet Nam and the black cotton uniformed peasant army of the National Liberation Front.

The military was now everywhere, and barbed wire surrounded their buildings and emplacements. In our neighbourhood, groups of soldiers could appear any time, day or night. Sometimes they claimed they were looking for young men who were evading the draft, but incidents of gang rape had become common. In reality, they were members of the defeated Southern army who had retreated to the city after their sectors were taken over by the National Liberation Front and Northern troops. Left to forage for themselves, they preyed upon the poorer neighbourhoods where people were intimidated by anyone who wore a uniform.

I myself experienced a series of narrow escapes. One night, on my way home from work and away from the busy main street, I passed a group of soldiers in an alley. Some of them were leaning against a dark wall, and they were talking and laughing. When they saw me they fell silent. I could see the red ends of their cigarettes and feel them staring at me. Their stares made me shiver. I quickened my step, but knew I couldn’t move fast enough to avoid them. I wanted to run, but sensed that would be the worst thing to do. Just then, I spotted an older man coming out of a building. He was wearing a white shirt with tie and dark trousers. His back was stooped a little, his hair was grey, and he had on a pair of clear eyeglasses.

I rushed up to him and called out, “Good evening, Uncle!” He understood the situation at a glance. He greeted me enthusiastically in return and, taking my arm, had me walk right beside him, talking as though we’d always known each other. He headed us in the direction away from my house, but that didn’t matter to me. Behind us, to my vast relief, the laughter of the soldiers faded. Afterwards, the kindly man offered to walk me home, “I think it would be better if I take you all the way to your house.”

But I said to him, “Thank you, Uncle! I am so lucky to have met you. But I think it’s now safe for me to walk home by myself.”

He was a herbal medicine doctor who had been visiting a patient in the area. He bade me goodbye with a bow and a warning, “From now on, tell your brothers to meet you at the bus stop.”

This I didn’t do, but I stopped working late in the office or shopping in the city centre in the evening, and always made sure to get home before dark.

Others weren’t as lucky. The niece of Mr Tu, our neighbour and the well-water carrier – Bay was her name – had been gang-raped by a marauding group of men in military uniform. Not long before that, the body of a young woman had been found by a beggar in one of the garbage dumps near the main road, not far from where we lived. The woman had been raped and murdered. No one in our area even knew who she had been.

Meanwhile, the fall of the former imperial capital, where thousands had been slaughtered, made it clear that we in Sai Gon would not be spared. My situation was further compromised by the fact that my uncle, Nam, in whose house I had once lived at the Joint General Staff Headquarters in Tan Son Nhat, was a colonel in the army of South Viet Nam. He was a man with a “blood debt” for his control of major military operations in the South, among them the notorious Operation Phoenix. The Phoenix’s goal had been to uproot the National Liberation Front’s infrastructure, and during its campaign there were mass arrests, detentions, and murders of “Viet Cong” agents and suspects. Widespread incidents of abuse occurred in rural villages and many innocent people were killed. Nam had already been marked for elimination by the National Liberation Front. He had long since left Sai Gon, but as a member of his family, I was sure to be hauled in for interrogation.

In addition, for several years I had been dating foreigners, especially Americans, who were now the deadly enemy of the combined nationalist forces. How long could I manage to conceal this if subjected to investigation? And even if I succeeded, what made me think I could escape the fate that awaited so many women in the ruins of war, who, even now, were being raped, beaten, shot, and dumped in ditches by the soldiers of the two armies?

My great hope was an Englishman named Andrew, whom I had met the previous year at my office. Andrew was a management theorist who taught at a major university in Hong Kong. He was doing research on corporate management in various Asian countries on the Pacific Rim. I had arranged contacts for him with a university professor and several Vietnamese companies. When he and a colleague came to my office the first time in July, 1974, he impressed me, even though the meeting was brief and formal. The next day, when we bumped into each other on Tu Do Street and exchanged greetings, I felt a current between us, and even though it would be months before we met again, my instincts were right.

Andrew contrasted markedly with most of the Western men I had known before. There was the way he spoke, for one thing – not only the charming and distinguished British accent but the complete and polished sentences! He had a cultivated, highly intelligent air.

Although he wasn’t conventionally good looking, I felt a strong physical attraction to him. He had curly auburn hair, eyes that suggested intellect and mischief at once, a handsome mouth with sensual lips. Though he had a stocky build, he moved and walked with grace and confidence. He wore a dark blue pinstripe suit that first time, and a shirt of an unusual shade of pink. Pink to me was a woman’s colour, yet this most masculine of men wore it with total insouciance. I also couldn’t help noticing that there was no wedding band on his fourth finger – a fact that intrigued me no end – and in the ensuing months I was unable to put him out of my mind.

In mid-December I sent Andrew a Christmas card. It was an excuse to re-open contact between us and I wasn’t sure he would write back. But to my pleasant surprise, three weeks after the holidays I received a letter from him. It began by addressing me formally by my surname and then continued:

How very kind of you to send a Christmas card. It was very nice to hear from you again.

We are now expecting to be in Saigon at the end of January, provisionally the week beginning January 27. I am waiting to hear from Professor Pho Ba Long and the Vietnam Management Association.

I shall certainly make a point of coming to pay my respects to you in person. We know so few people in Saigon it is nice to have a friendly contact. Perhaps we could have dinner at one of those magnificent French restaurants and you could tell me more about life in Vietnam…

I sent him a response the next day – telling him how delighted I was to have heard from him. And from that day on I was waiting anxiously for Andrew’s second visit.

A few days prior to his arrival I received another letter from Andrew, in which he revealed – to my great disappointment – that he was married. He wanted me to know this before his trip. On the other hand, he wrote, the fact that he was married ought not to prevent us from getting to know each other and becoming friends. That may have been his point of view but for me “getting to know each other and becoming friends” was a very complicated matter. I’d already done that once, and now the memories of Robert, my American lieutenant, came flooding back into my consciousness. On the one hand, I already knew in my heart that I preferred dating Western men. There were any number of striking differences between them and Asians, not the least of which, I had observed, was their solicitude toward women, their willingness to help without being asked, their politeness, even their deference.

But why, I asked in my naiveté and despair, did these men – these men of my dreams – come to me only when they were already married? Was this to be my lot always? If not, why was it now about to happen to me a second time, when all I really wanted was to love a worthy and single Westerner and to have a future with him?

* * *

Andrew arrived in Sai Gon in January, and he invited me to a French restaurant – the Aterbea – on the first evening. In my memory everything is still clear, from the watercress salad, the fresh strawberries and the candlelight, to how attentively he listened. I also remember, as we talked about the war and my desire to leave the country for a better future, how the tensions in me slowly ebbed away. Suddenly, in his presence, everything seemed possible. He too relaxed, and slowly, in the lovely chemistry of two people drawn to each other, we melted together. The next thing I remember was standing next to the window in his hotel room, his hand on my shoulder. Andrew turned me toward him, and we kissed for the first time. During the next two days we were inseparable. He would bring me to my office on Tu Do Street in the morning, come back to collect me at the end of my working day, and at night the overwhelming tides of love carried us both away.

From that point, Andrew worked frantically on a series of schemes to get me out of the country, but in the increasing confusion none of them could quite be finalized.

In the first attempt, a Cathay Pacific Airways’ purser would get me on a flight to Hong Kong for a proposed marriage. When that did not succeed, a Chinese friend of Andrew’s who had a nephew with a company in Sai Gon offered to make me an employee and transfer me. That did not work either. A few days later, I was notified that a New Zealander would enter a false marriage with me. Again, no success. A Frenchman then proposed to marry me in a mariage blanc. The complexity of the French bureaucracy did not, however, allow sufficient time for this to materialize. It was then arranged that I would marry a Chinese man who held a British passport. This plan too fell through. One of Andrew’s last resorts was for me to board a fishing boat and a cargo ship on the Sai Gon River, cross the South China Sea and eventually sail into Hong Kong harbour. Again, failure.

To Andrew’s efforts were added others of my own devising, each more desperate and foolhardy than the next. I had met a non-white American who promised to take me out of the country when he was evacuated. However, he demanded that I become intimate with him in exchange for my freedom. Reluctantly, but thinking there was no other choice, I entered the agreement, but after a few days I couldn’t stand it any longer and fled his apartment. Like many a Vietnamese young woman caught in the maelstrom of war, I did things that still shame me to tears when I remember them.

Meanwhile, all over downtown Sai Gon were the unmistakable signs of imminent disaster. Whole businesses were shutting down. Flights and sea passages were now cancelled more often than not and heartrending stories circulated about shipwrecks on the open seas, people starving to death, people being attacked by pirates and devoured by sharks. Key personnel vanished from the offices of the bureaucracies, leaving the embassies and consulates unable to cope. Even the mail service had become less and less reliable. Soon my own boss would stop coming to the office, leaving a surreal vacuum for those of us who continued to show up for work.

At last a letter came from Andrew instructing me to get ready for a cargo ship to Hong Kong. I was to make myself as ugly and careworn as possible, and I would have to contrive to speak Cantonese in order to disguise myself as a Chinese passenger when the ship entered Hong Kong waters. A new Chinese identity card would be given to me while on the ship. My ugly appearance was to help prevent a possible rape, a common-enough event during such a journey. The arrangement would cost twenty-five hundred American dollars; Andrew would pay. A Chinese man was going to come to my office and escort me to the ship. I would know him because he would call me by the code name, “Rabbit,” the affectionate name Andrew had given me when we fell in love.

Although I had learned to read and write Chinese, I was out of practice. I found a tutor who gave me intensive lessons and then practiced it with my two neighbours – Mrs Buoi and Mrs Troi. Married to Chinese men, they spoke fluent Cantonese. Out of curiosity, they asked me, “Why are you suddenly interested in speaking Chinese, Hoa Lai?”

I told them, “Aunties, I am going to work for a Chinese-owned business in Cho Lon, I will tell you more about it later”.

Meanwhile, I decided to make a cheongsam – the Chinese national dress with a high collar – in black cotton. I hid it in my desk drawer at the office. With the leftover fabric, I made a small sack to wear around my waist, inside my clothing. I would keep a small quantity of American dollars and my few pieces of precious jewellery in the sack. I needed a scarf too, but the ones at the Grands Magasins near my office were far too chic and I went instead to the Ben Thanh central market, where I found a huge black nylon scarf, ugly enough to suit my purpose.

A telegram arrived from Andrew, confirming the arrangements and giving me the name of the Chinese man, Mr Law Keung. Excited and anxious, I nevertheless concealed what was transpiring from everyone, even my family. There was a story on the official news about a boat carrying more than a hundred Vietnamese passengers that had been caught entering Hong Kong waters. The illegal immigrants had already been sent back to Sai Gon, where they were immediately imprisoned by the South Vietnamese authorities and classified as political prisoners. If that happened to me, I would jump into the sea and drown sooner than be jailed. Meanwhile, I decided not to take a bath in the remaining days, not to wash my hair, and to stop wearing makeup – all this to look unappealing by the time I reached the boat that would take me away.

The night before departure, I did everything as usual when I got home from work, but after my brothers went to bed, I went into my parents’ room. “Mother,” I called softly, standing by their bed, “there’s something I have to talk to you and Father about.”

Perhaps it was my tone; perhaps they had guessed. My mother immediately rose, lifted the white mosquito netting and came out. She sat at the edge of the wooden bed lined with a reed mat. My father did the same.

Neither of them spoke. They waited for me: this mother with whom I’d had such a turbulent, at times violent, relationship; this father whom I adored, but who had so long remained a mysterious, shadowy figure in my life.

I held my breath. Then, as calmly as possible, told them, “I am going away. It is rather risky. I will ask Quan Yin and Grandmother’s spirit to follow me to safety.”

“Going away?” my mother asked. “Where? How are you going to do that? Who will take you? Whom are you going with?”

I told them a friend had helped me, and about the Chinese man and the boat to Hong Kong. Even knowing that much could get them into trouble but in the event anything might happen to me, they would at least have a chance of finding out.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” This was my father’s quiet voice.

When I confirmed that it was, he said to me, “Dear child! You are an adult and I respect your decision.”

Still, tears welled in his eyes. I watched him quietly wipe them away with the sleeve of his pyjamas.

My mother broke down then, until I reminded her softly, “Mother! Your crying may wake up the children.”

She stood up and went into the kitchen, where she scooped water from the water tank and washed her face. Then she came back to sit on the edge of the bed with my father. He asked me if I had sufficient money for the journey, adding that my mother would give me more if needed.

“It is crucially important that you have plenty of cash with you,” he said.

“I do have some cash,” I assured him, “and I am also taking a few pieces of jewellery and one tael of gold with me. I think that is plenty.”

I then gave him Andrew’s address in Hong Kong on a piece of paper.

We fell silent. I said good night and quietly went up to my attic room. I returned five minutes later; more needed to be said.

“I will be safe, Mother,” I assured her, “and I will write home as soon as I get to Hong Kong.”

My mother by this time had regained her composure, but my father looked more distressed. I said to him, “I will take care of myself, Father. I believe that Quan Yin will guide me to safety.”

I’d always been his favourite child and loved him very dearly. My grandmother – his mother – used to sing my praises to him when I was little, saying I was the most affectionate and sensitive child she had ever known, and every time she did so it brought tears to his eyes. He also knew he’d never spent enough time with me when I was growing up and that I’d suffered from it, particularly at the hands of my mother. But that evening neither he nor I was able to express our feelings openly. This was partly our culture, which taught us constantly to suppress our emotions, partly the strange circumstances of his life, but it was also because of my mother’s presence.

With my mother things were more complicated, riddled with ambiguities, and in truth I could never bring myself to love her. As a child growing up in our village I had been largely defenseless before her rages and even as a teenager in high school I continued to suffer physical and mental abuse at her hands. For years, despite my innocence, she had referred to me as “the whore” and until I got my office job she would say out loud, whenever she became angry with me, that whoredom was the only profession suitable to me.

Since I had begun to bring money home, however, her attitude had shifted. Our house no longer had an earthen floor and mud walls. My father had had them replaced with a white and yellow French tile floor and stuccoed the walls a few years after we moved in. In early 1974 a second storey was added with money from my savings, and this money also paid to pave our alley. To celebrate that event, Mrs Troi, our neighbour, had made her famous rainbow cakes and we feasted on roasted ducks and chickens. To the delight of my family, I also had electricity and running water installed the same year and later purchased new furniture.

My mother stopped calling me “whore” then but she was still unable to show me any affection. What all but broke my heart this night was that she cried over me – the first time she had ever done so – just as I was about to leave the family home for good.

Later, in the attic, I lay in bed, eyes wide open. I called it an “attic” but actually it was the full second storey of the house. When it was rebuilt, I had wanted two windows, one facing the house of the former pirate Bay Ca and his family, the other facing the bamboo grove. Nearly everything in it was green – green walls, green curtains, green bed cover, and numerous house plants. Next to the bed was a metal desk, and on the opposite wall a wardrobe made four years earlier by a carpenter in our neighbourhood and painted a soft yellow. It contained my clothes – including the many white dresses and gowns Robert had bought for me. He had been my greatest love, but now, on the shipboard journey I was about to undertake, I would be abandoning his rich and beautiful gifts to assume the role of a poor and ugly Chinese widow.

Some time that night, I got up and tiptoed to the balcony overlooking the roof of Bay Ca’s house. I had a red rosebush there, with several buds about to open. I thought of my four-year-old sister, Hong, and how she would enjoy their scent when they opened. She was asleep downstairs in my parents’ bed. The cool breeze touched my skin. I went back to bed and half-asleep, half-awake, heard the gentle sound of the bamboo leaves stirring on the edge of the cemetery.

At five the next morning, I got up and went downstairs. My parents were already awake; perhaps they hadn’t slept either. Once again they sat on the edge of their bed, my mother’s long hair hanging loose, not in the tight bun she always rolled it into every morning. She was wearing a lavender blouse and black trousers. My father, next to her, wore his usual blue striped pyjamas and behind them, in the bed, my little sister, Hong, lay sleeping.

Neither of them spoke. Perhaps they didn’t know what to say. Neither did I. Finally, my father said, “You must look after yourself over the long journey, child!”

“Have you packed everything you need?” My mother cut in. “What about some bread and a few fruits?”

“I’ve got enough until I get to Hong Kong. I can buy some bread and fruits on my way to the office.”

On Andrew’s advice, I wasn’t taking a suitcase but only a small travel bag.

In my mind I was fighting back the strange, yet plausible conviction that I was seeing my parents for the last time. What would become of them? And my brothers and little sister?

“Mother! Please tell the children that I’ve gone overseas to work. But I will return one day with a lot more money for the family.”

And that was all.

* * *

When I got to Tu Do Street that morning it was still not seven thirty and the office wouldn’t open for another hour. All the shops and businesses were still closed, with the exception of the French café, but I was too agitated to enter and went for a walk instead along Le Loi Boulevard, past the imposing offices of Viet Nam Airlines. How impossible it was for an ordinary person like me to get on an airplane to go anywhere! But I was going now. I was going, not by air but by sea. And for all I knew, I was seeing the centre of Sai Gon for the last time.

I made a turn onto Rue Dr Calmette, and walked toward the waterfront. At the channel from Ben Van Don, known previously as Quai de la Marne, I wondered where my ship was. Two ferries, carrying passengers from the opposite side of the river, were docking, and several fishing boats, large and small, and a few ships approached at further distance, half hidden in the early morning mist.

Turning along the riverbank, I found a little bench and made myself sit there for as long as I could stand it. Again I wondered what type of ship Mr Law Keung was going to take me to. Soon, I was on my feet again, going down Nguyen Hue Boulevard to the Hôtel de Ville landmark. I stood below its ornate, pale-yellow façade, gazing upward. One evening just before the last Lunar New Year, after visiting the Flower Market with my brothers and little sister, we had gone to the Hôtel de Ville to watch the famous geckos feasting happily on the abundant insects. Almost every evening its exterior under the neon light was covered with several thousands of these small hungry lizards, who would offer an evening concert with their high-pitched chirping sounds. I thought of Hong and my brothers at home, imagining them eating their breakfast. Perhaps my parents were already telling them that I’d left for Hong Kong.

When I reached Tu Do Street again, the office still hadn’t opened for the day so I went into the Brodard café across the way, ordered some fruit juice and a croissant, but my stomach was churning and I couldn’t eat. Staring at the traffic going past without really seeing it, I realized that what I’d been doing, in the past hour, was saying goodbye to Sai Gon.

Later, at my desk, I pretended to work. Though I kept watching for the first glimpse of a Chinese man. I imagined him materializing all of a sudden by my side and whispering my code name. But the morning dragged by and he didn’t appear. I kept glancing at the clock, arguing with myself. It was perfectly logical, wasn’t it, that Mr Law Keung wouldn’t show up in the morning? Would a boat leaving Sai Gon for Hong Kong, smuggling passengers, dare embark in broad daylight? Surely he would come in the afternoon, maybe even the late afternoon.

Just in case, though, I decided not to go out for lunch. I went quickly across the street and picked up a sandwich and a Coke from the café. Back at my desk I reread Andrew’s letters, because there was no work to do. For many days, the foreign businessmen whom we served had stopped coming to the office, and the staff at the main counter sat there solemnly, doing nothing.

The afternoon crept away. At some point, a woman colleague came over to chat. I remember her talking and talking about the period she’d spent as a student in Australia. As I half-listened, I wondered if she had escape plans of her own.

If she did, she kept them to herself as I did, with mine.

By seven that evening Mr Law Keung still hadn’t come. Undeterred, I stayed where I was. Couldn’t he, I rationalized, have been waiting for people to leave the office and the crowds on the street to thin out? In fact, the other employees had long since left the office, all except for the security guard. Now, using the pretext that there was still work to do, I convinced him to go home and give me the keys. I promised to lock up and deliver the keys to a woman who worked at the Brodard Café and whom we both knew.

Then I was alone.

I waited, numb, in semi-darkness, refusing to admit the truth. Maybe Mr Law Keung had been detained? What if he’d been detained and had no way of getting a message to me? He could still be coming, couldn’t he? Besides, Andrew hadn’t given me a specific time, only the date. What if I left the office and found out later that he’d shown up? What if this was my last chance? What if there would be no other way out?

It must have been sometime near nine o’clock when I got up from my desk, walking to the front door like an automaton. I must have turned out the lights, locked the door and given the keys to the woman at the café across the street but I’ve no memory of it. The only image I have of myself is standing in front of the almost empty café, staring up and down Tu Do Street one last time. Just in case.

The traffic on the street had thinned out. The night curfew would begin in less than an hour.

I hailed a taxi – a terrible extravagance, but I couldn’t face being seen in public. Sitting in the back seat, the tears came, sudden and overwhelming. Tears of panic, tears of frustration. I glimpsed at the traffic moving steadily outside the window, but to me it was like a current being pushed and pulled by an invisible storm, and the storm was my own despair.

* * *

One week later another letter arrived from Andrew. The cargo ship had to be cancelled at the last minute. Because of the war closing in on Sai Gon, cargo traffic on the river was now considered unsafe.

I told the whole story to Nu, a few days later when she picked me up at work. She was my oldest friend in Sai Gon, nicknamed Kim Thanh, or Silverbell, back in our school days, just as I, in my family, had been given the nickname Hoa Lai, or Jasmine at birth. Nu had parked her mini-motorcycle a few blocks away, and we walked down Tu Do Street to the river and sat on a large stone bench. Behind us there was a concrete arch covered in massive clusters of dusty pink bougainvillea flowers. We were both dressed in our usual ao dai – the long tunic over trousers, which was the traditional Vietnamese dress. Nu’s was grey, mine was white. My colour was always white, whether I wore an ao-dai or a Western-style dress. I had made one exception in the previous month, when, to please Andrew, I’d acquired a silk ao dai in deep pink and also some blouses and skirts in other colours. My tailor, a highly skilled woman whom I had known for several years, was surprised that I suddenly decided to wear coloured clothes. I returned to white after Andrew left Sai Gon.

Nu had become a devout Buddhist following the sudden and tragic death of her father. She dressed in subdued pastels, and even with her long hair and small frame, her appearance was rather tomboyish. She let her hair grow without doing much to it, and sometimes the heat and wind made it unkempt and brittle. On the other hand, she had an admirable, almost steely, determination, and she was as rigorously honest a person as I had ever known.

She knew many of my secrets, including my earlier failed attempts to leave the country. Sitting on that bench by the river, after I’d finished describing the day I’d spent waiting for the Chinese man, she looked at me and asked, “How long are you going to go on doing this?”

“What do you mean, doing this?” I said.

“I’m talking about the end of the road,” she said. “Have you ever thought of what you’re going to do when you get there?”

“What do you mean by that?” I replied, beginning to grow anxious. “The end of what road?”

Nu had been born in the Year of the Dragon. To those of us who believe in Eastern astrology, as I did, this meant she was inclined to be dynamic and vocal, even aggressively so.

“You’ve tried and tried to get out,” she went on. “Nothing’s worked. What if we end up trapped or captured. There’ll be no one to save us then. What if we know we’re going to be raped, to be tortured and murdered and thrown in the gutter with the garbage, and that there’s absolutely nothing we can do to stop it. That’s the end of the road I’m talking about. What are you going to do then? ”

“I’m not going to give up!” I cried out. “I’m going to keep trying to get out, no matter what!”

“That’s all very well, but what if you fail? And it’s over? And there’s nothing left?”

At that, I burst into tears.

For a moment, she stopped talking, and stared at me, deadly serious. I’m sure she disapproved of my tears. Then she became agitated. Her face darkened as she talked on about rape. Rape at the hands of plundering men, the age-old fear of Vietnamese women, had come violently to the fore once again in the terrible wars of the mid-twentieth century. The subject had a particular resonance for all of us. Once, in our ancient history, Vietnamese society had been organized on the Matrilineal Tie System (Che Do Mau Quyen), but women had been debased and discounted under the thousand-year Chinese domination and had lost most of their rights. At the same time the Chinese rulers had also insisted upon female chastity before marriage. If a young, unmarried woman was violated, she became totally worthless, condemned and rejected not only by society at large but by her own family. The same tradition lingered on in contemporary Viet Nam, wreaking psychological havoc on those of us who were trying to survive at a time the social fabric was being torn to shreds. We had no mental health services, no psychological counseling, no crisis hotlines. Given the choice between rape and suicide, most Vietnamese women would have chosen suicide. A high percentage of rape victims did in fact take their own lives immediately after the trauma.

That was what Nu insisted on talking about, that day by the river. We talked about drowning, the easiest and quickest method for us because neither of us could swim very far. We discussed overdoses of medicine but how would we know how much we had to take? And how could we do it if we were already in the hands of our aggressors? We talked about self-inflicted violence with a knife or a gun, if we could get our hands on one. But I was afraid I lacked the courage to pull a trigger.

“But what if there’s no other way?” she kept repeating. “What if you know you’re trapped? What if you know you’re going to be raped and murdered?”

I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know what I’d do. I don’t think I wanted to know.

She got up abruptly from the bench.

“I can’t stand sitting here any longer,” she announced, glaring down at me. “Come on, we’ll go for a ride.”

We went to retrieve her little motorcycle from the parking lot. The machine kicked into life, and Nu gunned us along Cong Ly Avenue, passing the Presidential Palace, shooting up clouds of dust behind us while I, behind her, clung to her waist for dear life. The conversation had struck fear into my heart, not just because of me but what would happen to our families if we ever did lose our own lives? A few years before, a girl in our high school had hanged herself in the school’s toilet and her death had created an enormous scandal in the community. People had blamed her death on a failed love affair. I couldn’t speak for Nu, but I knew there were things in my own life, things I’d done when desperate and frightened, that I’d never told her or anyone, things I could barely allow room for in my consciousness.

We drew near the Vinh Nghiem pagoda, Nu braked and we got off. I looked at the eight-storey tower with its Japanese-influenced architecture. Knowing that Nu often sought comfort in Buddhist temples, I suggested we go inside. To my surprise, she refused.

“No,” she said, “not today.” Then, seeing the uncomprehending expression on my face, she added, “How can we go in, the way we are, with suicide filling our minds and hearts?”

At that she stalked off, pushing the motorcycle in front of her past the temple, alternately biting her lips and letting out angry words that, given the way the wind was blowing, I couldn’t really hear. I followed her mutely. Her face was again so dark, her hair so completely disheveled, that in my mind she had become transfigured into some sort of Angel of Death.

We crossed the avenue to a gray concrete bridge that spanned the river and bore the same name as the avenue, Cong Ly. Underneath the bridge, in semi-darkness, bobbed some unattended sampans.

“Cong Ly” in Vietnamese means “Justice.”

Justice Avenue.

The Justice Bridge

And my old friend Nu – Kim Thanh – with tears of rage now streaming down her face, cried out at the river below, “Where is justice in this world?”

Difficult as she was, I loved her still and on the bridge that day she made us swear to a solemn pact. If it came down to it, we would kill ourselves and we would do it the only sure way there was, by biting through our tongues and fighting off anyone who tried to stop the bleeding. There were many legendary stories – I had heard them as a child – of women in the revolutionary forces who had committed suicide this way. One of them was the wife of General De Tham, who had been imprisoned with forty other nationalists on a French warship in the early days of the colonial regime. En route to French Guyana for deportation, she committed suicide by biting her tongue. And then, during the first women’s uprising against the French regime in 1930, a Vietnamese spy named Ca Chuong was captured by French troops in Hon Gai. They punished her by hanging her upside down and pulling out her nails, then beating her. Ca Chuong bit her tongue in half and bled to death – and so became a legendary heroine of Vietnamese history.

But I wasn’t going to be another Ca Chuong. I may have made the pact with Nu but I wanted to live and was determined to escape.

* * *

I confided in a sixty-year old woman I had met under unusual circumstances, Mother Chin. She was physically small but with a stern expression on her face. Her hair was completely white, and she always wore round eyeglasses. She was talkative, highly judgmental, and was difficult for other people to get along with, but having no family of her own, she was always concerned about me. I had introduced Nu to her too, and sometimes the two of us were invited for lunch at her place.

One morning, listening to the Voice of America, I heard that a United Nations organization had arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and was taking a certain number of refugees out of the country. I also heard through the grapevine that there were Vietnamese living near the Cambodian border who had made their way on foot across the frontier, hoping to be accepted as well. Although I had no concrete details about the UN evacuation and no idea how long it might continue, I was desperate enough to take the risk. I talked it through with Mother Chin, and in the end she decided that she herself would escort me to the Cambodian border. She said we would need to go as soon as possible.

Nu and I had agreed, that day on the bridge, to escape together. However, if either found an opportunity to leave without the other, she was to take it without hesitating. I sent a letter to her home, asking her to join me and telling her to get ready.

I waited for three days but there was no answer. I had no other way of reaching her so, on the fourth day, I wrote a second letter and hired a neighbour, a young man with a motorcycle, to deliver it to her house. He came back without having seen her, but he claimed to have given the letter to Nu’s grandmother. In this second letter, I told her to come to my office that very day. If she couldn’t, I said guardedly, then she was to see Mother Chin, who would explain everything.

I learned afterwards that my first letter had not reached her until the following week and by the time her grandmother gave her the second one, it was already evening and too close to the night curfew. Nu and her family lived on a farm outside Sai Gon, at least an hour’s ride away. Having no news from Nu, I decided she’d changed her mind and wasn’t coming.

The following morning, telling no one else what was happening, I left for Mother Chin’s place as soon as the curfew was lifted. Over a breakfast of chicken noodle soup and jasmine tea, she packed some bananas, cold meat, and a loaf of French bread. We then took cyclos to the Tay Ninh bus terminal in Tan Binh district and boarded a large bus heading toward the Tay Ninh province, about one hundred and thirty kilometres northwest of Sai Gon. The bus was full of people, a few men sitting on the rooftop, struggling to hold onto their belongings. When the bus stopped at Long Hoa village, our destination, many Cao Dai worshipers also got off with us.

The village of Long Hoa was the main centre for the Cao Dai religious sect. A huge and elaborate religious complex contained the Great Temple, a famous herbal medicine hospital and clinic, administrative offices, and residential quarters for the priests. Cao Dai followers believe in combining Eastern and Western religions, and they are liberal in their approach. There were prayers four times a day. During weekdays, only a few hundred priests attended services, but during major festivals there would be several thousand, all dressed in white ceremonial gowns. Visitors to the temple were expected to dress respectfully.

The Great Temple had nine levels, representing the nine steps to Heaven. Above the front portico was the “Divine Eye”, the supreme symbol of Caodaism. Within the sanctuary there were eight plaster columns entwined with multi-coloured dragons supporting a dome that represented Heaven. We arrived at the Great Temple just in time for the noon ceremony and we knelt on the floor among many other visitors. We were wearing traditional Vietnamese dresses, mine white and hers blue-floral. Near my knees was my small soft leather bag containing a white blouse, a pair of moss green trousers, a set of underwear, a cosmetic sac, and my old purple umbrella, packed tightly together. I wore sunglasses and kept a smile fixed to my face as though I hadn’t a care in the world.

But I was unable to concentrate on the prayers. Mother Chin had already advised me to slip out while the service was still in progress, when there would be less chance of someone observing. The joss sticks were still burning heavily at the altar when she signaled me with a nod. I inhaled the pungent smoke and got up quietly.

Changing my clothes in a bathroom, and satisfied that I looked sufficiently like a peasant, I went out and into the surrounding countryside of fields and forests. I headed in what I knew was the general direction of the frontier. Within minutes I’d left the village behind me, and, looking back, I saw women washing their clothes at the side of the last house.

I entered the jungle, its thin, dry trees interspersed with occasional crop fields and crossed by paths of beaten earth. It was hot under the full sun but this was interior hill country and much less humid than the coast. I was following what appeared to be a well-used track. Only a rare farmer in a field, or a boy with a buffalo, came into view.

Soon I came within sight of the barbed wire border fence. This was unknown territory to me, in more senses than one. I stopped in my tracks, working up courage. All I could see was the fence. It didn’t seem the most formidable of barriers, not when my freedom was just on the other side.

How naive I was! To think I could simply climb through a barbed wire fence! That escape was so easily won!

I approached the fence and saw men standing on the far side. They were armed troops, soldiers in the Cambodian army. Suddenly they seemed everywhere. I kept on walking toward them. One of them raised his head and saw me.

He looked very young, and decent enough. I signaled to him that I wanted to cross through. He shook his head. I tried to speak to him but he again shook his head.

Suddenly, another soldier with bloodshot eyes realized what was going on. Immediately he held up his rifle and pointed it directly at me. I froze. Then I signaled that I wanted to speak. He shouted back at me in perfect Vietnamese:

“Di ve ngay! Neu khong toi ban”, “Go back! Or I’ll shoot.”

Other soldiers at the fence had targeted me too, a hard, callouslooking bunch. It was a shock to realize that they were capable of shooting me without a qualm. I looked back at the first soldier, beseeching, but he just waved his hand, signaling that I should get away from the border.

The second soldier’s rifle was still pointing at me. I wanted to beg them, but something stopped me, some instinct, and for all I know this saved my life. I slowly turned from the barbed wire fence and walked away as calmly as possible. I was too afraid to look behind me, but I felt them watching me. The moment I reached the trees and was out of their line of vision, I turned. Maybe, just maybe, there was an unguarded place to cross over further along in the forest. But as I trudged along, my nerve went. Wasn’t I taking a horrendous risk, wandering around along the frontier with little idea of where I was and knowing no one? Suddenly, the whole notion – that one could simply get on a bus, ride to Long Hoa, walk to the frontier, walk across…and then what?

Had I really expected a UN delegation to be on hand to greet me?

I was a young woman, one whom men considered pretty, with unusual eyes, and, despite my makeshift disguise, I was alone in the middle of a forest, a long, long way from home. I was lucky I hadn’t been raped by the border guards, much less shot in the back.

I turned back toward Long Hoa village, telling myself it would be useless to cry. I kept walking along slowly until I reached a coconut palm where I stopped, lowering myself against its trunk, and stared at the grass. I imagined waiting till dusk, then returning to the border in the hope of sneaking across. Or maybe finding the first soldier I had seen who, in my fantasy, was kinder than the others. Perhaps he would be there alone. The others would have gone off to eat, and I imagined him smiling at me and, without a word, letting me through the barbed wire. I imagined seeking out a family that lived in Long Hoa village. I would casually ask them about possible ways of entering Cambodia. If I was lucky, maybe they traded with Cambodians on the other side of the frontier and could be persuaded to sneak me across.

All of the above, none of the above. For as I sat there, immobilized, my back against the base of the tree, my mind racing through all these scenarios, the reality of my situation broke through. What in Quan Yin’s name was I doing there? A lone woman, a young lone woman, in the middle of a forest, like a character out of a fairy tale. But life wasn’t a fairy tale. Life was razor wire and men with guns. And also self-delusion. What a fool I was, what an absurdity, to think I could just blithely walk into Cambodia!

And even if I could, then what?

I thought of Mother Chin. She had agreed to wait at the Great Temple, but only for a couple of hours. If I hadn’t come back by then, she was to assume I’d made my way across and would be free to return to Sai Gon. Now time was wasting. I got up, but my legs had gone numb and I had to stamp my feet to get the tingling started. My eyes were burning, but I absolutely refused to cry. All I wanted was to get to Mother Chin. I started to run, but soon was out of breath and had a cramp in my side. I walked, as fast as possible, and ran when the pain went away. Finally I got to the village and then the temple. I dashed into the bathroom, changed clothes quickly, then stood still for a moment to regain my composure. I emerged once more in my white ao dai, looking just like all the other worshippers.

I found Mother Chin, standing outside the Great Temple, talking to a group of strangers. Her face showed no emotion, but her eyes studied me. She reached out her hand and took mine.

Pulling me close to her, she said softly, “Don’t be too discouraged child! There’s always hope. I will see what I can do to help you. We will talk more about this in Sai Gon.” We took a short walk around the temple grounds. I described what had happened. We then took the bus home.

* * *

I returned to work. With each passing day, though, the sense of the world unraveling – of my world unraveling – became more and more acute. Back in my neighbourhood, one night someone had planted a small Communist flag in front of a house near ours, and the sight of it threw everyone into a panic. The wife of Bay Ca was convinced we might have to flee at a moment’s notice, and she urged my mother, “We must pack our belongings. We must get ourselves ready. The Viet Cong are around here now.” I looked at my father for direction, but, for reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom, he had nothing to say. His face was calm, his eyes far off. It was my mother who ordered us to pack our clothes.

That same night I wrote Andrew the following letter. It causes me no end of embarrassment now – what did I expect the poor man to do, a married Englishman living in Hong Kong? – but it reflects my anguished state of mind accurately enough.

Dear Andrew,

It’s Sunday afternoon. We’ve packed our clothes, but aren’t sure where to go. This week I met many refugees from the Central Highlands, who’d risked their lives escaping to Sai Gon. The refugees are now occupying bus stations and Tan Son Nhat airport.

A few days ago the Deputy Minister and I traveled to Di An, near Bien Hoa and as we passed by the Binh Loi bridge I saw several dead bodies lying at the foot of the bridge. Bien Hoa military airport has been hit with 87 rockets so far. The remaining provinces of Central Highlands are already in the hands of Northern troops.

Our neighbourhood French bakery was robbed yesterday at six thirty in the morning. The robbers wore army uniforms with guns when they entered. All the male workers immediately ran away, thinking that it was a police search for ID, forcing them to join the government army. Without any man in the bakery, the armed men tied up two women and stuffed their mouths with cleaning cloths while taking all the money. Everyone feared them so no witness dared to intervene.

There was a funeral for two young men in my neighbourhood yesterday. Within one year this family lost all three sons in battlefields. Most of the young men working in the Ministry had been ordered to join the government army by April 15th. Now people don’t see them or know where they are.

Andrew, you have done your best to get me out of this country but now I feel that I may have to resign to fate. I will write to you again tomorrow if there is any news. Maybe a letter from you will arrive at the office in the morning. I am enclosing three addresses of friends and relatives in Sai Gon for you to contact, in case you will not hear from me again. I love you very much. Jasmine

Later that night, I went to the altar of Quan Yin in our attic and prayed. She was the lady Buddha, known as the Goddess of Mercy. My soul had been attached to her since I was five years old. From our early days in the village, it was my paternal grandmother who told me about her. She said that I was the “flower bud of Quan Yin”. After she left our village in 1957, abandoning me against her will to my vengeful mother and inducing my own overwhelming sense of loss, I began talking with Quan Yin every night and I have continued ever since.

Dear Quan Yin,

I now wonder if I only have a short life on earth. Will you be ready to receive my soul? Please assure me that I have no fear of death.

* * *

I didn’t die that spring. I lived through it all. I survived to recount those desperate days when so many of my people begged and fought and debased themselves in countless shameful ways, for a small place on the crowded helicopters and planes of the fleeing Americans … and I was one of them.

RIPE FOR SERVITUDE

“When France arrived in Indochina, the Annamites were ripe for servitude”

Indochina Governor-General Paul Doumer

My birthplace is in the Mekong Delta, the southernmost region of Viet Nam. It’s a hot, humid, green, rural and marvelously fertile region that lies between the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea. At its northern edge, the land rises toward the Cambodian border. At its centre is a vast jungle swamp. Farther south and east there are hundreds of little streams running towards the sea and numerous farms, hamlets and villages scattered across the flat, green landscape. When I was a child it took us two days to reach the southern capital of Sai Gon. We traveled out of the village by sampan, then onto the road, then after passage on two ferries onto the road again.

The delta region is fed by the Mekong River, known to the Vietnamese as the River of the Nine Dragons (Song Cuu Long). From early childhood I’d been told that the Mekong has nine dragon mouths. It is more than four thousand kilometres long and one of the most important rivers in the world. Originating in the mountains of Tibet, the Mekong flows through China, Laos and along the Thai border, and then through Cambodia and Viet Nam before reaching the South China Sea through the wide delta that is spread across Viet Nam’s southern tip of Ca Mau. For centuries the region has been known as the Rice Bowl of Viet Nam.

At the beginning of the Nguyen dynasty, in 1802, the South was called the Six Provinces (Luc Tinh). By 1850 my maternal ancestors had become moderately prosperous in a stable and quiet agricultural country, one with its own traditional culture. In 1856, though, the French warship Catinat under Leheur de Ville-sur-Arc arrived in Da Nang and launched a violent attack on the Vietnamese, making way for France’s invasion and a century of long and bloody wars. In 1867 the French gained complete control of the South and it immediately became their colony. They renamed the South “Cochinchina” and divided it into twenty-one provinces for colonial administration. To help strengthen their rule in the South, they attacked Ha Noi Citadel in 1873, and soon after took control of North and Central Viet Nam, as well as Cambodia, and Laos – these becoming France’s protectorates. The colony and the protectorates were both placed under the rule of a French Governor-General. So was “French Indochina” born.

All the Nguyen dynasty emperors were chosen by the French. In many instances, The French officials chose ‘rulers’ as young as seven years old simply because they were easy to control. However, with the exception of Emperors Khai Dinh and Bao Dai, they had shown opposition to French domination. These rebellious young emperors were sent into exile on various remote islands off the African coast.

Stretching along the eastern coast of the Indochinese Peninsula, Viet Nam is S-shaped, with a coastline of 3,260 kilometres and a land area of 329,566 square kilometres. The French, at the time, were not particularly interested in North and Central Viet Nam (which they renamed Tonkin and Annam) since these regions consisted of mostly mountains and hills. But they considered the South – Cochinchina – as the “Jewel of the Far East” because it was the richest part of Indochina, with the largest rice and fruit farms, vast rubber and coffee plantations, great cotton fields, and good production of spices. The South also contained significant mines, including gold. In addition, Sai Gon was a growing international port.

Can Tho – the provincial capital of Hau Giang province in the South – had been the birthplace of my maternal ancestors. Several generations of my mother’s people had owned farmland on which they cultivated rice, coconuts, citrus fruit, bananas, and mangoes. This was good land for fruit trees, high enough to escape the floods that often accompanied the heavy rainy season. They were able to live comfortably, and like many others in Can Tho, had been classified at the beginning of the Nguyen dynasty (1802-1945) as minor landowners (tieu dien chu).

The arrival of the French, however, brought sudden and drastic changes. The legitimacy of the former land ownership system was challenged by new officials appointed by the French, and supported by the French army. During raids, French troops burned houses, killed water buffaloes, and destroyed the residents’ stores of rice. Many of the inhabitants were obliged to flee and became refugees overnight. My maternal grandmother once told me:

Shortly after the colonial government gained complete control of our territory, those who had not returned or could not produce ownership papers to satisfy the French bureaucracy, had their land confiscated. Your great grandparents were among those victims. In our case, the deeds proving ownership had been destroyed during the invasion. They had lost everything, virtually everything that they had ever owned.

Many of the key policies were set by the Governor-General, Paul Doumer, whose regime (from 1897) was rapacious and arrogant. Typical of his touch were: the government opium monopoly with a profit of four hundred percent taken from a population encouraged in the addiction; taxes payable only in silver, and at six times the rate of the earlier regime; regional quotas for the required consumption of French alcohol; a ban on traditional rice wine distilling; a monopoly on salt with a profit margin of eight hundred percent.

This colonial administration produced a situation in which, by 1939, over fifty per cent of the peasant population was landless, while five per cent of the population – the major landlords (dai dien chu) – held forty-five percent of the land. The colonialists themselves had acquired much land; for example, in the year 1930 alone, they were “given” ten thousand hectares of land in the rich delta area of Cochinchina. For decades the greatest proportion of Viet Nam’s industrial profits ended up in Paris, while the local people’s needs for education and medical care were virtually ignored. No Vietnamese could hold an administrative post higher than the lowest French official. As Franklin Roosevelt observed in 1944 during a discussion of post-war policy on Indochina, France had “milked it for one hundred years”, and left its people “worse off than they were at the beginning.”

Since their skills were those of farmers, my now-landless great grandparents had no choice but to work for the new landlords as labourers. My grandmother described the situation of her parents:

They were still hoping that one day something would change, and the ancestral land would be returned to the family. But that day never came. As poor labourers, they had very few clothes and not enough food to keep the family going. For years they worked like slaves, while the harvests and all the revenues flowed directly to their masters.

With so little income, my great grandparents couldn’t keep up with the payment of their head taxes (thue than) – to be paid in silver, so they left Can Tho and emigrated to a rural village called Truong An, south of Can Tho, where I was born. My maternal grandmother, who herself had endured what she called “unbearable hardships” often recited to us children a poem by the revolutionary Phan Boi Chau, which invariably moved her to tears:

How do we grieve for the Six Provinces of the South?

A thousand years of hard work and sacrifice now gone

The mountains, the rivers, all dark and forbidding

Talking with the people, who does not feel this deep sorrow?

My maternal grandmother had five children. My mother was the youngest, a woman of medium build, with a fine complexion and a pretty face. From a very early age she worked in the fields, helping to support the family. She had no opportunity for education. Not that there was a formal school in the village in those days. Only later did the Nationalist movement led by the Viet Minh (The League for the Independence of Viet Nam) take it upon itself to raise the level of literacy throughout the country, and members of both sexes would be given equal opportunity – insisted on by Ho Chi Minh, and with a clear message to the nation, “You must learn to read and write in order to know, and you must know in order to carry out a revolution.” The Nationalists recruited volunteers to offer reading and writing lessons in Vietnamese (Quoc Ngu) through the Mass Education Program (Binh Dan Hoc Vu). Throughout the country, classes were brought to people’s homes, to village communes, to factories and rice fields, aboard fishing boats, and so on. My mother would eventually join one of these classes and begin learning how to read and write – at age twelve. She described her experience:

Before the Program was made compulsory, I, as a child, would from time to time come to observe a class – being held privately in the house of a village elder. I stood behind the palm leaf wall at the outside corner of the classroom and quietly watched the boys learning their lessons. When I asked my mother to let me go there for the lessons, she said that she couldn’t afford it. She also warned me that if I knew how to read and write, I would write love letters to boys and that would lead to dangerous consequences.

Such conservative attitudes would eventually change, following an awareness campaign that included an outpouring of poems encouraging girls to attend literacy classes:

Likewise, dear girl,

Your beauty is worth nothing

If your mind is still a blank.

The year my mother turned thirteen, my grandmother decided to distil rice wine to supplement their meagre farming income. This was illegal, and my grandmother had to hide the operation in the bushes. She and my mother worked quietly at night. Every day, while the elder children were working in the fields, my mother would sell the homemade wine surreptitiously at the Truong An market place. One afternoon, a terrible accident occurred and it would change my mother’s life. In her words:

There was a woman who ran a butcher’s stall and I was selling wine just next to it. That day the butcher’s husband appeared at her stall and asked for money. She refused, saying that he wanted the money only for gambling. While they were arguing, the butcher got more and more angry and started insulting the husband. In a rage, he seized a large ceramic bowl from the front of the stall and hurled it at her, but the bowl missed his wife and hit my head instead. All I could remember was a loud crash, my ears went deaf, I felt dizzy, and then I passed out. When I woke up, I was in bed, while my widowed mother was weeping next to me. She said that someone at the market had brought me home, and that I had bled heavily from the forehead. Following this accident I became paralysed for about two months.

As there were no medical facilities in the village, all my grandmother and aunts could do was to stem the bleeding and hope for her recovery. Having access to a medical doctor was extremely rare for those living in villages at the time. After ninety years of colonial rule, the French provided the country with two doctors for every one hundred thousand Vietnamese.

The front of my mother’s skull had been fractured and the physical sign of it would remain for the rest of her life. So would the psychological scars. My maternal relatives, I learned later, noticed changes in my mother’s mood and behaviour shortly after the accident. She became angry for no apparent reason and also began to use profane language. She may have healed physically but her mental condition and judgment had been drastically affected. Her violent rages would mark our family life for decades to follow. In other respects my mother was a child of her time. Her family had gone from prosperity to destitution in two generations. She grew up at a bare-subsistence level. This left her with a permanent obsession with money. There was never enough, never any to spare. She was also fiercely protective of her own children, and she feared the white foreigners, “Those white monsters have ruined our lives. They have taken so much from our people. Without them, we would not have been living in such misery. What rights did they have, to control the fate of our family?” So, when the Viet Minh underground movement began to take shape with the aim of regaining the country from the French, it was altogether natural that my mother would join it. At age fourteen, she took on the duty of sewing black cotton uniforms for the Viet Minh’s popular forces and the Nationalist flags – red background with a gold star. Five years later, immediately after my birth, she would wrap me in one of those flags.

* * *

I was born in the middle of the French War, three years before the great battle of Dien Bien Phu. To celebrate my birth, my father acquired a baby coconut tree, which he planted in our back garden. Since I was born in early spring. I was named Xuan Huong, meaning “Scent of Spring”. However, my paternal grandmother, who came to live with us when I was little and became my closest friend, dubbed me Hoa Lai, or Jasmine. The nickname stayed with me all the way through school.

My birth was described as boc dieu or coming out of the mother’s womb inside a “red sac”. This was commonly regarded as an auspicious birth, indicating that the child would have an extraordinary life. Not only was I the first in my family to have been born boc dieu, but the first in our village. Years later I would learn that the amniotic sac was a thin layer of red membrane that covered the baby’s body and had to be broken and removed immediately after the birth to prevent suffocation. The village midwife offered special congratulations to my parents for having a child born in a “red sac”.

My father recorded the details of my birth; and he soon consulted a renowned astrologer in Can Tho and gave her this information, together with his and my mother’s birth signs. My father had the reading rolled up into a tiny tube and hid it away. Not till seventeen years later would I have the opportunity to unroll the tube that contained my foretold future.

Although I was “transferred” from the red sac to the red flag immediately after birth, my mother didn’t use the flag for its symbolic value. It was simply out of necessity. There was nothing else available at the time. A month before my birth, French troops had raided our village and most of our belongings had been destroyed. The few surviving garments – a shirt, a blouse, a pair of trousers – had to be shared. One of my uncles and his wife, for example, were left with only one pair of trousers. Whenever he needed to go out, she would remain in their bedroom until he came back and vice versa.

Then again, nine days after I was born, the French bombed us in reprisal for repeated Viet Minh attacks on the local French garrison. The French “solution,” foreshadowing what many Vietnamese villages were to experience in the decades ahead, was to obliterate the area. My father, I learned later, was with us until immediately before the massive destruction took place. Someone then appeared at the house unexpectedly and my father went with him in a hurry, without explaining the reason to my mother. When the bombing started, she took me to a makeshift shelter my father had dug for us behind the house, but it was filled with water. Not long afterwards she fled with me to the jungle swamp behind the village to shield us from the danger. For hours she held me in a cold wind coming off the sea, all the colder if you had almost no clothes. I was eventually brought home shivering and blue and my mother held me near the fire to revive me. I was still wrapped in the same red flag from my birth nine days earlier. Later my mother commented that I was “a little patriot” without ever knowing it. I suspect that the asthma I suffered from intermittently all during my childhood was the result of that early exposure.

When the air raid was over, my father returned home to check if we were still alive. My mother was near-hysterical with anger, “Master, you must have decided that your own life was more impor- tant than ours.” Knowing this sensitive and kindly man as I later came to, I can picture his agonized expression, yet he was unable to tell her why he had abandoned us. I also learned later that among the victims of the mass killing that day was my mother’s best friend, Yen, who was blown to pieces before her eyes – a trauma that haunted her for years to come.

My mother left the Viet Minh to marry my father in 1950. Her elder sister, Di Nam, continued to participate in the food supplies network of the growing Viet Minh army. She had taken part in the Southern Uprising of November 1940 – the Nam Ky Khoi Nghia. This ill-fated revolt, masterminded by the “Red Queen” Nguyen Thi Bay in Sai Gon, was widespread throughout the South. In the Mekong Delta, it was led by Madame Nguyen Thi Thap and ended with the execution of several leaders, including Thap’s husband. In her continued struggle to help liberate the country, she would work with my paternal granduncle, Cuong, and they became close friends and comrades. They shared much hardship throughout the French War.

Aunt Di Nam was with the Viet Minh until the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. She then joined the National Liberation Front until the end of the American War in 1975. Her decision to remain with the Nationalist army had been reinforced by the death of Vo Thi Sau in 1952. Sau had been captured at age fourteen and kept in the Con Son Island’s high security prison until her sixteenth birthday, when she was executed by a firing squad. Under the colonial rule, children who took part in attacks on their regime could be sentenced to death, and they would be incarcerated until they reached sixteen and then executed. These deaths became focuses of nation-wide revulsion against the French. Their possible aim of making an example to other Vietnamese children had the opposite effect, and led thousands of youngsters to join the Nationalist movement in the years to come.

My cousin Hinh, the son of my mother’s eldest sister, joined the Viet Minh army when he was fourteen. Hinh’s father had borne a deep and abiding hatred for the French and led an outlaw’s life, heading a gang of strong men in attacks on colonial banks and other foreign enterprises, then hiding out at sea like a pirate. My grandmother had wanted no part of him as a son-in-law, despite her daughter’s desire to marry the lawless man. She once shouted angrily to her daughter, “He is a ruffian. We want no ruffians in our household. But you, you stubborn girl, you always want to go your own way! Then go! Get up into your wedding carriage. I will go down to my grave.”

Upon learning this, the ruffian arranged to kidnap the young woman – my aunt – and married her. Hinh’s mother died when he was a baby and it was my grandmother who raised him. Before the end of the colonial regime his father was caught and sentenced to fifteen years of imprisonment. He was kept inside a ‘Tiger Cage’ on the Con Son Island’s prison, where young Vo Thi Sau had been incarcerated before her execution. The Tiger Cage system designed by the French was like that at a zoo – except that each cage was only one meter by two metres – and it would have to contain up to six men or six women. All inmates had to follow the harsh rules: “No Sitting, No Talking or Whispering, and No Toilet at Night.”

Hinh had been a local spy for the Viet Minh. In 1960 he became an officer in the intelligence network of the National Liberation Front and from then on we saw him only at night, after he emerged from the jungle. He would come by sampan with his male and female comrades, all in black cotton uniforms, their heads camouflaged by water palm leaves. One of my aunts always provided hot meals for Hinh and his group and I often helped serve the meals. One time I offered him a green mango but he refused, “No, sweetheart! I can’t eat any un-ripe fruits.” While living in the jungle he never ate food from which he might get diarrhoea. Hinh and his colleagues endured extremely harsh conditions, especially during the rainy season. Often they went for days without a proper meal and had to survive on whatever wild plants they could find in the jungle, risking dysentery, malaria, and other tropical diseases. They were mobile at night and slept in the day. Each person, man or woman, carried a rifle, ammunition, some hand-grenades, and a backpack. The pack contained a mosquito net, a small blanket, some clothes, a hammock, a water bottle and some dried food.

Strangely – for the war never really ended, and the defeated French were soon replaced by the military of the new Diem regime and their American “advisors” – I look back on my earliest years in the village with a fond nostalgia. In many ways, the delta was a children’s paradise, even for children who had little in the way of material possessions. Small streams meandered all around us and our flat green plains were criss-crossed with waterways, big and small. No family could get far without a boat of some kind. Like all my maternal relatives, my family owned a wooden sampan, which my mother used frequently to travel within the village and to the nearest town of Thanh Chau, about three hours away by paddle boat. Motorized sampans were unheard of. All the houses were scattered along the banks of streams and rivers, and where two or three watercourses came together there was often a temple or a communal building. Wood, bamboo, and palm leaves were the normal building materials.

Next to my maternal grandmother’s house, at the side of a long river, was a large poon tree. The trunk was huge and it carried thick green leaves and fragrant flowers like white cherry blossoms with yellow stamens at their centres. It bore fruit like chestnuts which we crushed to make oil for lamps. (I never saw an electric light until our visit to the city of Can Tho, when I was five.) The poon tree was good for climbing and a favourite playground for my cousins and me. My mother’s elder brother, Uncle Muoi, who lived with my grandmother, also loved the poon tree and its beautiful white blossoms. According to Uncle Muoi, such a tree grew only in the South, and when Emperor Gia Long took refuge in the region in the late 1700’s he named it “southern cherry”.

Uncle Muoi was three years older than my mother. When he got married, it was decided that he would stay with my grandmother in her house. Like her, he raised a big family – thirteen children in all, adopted as well as biological. He was a solidly built man with a sturdy face, sharp eyes and curly hair, known for his mental as well as physical strength and endless energy. During the harvest seasons his crops typically brought in the highest yield among the family clan. He believed that the orphans of the village, especially those most victimized by a century of war, must be welcomed with open arms, and their innocence protected. His generosity toward them set an example that was widely esteemed.

When my grandmother gave Uncle Muoi a sampan, he decided to paint it the colour of green leaves. Every day around six in the evening the sampan always turned gray as a thick cloud of mosquitoes settled on it. They were always in the air, moving in swarms and sounding like the wind in a flute. A person could never stand still for long. Arms and legs had to be constantly on the move in order to keep the mosquitoes from settling on the eyes, nose, ears, and inside shirt collars and sleeves. I once nearly swallowed a small swam of mosquitoes while laughing with my mouth open. In the waterways and the ditches the problems were leeches and many varieties of poisonous snakes.

The tropical heat in the delta was relentless but relieved by sea breezes from beyond the horizon and by the regular cloudbursts of rain – heavy, brief, totally saturating, but never a threat except in a typhoon. On one occasion our house was destroyed by such a storm. The heavy rain poured down, in the suddenly cold, violently gusting wind, and the palm leaf roof swayed until it simply blew away. While the walls were about to collapse, my father shouted at us, “Heaven and Earth! It’s gone. Let’s get out of here! Quick! We have to run!”

With the heavy rain now pouring directly onto us my father grabbed a blanket, wrapped me in it and we ran all the way to my grandmother’s house.

One of my grandmother’s coconut trees had been uprooted in the same storm, and after it was over we sat in the dark on the fallen tree, waiting for my aunt to find wood for a fire to dry us. I was given some fresh clothes belonging to my cousin Hung, and the two of us rolled up our trousers and went looking for fish and crabs. They had been washed up from the nearby shores in the storm. We caught several sunfish and a dozen fresh water crabs. My aunt cut out the tender top of the coconut tree, considered a delicacy, and made a huge pot of delicious sweet and sour soup for us all.

Like most people in the village, we wore the simplest clothing. Nobody wore shoes, slippers, or anything on their feet. Most of our clothes were hand sewn and then repaired and patched over until they fell apart. The washhouse was the river and clothes were taken there and beaten on stones. Men and young children bathed there too because the water was usually clean and fast flowing. When girls reached puberty they took their baths in their family bathhouse, a fenced area on the side of each house that contained at least one large barrel for catching rainwater. We used two kinds of soap and each family made its own. The method was to take wood ash from a fire and add it to a bucket of water. In time the ash would settle at the bottom of the container and the liquid above it would be clean and clear, like a thin liquid soap. It produced bubbles and was used for most washing. The ash residue was good for scouring utensils.

We also made a special type of shampoo from the soap-berry, called bo ket. The berries were inside a pod that could be crushed to make the shampoo, but since they were hard to find, that soap was considered a luxury. To keep our teeth clean, we used the shell of the areca nut to make toothbrushes. Each shell could be cut into six or eight sections to reveal many layers of soft fibre, which functioned like a modern toothbrush. Each piece was used only once. Toothpaste was a special type of charcoal ash. Except for the elderly, nearly everyone in my village had perfect teeth, and I rarely heard anyone complaining about a toothache.

Women kept their hair long. While they were still single, it was left flowing or clasped in a ponytail, but once married, women traditionally wore it tied up in a bun, for to do otherwise would attract attention, comment, and quite severe criticism. My cousin Hien, the eldest daughter of Uncle Phan, was scolded by my maternal grandmother after her marriage, “Unless you intend to flirt with other men and infuriate your husband, it’s high time that you tie up your hair.”

Men and boys, on the other hand, wore their hair quite short. In my maternal clan it was Uncle Phan who gave haircuts to all my male cousins. My father had given him a French-made haircut kit with a sophisticated tondeuse, or clippers, and he cut Uncle Muoi’s hair too, while in return Uncle Muoi shaved Phan’s head entirely. In the village, you would occasionally see a little boy with a special haircut that left him with only three clumps of hair at the front and sides. This was a sure sign of ill health, intentionally designed to make the wearer look ugly so that the demons would leave him alone.

There was no Western-trained doctor in our village, and no hospital within a reachable distance. If a person became seriously ill he or she just went quietly to bed at home. We had one qualified male nurse who was able to dispense basic advice and some Western medicines. People reached his clinic by boat. Because of my asthma, my mother took me to see him a few times on the recommendation of Granduncle Cuong, who was a doctor and who visited us from time to time. Most villagers used traditional herbal remedies to treat their symptoms.

Nearly every day my mother worked in the rice field alongside my maternal relatives. Like all farmers in the village, they owned very simple farming equipment. My mother shared one of the two water buffaloes belonging to Uncle Muoi. She owned a ploughshare, a pair of shears, a shovel, and a special stake that was used to dig holes in the muddy ground before inserting the early sprouts of rice plants. Her tasks included planting seedlings and then transplanting them when the season arrived. During harvest time she did the work of a man. My father had tried to work in the rice fields right after their marriage but he had proven totally inept at farming and my maternal relatives ridiculed him for it. They still respected him, however, because he was a well-educated man.

Occasionally my mother complained about his lack of participation, and he would tell her, “My dear! There is really no need for you to go on working in the rice field. I am earning enough money to support us. Why don’t you just give the land to your brother? He has a big family to look after.”

Most of our village buffaloes were gone by the time I was born because they had been killed by French troops. My father recalled that, once the French War began in earnest in 1946, the French began killing buffaloes, justifying it publicly because it weakened the Viet Minh resistance. For every three buffalo killed, the French were reputed to believe, one Viet Minh member was as good as killed. But after the destruction of the buffaloes, it was Vietnamese women who took up the ploughing of the rice fields while their husbands, fathers and sons went to battlefields. By the time I came along, women constituted the majority of the agricultural work force.

Harvesting took place in September and March. My maternal relatives piled up their newly harvested rice stalks in their front yards. Two shared buffaloes were brought in to trample the piles until the rice husks separated from the stalks. On moonlit nights the un-husked rice shone with a rich golden colour. While the adults were pounding the golden rice in a giant stone mortar to separate the white grains from the husks, we children would play in the moonlight. If my paternal grandmother was present, we would gather around her and insist on a story. The first one that I remember sharing with my little cousins was about the buffaloes and the rice paddies:

In Viet Nam the water buffalo has been used in the rice paddies for centuries. He looks very much like a cow with a hump on his back. His body is dark grey, and he has flat horns that curve backward along his neck. He always loves to immerse himself in muddy water. Since his job is to plough the rice field, a heavy wooden yoke with the plough is placed over his neck. He pulls the plough through the water without much effort. In ancient times, though, water buffaloes were wild animals living in the forests, and they were idle and greedy too. To feed themselves they invaded the territory of other animals to steal grass and water. Then after eating and drinking they would all fall asleep. They rarely bathed and during the rainy season they looked for shelter under large trees to stay out of the rain. Although they were physically large and good looking, other animals in the jungle stayed away from them because of their greediness, laziness, and offensive odour.

Then one day all of the wild animals had their monthly meeting and made a complaint against the buffaloes. The Elephant, who chaired the meeting, suggested, “Now is perhaps the time to do something about the buffaloes. Let’s appoint the Tiger as our representative and take a message to them. Tell them to stop invading our lands, stop stealing our food, and start to earn their keep. If they refuse we will punish them.”

The Tiger went to look for the buffaloes. When he found them, he climbed onto a tree and called out, “O buffaloes! Please hear me!” The buffaloes were surprised and raised their heads to look around. One buffalo answered, “Yes, we hear you. Who are you and what do you want?”

The Tiger immediately said, “We want you to live in your own field, to gather your own grass, and to start bathing. You are such a disgrace to the animal kingdom with your behaviour.” One great buffalo, without hesitating, answered, “Be gone with you! Go tell your friends if they do not like things the way they are, then leave this forest. We are not common animals, we are mighty beasts. No one should tell us what to do. If you and your friends bother us, the great buffaloes of this forest will destroy you all.”

When the Tiger reported to the committee of animals on his meeting with the buffaloes, all started to shout and chatter at once. The Elephant trumpeted for order, then said, “Friends, we will ask the Divine Order for his guidance. Let us pray.” After the prayer was finished there was a great silence. Then suddenly a gentle voice came from the air, “Animals, you are right. Too long the buffalo has lived in disgrace. He has made no effort to change his ways. He must be punished. All the tigers of the forest will now go and attack the buffalo herd!”

Immediately, the tigers set out on their mission and carefully planned their big battle. During the fight many of the buffaloes were killed. Those who survived used all their strength to stumble to a stream where they lay in the shal- low water to heal their wounds. Their beautiful horns had been flattened and bent backwards. A few days later the buffaloes held a meeting. The older and wiser buffaloes thought it would be better to go back to their own territory but the young ones wanted to fight to the end. While they were arguing and bickering, a strange voice spoke to them, “Buffaloes, you have been punished for your selfish way of life. From this time on you will be beasts of burden, a consequence of your greediness and laziness. You will be ugly because you boasted your greatness and beauty, and you will enjoy wallowing in mud and water because of your filthiness. You must go now to the nearest farms and start to plough the rice fields to earn your livelihood.”

And so the water buffaloes went and were made to plough the rice fields forever.

My immediate family and I lived in a simple, one-storey house with an earthen floor and walls and roof covered with dried leaves from the water-coconut palm. The house was surrounded by trees and flowering shrubs and was only a few steps from the Catfish Stream, a branch of the river in front of my grandmother’s house. My mother raised chickens and ducks in our yard but no pigs until the day she bought an adorable piglet and gave it to me to take care of. He was still about the size of a cat, pink with very light hair. I let him wander about wherever he pleased and named him “No”. He enjoyed chasing after children and they enjoyed chasing after him. He often slept inside the house on the earth floor. The only food I gave him was a creamy substance from inside the rice husks, a little like wheat germ. Twice a day I measured the powder into a large wooden container, then added water to it. My little pig grew fast and became quite attached to me, grunting at me whenever I left the house and greeting me in the same way when I returned. He always heard my footsteps in the front yard. He knew exactly when it was time to eat and would happily make his way to the corner of our backyard, until I arrived with his dinner.

Once No grew to his full size, my mother told me we would have to sell him and I was heartbroken. Inevitably, the merchant arrived in his wooden sampan and came into the house with a giant black iron scale to bargain with my mother. The pig squealed when it was forced onto the scale, and I started to cry. The merchant gave my mother the money and took No away in the sampan. I was in distress for months, which infuriated my mother, “Don’t you keep crying and lamenting! If you don’t shut up, I will let you go hungry tonight.”

In our village people ate mostly fish, shrimp, crabs, fruit and vegetables, a lot of rice, and sometimes small servings of meat. My mother had erected a trellis on which we grew cucumbers, squash, winter melons and bitter melons. Our vegetable garden was filled with tomatoes, eggplants, mint, basil, coriander, lemon grass, and lettuce. There were several large jasmine shrubs around the house, and a huge flowering gardenia tree in the front. In the evening hundreds of white blossoms filled the air with sweet fragrances. We also had two fruit trees in the back garden – the coconut tree my father had planted after my birth and a guava. I found it hard to wait for the guava fruits to ripen. I sometimes went up into the tree and sat there like a monkey, eating too many un-ripened guavas until my stomach went into full rebellion.

Fish were plentiful in our streams and rivers and I began fishing at age four, always accompanied by a family member. From age seven I could go on my own and did so quite regularly. Sometimes I went with Uncle Muoi to a large river for serious fishing with a net. I also liked being on a boat and one day Uncle Muoi’s son Hung and I took my uncle’s sampan out to the water palm jungle, taking a knife with us. We were both ten years old at the time. Hung could swim very well but I didn’t. I myself loved the sweet kernel inside the brown shells of water-coconuts and it was my idea to go out that day, without telling anyone.

Our sampan passed slowly along the waterway by the side of the jungle, and soon we saw a huge cluster of coconuts over hanging the edge of the river. I tried to pull out a few nuts but none would go free, so I grabbed an entire bunch, all at once, and, wrestled with it, until the sampan tipped over. “Hung! Hung! Help me! Help!” I cried out in distress. Hung tried to stretch over to my side of the sampan but it was too late. We both plunged into the water, making a huge splash. Hung was in tears and tried desperately to reach me. He swam over and grabbed my foot. As soon as my head came out of the water, I heard his shouting, “Keep your head up! Put your feet on my shoulders! Can you stand up?” I followed his instructions, while he shouted again, “Both feet, not one! I’ll hold still … Don’t fall! Careful! Careful!” I successfully lifted myself onto Hung’s shoulders, with one hand grabbing a palm leaf branch. “Now! See the large trunk over there? Right over there!” His voice was shaking as he was out of breath. While holding my feet firmly on his shoulders with his hands, he shouted again, “Ready to jump! Now go!” I leaped over and fell onto the large trunk of the water palm, grasping it like a monkey. Hung got out of the water after me, and we both managed to turn the sampan right side up and rush home as fast as we could. We never told anyone about this incident. Without Hung, I would have drowned.

Hung soon developed seizures. Nobody could tell for sure whether his condition had any connection with an earlier head injury at the school playground, incurred when the nearby garrison was attacked by Nationalist raiders. His mother, Uncle Muoi’s wife, had taken him to several traditional healers but there was not much improvement. I witnessed more of his seizure attacks than anyone else because I often played with him. Every time Hung fell to the ground and his body started to convulse, I would hold his hands very tightly and call out his name. When his body stopped shaking, I used green leaves to wipe away the saliva bubbles from his mouth. One of the activities that he and I enjoyed was chasing dragonflies around the gardens. They came in all different colours – green, yellow, red, brown, and even striped. From time to time we caught giant green grasshoppers in the rice fields. We took them home to roast over the fire. Hung and I enjoyed eating them, at least until my paternal grandmother told us how sad she felt for the grasshoppers.

In the village, cooking was always the women’s domain. The kitchen was a separate hut, off-limits for most men in most households. Uncle Muoi enjoyed grilling fish but he did so in the open air. He would take a small bamboo stick and poke it through the length of the fish, usually a large walleye, mackerel or pompano and completely cover the fish with mud. He planted the spear upright, leaving the fish above the ground, piled dried hay around the spear and started a fire. When the mud dried, it could be cracked open to reveal the most deliciously cooked fish.

My mother liked to catch snakes and would use the meat as the main ingredient for rice porridge. One day she discovered some snake eggs in a corner of the house, which led to a search. We eventually found an orange snake curled up under a pile of bamboo baskets. It took fright and slithered up into the rafters. My mother stacked several baskets to stand on. She beat the ceiling and walls violently with her bamboo stick. Finally she hit the snake, which landed lifeless on the floor.

But no skill in catching living things could match that of Uncle Muoi’s wife – Mo Muoi. She was a physically powerful woman and needed to be, with thirteen children to look after as well having to keep house and raise domestic animals. When I was a baby, Mo Muoi nursed me with her breast milk once each day while my mother worked in the rice field. She was never ill. Her specialty was catching mice with her bare hands, often one in each hand, with little apparent effort. The performance always left us children flabbergasted.

My mother’s eldest brother Phan was a carpenter and, like many of our neighbours, a follower of Caodaism. He was quiet and reserved, soft spoken, and had very gentle manners. Having his head completely shaved, he looked like a monk. Uncle Phan was a vegetarian who would never kill an animal, not even a fish. He made wooden furniture for the villagers and they paid him with buckets of un-husked rice. He also made a beautiful mo, or wooden bell – a round hollowed-out object made of wood about the size of a grapefruit – for his Cao Dai shrine. In the evening he would beat the bell with a tiny stick, “Lock cock! Lock cock! Lock cock … ” while praying.

Uncle Phan rarely talked politics or wars but his two sons, Bao and Huan, were fully aware of what was going on in the world around us. One day they decided to abandon all farming work to their wives and sisters to join our elder cousin Hinh. Uncle Phan did not show any emotion when they left but that same evening he went to his Cao Dai shrine and prayed for them. His wife was crying and could not eat that night. When Bao and Huan came to say goodbye to my branch of the family, I asked them where they were going. They gave me a smile, “Little Sister, we are going to join big brother Hinh.”

“But why don’t you wait until Grandma finishes making the hammocks for you?” I asked. “How are you going to sleep in the jungle?”

“We have to leave today.” They responded. “But we will come back to collect them later.”

Uncle Phan’s house was near my grandmother’s and shared the same river. At the side of his house was a large pond where he grew mostly yellow and white lilies and some pink lotus. During each full moon my grandmother received a bunch of lilies or lotus from him. I often volunteered to bring her the flowers. I loved to inhale their pure fragrance. Sometimes when nobody was around I would slip into the pond and play in the water until my whole body was scented, just like the lilies themselves.

The lily pond attracted several varieties of frogs – green, yellow, black, and striped. There were also a few rough-skinned ones that were much larger than the others. Sometimes several frogs just sat on top of a lily pad and made no noise at all. At other times they were jumping all over the place and singing with their inflated chests “croak, croak, croak … ” Their voices would become much louder when children came to the pond and disturbed their peace. My cousin Dzung, Uncle Phan’s third son, guarded the frogs to make sure nobody would catch them to eat, as the frogs had become friends of the children.

The best time of the year, though, was the harvest. It was invariably accompanied by songs and poetry and playful exchanges between young people. In our village the girls and boys would congregate and the girls’ songs were funny and provocative:

A gang of men is worth three piasters

Let’s lock them up inside this cage

Then ask the ants to carry them away

A woman is worth three hundred dollars Let’s spread out a bed of fresh flowers

And invite her to have a seat.

…

As children grew older and reached an age when courtships became more serious, there were strict rituals to be followed. Young men and women weren’t normally permitted to be in close contact with each other. Girls were taught to be demure and open flirting was considered outrageous behaviour. The courting signals were thus very subtle and restrained. Holding hands while walking together was a sign of very serious commitment. There were few chances for physical closeness except in the dark of the communal centre where an opera or a musical play was being performed. In those circumstances, surrounded by all the neighbours, one might sit close enough to sense another person’s thighs or shoulders. But girls and young men for the most part met in separate groups and didn’t mix. When Hien met her future husband, I was with her at an evening opera.

The traditional opera, known as Hat Boi, was like that of the Chinese. Everyone loved it. The stories were universally known and contained legendary characters, princes and princesses, famous generals and wicked enemies, wise men and amusing fools, mandarins, dragons and magic monkeys. Virtue always triumphed in the end and evil was punished, kingdoms were lost and gained in the process and there were always points of high drama that made the audience feverish with excitement and anticipation, even if everyone already knew the story from beginning to end.

The singing was formalized, the theatre sets simple but the costumes were highly elaborate. Much use was made of masks and such gestures as the fingering of a beard would carry significant meaning. Each performance was monitored by a person of honour who sat in the audience with a wooden bell, or mo on his left, which made a clacking sound, and a drum on his right. If all went well with the acting he banged the drum and the audience cheered and stamped their feet, but if he wasn’t happy with the performers, he sounded the mo and groans of protest arose from the spectators.

My mother’s favourite entertainment was not the traditional opera but a modern form called Cai Luong, which only began to develop in the 1920’s. When I was a child there were about forty troupes in the South performing this genre of musical play. The stories were more human and down to earth than those in traditional operas. They were full of the kind of real-life drama people could relate to, such as a love triangle, a fatherless child, or the sudden death of a young girl. The audience would be brought to tears by the songs, and the actors and actresses who performed Cai Luong became celebrities with a wide following.

In Truong An, the operas and modern musical plays came several times a year and they would run for three consecutive days and nights. There was always one or the other to coincide with the celebration of Ky An, the annual festival of prayer for the village’s peace and prosperity. The audience consisted of officials, people with money, farmers young and old, labourers male and female, young men and women and children, all sitting on wooden benches in one of the large communal huts.

Hien and her future husband, on their second meeting at the theatre – and their first real date – became engaged. She was seventeen and Than proposed marriage to her. He gave her a little package of white silk, containing a beautiful comb made of jade, the symbol of his love and commitment. For a wedding to be amicably agreed upon, an arrangement had to be made by the traditional matchmaker or a respected elder person in the groom’s family. The calendar of the seasons had to be taken into account. In my village, and generally in the delta, the wedding season was from the ninth moon to the first moon, or October to February. This fitted into the cycle of the rice crop, the village’s main means of survival. Work in the rice fields was divided into two seasons, the first beginning in the fifth moon (June), and the other in the eleventh (December). Each season required three months of full-time labour at different parts of the cycle. At other times the work was easier, consisting mainly of the maintenance of dykes and ditches. When the rice was growing – ripening ‘like a young girl,’ as it was said, and the green shoots were slowly rising from the water, there was a long period when people could relax.

Life in the tropics is without a real winter or spring, but there is always variety in the environment. A day can contain many moods, heavily overcast at one point and then brilliant sunshine shortly afterwards. There can be morning mists, gentle breezes, wild storms and still air. We always had spectacular sunsets and bright moonlight. We never knew snow. We had a chant that went:

A day has all four seasons

Morning is spring

Afternoon is summer

Evening is autumn

And night is winter.

There was, of course, no television when I was little; but even if there had been any, we had no electricity. I did not visit a cinema until I was thirteen, and that was in Sai Gon. There was not even a radio, at least not until our neighbour’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Que, went to Sai Gon to visit her aunt for a few months. Her return was marked by two separate gatherings of excited and curious onlookers who flocked to her parents’ house. The first group to arrive was all the girls and women of the village, who wanted to see what a Sai Gon lady really looked like. My mother went and she took me along with her.

The word had already spread that this country girl had come back from the city transformed and that we would see things never before witnessed in the village. The rumours turned out to be absolutely right. Que now wore face powder, lipstick, and nail polish. She wore mascara on her eyelashes, and her hair had been curled. She wore a silky dress, and beneath she wore an absolutely amazing thing called a “bra”.

And she was wearing shoes!

Above all else, she had on an array of the most fancy glittering jewellery.

Que received the long line of village ladies who wanted to touch these unimaginable fineries and see them close up. Months later, to be sure, the balance was to be restored when the young woman, having run out of both make-up and a place to wear it, reverted to her normal rural self. Like all the rest of us she would once again wear cotton until it fell apart and her feet would be bare, her skin dark from exposure to the sun and the wind.

Something else Que brought back was of interest to a wider set of people, many of them elders of the community. This was the village’s first radio. Her aunt in Sai Gon had given her a small wireless set and some precious batteries to go with it. Mrs Sau’s husband set it up in a place of honour in their home, and honoured guests were invited in to witness the miracle. The house was soon crowded with village people, with an overflow in the front yard.

In a hush of anticipation, the set was switched on, and to the general astonishment, disembodied voices filled the air. For a moment, people were simply too dumbfounded to speak, but soon there was an outbreak of muttering and then volleys of comments from the visitors. An old man uttered, “There must be some tricks to this.” A woman seemed to agree with him, “There must be some people hiding on the roof or inside some walls around here.” Mrs Lua, then in her seventies, was positive that the voices belonged to ghosts. And ghosts, she loudly maintained, were not to be trifled with!

* * *

We may not have had radios in the villages of the delta back in the fifties but the air was always full of sweet sounds, among them the calls of the vendors. Heavy goods like rice, potatoes, drinking water were brought in by boat. Each merchant had a distinct sound or cry. Goods light enough to be carried were borne on the vendor’s shoulders in containers and set down while a sale was being settled.

At meal times we might wait to hear the clacker of the noodle soup man, or the tinkling bell of the ice cream boy. The distinct traditional call of the fish lady, the knife sharpener, the barber, or the sliced fruit man could come anytime during the day. Some warbled as they sang their call while others had high-pitched voices and long calls. All were instantly recognizable. The range of goods and services was enough for most of our needs. I often bought fresh tofu in syrup and young coconut juice at the doorstep of our house. We could even have our clothes dyed by the dyeing man with his pans of jet-black liquid. People wore clothes until they had lost their first colour and then gave them a new life in black, the destination of nearly all garments for daily life and work.

In our village there were no cars, no bicycles, and no telephones. But the air was full of the tinkling and warbling of bells, and calls, of the paddling of boats, and the gentle padding around of people and their animals. The singing of frogs responding to children, the low flute-like sound of the mosquito swarms, the calls of goats, chickens, and the occasional grunting of a pig reminded us always of the animals we shared our land with.

Several times a year the men of the village gathered for the staging of a cockfight, sponsored by Mr Ba Dan, who was also the principal host. He and his family were converted Catholics. He had been a collaborator under the French and had received a fair amount of land by them. Although Mr Ba Dan would not be considered wealthy elsewhere, in Truong An he was rich. He had several concubines acquired from destitute families. He was known as “the Great Master” and had a reputation for being extravagant. On one occasion, one of his concubines had lost an earring and couldn’t find it in the dark. Mr Ba Dan sent an order to one of his servants to bring him a Frenchmade lighter. Everyone watched the great master in amusement. He took his cigarette between his lips, then proudly dipped into his trousers’ pocket and pulled out a huge stack of Indochinese piasters. Now holding a large value bill, he signaled the servant to light its edge. With the bill alight in his hand – as a torch, the great master bent to the floor and started searching for the earring. Quickly a second bill was lighted and this went on – one bill after another – until the stack of money was nearly gone. No earring was found. Having done his best to please his beloved mistress, the great master let out a sigh and returned to his seat. He lifted one leg and crossed it over the other. He looked comfortable, with chin pointed to the ceiling, while eyes were half-closed. He was contemplating. Another servant handed him a Cognac. His concubine wiggled her hips, rose up, and walked out of the room. The great master turned his head toward the door. Without saying a word, he watched her body in motion and listened to the rustling sounds of her silk dress.

Under Mr Ba Dan’s cockfighting arrangement, all the chosen cocks would be brought to Truong An from other villages in a special boat. If it were to be a big tournament, the news would have spread to several villages and there would be a large and noisy crowd of expectant onlookers waiting to see the line-up of birds. There was always a second boat accompanying the cockboat, carrying beer, wine, and food to be used between the tournaments. Uncle Muoi was passionate about cockfights and he always had a pair of birds ready for each tournament. A typical cockfight event would last for about three days. The winners would be invited to a great feast at Mr Ba Dan’s house afterwards. To me, the vicious fighting between each pair of cocks was not a fun event and I rarely watched it.

For the most part, my childhood years in the village were a time of slow peaceful routines, determined by the rhythms of the rice crop and the calendar of traditional festivals. Life did not have great comforts but it had many simple pleasures: the taste of a coconut or a water melon, eating Uncle Muoi’s grilled fish, the opera and musical plays, the girls singing and laughing, the sweet scents of our flower garden and my grandmother’s poon tree, a fresh breeze, and the nights so quiet you could hear snakes slithering after mice in the undergrowth.

But these peaceful routines of my childhood were to be interrupted. One day, without warning, but in a never-experienced crescendo of hissing, then screaming, then ear-splitting roaring, came the first deadly weapons. Then came the military men and their metal machines. The air darkened with heavy smoke and burned with flashes of gunfire.

What had already become commonplace in other parts of our country now came, day after day after day, to Truong An.

BEGINNINGS OF LOSS

“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey”

Kenji Miyazawar

My paternal grandmother came to live with us in the village when I was two. I was her first and only grandchild at the time, and she always told me, “My child, I came because I wanted to be with you.” Her possessions and furniture hardly suited the conditions of village life, and before she moved, she sold or gave away everything she could live without. Nonetheless, when she left the city of Can Tho one spring day in 1953, she needed a large horse-drawn wagon to carry her remaining belongings. These included a sideboard inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a rosewood dining room set, a mahogany divan, a canopy bed, a grandfather clock, two trunks of blue and white china, a trunk of silk dresses and beaded slippers, four porcelain high stools, and a set of copper cookware. Concealed under her clothing was a long black silk tube in which she had hidden a number of gold bars, several of them recently bought from Granduncle Ba’s gold shop.

After two days of traveling by horse and carriage, my grandmother and her possessions arrived at Thanh Chau, the town closest to our village. From that point on everything had to go by boat, requiring several hours of rowing. She spent the night in the town while waiting for my parents to arrive the next day to accompany her on the last leg.

As soon as she arrived in our house hostilities broke out between her and my mother. It was inevitable. In addition to the traditional antagonism between in-laws, there were huge differences between them in social and cultural background. My mother made it clear from the beginning that she did not want my grandmother interfering in the running of the household, especially in the kitchen hut, which was separate from the main house and close to the vegetable garden. However, as my mother worked long hours in the rice fields most days, much of the cooking ended up being done by my grandmother. It didn’t keep her daughter-in-law from criticizing her cuisine.

And there was the gold bracelet.

My grandmother brought it as a gift for my mother – a beautiful carved object depicting apricot flowers and leaves. My mother tried it on briefly, then immediately hid it away and never again wore it. Was this because she didn’t like it? No, at least not on the surface. One day my grandmother asked her, “Daughter, you have not worn your bracelet at all. Don’t you like it?”

My mother gave a sharp answer, “Madame! The women in this village never wear any jewellery and I am not about to arouse their jealousies by parading such a large piece of gold in public.” Besides, she said, “It wouldn’t be safe to show it anyway. Who knows what may happen.”

With those comments, my grandmother began to worry about her own valuables. Without telling anyone, she put most of her gold bars into a ceramic pot, standing them upright together inside, then buried the pot in the ground under the house. The house was supported on many wooden poles and she marked the nearest one to show exactly where the pot was buried.

Her furniture was eventually distributed all around the house. It may have looked strange and out-of-place in such a rustic setting. But I loved to climb over the high porcelain stools that now stood in the living room. She had her own bedroom, for which my mother made a pair of soft-yellow curtains. Sometimes I got to sleep with her there. Her window overlooked the small pond at the side of the house with its white and yellow water lilies. I knew nothing then of the tragic circumstances of her life. All I knew was her kind voice, her tender embrace, her cooking, and the wonderful stories she told me.

My grandmother had been born in Long An, a suburb of Cho Lon. Cho Lon itself had always been known as the Chinese district of Sai Gon, and it was there that she met her future husband, who was Chinese. She was twenty years old when they married and a classically beautiful woman. He was from Fukien province in China and had a trading business in silk and spices that took him on trips to Laos and Cambodia as well as China. They went to settle in Can Tho soon after they were married.

My father was her only child. When he was six months old, his father left on a business trip to China and never came back. In fact, he was never heard from again. My grandmother never found out what happened to him. One possibility was that he was trapped by the revolutionary tides that swept across China after the collapse of the Manchu dynasty. It was an anarchic period in the great country to our north, one filled with danger and violence and in which any individual might be maimed, robbed or killed. Many simply disappeared. It is also conceivable that my grandfather simply abandoned his wife to her fate.

My grandmother went through a long period of intense grief and suffering. She waited for him -- in vain, rather like the stone statue on the cliff in a story she used to tell me. In that story, a young woman and her child had been abandoned by her husband in unusual circumstances and every day she carried the child and stood on a cliff to wait for him, until one day both mother and child turned to stone.

My grandmother never quite came to terms with what had happened. In her solitude she would lament:

Sunset after sunset

Many sunsets I long for you

I miss you in that white tunic

And the scarlet scarf over your shoulder

My father, who grew up without a father of his own, developed very slowly as a child. And he didn’t walk until he was two. He was raised with the assistance of his maternal aunt, Di Ha, who was often exasperated by his crying. At his first steps my grandmother shouted out to her mother, ‘“Look! Mother! He is walking now!” The child’s grandmother was pleased but not Di Ha, who responded sarcastically from another room, “So finally an old baby can walk. Nothing to be excited about, my dear!” My grandmother always felt that her son had been grieving with her over the loss of his father and this had delayed his development. She became much more sensitive to his needs as a result.

Once my father reached school age, his maternal uncle, Ba, stepped into his life as a substitute father. Granduncle Ba was well off and he owned a fine jewellery shop in Can Tho. He had no interest in politics or revolutionary activities, concentrating instead on his business and at the same time practising herbal medicine on the side. A handsome man, always well dressed in silk robes and trousers, he was the youngest of my grandmother’s generation and the one she felt closest to. I didn’t meet Granduncle Ba until I was twelve, when we moved to Sai Gon. Despite his intense dislike for my mother’s person- ality, he treated me as if he was my grandfather, and I was very fond of him.

* * *

When I was three, my mother gave birth to a baby girl. But the child was born in a breech position, and the local midwife, Mrs Qua, could not handle the delivery. The baby died at birth. While my parents were still grieving over this loss, they learned that in the nearby village of Vinh Vien, there was another newborn child whose parents had refused to recognize him. He had come out of his mother’s womb with a white membrane covering his head that looked like a hood. They called it the “white hood” (mu trang), which was equivalent to a white funeral headband. Such a birth, although very rare, prophesied in Vietnamese tradition that either he or one of his parents would soon die.

My parents decided to adopt the rejected child. Because my father had to be away, my mother asked Uncle Muoi and his wife to collect him for us. They went off in a sampan and came back with the baby on the same day. The child wore no clothing except a triangle of beige cloth that barely covered his midriff. His hair was damp and he looked dirty. I took one look at him and told my mother to throw him away! My mother laughed and said that she’d turn him into a fine baby, complete with new clothes. When my father came home he named the baby Son, meaning Mountain.

With my mother’s breast milk, Son soon had a baby’s chubbiness. I began to like him, and he became attached to me. When he was a year old I started to carry him around on my back when playing with the other children. We fell over regularly and went squealing into the mud. He learned how to walk using a kind of tiptoe movement and had difficulty with balance. My parents were concerned about him but he appeared to be healthy and was very happy. I loved him dearly.

When he was two and a half, Son suddenly fell ill with typhoid fever. His skin turned pale blue and he lay immobile and unresponsive. A healer was called to our house, and my grandmother sent me away to a neighbour’s. That night I slept at my maternal grandmother’s. When I was brought home the following day I kept asking where Son was, not knowing that he had died and been buried without a funeral. I begged my parents to look for him in the village and they promised. But after many days, I began to cry constantly and my father finally told me Son had died. This first loss, of my baby brother, was unbearable. I felt broken inside. I refused to eat, and at night I couldn’t sleep.

My father tried his best to comfort me. He carried me around the garden and along the river. He told me Son’s spirit had joined the fairies and was living in the sky. I asked him, “Can I see Son and the fairies in the sky?”

“You will see them one day,” he answered, “but only after you die.”

He then explained to me about death and dying. He said that my paternal grandmother would join the fairies first, then he and my mother, then me last. I burst into tears and stammered out that I wanted all of us to die at the same time. The idea of being abandoned by him and my grandmother terrified me.

One day I went with my mother to see my maternal aunt, Di Nam. After we had crossed a large bamboo field, she pointed to a small mound in the ground, “Your little brother was buried there.” I saw a sad look on her face but she didn’t want us to stop. Son’s grave was unmarked, and though only four months had passed, grass had already started to grow over the little mound of dirt. The surrounding area was full of tall reeds, dried out because of the sun. My mother was almost in tears, “It was Uncle Muoi who carried Son’s body to the site and buried him.” Trying not to show her emotion, she added, “No one else was present at the burial ground that day.”

“Why did no one go with him, Mother?”

“It’s the custom,” she explained, “the mother isn’t allowed to accompany her dead child to the grave.”

“But what about me?” I was quite upset. “Why wasn’t I allowed to see my baby brother being buried?”

“No, not you either.” she cut me off. “It’s the same custom.”

She hurried me along. The heat was intense and to reach my maternal aunt’s house we had to cross a monkey bridge (cau khi) – simple bridge consisting of a tree trunk -- and then a huge swamp, where her legs would sink up to the knees and she would have to lift me across. The next day, though, I went back on the same path by myself and found the grave. How desperately I wanted to hold my little brother in my arms! My mind now returned to the last day of his life:

Two little chubby cheeks

Why so silent, the two pink lips?

Why no brightness in the velvet eyes?

Why no breathing?

The body is cold

The ten baby fingers are not moving

Oh! The end of a bitter-sweet childhood

My very precious little brother.

Kneeling by the mound of earth, I called out my brother’s name and let the tears flow. As I walked away finally, I observed two other graves, each with a tombstone attached to it. Why hadn’t my parents made one for Son? What was he wearing? What kind of material had they wrapped him in before he was placed in the earth?

Several months later a little girl in my village died. I only learned about it by accident. That evening, while walking with my mother, a man passed us on the road. I noticed he was carrying a large package covered in a sleeping mat on his shoulder. The package was tightly secured by multiple strings – the same type of strings made from bark that my mother used to weave hammocks. He and my mother started to talk to each other, and I saw his sad expression, but afterward she refused to answer my questions. A few days later when I was at Mrs Qua, the midwife’s house, I heard her saying to a friend how sad she was about the little girl who’d just died. It was she who had delivered the child eighteen months earlier. I asked Mrs Qua about the package I’d seen on the man’s shoulder and she confirmed that it contained the little girl. I then concluded that that was how my little brother had been wrapped before he was buried. That evening I fell sick again and, though my grandmother took me with her into her bed, I was unable to sleep.

I had also learned from Mrs Qua that following the death of Son my mother went to one of the village shrines and made a prayer. She had asked the spirits to give her a son.

And indeed Mother gave birth to a baby boy in the Year of the Monkey, 1956. My father named him Trung, meaning Loyalty. He too was delivered by Mrs Qua, and at home. As was the custom, Mrs Qua was presented with a live chicken after the delivery, and my mother was given a bowl of a child’s urine to drink. Following Mrs Qua’s orders, she followed a very strict diet. She had to consume a huge quantity of green tea and eat fish or meat cooked in fish sauce seasoned heavily with black pepper. No citrus or unripe fruit was allowed before six months were up. Every day for an entire month my mother had to lie flat on her stomach on the bamboo bed under which the charcoal was burning. The heat helped tighten her muscles and the belly would return to its normal size rapidly.

My father and I visited a fabric merchant in the village and bought some cotton cloth for Trung and also for me. He paid the merchant with “real” money. This was the first time I’d seen money in paper form. Counting out the correct amount, my father also showed me some bills with the likeness of Uncle Ho (Bac Ho). They were no longer valid, he said, but he’d kept them as a souvenir. I asked him who Uncle Ho was and he answered, “ His name is Ho Chi Minh, the father of our country”. He began telling me a sad story about the childhood years of the great man, who had been born in a war-torn village called Lotus (Kim Lien) in Central Viet Nam. Bac Ho’s name at birth was Nguyen Sinh Cung, my father said. In the year 1901, when Cung was ten years old, his scholarly father had to travel from their home in Hue to Thanh Hoa to supervise an imperial examination – a great honour at the time. Cung’s elder brother accompanied the father during the dangerous journey on horseback, travelling through dense forests, remote hills and mountains that were infested by bandits. The one-way trip alone would take more than a month. Cung was left at home with his pregnant mother. One morning Cung had gone to the village market to buy food and when he returned home he heard the crying sound of a baby – his baby brother. He rushed in, and saw that his mother was lying immobile in bed, next to the newborn baby. He called out to her and shook her shoulders, but there was no breathing. Cung started crying and went to look for the neighbours. For several days he wept and wasn’t able to sleep. After the mother was buried, Cung had to carry the baby from house to house asking for milk. His village had been among the poorest but they did their best to help while waiting for the father to return. By now, Cung’s father had left Thanh Hoa. But on the way home he stopped in Lotus village to build a stone tomb for his parents – a foolish decision on his part.

When he received the news of his wife’s death, he hurried back to Hue, but it was already too late to return in time for the funeral. He felt deep regret and became angry with himself. For young Cung, the sudden loss of his mother under such tragic circumstances was the saddest experience in his childhood years. When my father ended the story, I said to him, “It’s terribly sad. Is this a real story, Daddy?”

“Absolutely! It’s a true story. Now you have a baby brother too. Will you help your mama to look after him?”

“Of course I will, Daddy!”

When my baby brother was three months old, a major family expedition took place. The cause was my birth certificate. Issued originally by the village authorities under the Viet Minh, mine and all certificates like it were considered invalid under the Diem regime once it took over from the French in 1954. It was necessary for me to have a “substitute birth certificate” issued by the Civil Court of Can Tho, and this meant a personal appearance before the court. We would stay at the house of Uncle Nam.

My mother had made two new blouses for me – one pink and one purple – and trousers to match. She also cut my hair to shoulder length and I wore a pair of gold earrings my father had given me for the occasion. He’d always felt a girl ought to own one good piece of jewellery, even when her family was poor. My baby brother wore a yellow T-shirt and nothing else. Father put on his usual outfit – beige khaki shirt and matching trousers. Mother had on a green silk blouse and black satin trousers. He wore black leather sandals. She and I went barefoot, as always.

Uncle Muoi accompanied us, paddling the sampan. He wore a black cotton outfit, a checked scarf in black and white around his neck, and on his head a non la, the typical Vietnamese conical straw hat. About half way to Thanh Chau town my father insisted on taking over the paddling from Uncle Muoi. It ended with my mother scolding him, “When it comes to physical labour, you’re quite useless, Master! Here, let me do it.” And she did.

It took us about three hours to reach the busy town. The sky was clear and bright. I was immediately astonished by the sights and the masses of people. The land had little greenery and no palm leaf houses. Standing against the blue sky were colossal buildings of various styles and textures. For the first time I saw bicycles, cyclos, cars, buses – all in a blur of traffic. And gray smoke with a strange smell. Machines were honking and making horrendous noises. People filled the streets, so many of them – talking so fast, running, pushing, shouting – and they dressed differently. Most people, especially the women, wore such elegant clothes, all colours imaginable. The openair market was a giant cornucopia of food and household items.

I wanted to taste everything. I couldn’t make up my mind. My baby brother glued himself to my mother’s breast while my father took me through the market. Such was my amazement and confusion that finally he had to choose something for me. He bought me a bowl of noodle soup with meatballs and shrimp – delicious! – and for himself a package of steamed glutinous rice in fruit puree – a disappointment to me because we had it regularly in our village. My mother, meanwhile, had grilled chicken and rice noodles with vegetables. We also bought several varieties of small cakes for me to take on the bus. I plagued my father with questions. “Why are they so rich?” “Why are we so poor?” “Why did you choose such a poor place for us to live?” My father answered that it had been my mother’s decision to stay in the village, but that we needn’t live there forever. “We might even move to Sai Gon,” he said, “so that you can go to a proper school.”

We boarded an enormous bus that took us all the way to Can Tho, a place that would prove to be even more astonishing. Uncle Nam’s house was some distance from the bus station, and we had to take two cyclos. As gifts to Uncle Nam and his wife, we carried two live chickens and a dozen live fish in a large tin, half-filled with water. We finally arrived at their villa and stood on the threshold in our normal bare feet, afraid to walk onto the clean and shiny tiled floor. Nam came out to greet us with his wife’s mother. We gave her the chickens and the fish. A solidly built man with a broad and pleasant face, he was dressed in civilian clothing, a short-sleeved yellow shirt and dark trousers. His mother-in-law appeared to be in a pleasant mood, but I sensed that she was not thrilled with our visit.

Nam offered to take my mother and me to buy sandals at a market nearby but my mother refused, so he instructed the maid to find some Japanese slippers for us. My mother and I wore them for a short time, then went back to bare feet.

We met Nam’s wife just before lunch, an attractive woman with long curly black hair and dark complexion. Her face was oval and she had very nice teeth. She was very talkative, with a domineering voice.

We all sat around a long table with a white cloth on top. Out in the garden a nurse was taking care of my brother. Uncle Nam lifted me from the French tile floor and he sat me next to him. The maid had already placed a large cushion on the chair as a booster for me. Nam asked me what dishes I liked best. How could I answer him? There were too many and I felt my mother’s eyes on me constantly, worried I might spill food on the white tablecloth. Nam wanted to know about my schooling and I told him I had started school only a few months before. He asked me, “Do you know how to write your name?” I nodded. He then asked me to tell him how to spell his name.

After lunch Nam said he would take us to the Court in his car, which was parked in front of the house. Unused to automobiles and awkward in her slippers, my mother nearly fell down while she tried to get in the car. I felt as if I was on my way to heaven but my mother just stared out the window, rigid, looking as though she was having trouble with breathing. Whenever we stopped for a red light or at an intersection, Nam turned to talk to me, pointing out the sights in his warm and clear voice. I liked Uncle Nam. I liked his piercing but gentle eyes.

My father had taught me and made me rehearse what I was to say to the judge in Can Tho. I could recite perfectly my birth date, the place I was born, and my full name. We were told to return in a month’s time to collect the certificate.

Years later, the subject came up, and I asked my father about the cost of my substitute birth certificate. He said, “ It ought to have cost only a few piasters, at least as far as the government fee was concerned. However, your aunt-in law said that we would only get it if we let her make the ‘arrangements’ for us, and she made me pay her in cash – an amount that was enough to buy a thousand chicken eggs.” My father admitted that the cost of this piece of paper had wiped out a good portion of his savings at the time.

That evening, at Uncle Nam’s house, I saw an electric light bulb for the first time. I couldn’t understand what it was doing, hanging upside down, instead of sitting in a base like a kerosene lamp. I couldn’t sleep, partly because of excitement but also because of the street noise. I tiptoed to the balcony outside my room. There, in a daze, I watched the fast moving cars, the slow peddling cyclos, the hurrying street vendors, the laughing of people out late on the streets, and, shining above all, the bright electric street lights. What my father had said to me in Thanh Chau – that we might end up living in Sai Gon one day – became that night my most fervent wish.

Nam talked to my parents about the problem of safety in the villages and about schooling for me and later for my brother. Although he couldn’t say so directly, he must have known full well that the Diem regime was going to take an increasingly hard line against the former Viet Minh and the delta villages. As a known stronghold of underground resistance, Truong An would be targeted for reprisals. Uncle Nam tried to convince my mother, “Big Sister, I think you all should move out of Truong An. You may come to Can Tho and live near us, or to Sai Gon to be near my brother Nghiem’s family.” But my mother would hear none of it, “I know what you are saying. But it’s not easy just to move out of the village and move into the city like that. Thank you any way, for your concern.” For one thing, her life and her family were in Truong An. For another, they were resolutely opposed to everything Nam stood for. In her mind, he was the enemy of the village.

* * *

On the eighth of October, 1956, without a word of warning to me, my father disappeared from the village. He didn’t even say goodbye. I didn’t pay much attention at first – he had been absent before without explanation. I waited for him at the house entrance that evening as usual, but there was no sign of him. It was raining heavily and I thought that he might have been caught in the storm, so I continued to wait until my mother ordered me to bed. I asked her where he was and she said he would return “later,” but she said it in a tone that suggested she didn’t want to hear anything more about it. I started pestering my grandmother. Where was he? I wanted to know.

She said he’d gone to Can Tho for his asthma.

His asthma? I asked. My father suffered intermittently from asthma as I did, but he hadn’t had any recent attacks that I knew of.

But Uncle Nam, I knew, lived in Can Tho. Had he gone to visit Uncle Nam? But if he’d gone to visit Uncle Nam, why hadn’t he told me?

My grandmother simply shrugged.

More time passed and there was still no sign of him.

I pressed my grandmother again. She became evasive.

“But where has he gone? You have to tell me!”

She didn’t answer. Finally, her voice grave, her expression sombre, she said, “To Sai Gon, Hoa Lai. He’s gone to Sai Gon.”

“To Sai Gon? But why?”

“For work,” she said.

“Work?” I asked. “What work? And why didn’t he even say goodbye?”

I began to cry.

My grandmother took me in her arms and explained that he hadn’t said goodbye to me because he was afraid that I’d be too distraught. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. I had never felt so betrayed, abandoned. I cried for a long time. That night I refused to eat. I went to bed instead but couldn’t sleep. My grandmother wasn’t sleeping either and I saw her wiping her own tears.

I asked her again, “Grandma, are you sure he’s coming back?”

She answered, “Yes, I’m sure.”

Somehow I doubted her. Her distressed look made me feel there must be something very wrong. When my brother Son died, hadn’t I been told he would come back? If they hadn’t told me the truth then, why should I trust them this time? How did I know my father wasn’t dead?

Some months later, however, my father returned to Truong An for a short visit. He had gone to Sai Gon where he’d taken a job with the Ministry of Transportation and his work was to help maintain and protect the country’s roads and waterways. For the next seven years, I would see him only on sporadic visits. It would be many more years before I learned the real reason he had left and why his departure had been so sudden.

* * *

One evening in the dry season of the Year of the Rooster, 1957, my grandmother had just prepared supper. She had cooked fluffy fragrant rice, and made my favourite caramelised fish dish. That afternoon I’d gone fishing with my cousin Dzung and had caught a large goby from the stream. Dzung was like my big brother. He was born in the Year of the Pig, 1947, the third son of Uncle Phan. He had a round face and a pale complexion. His eyes were bright and they welled with tears whenever he saw my mother hitting me.

We went fishing together at least twice a week. I owned a tall bamboo basket with a narrow neck, the shape of a squash. My fishing rod was also made of bamboo. I used earthworms and cicadas as baits. Sometimes I caught nothing, and Dzung would divide his fish and give me half. “Tell your mother you caught them yourself if she asks.” This day Dzung was very pleased with my catch and on the way home kept looking inside my bamboo basket, “ You’re lucky to have caught a goby, Hoa Lai!” He himself had caught several large anabas and two catfish. His mother would turn the anabas into a sweet and sour soup and the catfish would be grilled over the fire.

I gave the fish to my grandmother, “Grandma! Now I will go to the back garden and pick out a perfumed squash, the largest one on the trellis.” My grandmother and I were going to eat by ourselves. My mother had gone to see her mother, taking my baby brother with her.

“Now come and sit down at the dining table, Hoa Lai!” instructed my grandmother, while she was scooping out the steamed squash into a serving bowl. Since the day she arrived in the village we had begun to use her blue and white china, but it was still not her best dinnerware, and some pieces were chipped. Her best china remained stored in a metal trunk.

Suddenly violent sounds burst above our heads, a terrible hissing and whistling. I immediately rushed to her and asked, “Is somebody getting hurt now Grandma?” (Some weeks earlier, I’d been at my maternal grandmother’s house when a visitor had imitated just those same hissing and whistling sounds. Then she followed these immediately with human crying sounds and her face went agape with an expression of horror. Hung and I had just come into the house, and, seeing us, Uncle Muoi’s wife interrupted the lady and signaled her to stop telling the story. In my family, they kept many secrets from young children.)

Now, as I clung to her, my grandmother told me, “Stop asking such foolish questions, my child! Of course no one is getting hurt. The noises will go away soon. Let’s go and have our dinner.” We sat down at the table and began eating. I heard another whistling sound, and then another one, and another one. She too was afraid but continued eating, pretending to ignore what was going on around us.

We finished dinner quickly, and, just as she had said it would, the noise did stop.

The next day I went to a friend’s house to play and there I overheard the adults talking about “roc-ket”. I asked my friend Lien, but she didn’t know what a “roc-ket” was. I went on playing until my grandmother came to collect me, but on the way home I asked her the same question. She didn’t answer till we were inside. With me on her lap, she began explaining to me about the “roc-ket” and the other strange sounds we had heard.

“They’re the same noises you would hear,” she said to me, “if you were out in the deep jungle in the middle of the night.”

“But what makes those sounds in the deep jungle, grandma?” I asked.

“When the lion is growling you hear ‘rrhaaaa,’” she said, imitating the lion’s roar. “And when there’s a strong wind, what do you hear? ‘Sssshheeeesh.’ ”. She gazed at me. “And the ‘rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tattat?’ That’s a very big rainstorm. Very big!”

I accepted these explanations willingly enough – after all, she was my grandmother and she knew everything. But soon afterwards I learned that neither she nor anyone else was able to shield us from the sounds and the terrors of war.

One day, when we returned after one particularly fierce and prolonged raid and reached our house – or what had been our house – we stood in shock, unable to believe our eyes. The building no longer existed. In its place was a heap of ashes, in which the only recognizable object was the pendulum of the grandfather clock. My grandmother’s trunk of blue china, although not burned, had been taken by looters (shortly afterwards items of our porcelain started to appear in other village households; we eventually retrieved nearly half of them).

Witnessing the total destruction, my grandmother flew into a severe panic. She could no longer identify the spot she’d buried her gold. My mother arranged for two village men to dig up the entire ground but to no avail. Nothing was ever found. Although my mother later suspected that the men doing the digging had made off with the treasure. My grandmother was now destitute, and so were we. She would sit alone in the back garden for hours at a time, inconsolable. One evening she lamented:

A bamboo bridge ought to be sturdy

This one is rickety and unsteady

How can I cross over such a flimsy bridge?

To borrow a bowl for my rice

To borrow a cup for my tea…

While waiting for a new house to be built, we lived in a temporary shelter at the edge of the jungle. My mother relied on the assistance of my uncles and their sons to cut new timber, palm leaves, and bamboo. But since many of the bamboo bushes had been burned, and with every household needing trees at the same time, the materials became scarce. We could only manage a small house. My grandmother, fragile and ladylike, could only stand by helpless while the heavy work of rebuilding was going on, most of which was left to my mother. This did not produce good feelings between them, and late in 1957 it all finally came to a head.

The new house was much smaller. My grandmother no longer had her own bedroom and she had to sleep in the living room. She suffered a huge loss of face and continued to grieve. My mother started to humiliate her, sometimes openly insulting her. It became so bad they could no longer tolerate each other’s presence in the same room and more than once I saw my grandmother crying alone in the back garden after one of my mother’s verbal attacks. Though I can hardly exonerate my mother for what happened, I can understand how my grandmother had become nothing but an additional burden to her, and how, in my father’s continued absence, she found it increasingly difficult to fend for us all.

One day, quite by accident, I broke a ceramic bowl while helping my grandmother wash the dishes in the kitchen.

“You little idiot!” my mother shouted. “How many have you broken so far? From now on you’re going to be eating out of a coconut shell!”

My grandmother said to her, “I will buy us a replacement. Don’t tell her to eat out of a coconut shell.”

My mother gave my grandmother the most contemptuous look.

“She is my daughter!” she retorted. “And you couldn’t afford to buy another bowl. And I don’t listen to any damned fool!”

To which my grandmother answered, “You are mean! And you have the temper of the most vicious lion!”

I tried to retreat out the kitchen door but my mother had already taken her bamboo cane off the kitchen wall and seized me by the hair. I cried for help but she yanked me out of the kitchen. Once outside, she began beating me with the bamboo cane, whereupon my grandmother attacked her, struggling to wrench the cane from her hands. My grandmother failed. She was frail and my mother was physically tough. Excited, her face flushed, my mother beat me even harder. Finally, she let go of me, but that, as it turned out, was only the first installment. Later that night, shortly after I crept onto the divan with my grandmother in the living room, my mother came over, screaming and dragged me away to the back wall. She started beating my head with her fists. Her face was set in a grimace and her teeth clenched. While shouting, she also took hold of the precious pair of bedroom slippers my grandmother had given me and hurled them out of the house.

I was too young to understand the wild ferocity of her rage. I can’t say that I understand it even now. She continued to shout and insult my grandmother and me for what seemed like hours, exorcising her peculiar rancour while I, for my part, sitting with my face in my hands, wept. Finally she ordered me to go to sleep in her room. This I did, stilling my tears but unable to calm the panic in my heart.

Late that night, my grandmother packed all her clothes in a small suitcase and left it under the divan. My mother spotted it and realizing my grandmother intended to leave, quietly picked up the suitcase and hid it. Early the next morning, while it was still dark, my mother left the house and went to see her mother, taking my little brother with her. My grandmother went hunting for her suitcase and eventually found it under a pile of bamboo baskets. She left before sunrise, left without seeing me. I was still asleep in my mother’s bedroom and when I woke up it was to an utterly empty house.

Dear Quan Yin,

Please stop my mother from being so cruel. She is completely cruel and I will never love her as long as I live. I want my grandmother. Jasmine is now a shattered flower bud.

TAKING SIDES

“It is the karma of people who have lost their country either to be crushed underfoot like worms and crickets or to make a revolution that smashes the cangues and chains which imprison them”

Truong Sinh

Of my four paternal granduncles, Khanh, Hai, Cuong, and Ba, three embarked on careers that clearly expressed the terrible divisions that lay in store for us all. While Ba quietly ran his jewellery business and practised Chinese medicine, Cuong – trained as a medical doctor in the French system – became a revolutionary. At one point he wrote, “I joined the revolutionary force in order to help liberate my country. I have no political ideology and do not wish to become part of any political party.” Although for a time, at the specific request of Ho Chi Minh, Cuong did lead a political party, and in 1945 he represented Cho Lon as a congressman in the short-lived government that preceded the French return. Cuong saw himself as a nationalist and did not become a communist.

Khanh had given up teaching in order to join the revolutionary movement in 1940. He participated in the failed Sai Gon - Cho Lon revolt, which was part of the Southern Uprising (Nam Ky Khoi Nghia) masterminded by Nguyen Thi Bay. At the time, the French, who continued to run the country’s administration under a World War II agreement with the Japanese, had recognized Bay’s powerful influence and nicknamed her “La Reine Rouge”, or “The Red Queen”. They succeeded in capturing her and several other leaders. Khanh escaped and went into hiding with remnants of the Red Queen’s force.

On 5 April 1941, the French executed the Red Queen and four other male leaders at a football field in Cho Lon. That day owners of all the shops and markets throughout Sai Gon and Cho Lon closed down their businesses – out of respect and defiance. Cuong also closed his medical clinic and personally witnessed the execution. As described by Cuong:

When I arrived, dozens of colonial policemen were already present at the football field – to maintain security. A huge crowd of local people and expatriates were forming a ring around the area. The district chief of Cho Lon was made ‘the witness’ of the public execution. The French and their five prisoners arrived at the football field in a ritual and orderly manner. First in line was an impressive looking car carrying the French senior army officer and his subordinates. Second in line was a huge army truck carrying the firing squad and some members of the Foreign Legion. Third in line was another truck carrying Sister Bay, her four male colleagues, and several guards holding guns. Fourth in line was another truck carrying five empty coffins and a few colonial soldiers. Sister Bay – looking frail from her treatment in captivity – entered the execution ground wearing a black cotton suit and a white silk scarf. By her side were Brothers Muoi Thiep, Hai Trieu, Hai Dang, and Chau. A French Catholic priest was sent in to baptize her but she shook her head. They asked if she had any message for her family, she again shook her head. But she indicated that she wanted to speak to the people of Cho Lon, and they let her. Her voice was calm and clear, ‘My dear people! Please carry on with our struggle to liberate our country. This time we failed but you should never give up. Next time we will defeat the invaders and victory will be ours.’ The French wanted to blindfold Sister Bay before the execution but she refused, ‘I want to look straight at the gun barrels of my enemies!’ The firing squad was divided into two rows – standing and kneeling. When the series of gunshots ended, the five bodies were picked up and thrown into the coffins. Among the mortified Vietnamese crowd, many covered their faces, others wept, the rest quietly walked away in deep anger. The French now started leaving the football field, again in a ritual and orderly manner.

Cuong was badly shaken by the execution. Never before had he felt so humiliated.

In the Mekong Delta, twenty-eight men and women under the leadership of Madame Nguyen Thi Thap were executed in the same month. Thap herself made a narrow escape.

The French military court in Sai Gon sentenced to death five more individuals from the same uprising – Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Nguyen Van Cu, Ha Huy Tap, Phan Dang Luu, and Vo Van Tan. All were guillotined in Sai Gon on 28 August 1941. Minh Khai was significant for her advocacy of participation by women in the armed revolution envisioned by Ho Chi Minh, but also for the fact that she and Ho had been lovers. Moreover, she was Vo Nguyen Giap’s sister- in-law. When Giap’s wife Minh Giang and her sister Minh Khai were captured by the French, Giap himself had already escaped to China. Two years later, while he was still in hiding, his wife and their young child died in prison. Giap reported much later that these deaths had destroyed him. In the next decade he was to lead the jungle warfare army of fifty thousand men and women to annihilate the French at Dien Bien Phu.

The Vietnamese continued to revolt and the French continued to slaughter them. The more executions Cuong witnessed or heard, the more resentful he became. He was now a different man. While trying to continue with his medical practice, Cuong waited for an opportunity. Ho Chi Minh was still in hiding and the executions had weakened the Nationalist leadership. Since 1931, the French had given Ho a death sentence in absentia, and there was a ransom of seventy-five thousand Indochinese piasters on his head. He was living as a fugitive, moving from one country to another, including imprisonment in Hong Kong by the British – who were working in collaboration with the French (he made a narrow escape with the dramatic assistance of the Hong Kong governor’s sympathetic wife). Ho had already spent many years in exile before, as the French Surété had been following him since 1919. During those unsettling years he had achieved fluency in French, English, Russian, and Chinese. He had also immersed himself in a diversity of contemporary political thinking.

After studying the nature of the revolutions in the countries he had visited, Ho began to look for ways of governing Viet Nam as an alternative to exploitation by the French. He understood the specific political implications of the social movements and resentments inside the colony. The French did not underestimate him and would continue to hunt ruthlessly for him. Outside Viet Nam, he was equally in danger of being handed over to them by other powers. He was in danger wherever he went, including the seas, as these were being regularly patrolled by warships from Japan, Britain and the United States, as well as France.

World War II changed the circumstances for most of the major powers. In August 1942 Ho thought it was time for him to return to his homeland – to mobilize people for a revolution. The secret journey ended in disaster. Someone recognized him while he was disguised as a tribal man at the Sino-Vietnamese border. He was arrested and sent to a notorious prison in Guangxi, under Chiang Kai-shek’s order. Failing to get any information out of him, they sent him to a sequence of twenty-nine more prisons. To cope with the inhumane conditions, he composed 133 poems describing his ordeal.

In front of the prison gate, guards stand with rifles

In the sky, masses of clouds carry away the moon

The bed-bugs swam round like army tanks on manoeuvre

The mosquitoes form squadrons attacking like fighter-planes

My heart travels a thousand miles toward my native land

My dream intervenes with sadness,

Like a skein of a thousand threads

Innocent, I have now endured a whole year in prison

Ho Chi Minh, A Diary in Prison

Ho had encountered similar risk fifteen years earlier in Shanghai. A thirteen-year old boy under his care named Ly Tu Trong had been detained and beaten in one of Chiang Kai-shek’s prisons. The child revealed nothing while Ho escaped to Thailand. The little boy, who remained loyal to Ho after his release, was later captured by the French. They guillotined him when he reached sixteen.

It was not until January 1944 that Ho emerged from the Chinese gulag. Having suffered severe beatings while in prison, he was nearly blind and unable to walk. At least he could be reunited with fellow revolutionaries in a limestone cave in Pac Bo (near the northern border with China). Each day members of the group carried him to a mountain site and trained his feet to walk again. Life in the cave was extremely harsh and all the fugitives, including Vo Nguyen Giap, were in constant danger of being identified and captured by the French.

With wide knowledge and experience from overseas, Ho taught his colleagues world history and modern day revolutions. He had written a book called “The Road To Liberation” (Duong Kach Menh) and used that as part of the teaching materials. From Pac Bo Ho made an emotional appeal to the nation and it spread in secret throughout the country, “All of you, revolutionary soldiers! The hour of liberation has come! Please raise our independence flag and lead the country’s men and women to destroy our common enemy…”

People from all segments of society – teachers, lawyers, writers, artists, peasants, labourers, youths and elders of both sexes – responded to the appeal and committed themselves to the Nationalist movement. Without any reservation, Cuong closed down his medical clinic and joined the forces. In December that year Ho Chi Minh asked Vo Nguyen Giap to organize the Viet Minh army, a force that would consist of twenty percent women. The first woman military cadre was Ha Thi Que, who provided military and political training for Viet Minh troops in the Secure Zone. Ho Chi Minh’s appeal was re-enforced by the following poem:

The ancients used to love singing about natural beauty

Snow and flowers, moon and wind, clouds and mists, mountains and rivers

Today we should make poems including iron and steel And the poet should know how to lead an attack.

(Ho Chi Minh. On reading an anthology of a thousand poets)

Khanh, who had been involved in the 1940 insurrection, had gone with members of the defeated rebels to Rung Sac, where he lived during the five years of Japanese occupation. The Vietnamese were now fighting two enemies at the same time – the French and the Japanese. Rung Sac is a jungle area immediately south of Sai Gon, considered strategically important to the Nationalist armies during the French and the American wars. It is heart-shaped and covers an area of seven hundred square kilometres, with hundreds of small rivers criss-crossing the land like a spider’s web. On the east, the jungle river system connects Sai Gon with the South China Sea. Known as the “throat” of Sai Gon, it separates the city from the southernmost part of the country. There are thousands of tiny islands which appear only at low tide and where mangrove trees grow in thick layers, their roots tangled like strands of spaghetti.

After the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, the Nationalist force of Sai Gon - Cho Lon emerged from Rung Sac. This was the year Khanh was captured by the French and subjected to repeated interrogation under severe torture, which left him crippled. Despite the last-minute medical care of his brother Cuong, he died later in a hospital. Before his death his daughters succeeded in persuading him to renounce the revolution. This left him without honour among the revolutionary half of my divided family.

The last of my grandmother’s four brothers was Hai. Such are the strange fortunes of families in periods of war that he was appointed to high positions by the French colonial administration and later by the American-backed regime.

Among all his uncles, my father felt closest to Cuong. He said to me:

In 1937, Cuong had done a remarkable thing: he got a medical degree from the University of Indochina in Ha Noi – the best place to study in the entire country. After that he opened a private practice in Cho Lon. While I was still going to school I would meet Cuong every so often, and he would give me an allowance of three Indochinese dollars each time. In those days ten cents would buy two kilos of pork, so this was more than just pocket money.

Following the August Revolution in 1945 (Cach Mang Thang Tam), Cuong was elected to represent Cho Lon in the First National Assembly of Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary government. In January 1946 he participated in a remarkable journey on foot to Ha Noi. He and four other representatives were in constant danger of being killed by the French. At this time colonial troops were in control of all routes between cities and towns and were cutting off the flow of Vietnamese travelers between the North and the South.

Crossing through hidden paths, forests, and remote villages, the group was led by Madame Nguyen Thi Thap, the elected representative of My Tho province. She had met Cuong and another colleague secretly at a pineapple field near Cho Lon, each carrying just a small backpack. A few days later representatives from three other provinces joined up with them. The group walked through a vast jungle before reaching the rubber plantations of Bien Hoa, which were entirely under French control. After two weeks, they arrived at the first Viet Minh station of Ben Vinh, in a stretch of jungle between the two rivers Dong Nai and Song Be. They had a short rest and restocked their food supply. A guide was to accompany them to the Central Highlands, the formidable mountainous region shaped by the Truong Son Mountain Range. The guide was armed with a rifle and a machete, and his mission was to protect the un-armed group at any cost.

To avoid detection they traveled by night, and regularly had to deal with the raw nature of the jungle. One morning they reached a huge waterfall in Tri An and decided to take a rest and to cook a meal. It was overcast and the thunderous sound of the waterfall was the only noise they heard. The forest was so dense there was almost no light from the sky. After a day’s rest they resumed their journey at nightfall but encountered jungle leeches (con vat). These glued themselves to a person’s neck, under arms and legs. Touching whole clusters of them, the person’s hand was smeared with blood. One of the men lit some matches and could see swarms of leeches, ready to attack the human body. Once they escaped the leech territory they met nests of giant black ants. In the dark, without realizing, they stepped on these nests and armies of vicious aunts stung their feet and knees before crawling inside their clothing.

They carried a small quantity of rice, as well as dried meat and a piece of aluminium cookware. A vegetarian, Cuong wore a sling around his neck containing a packet of rice, a small sack of sea salt, and sometimes a bunch of bananas. His backpack contained emergency medicines as well as personal belongings. The guide was familiar with many short-cuts and he could lead the group through vast areas of thick woods in the darkness of night. Often one person had to cling onto another for support and direction, taking each step blindly. Occasionally they saw tiny stars in the black sky and would sing a song to cheer themselves. At some of the Viet Minh stations, the guards had either been killed by colonial troops or had fled. As soon as they reached the Central Highlands, they learned that the local Montagnards had been armed by the French army and promised three Indochina piasters for each Viet Minh head.

Standing next to a broken thatched hut at the foot of a hill, the guide bade them goodbye. A new guide was introduced and he invited them to go inside the hut. He was in his forties, with a bony face. His clothes were dotted with patches, and he looked weary. He did not say anything and did not offer anything. Madame Thap looked annoyed. Sensing everyone’s discomfort, the guide calmly said, “Comrades, please follow this star to the North and ask for directions as you travel.” Madame Thap became even more annoyed, but she asked politely if he would send someone to accompany them. He answered, “I am the only surviving person at this station. There were seven of us together but six have lost their lives.” His words touched their hearts. Their eyes filled with tears.

In pitch darkness they kept on walking, following the star the guide had pointed out to them. Madame Thap gathered her resolve and said to the group, “All paths are inside our heads, Comrades. And our people will always assist us.”

The tropical forests of the Central Highlands were daunting to pass through, and vast bamboo groves were common. Moving along the rocky paths they heard voices of jungle birds fighting over fallen fruits. Often they encountered traces of tigers and would start a fire and keep it burning for hours, while watching out for the tigers. Each time this happened the fear would haunt them for several nights.

At a tribal village one early morning they were restocking their food supply. Cuong found a bunch of bananas but they were too young and would never ripen. He still ate the bananas with rice and sea salt. Others ate rice with dried deer meat and chilies. They had been traveling for nearly three months and the risk of capture still remained very high. To get ready for the steep mountain routes, they had to abandon some personal belongings. Madame Thap kept one piece of paper inside her bamboo walking stick. It was a letter introducing them whenever they reached a Viet Minh station. If the enemy caught them with that letter, they were sure to be executed.

As soon as they reached Phan Rang, on the coast, they learned that French troops were raiding the villages. The Viet Minh network immediately arranged for them to escape by sampan to a small island. After a short rest they tried to reach Tuy Hoa with the sampan, but on the second night they encountered a heavy rainstorm. The mast broke and the sail collapsed. Everyone lay flat on the bottom of the sampan as it drifted through the night. It was a moonlit night, without rain, and the sea churned by the wind into a foaming froth. They remembered this as the “milk storm.”

They eventually reached Tuy Hoa and were able to take a train. When the train stopped in Hue they were greeted with banners from the local people, “We support the people of the South and their struggles.” On the same train journey, once they reached Nghe An, they entered territory controlled by the Chinese army of Chiang Kai-shek. By the time they arrived in Thanh Hoa the towns were filled with Chinese soldiers. There were signs of destruction everywhere. Chinese troops had killed many villagers and those who survived had escaped the area. Under intense heat all the greenery had dried out, exposing bare rocks and hills. The train encountered heavy rain and was derailed in Nam Dinh. The group eventually found an old car for the remaining journey. As soon as they reached Ha Noi, they could hear the chanting and singing of the Viet Minh army.

They had traveled nearly two thousand kilometres, circling and doubling back over the country, and it had taken four months. They arrived too late for the Congress – of the fifty representatives from the South, not a single one had arrived in time – but they were received with fanfare by their hosts. Cuong was asked by Ho Chi Minh to remain in Ha Noi.

Although the French didn’t officially declare war against Viet Nam until December, 1946, in reality the French War had begun over a year before, when French troops forced their way back into Sai Gon. They had military assistance from the British. It was scarcely a month after Japan’s unconditional surrender and the Europeans were hell-bent on reclaiming all their pre-war colonies in Southeast Asia, by force of arms where necessary. Leading his troops, General Jacques Leclerc announced on entry to Sai Gon on 24 September 1945, “We have come to reclaim our inheritance.” Upon hearing Leclerc’s statement, Vo Nguyen Giap wept.

Cuong was appointed Chief of Medical Services for the Ministry of Defense in Ha Noi. More bloodshed was anticipated between the two armies. Three years later, in the autumn of 1949, Cuong was sent on a secret mission to the South along with Le Duc Tho and General Duong Quoc Chinh to study the Southern war zones and prepare for the protracted struggle ahead. (Tho later represented North Viet Nam in negotiations with Henry Kissinger over the eventual cease-fire in 1973.) When the mission was over Cuong wanted to stay and Ho Chi Minh asked him to oversee the Viet Minh’s military medical services in the Southern war zones. He was based in Hong Dan, twenty kilometres southwest of Truong An – my home village, and forty kilometres northeast of the Jungle of Hell (Rung U Minh). The Viet Minh was using this jungle as their main southern base. The Jungle of Hell is a huge and poisonous mangrove swamp – the largest one in the world outside the Amazon basin – well known for its leeches and malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The Viet Minh built simple huts there above the water, supported on wooden poles, and slept and worked inside mosquito nets, knowing that no foreigner would dare enter such a pestilential area. From this time until mid-1954, Cuong and my father would meet regularly, at our house where Cuong would come to recover from physical exhaustion, or in the jungle.

For Cuong, managing medical services in the active war zones, with limited resources, and in constant danger, was a severe challenge. Staff meetings were held on wooden platforms just above the water, with junior staff sitting or standing in adjacent sampans. The platforms doubled as emergency rooms. The Viet Minh owned no cars, no jeeps, and no ambulances. The most common method of transporting wounded soldiers from battlefields to emergency care stations was by canvas stretcher and sampan. At each station the medical team could handle from forty to fifty wounded soldiers. Patients were placed on “beds” of green leaves, cloth, or plastic sheets. None of the stations had a roof – to prevent being identified by colonial aircraft. During the monsoon seasons patients and nurses endured horrendous conditions.

A typical “operating table” was the deck of a sampan or a canvas stretcher, supported on the shoulders of two women standing in water. Only a small number of the wounded could be carried out of the battle zone for longer term care. For many, the swampy jungles, rivers, and channels became their final resting place. Far to the north, along the Truong Son Mountain Range and on the series of paths known to the West as the Ho Chi Minh trail, thousands of Vietnamese soldiers – men and women – would be buried in mass graves at the foothills of the mountains.

The French War had already begun. As he witnessed more human losses and suffering, Ho Chi Minh tried to reconcile with the French. In January 1947 he wrote to Jean Sainteny, who was Charles de Gaulle’s special emissary to Viet Nam:

There are already enough deaths and enough ruins! What are we to do now, you and I? France has only to recognize the independence and unity of Viet Nam, and at once hostilities will cease. I am ready to work for peace, a just and honourable peace for our two countries. I hope that you, on your side, will be working to the same end.

The letter was not answered.

Ho Chi Minh then sent a cease-fire proposal to the French High Commissioner for Indochina, Emile Bollaert. It was rejected. Charles De Gaulle had already instructed Bollaert not to give up any of Viet Nam’s territory to the Viet Minh.

Ho tried to seek help from the US government but his effort failed too. From the days of his earlier exile in Europe until 1947, Ho had repeatedly made pleas to the Americans and he told them, “I am not a Communist in the American sense.” His country needed an ally and he still had much admiration for the American people and their spirit of independence. But the US government would actively take sides with the French throughout the French War (1946-1954). Having recognized France’s claim to Indochina, the Americans continued to support them both financially and militarily.

By 1952 the French counted ninety thousand men as ‘dead, wounded, missing or captured’ in the six-year war with the Viet Minh. A senior US Defense Department official, John Ohley, made a public statement, “Officers are being lost at a rate faster than they are being graduated from officer schools in France.”

The French had been driven back on the defensive and were concerned about how to regain the upper hand against their guerrilla tormentors. It became clear to them that a decisive settling was needed. International opinion was now moving toward the kind of negotiated settlement they did not want. This added urgency to their military agenda.

THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ELEPHANT

“In all territorial species, without exception, possession of a territory lends enhanced energy to the proprietor… the challenger is almost invariably defeated, the intruder expelled”

Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative

“You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at these odds, you will lose and I will win”

Ho Chi Minh to the French

To demonstrate their mastery of the country, the French fatefully chose a confrontation at Dien Bien Phu, which had long been one of their strongholds controlling access to Laos. Located in a remote area, four hundred and fifty kilometres from the coast and two hundred kilometres from Ha Noi, Dien Bien Phu, in practical terms, was only serviceable by air. This tranquil valley, twenty kilometres long and five kilometres wide, was surrounded by a ring of mountains a thousand metres high. The Dien Bien Phu valley had a total population of over ten thousand, scattered in tiny villages over the flat farmland, and along the surrounding slopes. The valley had the highest rainfall in the High Region and lay green amid the surrounding brown hills stretching to the horizon. For long it had been the main supply centre for the French government’s Indochina opium monopoly, and was sufficiently important to have an official permanently stationed there. His bungalow and its surrounding brick buildings would soon enter history as the notorious French outpost named ‘Eliane.’ To fight against the Viet Minh army, the French were clearly intending a pitched battle on an open plain, and would be ready with the most powerful tanks. The Vietnamese would have to bring troops and supplies from the same distances, but by land. Vo Nguyen Giap planned to deploy fifty thousand men and women for combat and twenty thousand volunteers of all ages for the supply lines. To reach Dien Bien Phu, the Viet Minh would have to build simple roads and pontoon bridges, and the typical journey would take at least two weeks on foot, by bicycle, or by small river craft. For Giap himself, he would be traveling on horseback. But his men might capture an enemy jeep on the way!

In November 1953 “Operation Castor” dropped nine thousand troops into the area in three days, and the French started setting up fortress-like outposts and strongpoints. They committed more than ten thousand troops and with later reinforcements the total would reach sixteen thousand. French troops came from French air-borne, Foreign Legion, African Rifles, Vietnamese colonial regiments, and Thai- Laotian-Muong auxiliaries. My uncle Nam, who had gained a reputation as one of the best gunnery officers in the colonial army, would be fighting at this battle under the French artillery commander Charles Piroth. Both Nam and his superior would soon be shocked and amazed at the weight of Giap’s artillery force and its destructive accuracy.

The Commander of French forces in Indochina, Henri Navarre, decided to celebrate Christmas with members of his troops at Dien Bien Phu to boost their morale. Colonel de Castries hosted the feast in a huge tent erected outside the main headquarters, assisted by his personal secretary Paule Bourgeade. Addressing the troops of multicoloured camouflage uniforms, Navarre assured them of victory. Navarre didn’t give much credit to Vo Nguyen Giap’s military experience, noting that Giap was a history teacher, with a law degree from the university in Ha Noi. Giap had never been trained at any military academy.

It was Ho Chi Minh who had ordered Giap to take military training in the jungle after the Red Queen’s revolt in 1940 – while both men were in hiding near the Sino-Vietnamese boarder. Giap had responded to Ho at the time, “But my hand is for holding a pen, not a sword!” In response to Giap’s reservation, Ho said that he would not change his mind. He had already chosen Giap to lead the future Viet Minh army.

In the winter of 1953-54, Richard Nixon, then Vice-President of the United States, made a secret trip to Ha Noi. He toured the Red River (Hong Ha), observed a battle southwest of Ninh Binh and listened to a detailed plan presented by Navarre. The Navarre plan had been carefully designed in consultation with Joseph Laniel (appointed premier of France in June 1953) and the American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and was supported by eighteen French and American generals and colonels. Christian de Castries, a gallant cavalry officer with an impressive military record in World War II was appointed Commander at Dien Bien Phu. After five days in Viet Nam for observation, discussion, and eating Vietnamese food (which he greatly enjoyed), Nixon was highly optimistic for the sophisticated French military. Nixon also knew that Viet Nam had just gone through a terrible famine. Two million Vietnamese had perished in one winter as the colonial administration had refused to release food supplies from storage facilities in the South. Those who survived were still grieving over the calamity. Their vulnerability added to his optimism. By this time, the United States had already spent nearly three billion American dollars to finance eighty percent of France’s military expenditures in Viet Nam.

As soon as Ho Chi Minh heard the French choice of Dien Bien Phu for this decisive battle, he took off his hat and threw it upside down on the table. Knowing that the site was a large hollow and pointing at the hat, he said to Vo Nguyen Giap, “The French will be buried in there.” He reviewed Giap’s plan and gave him full responsibility as field commander.

When French troops started pouring into Dien Bien Phu, Giap saw that with enough artillery available to him, the French could be completely cut off there. Depending so heavily on air support would put them at a crucial disadvantage. By contrast, the surrounding mountains and jungles were ideal for the Viet Minh to conceal their weapons, if they could get heavy artillery uphill manually across the vast jungle territory, over several mountain ranges, and into camouflaged positions in the hills surrounding the French. They worked in secret and mostly at night. Every time the French suspected troop movements, they sent aircraft to bomb the area to destroy the transport line. The pulling of cannons uphill was described by the future General Tran Do:

Each night, at the hour when the freezing fog came down the hills into the valley, groups of men arrived on the road… The track was so narrow that if a slight deviation of the wheels had taken place the gun would have fallen into a deep ravine. The newly opened track was soon an ankle deep bog. With our sweat and muscles we replaced the trucks to haul the artillery into positions. We ate only rice – sometimes uncooked or overdone… the kitchen had to be smokeless by day and sparkless by night. To climb a slope, hundreds of men crept in front of the gun, tugging on long ropes, pulling it up little by little. On the crest the winch was creaking, helping to prevent it slipping… The gun was all the heavier, the tracks full of twists and turns… Whole nights were spent toiling by torchlight to move a gun 500 or 1,000 metres.

To the astonishment of their enemy and at tremendous sacrifice to themselves, the Vietnamese succeeded in getting all their cannons into the right hilltop positions – to encircle the French and the landing strips on which French troops depended so totally.

Giap communicated with his battalion commanders from a tiny hut at the top of Muong Phang mountain, overlooking Dien Bien Phu valley. The hut was furnished with a wooden table, two rattan chairs, and a small bed with a dried hay mattress. He spent most of the time in the hut and would go down to a tunnel every time there was an air raid.

The French positions in the valley included a central stronghold, eight outposts named after Colonel Christian de Castries’ mistresses (Gabrielle, Beatrice, Anne-Marie, Huguette, Claudine, Eliane, Dominique, and Isabelle), and forty-nine strongpoints. The centre of Dien Bien Phu contained five jungle-covered hills and below it was the heart-shaped Muong Thanh green field. The challenge for the Vietnamese was how to attack the centre and the south across an open plain raked by heavy artillery fire and protected by tanks. They would only succeed by way of tunnels and trenches. The digging had already begun during the winter months, mostly in the night. A woman volunteer for the tunnel work expressed her group’s dedication:

Up and down, by the torch’s dimmed light

Crawling and scooping in the dark underground

The hoes are turning over, the earth is cracking and falling

One row of men, one row of women

Who works faster tonight?

Oh! Brothers and Sisters, we must be speedy

Tonight the cold wind is piercing through our skin

The bright moon has already faded behind the hilltop

But we are still here, crawling and kneeling at the tunnel

Following the French military tradition, a French mobile field brothel, which was part of the bordel militaire de campagne (BMC), arrived at Dien Bien Phu in mid January. The Vietnamese prostitutes were flown into the camps and placed under the care of the medical officers of the Foreign Legion. Many excited French troops volunteered to build suitable quarters for the women. Their presence in the valley helped cheer up the men. However, very few from the combat units would have an opportunity for leisure and companionship.

The great battle was to begin on the morning of 13 March 1954. In the days before the battle, Colonel de Castries requested an increase of three battalions. But he was not to know, until the battle started, that the Viet Minh had already completed much tunneling, and their devastating heavy artillery now surrounded the valley and its airstrips, and that they would begin their serious attacks in the afternoons, late enough to make it impossible to call in French air support before dark. Major General Rene Cogny, Navarre’s talkative deputy in Ha Noi, leaked some military secrets to the press in Paris that included knowledge of the French on the movements of Viet Minh’s troops. When General Giap learned about this leak, he changed his signal coding and some strategies of his army. On the morning of 12 March, Cogny made his last visit to Dien Bien Phu and saw that the French had been surrounded by a huge amount of trenching below their positions. Standing on one of the hills, Cogny watched the French’s assaults on the Viet Minh’s trenches and the capturing of some weapons. But this battle was not going to be about trenches. It was going to be about tunnels, and heavy artillery, and landing strips, and the isolating of an army.

* * *

The Saturday morning of 13 March was misty under cloudy sky, the air was cool and damp, and all the greenery was covered in shades of dark bluish grey. In the trees covering the slopes of the surrounding circle of steep hills, flocks of mountain birds were chirping and singing. While perching on the branches, some were spreading out their wings and preening their feathers.

Then hellfire entered the valley, frightening away all the flying creatures.

With howitzers from the overlooking ridges, the Viet Minh began sporadically shelling Muong Thanh airfield. By midday three aircraft were on fire and a few had sustained minor damage. One French company and two tanks retaliated, while the Viet Minh continued with their attack on the airfield and the northern outpost Beatrice.

At half- past one in the afternoon, under the now intensely blue sky and white clouds, the bombardment of Beatrice gradually increased in volume and went on for two hours without interruption. The French colonel in charge of Beatrice and his deputy were killed in a direct hit on their command bunker. The French liaison staff tried to call for artillery support to retaliate but the communication lines were down. That day French troops also had a crisis with their fuel systems and failed to respond to the unanticipated large scale of attacks.

At five-thirty, against an orange-red horizon, the whole hillside of Beatrice was suddenly filled with several battalions of Viet Minh troops in light green uniforms and palm-leaf helmets. Each man and woman held a rifle with fixed bayonet. They had quietly emerged from the trenches around the foot of the hill. Stunned by the effect, the French tried to attack them with heavy mortar fire, but it was too late. They were outnumbered and Beatrice was taken – an event so shocking to the French that it would cause a massive loss of morale.

At six-thirty, two northern strongpoints came under severe attack by an army of the palm-leaf helmets. On a slope near outpost Dominique, while members of a mortar platoon were getting ready to aid Beatrice, their hilltop was suddenly hit with a powerful explosion, followed by huge clouds of red dust and black smoke, and the hill’s surface quickly turned into a deep crater. Four out of their six mortars were severely damaged. Their line of communications was destroyed.

At seven-thirty, the Viet Minh achieved a direct hit on the aviation fuel and napalm dumps. Above Beatrice, giant orange flames were rising rapidly and brightly lit the evening sky. The intense burning continued into the night.

By half-past ten the temperature suddenly dropped. In the darkness of night, heavy shells fell all over the French hill outposts, ploughed up the earth, crumbled the dugouts, leveled the trenches, wrecked the weapons, and killed and wounded many of the French troops. The earsplitting sounds were accompanied by a mixture of red dust and acrid cordite fumes. Inside various command bunkers the earth around them shook violently. The bunkers were rocking and shifting back and forth, pieces of furniture were crashing into one another, objects were falling and flying from walls and ceilings, and people were falling on top of each other. In the centre of the camp, a lieutenant colonel was taking a shower outside when shells began to burst nearby. He ran naked toward his base to make a telephone call to his battalion commanders but the line had been cut off. The entire French soldiery had been forced – with great suddenness – to come to terms with the full impending horror implied by the awesome weight of the Viet Minh artillery and its positioning. And this was only the very first day of the battle.

At midnight, the shelling stopped. Viet Minh Colonel Mac Ninh – now in command of Beatrice – sent a message to Colonel de Castries:

Following orders from our superior, I inform you that at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning you and your people are allowed to bring in one un-armed platoon and ambulances to collect your wounded men. Someone must be holding a white flag before entering Him Lam (Beatrice)

Colonel de Castries faced the crisis with little help from his commanders. Lieutenant Colonel Keller, Chief of Staff, suffered a nervous breakdown and would hide in the deepest dugout wearing a steel helmet. Colonel Piroth went into a deep depression, leaving all artillery decisions to a deputy. Lieutenant Colonel Langlais, Chief of Operations, became confused and enraged. Even Colonel de Castries’s secretary, Miss Bourgeade had been badly injured.

The sun rose early on 14 March.

The central camp was quiet and ghostly. French troops gazed silently at the massive destruction of the bombardment. The entire earth was pocked with deep craters. Broken vehicles, bursting sandbags, shell cases, chairs, tables, lamps, boxes, tin cans, etc. were scattered everywhere. The air was thick with a strong smell of burnt petrol and charring. A group of weary legionnaires were wrapping up dead bodies in ponchos before carrying them to the morgue behind the field hospital. The morgue was a simple dug-out filled with plank coffins. It was completely full and more than a hundred corpses were placed on the bare ground. Many more were still lying on stretchers, waiting. The chaplain of the Foreign Legion, Father Trinquant, accompanied a medical officer and three vehicles under the Red Cross flag to pick up the bodies of legionnaires unburied under the intense heat around the strongpoints. The Viet Minh had already removed their own casualties in the night. Major Dr Paul Grauwin requested a special aircraft to transport four seriously wounded men and Miss Bourgeade out of Dien Bien Phu for medical treatment. De Catries himself bundled his secretary into the aircraft against her will. She had refused to leave the battle.

In the early morning of 15 March the Viet Minh took complete control of another northern outpost, Gabrielle. Several commanders showed more signs of confusion and depression. At midnight Colonel Charles Piroth committed suicide with a hand grenade.

Unable to transport the dead to the designated cemetery, on 18 March, Colonel de Castries ordered that those killed in action were to be buried on the spot, in mass graves scooped by a bulldozer. The delays in burying them had caused serious problems with stench and infestation of flies.

During a radio conversation with Major General Cogny on 19 March, Colonel de Castries informed him that the southern outpost Isabelle would be taken by the Viet Minh any time. Cogny made some tactical recommendations but ignored the realities at Dien Bien Phu. He appeared to have distanced himself from the operation on the ground. Once the fighting had begun Cogny never visited the battlefield.

On 24 March, Lieutenant Colonel Keller was flown out of Dien Bien Phu quietly in an ambulance aircraft.

As the French crisis deepened, the US government moved urgently to support them. Under “Operation Vulture”, on 24 March, American forces arrived with sixty B-29 bombers from the US Far East Air Force base in the Philippines. They began bombing the Viet Minh’s supply routes leading to Dien Bien Phu, killing thousands of women, children and elderly on bicycles. From 25 to 27 March the combined French and American force mounted seven hundred and fifty heavy bombing raids on the Viet Minh zone, killing large numbers of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.

Despite heavy losses in the air raids, in the early hours of 30 March the Viet Minh began their second series of attacks with a major offensive against the centre of Dien Bien Phu – the battle for the five hills. Dominique outpost on the left bank of Nam Rom River fell quickly. Several strongpoints on the hills in the east of the valley were taken. Two of the French companies defending Dominique were reduced to such low strength that men tried to flee across the slope to seek refuge at a stronger position below. They were seen as deserters and driven out by that position’s commander, to be caught and killed in the Viet Minh small arms fire.

At the field hospital, Dr Grauwin had received seven hundred and fifty seriously wounded men, and for three consecutive days and nights he and four other doctors were performing surgery around the clock. Genevieve de Galard, his only female nurse, also worked around the clock with them and thirteen trained nursing orderlies. With her patience and dedication, she was to become the ‘Angel’ of French troops at this relentless battle. The average casualties rose to one hundred and twenty a day and the medical staffs were not able to cope. Nurse Galard later described her mounting despair at the toll of dead and wounded. In the end she broke down and cried, “I want to go into a deep sleep and never wake up again.”

Airlift priority had been given to a huge supply of blood and plasma, as well as replacements of X-ray machines. However, due to the problems of refrigeration and irregular parachute drops, these urgent needs would not be met.

On 30 March, General Navarre landed in Ha Noi to study the situation. The monsoon season had started and the valley had turned into a sea of deep mud. Ambulances now had great difficulties in getting around and to Dr Grauwin’s hospital with emergency cases. Earlier that day Colonel de Castries had made a request to Major General Cogny for urgent reinforcements. However, Cogny was not at his headquarters to respond to de Castries’ request or to meet Navarre’s plane at the airport. Although he and de Castries had had an agreement to speak to each other at least twice a day, Cogny had left his desk for a social obligation and asked not to be disturbed by anybody. De Castries voiced his frustration, “The situation will be difficult to restore without reinforcements from outside. We are trying to do the impossible.” The next morning Navarre met Cogny and they had a heated argument that would end in permanent mutual distrust between them. Cogny justified his behaviour by saying that he had been over-stretched with requests for reinforcements from several other battlefields in the Northern delta areas – all were taking place at the same time.

Moving into the first week of April, French troops were gradually having their field communication lines cut. Many were unable to receive orders and warnings or information from their superiors. They were wary and confused. The Viet Minh were taking control of more outposts and strongpoints. They continued relentless attacks on the airstrips, making them totally un-useable by 27 March. The French last attempt to transport wounded men out of Dien Bien Phu for medical treatment was in the morning of 28 March. That morning, after loading twenty-five seriously wounded cases, the mechanic staff found out that the aircraft was damaged. A commanding officer in Ha Noi sent a radio message that he would fly in to pick up the crew the following night. However, this was not possible. From 13 to 27 March they had succeeded in flying 324 wounded cases out of the battle. But there would be no more.

The Vietnamese would come to destroy a total of sixty-two French and American aircraft at Dien Bien Phu. By mid-April the Viet Minh had effectively won the battle, and they now referred to the remainder of the confrontation as “slowly bleeding the dying elephant”. Between artillery barrages, the Viet Minh’s loudspeakers began to broadcast messages in French and German along the valley, persuading General de Castries’ troops to desert and surrender.

Foreseeing the French defeat, on 14 April, John Foster Dulles presented to the Congressional leaders his proposal to use atomic weapons to destroy the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu. The proposal was seriously discussed, but Lyndon Johnson, the United States Senate Majority Leader, argued that such weapons would wipe out both armies. Since they couldn’t see how the French garrison would survive an atomic attack, the plan was abandoned.

* * *

Colonel Christian de Castries was promoted to Brigadier General on Good Friday, 16 April. Several others in the field, including Lieutenant Colonel Langlais, were also promoted to the next rank. Perhaps this was a political decision. For weeks now the Paris media had been praising their troops over the heroic defense of France’s Far Eastern colony, and the French public was watching with horror the developments at Dien Bien Phu.

Having abandoned the airport at Muong Thanh, the French had to parachute in personnel by night and food and ammunition by day. However, they were unable to maintain supplies for their troops. Strong winds forced many of the parachutes to drift into the surrounding fields controlled by the Vietnamese. The Viet Minh also used anti-aircraft guns to bring them down.

Green parachutes,

White parachutes,

Camouflage parachutes,

Here is ammunition, Brothers!

Be ready to shoot them down…

A major problem was the supply of parachutes. The French had not foreseen that they would use one thousand parachutes each day – each to be used only once. They had run out of supply as early as 27 March. The US Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Sai Gon headed by Lieutenant General O’ Daniel quickly organized an airlift of sixty thousand parachutes to Dien Bien Phu from bases in Japan and the Philippines to meet the demand.

On May Day, the Viet Minh launched their third series of heavy attacks, with a massive artillery barrage aimed at the strongpoints in the South and East. They captured the eastern outpost, Eliane, which was under General de Castries’ direct command. Colonel Langlais spoke to Colonel Sauvagnac through radio links with an urgent request for a whole battalion of paratroops. He hoped to recapture the eastern hills and to defend the central camp. But Sauvagnac responded that it would be impossible. Colonel Langlais shouted in anger and desperation, “ We shall win this battle without you and in spite of you. This is my last message and I will never speak to you again.”

The following day, de Castries received confirmation of four hundred and fifty paratroop replacements. They would arrive on 7 May, directly from two parachute schools in France.

In the afternoon, under a heavy rainstorm, the Viet Minh bombarded Isabelle. French troops defending Isabelle could only get six out of eleven canons to function. Heavy rain continued and parachute supplies were hampered. There were only three days of cold food rations left for French troops.

On 3 May, Cogny suggested to de Castries a way out with a plan called “Albatros”. Most French commanders had lost the will to continue with the battle. General de Castries refused to take the escape route and was determined to stay with his wounded men until the end. For him, military honour depended on saving the lives of his surviving troops and minimizing their suffering. While coping with the large number of deaths and injuries, de Castries was also faced with the intense frustration of shortages of ammunition, food and essential medical supplies. Parachute reinforcements were not reliable but he also had serious problems with the French administration. During the rainy evening of 4 May, while Huguette was under heavy bombardment by Viet Minh artillery, de Castries sent a desperate message to the French headquarters in Ha Noi:

We don’t have enough ammunition to stop enemy attacks or the continued harassing fire. It appears that no effort is being made to remedy this situation. I am told of the risks to the aircrews, but every man here runs infinitely greater risks – there cannot be a double standard. Night supply drops must begin at 8pm instead of 11pm. The morning hours are lost because of the fog, and due to the planning of night drops with long intervals between aircraft, the results are ridiculous. I have absolute need of provisions in mass quantities. …I cannot count on recovering even half of what is dropped, although the quantities sent to me represent only a very small proportion of what I have requested. I have nothing to sustain the morale of my men, who are being asked for superhuman efforts; I no longer dare to go and see them with empty hands.

Severe thunder storms added to this final week of misery. The cumulative effect of bombardment and flooding had turned the ground into a series of swamps filled with trash and corpses. Their new enemy, the mud, was now up to knee level. As described by one of the Viet Minh soldiers:

Those are hills with a strong burning smell

Dead bodies are piling up on the ground

Half-buried in clumps of red mud

Rain! Heavy rain is still pouring …

A number of service wives were present at Dien Bien Phu. One woman gave birth to a baby girl on 4 May, inside the bunker of the temporarily re-gained Isabelle outpost. Her wounded husband, Captain Desire, was lying nearby with a group of wounded men. The child was named after one of the outposts and baptized by the Reverend Tissot. Outside the bunker, the monsoon downpour continued and would turn into a violent storm the next day. That night, thirty-two men went on patrol out of Isabelle, heading west. All were ambushed by the Viet Minh.

Two American C-119 crews led by James McGovern had volunteered to fly a low-altitude ammunition drop over Isabelle. On the morning of 6 May, under a clear blue sky and warm sun, they arrived over Dien Bien Phu. Viet Minh troops on the grounds were ready to shoot them with anti-aircraft guns. The first plane piloted by Art Wilson was hit in the tail boom. Wilson lost control but managed to escape and landed safely in Cat Bi. McGovern’s plane was hit in the port engine and he lost control, then a second shell struck its tail. Both McGovern and his co-pilot were killed by the exploded ammunition they had loaded inside the aircraft.

A crucial action for Giap in the final days was the attack on a strongpoint near the left bank of Nam Rom River that protected the central command post. Of their forty-nine strongpoints, this one was seen by the French as ‘the throat of Dien Bien Phu’ and it had been the scene of enormous casualties on both sides. Giap had discovered that the French access to this hill was via a fortress constructed many years earlier. The Viet Minh tunneled towards it for sixteen days, reached the site at eight-thirty in the evening of 6 May, set charges for nine-thirty, and blew it up with a huge quantity of dynamite. This single explosion was louder and more destructive than those previously. Before midnight, the Vietnamese gained complete control of this strongpoint. Their waiting army from the trenches started marching up along the slopes to the last hill.

Early Friday morning, 7 May, Viet Minh troops raised their red flag with its gold star above General de Castries’ command bunker. In the afternoon Colonel Langlais went to his dugout and burned his red paratrooper beret. He exchanged it for the hat of an infantryman. Meanwhile, General de Castries telephoned his wife in Paris with a brief message, “Do not worry. I’ve already been a prisoner. We will see each other again.” However, Cogny spoke to de Castries over a radio link from Ha Noi and instructed him not to surrender.

“Old boy, it has to finish now; but not in the form of capitulation. That is forbidden to us. There mustn’t be any raising of the white flag. The firing must be allowed to die away – but don’t surrender. Don’t mess up what you’ve done.”

“All right, General. I only wish to protect the wounded,” answered de Castries, in tears.

Cogny went on, “ I haven’t the right to authorize you to make this capitulation. Do whatever’s best. But this mustn’t finish with a white flag. Do you understand, old boy?”

“All right, General.”

“Au revoir, old boy.”

But la gloire was now irrelevant. It was impossible to prevent the widespread raising of white flags among the exhausted French troops, badly needing to avoid last-minute firing and the danger of mistaken identities. All over the battlefield, on one of the very few sunny days during the entire campaign, the French began to come to terms with their despair. Both sides began to count their losses.

In fifty-six days of fighting, the French lost 2,748 men in combat. At the battlefield, the Red Cross counted 4,436 wounded – of these 429 died shortly afterwards. More than three thousand men had deserted during the battle. Among those deserting, a few hundred found hiding places inside shelters and sat through the battle.

From late afternoon to evening on 7 May, ten thousand starving men in tattered clothes and rotten boots were emerging from the long valley. The Viet Minh ordered them to march to prison camps several hundred kilometres away. Many couldn’t. They were physically too weak. They formed staggering queues heading to the hospital, where they soon collapsed. Dr Grauwin ordered his staff to get into proper uniforms with Red Cross armbands and continue with their duty. Most of the survivors were disoriented due to prolonged bombardment. They were soon suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that would remain for years to come.

Vietnamese losses were much higher, with eight thousand killed and fifteen thousand wounded. This reflected the disparity in tactics, military technology, and wealth. That would always be the pattern for the Vietnamese, who would be willing to pay any price to free their country from foreign domination. To celebrate their victory, the Viet Minh army went on marching and singing their own songs – one was for Henri Navarre.

Navarre! Navarre! Coming with ferocious spirits Navarre! Navarre! Leaving torn to tatters…

The revolutionary side of my paternal family experienced the deepest sense of fulfillment. In Truong An, my grandmother cried out with joy, “Now we have justice! The invaders are always defeated in the end.” To celebrate the country’s liberation, our village, like so many others, held a huge feast in the open air – with decorative tents spreading from one end of the village to another. They roasted dozens of pigs, chickens and ducks, and Uncle Muoi grilled a great variety of fish. The happy event was highlighted with traditional music, dancing, and revolutionary songs – for three consecutive days and nights. I was only three years old at that time, but through the mist of early childhood memories, I can still recall glimpses of that joyous time.

Oh! The two words Compatriot and Homeland

Finally they are back in our hands

One Century of a lost nation

Now I can return to smiling and singing

Both Laos and Cambodia were also liberated. The battle of Dien Bien Phu had come to symbolize decisively not just the end of French colonialism in Indochina but also the end of centuries of European colonialism worldwide. In the words of Stanley Karnow, a historian of Viet Nam, this battle was “equal [to] Waterloo, Gettysburg and Stalingrad as one of the decisive battles of history”. In his country, it brought to Vo Nguyen Giap almost the status of a deity.

* * *

The French had left behind eleven thousand prisoners of war and sixteen hundred missing-in-action. The prisoners lived in open thatch huts in remote villages. Without security guards, they could wander about in open fields. However, it was impossible for them to escape as the villagers would keep an eye on any escapee. A number of prisoners did try but were captured and returned – their food rations were taken away as punishment, though they were seldom beaten. For the foreign soldiers, the surrounding jungle itself was a deadly terrain. At night the howling of monkeys, the growling of tigers, the blaring of elephants, and the near silent whispers of snakes, terrified any man contemplating escape. A prisoner’s daily diet consisted of boiled rice and vegetable, dried meat, and some pork fat. Each prisoner was given 1,600 grams of cooked rice per day (a Viet Minh soldier received 1,300 grams a day) Daily activities for the inmates included burying the most recent dead, manual labour, political lectures, meal times, and reading the L’Humanite (airmailed from France). Copies of the old newspaper were used to roll cigarettes and as toilet paper.

In March 1955 the Viet Minh handed over to the French 3,900 POWs from Dien Bien Phu, or forty-three percent of the total prisoners taken from the valley at the closing of the battle. The death rate of French prisoners while in captivity was sixty percent. Causes of death included dysentery, typhus, bronchitis, pneumonia, beri-beri, leptospirosis, and oedema. The impoverished Viet Minh could not provide medical care to sick French prisoners. They had no choice but to watch them suffer and die. However, they never resorted to any form of malevolent treatment toward their foreign enemy, whom they viewed as oddly naive. This was not the case with their fellow Vietnamese who had betrayed their country and various forms of sadistic cruelty were not uncommon – a severe punishment for an unforgivable crime.

Ho Chi Minh sent Cuong an urgent message, asking him to return to Ha Noi, to take charge of a major veterans’ hospital. The Vietnamese now had to cope with the fifteen thousand wounded men and women returning from the great battlefield. Cuong packed a small bag of personal belongings and he came to Truong An to say goodbye to us. My father accompanied him to Thanh Chau. He was to travel from there to Sai Gon by means of bus and ferry. From Sai Gon he would join a group and head directly for Ha Noi.

ORGANIZED DEATH

“We shall bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age”

General Curtis Lemay

“The Americans thought that the more bombs they drop, the quicker we would fall to our knees and surrender. But the bombs heightened rather than dampened our spirit”

Ton That Tung

My family, especially my father and grandmother, were longing for Cuong’s return. Neither of them could predict that the American War would soon begin on our soil and Cuong would never again return to the South. They always talked about him with fond memories. The correspondence between him and the family had come to an end after the Geneva Agreement in July 1954, dividing the country in half against the will of the Vietnamese people.

Cuong had visited us frequently during the five years he was based in the Mekong Delta. My mother was especially hospitable to him and since he was a strict vegetarian, she served him a diet of brown rice, nuts, tofu, fresh fruits and plenty of vegetables from our garden. It was Cuong who taught her rudimentary medicine and basic health care. He had learned from my paternal grandmother that my mother had overdosed me with Western medications at least twice. My mother described one of those incidents:

Hoa Lai had high fever that evening and I looked for the box of quinine. It was wet from the rain and all the tablets stuck together. I used a tiny spoon and scooped out a lump and pressed it down her throat. Her body began to jerk violently, and her eyes rolled up. I was so scared and did not know what to do. I just held her and eventually she stopped jerking and went to sleep for a long time.

On several occasions, my mother had also misused the asthma medicine given to me by Uncle Nam. She had thought that by giving me the double quantity I would recover sooner.

Not only did he teach my mother the proper use of Western medicine, Cuong also recommended a diet to help relieve the asthma symptoms. Whenever Cuong was in our house, he would take me for a walk around the garden after each evening meal. We smelled the fragrances of the flowers and he taught me their names. Afterwards he and my father would have a long chat over jasmine tea and sweet ginger. Every morning before sunrise Cuong started a walking meditation along the riverbank, for an hour, always in bare feet. My grandmother said the way Cuong walked while meditating was very different from his normal stride. He planted each step slowly and firmly on the ground, thereby pulling energy, so my grandmother said, from the earth.

Cuong and my father dressed similarly – beige khaki shirts with four pockets in the front, and matching trousers – and each carried a faded and partially worn leather briefcase. They were tall, but my father, whose facial features resembled his own father, was noted in the village for his prominent and straight nose. He looked very much like a Confucian scholar and behaved like one. Cuong resembled my paternal grandmother. His features were refined, his complexion light, and he had an aquiline nose and sensitive eyes. His manners were graceful, and, unlike my father, he loved to talk.

Granduncle Ba had two sons who were like brothers to my father, and Nam was one of them. Following the Dien Bien Phu battle, Nam escaped to the South with remnants of the colonial army, disguising themselves as civilians. Nam’s military career had begun in 1951 – when he was drafted into the colonial army. The day French troops took Nam away, his mother and elder sister rushed to the French administration compound in Can Tho where young draftees were kept. The compound was stormed and hundreds of protesters were arrested, including Nam’s mother and sister. The mobilization of Vietnamese young men to fight against the Viet Minh had been the brainchild of the Americans. The United States regarded the creation of the Vietnamese colonial army as essential in defeating the Viet Minh and made that a condition of their financial support for the French in Indochina. Thus, the establishment of the Armée Nationale Vietnamienne (ANV) was officially announced by General de Lattre in July 1951. By the end of the year, the colonial regime had succeeded in drafting 63,600 Vietnamese men and many French regi- ments were instructed to incorporate at least one Vietnamese company in every battalion for on-the-job training. After basic military training under French leadership, Nam was transferred to North Viet Nam to fight against the Viet Minh. He quickly rose to the rank of captain, a rarity for a Vietnamese in the colonial army. His reputation had grown and created a tug of war between the French commander of the Military Academy in Sai Gon, who wanted him to teach artillery classes, and the field commander in Ha Noi, also French, who refused to release him for transfer to the Academy. Who could say how many casualties were caused by Nam’s accurate artillery fire, ironically the very same casualties his uncle Cuong was trying desperately to save?

Nam’s younger brother, Nghiem, who would become in time a well-to-do businessman, had no interest in the military. However, he too was eventually drafted into the ARVN and served in its military police.

* * *

Following the Viet Minh’s victory at Dien Bien Phu, Viet Nam had the right to be recognized as an independent nation, with Ho Chi Minh as head of state. However, the major powers – especially the United States and China – sought to divide Viet Nam in half. Zhou Enlai, the Chinese Communist representative at the peace conference in Geneva, put China’s priorities first. For centuries, Chinese foreign policy had been based upon fragmenting South East Asia in order to assert Chinese influence and control. Accordingly, a divided Viet Nam would better suit Chinese interests than a united Viet Nam. To achieve this goal, Zhou prepared the groundwork for the Geneva Conference beforehand by conducting “underground negotiations” with Pierre Mendes-France, elected prime minister in June 1954. To impress other delegates, Zhou, then age fifty-six, arrived for the seventy-four days of talks in the Swiss capital with an entourage of two hundred people, including cooks, hair dressers, servants, and shipments of Chinese antiques and carpets destined for his delegation’s headquarters – the lavish estate Grand Mont-Fleuri. By contrast, Ho Chi Minh’s small delegation, represented by Pham van Dong, stayed in a modest villa nearby.

The Geneva Conference failed to find a durable solution for Viet Nam and angered the Vietnamese. They were furious with Zhou for conniving with their enemy. “He has double-crossed us,” Dong said. In this international game, Viet Nam was merely a pawn.

The United States, then in the midst of a Cold War with the Communist Bloc was also in favour of a divided Viet Nam. Under the agreement struck in Geneva, North Viet Nam, from the 17th parallel northward, would be ceded to the Viet Minh. The South, on the other hand, would be administered provisionally in preparation for the general election of a national government two years later, on 5 July 1956. However, unhappy with its terms, the Americans refused to sign the agreement. They had already decided to pursue their secret plan for a military regime in South Viet Nam. Knowing how popular Ho Chi Minh was among his own people, the Americans feared the charismatic leader would win in an election. The two-year delay simply served as an excuse to allow enough time for the establishment of the American-backed regime. The national election designated for 5 July 1956 would never be held.

To the Vietnamese, Ho was an intellectual and a poet with a common touch. His immense authority came from quiet persistence, self-denial and moral strength. He had suffered much during the three decades of being hunted and in his crippling detention in Chinese jails. This had left him virtually without equal in public respect and affection. Besides being a scholar, Ho also conducted himself as a gentleman. These two are very potent sources of authority in an Asian society, especially where there is a heritage of Confucianism.

Without consulting the Vietnamese people, the Americans now suddenly showed their hand. They had found Ngo Dinh Diem in a Catholic seminary in New Jersey and arranged for him to return to Viet Nam. He was to become the leader of South Viet Nam – representing the American position.

Diem was a puritan, a celibate and a recluse. He had no local support network and was without any army. Diem had little appreciation for the Vietnamese struggle for independence. His ancestors had been converted to Catholicism in the seventeenth century by Catholic missionaries from Portugal, who had opened trade with Viet Nam. When France invaded Viet Nam, the Ngos had sided with the French. Once “Indochina” was firmly established in 1873, the French also assumed the power to enthrone and dethrone Vietnamese emperors. In 1885, they removed Emperor Ham Nghi, who made a narrow escape with his senior mandarins to a mountainous area in Central Viet Nam. Ham Nghi led a nation-wide resistance movement called “Can Vuong,” with secret headquarters in Quang Binh (Ngo Dinh Diem’s ancestral province). The French brutally suppressed the Can Vuong, captured the Emperor, and sent him into exile in Algeria in 1888. Diem’s father, Ngo Dinh Kha, was a senior interpreter for the French at the time and was appointed to be “Pacification Minister”. Kha’s responsibility was to assist Colonel Duvillier, the military commander for Central Viet Nam, to wipe out all anti-French movements initiated by the Can Vuong. When the French enthroned Dong Khanh, Kha was promoted again and became the new emperor’s “personal advisor”. He was to watch over the emperor’s activities and report them to the French.

The appointment of an interpreter to such a high position in the Imperial Palace broke the long tradition of the monarchy that had earlier chosen only senior ranking mandarins with a Confucian background to serve the emperors. But Kha was serving the French, not the emperor. Some years later Kha would be discarded by his French masters and he would have much resentment toward them.

Upon Diem’s return at the Tan Son Nhat airport in July 1954, he was welcomed by a handful of people arranged by the American colonel, Edward Lansdale. Diem talked to his brother Nhu about the lack of public support, his disappointment, and his desire to go back to New Jersey. He was a Catholic, yet he was to rule a country whose population was eighty percent Buddhist. Lansdale refused to let him go. Reluctantly, he stayed. He was to lead the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (ARVN).

This injection by the United States, of a President for the South, chosen for his family history of service to the colonial French, was taken by the Nationalists as a slap in the face.

For the minority group of French collaborators, the converted Catholics, and those who sought new political opportunity to gain personal status and wealth, this was an excellent chance to exploit the changing situation and to cultivate the incoming power. They would cooperate and advance themselves under the Diem regime. My granduncles Hai and Cuong, and Cuong’s son-in-law had been contacted by the network of Colonel Edward Lansdale with offers of attractive positions in the ARVN regime. Negotiations between Landsdale and various Vietnamese groups and individuals had taken place while the Americans were still organizing for Ngo Dinh Diem to assume power. Cuong would never accept any such offer. But Hai did and became deputy chief of the city of Can Tho. Cuong’s son-in-law became one of Diem’s ministers – with the condition that he would convert to Catholicism before taking the post. For my uncle Nam, this situation was also favourable in shaping his military career. He was promoted to major shortly after his superior became Diem’s most trusted colonel. In the mid 1960’s Nam was promoted to colonel. During the height of the American War, he became deeply involved in the “Operation Phoenix” (Chien Dich Phung Hoang), which raised the level of aggression against the “Viet Cong” to an unprecedented ferocity. This left Nam marked for assassination by his enemies.

* * *

As for my father, in 1949, the French authorities appointed him to the Economic Committee in our home district of Long My. He was put in charge of issuing permits for the transportation of rice and other commodities in the area. He stayed at this position until mid- 1954. Granduncle Cuong was based in the Mekong Delta during this same period to oversee the medical services for the Viet Minh army in the southern war zone.

After the Geneva Agreement, the Viet Minh had left themselves with fallback positions, in case the breaches of faith they suspected turned out to be justified. While the regrouping of Viet Minh forces (Tap Ket) and moving them to the North was taking place, Ho Chi Minh left certain members in the South, undercover, to await the unfolding of events and to gather intelligence. My father was one of those. The permission for him to stay was given on account of his being the only child responsible for an aging mother.

In the autumn of 1954, my father started teaching at a village school he set up himself. It consisted of one huge classroom in a vacant palm-leaf hut that had been used earlier to shelter buffaloes at night. The hut had no walls. The ground was covered with dried hay. Wooden tables and benches were donated by Uncle Phan and other villagers. This was the only school for the whole village. Since the classroom was not big enough to accommodate all the students, several had to sit on the ground outside the hut while listening to lectures. Some students brought their own reed mat or cushion to school. Each day I collected my father at the school and escorted him home for lunch. I was only four years old but determined to go on my own; my paternal grandmother was equally determined to protect me. We compromised, “Little Hoa Lai, I will take you as far as the monkey bridge, and I will cross over with you. But I won’t go any further.” So she would wait at the foot of the bridge. From her vantage point, my grandmother could follow my passage along the rice paddies to the school and watch us make our way back.

My father would return to his afternoon class on his own, while I had an afternoon nap. In the evening, before sunset, I would always be waiting at our front gate with something for him -- a banana, a mango, a piece of watermelon, or a stick of sugar cane.

He never received any fees for his teaching. The village people were too poor. Yet they felt their children must at least learn how to read and write, and so from time to time they gave him tokens to show their gratitude – a live fish, a live chicken or duck, a bunch of cucumbers, a basket of fruits, a bag of homemade cookies.

Deeply influenced by Confucianism, the Vietnamese have always made education a central part of their lives. However, by 1930 – after eighty years under the French regime – only fifteen percent of schoolage children were receiving any kind of schooling. Eighty-five percent of the population therefore was illiterate. For a population of twenty million, there was only one university, in Ha Noi, with seven hundred students. During colonial times the entire country could count on only three high schools for the Vietnamese and three for the French themselves. That meant three schools for ninety-nine percent of the population and three for the remaining one percent. As my father once commented, “So much for the French preaching of egalité.” It is worth noting that in 2000, less than half a century after the French were thrown out of Viet Nam, the country enjoyed a literacy rate greater than ninety percent.

In May 1955 the administration of the new Diem regime set up a village council for Truong An and insisted that it be staffed with Catholics. The regime also ordered the construction of four Catholic churches – an amazing number just for Truong An. We were all expected to convert to Catholicism. The village was considered a stronghold of the Nationalist forces – the “Viet Cong”, which the regime was determined to wipe out. In addition to its role of running the village, the council was formed to keep an eye on “enemies of the people” and to pass on the names of suspects to the intelligence services of the ARVN police.

From the entire population of Truong An – with forty-five hundred people – not a single person volunteered for a seat on the council. For one thing, no one wanted to convert. For another, everyone feared the Viet Minh.

The district chief of Long My, himself a Catholic, knew and liked my father and summoned him.

“How would you yourself like to be the head of the Truong An council?” he asked him.

My father declined most diplomatically. “I don’t think there is any way that would work,” he said. “I’m not a Catholic and my family would refuse to let me convert. But you’re Catholic and, more important, all the military at Constance Garrison are Catholics too. Do you really believe they will deal with a council led by a non-Catholic?”

The district chief had looked high and low for a suitable candidate and had failed to find one. His superiors in Sai Gon were growing impatient.

“Let me see what I can do,” my father said. “I will report to you again.”

In fact, my father saw this as an opportunity not to be wasted. The first man he approached refused him categorically but the second, an elderly friend called Quang, appealed to his reason. “If I take the job,” he told my father, “you know what will happen. The Viet Minh will throw grenades at my house. I have a family. What do you expect?”

My father thought Quang could be convinced. He and his family were Catholics. There were protracted secret negotiations and my father succeeded in obtaining a Viet Minh guarantee of Quang’s safety. Quang took the job. As part of the agreement, my father became the council’s financial secretary. I remember Quang as a pleasant and soft-spoken man, who was quickly able to fill out the other places on the council to the satisfaction not only of the district chief but the Viet Minh too.

* * *

Under the new ARVN regime, my family’s experiences were similar to those of most Vietnamese living in the South. First was the frustration with a puppet government abusing basic human rights – such as the right to vote. The general population had nothing but contempt for the intolerance and favouritism associated with Catholicism. The overt religious preference was a bitter and costly reminder of the Vietnamese people’s subjugation under the French and a pedantic platform from which to attack Buddhism. Second was the indiscriminate use of arrest, imprisonment, torture, and summary execution. People lived in fear. The regime’s aggression was not just limited to obvious political targets but also struck the common people. It began with the merciless implementation of the Strategic Hamlets program and was followed by the growing number of direct raids on villages as the war escalated.

Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated in November 1963. There was a succession of several “Diem like” governments consisting of the same men who had served under the Diem regime. President Johnson believed that South Viet Nam could not hold off what he and other American political leaders and policymakers saw as an inevitable Communist victory. In pure political terms, the American president had no choice but to escalate America’s military involvement. In 1965 there were two hundred thousand American combat troops in Viet Nam. In 1966 the number had increased to four hundred thousand. Following the Tet Offensive in 1968, despite the rise of domestic protests against the “Vietnam War”, the American government continued to send additional troops to stave off a “total fall” of the region to Communist-backed forces. By the end of the year, the US Army’s strength in Viet Nam reached more than half a million personnel.

The tragic irony of America’s military adventure in Viet Nam lies in the fact that the two countries were fighting different wars. The Americans were fighting to contain a communist monster they saw as intent on world domination and enslavement to the State. The Vietnamese, in contrast, were fighting to reclaim their right to self-determination and self-rule, a war of independence. From the perspective of the Vietnamese, how Viet Nam would be governed and whether it would prosper were not issues for “outsiders” to decide. For them, the issue focused on the decisive return of its “self-evident” right to be free from imperialist domination. In waging their crusade against Communism, the Americans were seen as new imperialists clinging to an old position.

The effects on American morale from this political disconnect would become apparent. American soldiers could not understand what they were doing in Viet Nam and why they were fighting. They could not adjust to a climate of extreme heat and humidity and persistent rain. And far more lethal than the enemy were the jungles. These terrains were infested with poisonous snakes, blood sucking leeches, scorpions, malaria carrying mosquitoes, ticks, and invisible but equally deadly parasites. This same condition had earlier been observed by Professor Michael Bodin in his evaluation of the French military in Viet Nam, “The failure of members of the Expeditionary Corps to adapt to the natural and human condition of Indochina often appeared to be the essential element in France’s overall failure.”

To cope with fear and anxiety in a foreign territory, opium and heroin addiction would come to affect a third of American troops by 1971. Mindless bombing and senseless deaths would rock their morale. Back in the United States, opposition to the war mushroomed as stories of atrocity leaked out. The financial cost to continue a foreign war would sky rocket and the general population would have to make sacrifices. Eventually, the Americans were forced to find a means of exit. Before doing so America would lose fifty-eight thousand lives and three hundred thousand injured in combat. America’s international prestige, as well as its national pride, suffered heavily as a result of backing a losing regime and engaging a resolute enemy.

Fighting America’s “Vietnam War”, President Nixon had boasted about American superior military power:

Today there are well over a million men on our side. The United States air power is 1,000 to 1 over the enemy’s. Our ground fire superiority is at least 10 to 1. The enemy has a few tanks, practically no planes, no warships, and only a fraction of the material resources available to the US.

By the end of the war in 1975, American forces would drop eight million tons of explosives on Viet Nam’s soil. In addition, seventyfive million litres of defoliants were poured over Viet Nan’s agricultural lands, jungles, and villages. The American War killed three million Vietnamese civilians and wounded at least four million others. The Americans succeeded in eliminating no more than two hundred thousand Nationalist fighters – the “Viet Cong”. To the majority of the Vietnamese, it appeared that achieving a maximum level of destruction to the country and its people had been America’s ultimate, if not only, goal.

General Curtis Lemay, the US Air Force Chief of Staff during the war, had said to American troops in Viet Nam, “If you kill enough of them, they’ll stop fighting.” His policy of mass destruction with advance military technology was implemented indiscriminately. An example was the campaign against North Viet Nam from March 1965 to November 1968 under “Operation Rolling Thunder.” The air strikes went on daily for three and a half years, dropping a million tons of bombs, and eight hundred tons of rockets and missiles. In 1966 alone, the Americans conducted seven thousand air raids against roads, five thousand against vehicles, and more than a thousand against railroad yards. The American strategy was to weaken the morale of the Nationalist fighters. However, to the surprise and disappointment of Washington, this failed. As General William Westmoreland later noted, “[there seems to be] no indication that the resolve of leadership in Ha Noi has been reduced.”

Robert McNamara – as Secretary of Defense, the principal American architect of the “Vietnam War” – finally confessed his errors of judgment, in his memoir on the tragedy and lessons of Viet Nam:

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong.

He eventually realized, as the US campaign began to rot from the inside, both on the battlefield and in the campuses back home, that the fighting had no publicly acceptable moral purpose. Even many soldiers lost faith in America’s mission in Viet Nam; within five years after the war, nine thousand returning American veterans had committed suicide.

With jungle warfare, the Americans also learned that their troops had not only failed to cope with the terrain conditions, but also to match the skills and courage of Vietnamese fighters. The French had already learned this costly and painful lesson.

SCENTS OF WAR

The submerged country, river and rice field, is a battleground

How can people enjoy wood cutting and fuel gathering?

I charge you, sir, not to talk of high honours

A general achieves fame on the rotting bones of ten thousand

Tsao Sung

I went to my first school at age five. The classroom was attached to the house of an elderly friend of my father, Mr Can. He was also my teacher. There were seven students in the class, some were much older than me, who learned how to read and write for the first time. My mother had expected me to write well in the first few weeks and she became irritated every time she looked at my handwriting. I wasn’t able to write g, p, q and y properly and they looked like crawling snakes, she said. One evening, while checking my homework, she hit my head very hard with her fist and said I was stupid. My head hurt so much and I told my grandmother, who was furious with my mother. They had a big argument that night. Less than six months later Mr Can’s house was destroyed by an ARVN raid. It was the same raid that burnt our house and reduced all of my grandmother’s furniture to ashes.

A new school was opened north of the village and my father sent me there. It was in the middle of a meadow. The roof and walls were made of water palm leaves and golden bamboo. There was one large classroom, with two windows overlooking beds of wild flowers. Uncle Phan had volunteered to make some new tables and benches. The rest were donated by other villagers. On the wall behind the teacher’s desk was a long blackboard, in a beautiful bamboo frame. A large map of Viet Nam, donated by my father, was hung on the next wall, at the teacher’s right. There were twenty students in my class, mostly Vietnamese with a few Cambodians. Several students were too poor and couldn’t afford to buy supplies for school. They made their own pens by sharpening bamboo sticks with a knife. Their pots of ink were also homemade. All our notebooks were beige, with a rough texture, no lines, and quite thick. When my father returned to the village for a visit he provided me with proper tools for writing. Father also gave each of my classmates a new pen. My two best girl friends at this school were Cambodians and we loved to play hide and seek. The surrounding greenery was a great playground for us; sometimes we ran past rows of shady coconut palm trees and hid in a giant bamboo hedge.

Our teacher’s name was Cong. We all called him Thay-- an honorary term used only when speaking to a father, a teacher, a senior Buddhist monk, or a prominent astrologer. I’d been in school only a week, when Thay visited our house. To my great relief, he told my mother, “Your daughter is very bright and she possesses a remarkable memory, Madame! I am very pleased to have her in class. Great parents often produce intelligent offsprings!” For a brief moment I thought I saw my mother’s expression of pride. Then I heard her saying to the teacher, “I will leave all the teaching and discipline to you, Thay! And please don’t hesitate to beat her with a stick when necessary. She is quite stubborn sometimes.” I was standing at a corner in the back room and pretended I didn’t hear anything. I knew my mother would not want me to feel proud of myself.

My earliest lessons began with the writing and reading of Viet Nam’s national language, Quoc Ngu. Thay explained to us that Vietnamese had originally been written in complex Chinese characters. The language had been transcribed into the Roman alphabet by a French Jesuit, Alexandre de Rhodes, in 1628, to facilitate the teaching of Catholicism. The effort of conversion failed for the majority of the Vietnamese – much to the disappointment of the French missionaries – but Quoc Ngu today remains the official written language.

At age seven I started to learn mathematics, geography, and history, as well as poetry reading and composition. History and poetry were my favourites and I was also good at mathematics. Thay had a textbook for each subject but we students only had notebooks. We never owned a printed book of any kind. For me the classroom was like heaven, insulated from the tension and misery that had become routine in my home life. School, furthermore, was the place I could excel and where I was never condemned as an “idiot.”

My classmates lived some distance from my house. We only met in school and rarely visited each other at home. My two childhood friends outside the classroom were Lien and Cam who were also my immediate neighbours. They never attended any school. Lien was thin, with a dark complexion, fierce looking eyes, and talkative. She used a clip to tie her long hair at the back. Cam was chubby, with light skin, the youngest daughter of Mrs Sau. Her elder sister Que had given her a bob style haircut after her trip to Sai Gon, which made her look quite different from the rest of the girls in the village. The children gave Cam the nickname Cam Phi – Plump Orange, and Lien was known as Huyen Lien – Black Lily.

Their mothers never beat them and rarely shouted. I preferred to be at their houses, or just in the open field with trees and shrubs. We always created our own toys. I could make a grasshopper or a bird out of a palm leaf, a basket or a boat out of rice stalks. Lien could produce a flute from a bamboo pipe. We never had any kind of paper to play with, as it was too precious.

I was at the second school for less than two years. It was severely damaged by an ARVN raid and the surrounding fields were badly burnt, including the bamboo hedges. Witnessing the destruction of our school, we students were very upset. While waiting for another school to be built, my maternal grandmother kept saying how lucky the children were not to have suffered any injury. Finally the government itself decided to build a new one – right next door to Constance Garrison, the ARVN camp.

* * *

When France took over the South as its colony, our village of Truong An was officially renamed “Constance” and became home to a military garrison. Throughout the long period of French domination, however, the residents always made a distinction between village and garrison. They continued to call the first by its old name, Truong An, and used Constance just for the Garrison. Constance, despite being in a remote and rather isolated zone, was no ordinary ARVN outpost. It had been considered strategically important by the French and even more by the American-backed regime.

Children attending “Constance School” had to wear white blouses and white shirts. Wearing white distinguished us from the “Viet Cong” – who dressed in black uniforms. It also helped the authorities to identify us whenever there was a bombing raid.

Every day before class all thirty children had to stand up to sing “Worshipping President Ngo” (Suy Ton Ngo Tong Thong), in addition to the National Anthem. The song began, “Who, for so many years, has dedicated his own life to our mountains and our rivers, and has saved our land and our people…leading the country to freedom. President Ngo one thousand years. President Ngo one thousand years. President Ngo one thousand years…” We, as little children, had to remember this song by heart. We did not know then, that President Ngo had come directly from a Catholic seminary in New Jersey. He had never dedicated his life to our mountains and rivers or done anything to save our land and our people.

I went to school by myself – a thirty-minute journey. The village road wound its way between shrubs and trees, following a clear water stream. On the other side were mostly rice fields and a few buffalo huts. I had to cross a long monkey bridge – where I stopped to watch flocks of white ducks floating on the water, families of snails clinging to the trunks of the water palm, and pairs of birds singing in the trees.

Hung and I attended Constance School but we traveled there each day on different roads. From this time until I left the village in 1963, I wouldn’t change schools again. Every time our school building was damaged by gunfire, it was quickly repaired by the government.

As Constance Garrison was next door, I often saw ARVN soldiers wandering outside, even around the schoolyard, unarmed, their army shirts hanging loose. It was safe for them to walk around the school building, because the Nationalists would never fire at the school. In my memory, the image of those government soldiers was accompanied by a hot, dry, intense, and acrid smell, a vivid contrast to the cool, wet, calm, and mangrove-scented smell of the Nationalist soldiers.

The Catholic Church next door to the Garrison and the Channel on the north side were also named Constance. The fortified area of the Garrison, triangular in shape, covered over two thousand square metres and contained four blockhouses – a tall and large one in the middle and one at each corner of the triangle – designed with dozens of small loopholes (lo chau mai) for observation and firing weapons. All four blockhouses were buttressed with heavy sandbags. The Garrison walls were made of a mixture of dry hay and earth, strengthened by sandbags from ground level up to a height of about four metres. The barracks paralleled the three sides of the Garrison. Their walls were also reinforced with sandbags.

The entire fortified area was surrounded with defensive moats, each about ten metres wide and two deep. There were six layers of barbed wire, plus a thick iron fence for additional protection. The surrounding area consisted of open green fields. The public was banned from these, because they were where helicopters landed and took off.

All of the classes at Constance School, from grade one to five, were held six days a week, some in the morning and others in the afternoon. But what we children never knew was that the school served a second purpose. At night it became an interrogation, torture, and execution centre. I learned much later that, from 1957 until the end of the American War in 1975, a total of 564 Vietnamese were executed in those classrooms at night. All the victims were labelled “Viet Cong,” and were either beheaded or disembowelled. I would arrive at school and sometimes see a strange, reddish-brown liquid and dark stains in the yard outside. I often smelled and sensed something peculiar in the air too, without knowing it was the distinctive smell of spilt human blood and of flesh and bones brutally crushed in the night. The victims’ angry spirits always inhabited the air, to haunt those still living. It was only several years later, after we moved to Sai Gon and revisited the village that my aunt-in-law Mo Muoi explained to us about the strange liquid. She said that it was a mixture of stale blood and water, from the executioners of Constance Garrison washing down the classroom floors after each nocturnal slaughter.

The students of Constance School served as human shields for the Garrison during the American War. Whenever the Nationalist forces staged their attacks on the Garrison, they had to restrain themselves so that the children would not be hurt. How many battles took place there while I was still living in the village I couldn’t say, but during my return visit to Truong An after the war, the local authorities allowed me to see a record of 621 engagements, fought from 1954 to 1975 between the two armies. A total of 2,850 ARVN soldiers and two American military ‘advisors’ were killed. There was no record kept of American soldiers abandoned by their own troops or kidnapped by the Nationalists, however. The combined casualties in the NLF army and the civilian population were many times higher.

* * *

In 1958 my mother stopped working in the rice fields. During one of my father’s home visits she told him that farming labour was too strenuous for her, “Master, I really want to do something else. I’ve saved all the money from the sales of the pig and the chickens and now need some more cash to buy a sewing machine.”

“What are you going to do with a sewing machine, my dear?” he asked.

“I will take sewing lessons and sew clothes for people, to earn an income,” she explained. “I don’t want to be dependent on you forever.”

My father agreed and they went to Thanh Chau with three thousand piasters to purchase a Mitsubishi sewing machine. When it arrived, dozens of people in the village came to view it. One village man and my mother even argued for a long time over the pronunciation of the word “Mitsubishi.” My mother began her sewing lessons immediately. As with the cooking instructor who had given my mother cake lessons earlier, every time the sewing instructor arrived, she asked me to close all the doors and windows. “Make sure you close everything, little Hoa Lai! I don’t want anybody to steal the valuable lessons,” she said.

Soon the village women asked my mother to do sewing for them. She earned a good income and began to make nice clothes for herself. She continued to wear the traditional blouse, called ao ba ba, but her favourite blouses were now in the colours of banana leaf green, eggplant purple, and dusky pink, instead of black. Her satin trousers were always black, however. My mother used the leftover fabrics to make something for me and, later, for my baby brother, Nghia, meaning Charity, who was born in the Year of the Pig, 1959.

* * *

At the beginning of the monsoon season in 1961 we were forced into the Strategic Hamlet at gunpoint (I will describe later). This was a form of house arrest applied to an entire community. We were all uprooted at short notice. My grandmother told us we must be resigned to our fate and get ourselves “settled” inside the fortified village and try to make the best of it. However, the NLF was determined to launch a major attack on Constance Garrison as part of a plan to free us. In the mean time I continued attending the government school.

My father was living in Sai Gon and he visited us in the Strategic Hamlet during the Lunar New Year holidays. My grandmother was staying at the house of Uncle Nghiem, Nam’s younger brother. Both Nghiem and his wife were working full time. They had a maid who looked after the two young children, but Nghiem wanted my grandmother there to supervise. For the New Year – which we called Tet – my grandmother sent me a pair of cotton pyjamas in apricot, new slippers, a pretty ivory comb, and a fan made of banyan leaves. My father had bought a few pieces of fabric for my mother and he also gave her a stack of bank notes. My two little brothers were provided with T-shirts and even given some modern toys – a jumping green frog and a little red metal car operated by battery. These created a sensation among the village children and they started coming to our house each day for at least a week.

Father had bought me enough white cotton fabric for two blouses, a leather school bag, and one printed book of illustrated stories of Vietnamese heroines, written for children. The story of the Trung Sisters, Viet Nam’s first monarchs, was my favourite. It described the long struggle of the two sisters and how they had organized and commanded a strong army and crushed a Chinese invasion in 39 AD. Together they were proclaimed Queens of a new and independent state. But their victory was short-lived. Four years later the Han Emperor sent a more powerful army and defeated them. The Queens were obliged to commit suicide by drowning in the Hat Giang River. For the next thousand years, the Vietnamese would continue to fight against China’s repeated invasions.

Nguyen Trai, a prominent scholar of the 15th century, wrote of the Vietnamese struggle to defend our land:

Our people long ago were established as an independent nation with its own civilization. We have our own mountains and rivers, customs and traditions, and these are different from those of the foreign country to the north (China). We have sometimes been weak and sometimes powerful, but at no time did we suffer from a lack of heroes.

I showed this book to Thay Tuan, my new teacher, who shared the stories in class. Thay reminded us that Vietnamese culture had been developed in the Red River Valley long before China established its rule over Viet Nam and that future generations should try to preserve our country’s cultural authenticity. Thay was extremely knowledgeable about the history of our country and all the battles against the Chinese.

During this New Year visit my father could foresee the danger if we were to remain in Truong An. He detested the confined living arrangement and said to my mother, “I think I must get all of you out of here. The sooner the better.”

“I’m not moving!” My mother quickly answered. “All my relatives are here and I want to stay here with them.”

“But what about the children? I am worried about their safety.” My mother went on, “We can’t leave my mother here, and there are my brothers and sisters and their children. We all will stay here and die here.”

“ You can stay as you wish,” my father said with an angry voice. “I will take the children to Sai Gon with me.”

My mother walked away and said out loud to him, “No! I will not let you, Master! I will never let you take them away from me.”

For the remainder of his visit my father refused to speak to my mother. She appeared quite pleased at having won the argument. ***

We were in the spring of 1962, Year of the Tiger. It was early afternoon and I was walking toward my school. No other children from my section of the Strategic Hamlet were going to school because their parents were too upset and angry at the government. My mother did not want me to go either, but she had to respect my father’s wishes. Uncle Muoi also allowed Hung to continue and he was in the same class as me. Uncle Muoi, his family, and my grandmother were living in a different section of the Hamlet.

I strolled along carrying my school bag. Suddenly I met several soldiers in ARVN uniform sitting at the roadside near some bushes. They stood up.

“Go home, little girl,” one of them said.

“I’m going to school,” I replied. “I can’t go home now.”

“You have to go home. Forget about school.”

They were very insistent. I refused to listen to them, “Why shouldn’t I go to school?”

Then one of them stepped aside and with an exasperated gesture, said, “All right, go ahead then! Go on to your school!”

I had no way of knowing, nor could they tell me, that a battle was about to take place. Or that they, these men in ARVN uniforms, were really Nationalist soldiers in disguise.

I headed straight for school, wondering what on earth the soldiers were doing there, in the middle of the countryside. I attended class as usual and never mentioned to anyone that I had met the soldiers. At break-time I walked to the house of an elderly lady, Mrs Xa, who sold several varieties of crawling cakes, which are similar to sponge cake and eaten with hot coconut milk. I liked her cakes very much and went to her house twice a week to buy them. There, we heard gunfire, followed by the zinging of bullets nearby. I leaned out from her kitchen window and saw sparks of fire in the air. I heard Mrs Xa’s trembling voice, “Heaven and Earth! Oh no! They’re coming again!” Immediately she grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me to a corner of her kitchen, where a giant rice barrel stood.

We lay flat on the earthen floor behind the rice barrel as the shooting continued. The air in the house was suddenly alive with flying bullets. Then a large explosion shook the ground. A series of explosions followed immediately. While the ground was rocking, the un-husked rice inside the barrel began sliding towards us, making a loud rustling noise through holes torn by bullets. Holding our breath, neither of us spoke. Peering through the open cracks of the kitchen’s palm leaf wall I could see soldiers in black uniforms firing steadily at the walls of Constance Garrison. From the Garrison, repeated splashes of fire sprouted in the air in retaliation. A row of palm leaf houses went up in flames and people burst out in all directions, like panicking ants. Mushrooms of black smoke and orange flames were rising in the air.

Through the curtain of gray smoke I saw wounded men and women being lifted upon stretchers and taken away. A group of very young Nationalist soldiers were playing harmonicas at the same time. Mrs Xa whispered to me, “Little one, do you know that the harmonicas lift the soldiers’ spirits? Such music inspires them and makes them fight harder, without fear.” The explosions began again, more rapid and louder, and more men and women fell to their knees. The powerful burning smell of combat nearly suffocated me. I thought of death and dying. I thought of my own death. I rolled myself closer to Mrs Xa and prayed to Quan Yin to save us.

Gradually the thundering noises of the battle died away. All living soldiers as well as the dead ones had already disappeared from the rice field. They left behind little pools of bloodstains, blankets of burned grass, and a nauseating odour. Quietly Mrs Xa went outside to check in all directions. She came back and put her arms around me, “You can go home now, little one. But be very careful. If you see them on the road again, run right back to me. I will be here.” She gave me a big hug and her eyes were almost in tears, “Bye Hoa Lai!” I hurried to the door, “Bye Mrs Xa!” I thought of Hung and wondered where he was. Bracing myself, I quickly got onto the road and ran as fast as I could. About fifteen minutes later I saw my mother approaching from a distance. When she recognized me, she sighed with relief.

“You are all right but how is Hung?” My mother asked. “Was he not with you?”

“I don’t know Mother. I don’t know where he is.” I worried about Hung too and tried not to cry while answering her. “Tell me what happened at school!”

“During break I went to Mrs Xa to buy some cake and the fighting broke out. I was with her the whole time. Hung was at school.”

“I was afraid that you and Hung might have been killed. Mo Muoi must have been at the school already, to look for him.”

“Are we now going to the school or home? Mother!”

“Home. Quickly. We will see your grandma. Let’s hope Hung is not hurt in the attack.” The Hamlet section where my grandmother and Uncle Muoi’s family lived was closer to the Garrison and the school and we thought that Mo Muoi must have found Hung by now. Walking as fast as I could behind my mother, I kept thinking about him. Was he wounded, or dead? I felt like crying.

When we arrived at Uncle Muoi’s house, Mo Muoi and Hung were already there. Hung refused to speak. His head was covered with a bandage and his white shirt was dotted with bloodstains. Mo Muoi described the classroom scene, “The roof and some wall sections were blown off and scattered on the ground. Hung was crying among other wounded children. I noticed that Thay had cuts and bruises on his face, and lots of bloodstains on his clothes. He had a band of white cloth around his wounded arm. Two women were tending the children. One woman was weeping. Hoa Lai wasn’t among them. I ran out side to look but there was no sign of her.”

Hung had what appeared to be a minor head injury but nobody knew if there was any internal damage. More than twenty children were injured that afternoon. Luckily none were killed.

* * *

My mother grieved for the “old” village life and was desperate for all of us to leave the Strategic Hamlet. She said to me, “Next time there’s an attack, we will tear down the houses as soon as the battle is over, before they can send new soldiers to the Garrison. We’ll have to move back to the old village very quickly. We’ve learned our lesson this time.” She often talked about the past and all the good memories of growing up in the “old” village. She told me that she was planning to build a very large kitchen hut the day we returned and she would bake little wedding cakes by the hundreds – her specialty beside sewing – just as she had when Hien got married.

Several years had passed and we were still talking about that wedding, as were other people in the village. Maybe this was because it was one of the last events we had been able to celebrate fully, in the traditional manner, before war took over our lives, and most of the young men and women went off to join the Nationalist forces in the jungles.

Hien’s husband was Than, whom she’d met at the visiting opera. He lived with his uncle and worked as a nurse in Can Tho. Than’s father had been executed by the French shortly after Than’s birth. His mother died a few years later, from profound grief and suffering. Being an orphan, his uncle had adopted him. My maternal relatives had not known Than or his family before. Hien’s mother was a liberal woman and Uncle Phan a gentle father, so she was allowed to marry for love.

I was with Hien on the day she became engaged. She wore a pretty yellow cotton ao ba ba – the traditional blouse, with white hand embroidery around the hems – and black satin trousers. She also wore a pair of wooden clogs, which I had not seen on her feet before. In her hair she inserted a little white orchid. Hien was well built, with a slightly dark complexion and a sweet smile. Before the arrival of the groom and his people, Hien instructed her younger sister Sac and me to change our clothes. “You girls have to look clean and smart!” she insisted. This we did, and until the guests arrived, we waited in the kitchen hut with Hien. Her mother, Uncle Phan, and my maternal grandmother waited in the main house.

Than’s people appeared at the main entrance all at once. He was led by his uncle – the most senior member of his family. Both were wearing short linen tunics over dark trousers. Than’s tunic was navy blue, his uncle’s dark gray. Than was tall, dark, fairly handsome, with a melancholy air. The uncle was a retired teacher with masses of distinguished gray hair. Right behind them came twelve young women, each carrying a large tray covered with a red cloth. The trays held betel leaves and areca nuts, tea and cakes. The girls were dressed in ao ba ba. Their blouses were solid colours – pink, red, purple, blue, green, yellow…forming a beautiful and cheerful rainbow. Their trou- sers were black. Because Uncle Phan had a wide circle of relatives and friends, there had to be enough gifts to distribute among them. This custom was called the “crossing of the bride’s house gate.” The exact date and hour had been chosen according to the astrological calendar, as was insisted on by Than’s family.

Sac and I accompanied Hien to the main house to meet her new in-laws. They presented her with a set of wedding gifts – an engagement ring, a pair of jade earrings, a necklace, and cash.

Gifts of food were placed on a large table below the ancestral altar, and incense sticks and lights were lit. Hien and Than bowed before the altar. After this Sac and I escorted Hien back to the kitchen hut, where she was to remain during the engagement feast. In the mean time Than took over the entertainment of the guests. He was now acting as a member of the bride’s family.

The wedding took place a few months later. On the appointed day the family of the groom accompanied him to Uncle Phan’s house at the hour specially designated by the astrologer. Than was led by his uncle. They were wearing long silk tunics and black trousers, with matching headbands. Than’s tunic was medium blue and his uncle’s golden brown. The uncle was carrying a shiny copper incense burner. Behind them came many attendants, then his brothers and sisters and close friends. Young women carried a large quantity of betel leaves and areca nuts on bamboo trays and distributed them to the wedding party along the route.

After tea, Than’s uncle made a formal request to Uncle Phan, “Representing our family, may I ask you and your wife for permission to accompany Hien to her new home?” Solemnly, Uncle Phan agreed. He performed a rite before the altar, requesting the ancestors to accept the marriage. The bride and groom then bowed to the ancestors and gracefully walked out to the gate to be with the several hundred waiting guests. Uncle Phan and his wife did not walk beyond their house entrance during the wedding ceremony. They did not wish to be seen as being too eager to give their daughter away.

The groom’s entourage gradually began the procession home. Than’s people used a dozen sampans – all lined at the base with woven water palm leaves and decorated for the occasion. The bride’s sampan was painted sky blue and contained two bamboo arches, supporting a pergola. It was my grandmother who had made the roof from coconut palm leaves. The pergola was decorated with garlands of fresh flowers. Hien wore a brilliant red silk ao dai dotted with gold coin prints, and had a beautiful cluster of white orchid in her hair. She wore some light makeup on which Than had bought for her. She wore a pair of beaded moccasins, given to her by my parents. Hien’s bridesmaid, who was her best friend, wore a pink silk ao dai. Sac and I, as “flower girls,” also wore pink ao dai and our hair was braided and decorated with a cluster of white orchids.

At the groom’s house the festive group was greeted by a series of fireworks, followed by a ceremony to honour the God and Goddess of Marriage (Ong To Ba Nguyet). Then, the three-day feast began. My mother had supervised the preparation of several hundred little wedding cakes for the celebration, baked in clay stoves lent by our neighbours. While the main cooking for the feast was done inside the kitchen hut, my mother and a dozen young women lined up the stoves outside and did their baking. The aroma filled the neighbourhood for two whole days.

* * *

At home we had three terra cotta burners which my mother referred to simply as ong tao, or kitchen god. Sometimes I would hear her praying to the kitchen god, who was supposed to have a friendly black face peering over the burners. The Vietnamese believe that every year, on the twenty-third day of the twelfth moon, seven days prior to the Lunar New Year, the kitchen god goes to Heaven and reports on the household’s activities.

One day, my mother said to me, “You have been spoiled by your grandmother. It’s now time for you to learn how to gather fuel and to cook meals.” With help from Uncle Muoi’s wife, I obtained enough palm leaves and coconut husks for a two-week supply. Dzung and I arranged them to dry in the sun. Days later we tied the dried palm leaves in tidy bunches and stacked them neatly against a wall in the kitchen. We stored the dried coconut husks in two huge bamboo baskets. To start a fire, I would light a bunch of the dried leaves and feed the fire with some dried husks. The husks produced beautiful glowing flames and turned into red chunks of charcoal that retained the heat throughout the cooking process.

Sometimes my mother and I had to go into the deep forest to cut firewood. She sawed the trees and chopped them into the sizes we needed with an axe. I helped load the freshly chopped wood into the sampan. She would perch me at the front end of the sampan while she sat at the back. We paddled the sampan home. If there was a lot of wood my mother would ask Dzung to come with us. He would take my place to do the paddling. As the war continued to escalate, the jungles would soon be poisoned and destroyed by chemical defoliants. Many families would start using portable oil burners for cooking.

My mother often cooked fish inside a ceramic bowl over a low fire. Slow cooking in the bowl made this “a dish fit for a king”, she said. Whenever she couldn’t find the right size bowl, she took one of my grandmother’s antique china bowls. The blue and white bowl turned completely brown around its rim. Another use – or misuse – to which she put one of the china bowls was for sharpening her knife. She turned the bowl over and whetted the knife’s edge on the rim. It made my heart ache, and would have destroyed my grandmother, if she could have witnessed it.

Every day I helped my mother prepare meals, I was also responsible for looking after my brother Trung. He was an extremely active little boy. Mother had warned me that I had to watch him closely at all times. Because of this my fishing expeditions with Dzung were curtailed. One day, however, I decided to try my luck and look after my brother while fishing next to the house. He was playing in the front yard and I had my fishing rod over the stream. I kept running back to the front yard to be with him, then back to the rod to check for fish. Eventually he came crawling from the yard towards the pond. I heard a splash of water. I ran back and saw him floating among the water lilies, his yellow-striped T shirt glued to his chest and his bare bottom under the water. I screamed out, “Mother! Mother! Trung fell into the water. Come out quickly, Mother!” She came rushing out of the house, jumping into the pond, and scooped him out.

My mother gave me the most vicious look, her teeth clenched, her eyes like those of a lion. She stormed into the house, putting him on the floor, and came at me with a bamboo stick. She lunged at me, grabbed hold of my long hair, jammed my body against the wall and started beating me with full force, “You’re a careless idiot. You’re evil. He nearly died because of you. I am going to beat you, beating the hell out of you. From now on don’t you dare neglect the baby again…” The beating continued until she became exhausted.

I felt my body being torn apart, like a shredded rag. That night I ached so much whenever I moved on the reed mat. The demonic look on my mother’s face would reappear in my dreams many nights and many years later.

* * *

It was a sunny afternoon with blue sky, in late 1962. I went fishing without Dzung. He had been helping his two sisters-in-law in the rice field. My mother asked if I would collect some bitter herbs on my way back. We couldn’t grow these types of herbs in our garden, but they thrived in the muddy jungle soil. I was in no rush to return, even though my basket had been filled with a variety of wild herbs, on top of the fish I had caught.

Suddenly I heard the deafening sound of an aircraft. I was conditioned to believe that, in all probability, there would be an air raid. Realizing I was a long distance from home, I ran toward the jungle. I had never been in the jungle on my own before. Now I felt the urgency of being absorbed and protected by it. I looked up and saw two giant black fish flying across the blue sky. They quickly descended, circling just over the tree tops. A series of violent explosions rocked the ground and the sky was quickly filled with black smoke and orangered flames.

I burst into tears while running, stepping over broken branches and small shrubs at the edge of the jungle. I bumped into a tree trunk and my head went numb. The forest was dancing in front of me. The roaring sounds continued and the jungle was shaken by more explosions. I ran deeper and deeper into it. I thought of imminent death and my body went into spasms. Slowly the fear subsided. In my mind, death was inevitable and I came to accept it. “Quan Yin, please receive me! I am coming to you.”

When I came to my senses, I found myself leaning against a tree trunk with my feet sunk into the wet ground. Above me I saw the green fruits of a tropical cypress tree. I’d lost my basket and had no recollection where I had dropped it.

The jungle was silent. The calls and songs of birds had ceased. I could hear the soft whistling of the wind. The sky was already tinted purple. I wanted to go home but was too afraid to walk out of the jungle by myself. The purple sky grew darker and the strange green forest around me was now turning black.

I hoped against hope that someone would come looking for me. I knew my mother had to take care of my two little brothers, but perhaps one of my relatives might come. I turned in one direction and started walking. I changed to the opposite direction and walked again. I realized I had no idea of the way out. The sky was completely black and I’d started shivering. My lips quivered uncontrollably, “Quan Yin, please guide me home!”

I caught sight of some light ahead in the distance. I came near a solitary hut. There was a kerosene lamp in the kitchen, but there was nobody anywhere near. I stepped inside. On the clay burner I spotted a pot of rice, apparently cold. My stomach was tied in knots and I just wanted something to settle it. I grabbed a handful of the rice and ate it quickly. Then another handful. All of a sudden, a hard object struck me above my right eye.

Before I felt any pain, drops of blood splattered over the front of my white blouse. I could taste the saltiness of my own blood with the rice. An unknown boy was standing in front of me. He was about fourteen. There was a fierce look in his eyes. He stared at me but didn’t speak. My limbs started to shake. An old woman appeared behind him and shouted at him to get away. He obeyed her. She then attended to my wound – whatever he had hit me with was to leave a scar on my face for life. The old woman soon led me outside, and pointed me in the right direction.

I set off as darkness increased around me and soon reached an area where I inhaled a powerful smell of scorched foliage – heavy and nauseating. I heard voices calling out for loved ones. A cluster of people were trying to lift a wounded person from the ground onto a wooden stretcher. One was holding a kerosene lamp above the body while the others were lighting the road with torches. Although I was not able to see their faces clearly, I heard a woman crying in anguish. The wounded person was taken away.

I went on only to be stopped by another crowd. They also carried torches and kerosene lamps.

About two metres away from me was the crushed head and partially burned limbs of a child. The people gathered around it couldn’t identify the body. Then I saw the wounded chest of a man, not far from the child. The blood on his chest had dried and darkened. His severely burned face was blackened like charcoal. His white teeth looked like he was smiling.

I pushed my way through, stunned but impelled by an overwhelming desire to get home. It was Dai, the eldest son of my aunt Di Nam, who found me. He spotted me in the crowd and shouted out, “She is here! I found Hoa Lai! Mother! Auntie!” I heard a sudden anguished shrieking. It was my mother. For one brief but extraordinary moment, I thought perhaps she loved me after all. Dai seized my shoulder and lifted me high in the air, forcing his way through. In the absence of light, I couldn’t really see my family’s faces but I recognized their voices.

In the aftermath of that raid, a new song began to circulate, the mourning song of a child for the destruction of her village. It was anonymous, lest there be reprisals against whoever wrote it, but it became well known among the people of the delta:

There was a little place before

Named the village of the Little Elephant

The elephant is no more

He was a victim of the war

What’s left is a charred clearing

In the old bamboo jungle

Called the village of the Little Elephant.

IMPRISONING A VILLAGE

“If you win the people over to your side, the Viet Cong guerrillas have no place to hide. With no place to hide, you can find them. Then, as military men, fix them…finish them!”

Colonel Lansdale to his secret squads

“It’s better to kill an innocent person than to leave out a Viet Cong.”

Ngo Dinh Diem to his secret police

After the establishment of the ARVN regime, a campaign of repression began. People were executed in public, or they suddenly disappeared, never to be seen again. The “Viet Cong” struck back and the ARVN carried out further reprisals. Like other children of the village, I understood little of what was going on. All we knew was that, at the first sounds of gunfire, we fled into the jungles.

In 1961, the Diem regime began a campaign of moving ten million peasants into seventeen thousand fortified villages called Strategic Hamlets, known to the Vietnamese as Ap Chien Luoc, in order to isolate them from the “Viet Cong” and vice versa. The peasants showed much resistance and in retaliation the government sent troops to raid the villages. In Long My district, during the first five months of May 1961, ARVN troops conducted more than five hundred raids on nine villages. They arrested and killed hundreds of people, among them close friends of my maternal relatives. The methods of killing included shooting, beheading, cutting open the stomach, and throwing a person tied with rocks into the sea.

Prior to our relocation to the Strategic Hamlet, the authorities in Truong An ordered the construction of four Catholic churches inside the new living compounds, leaving the other four Catholic churches in the “old” village vacant. The building work was done by the villagers and without any form of payment or compensation. As soon as we moved in, we were ordered to convert to Catholicism. The majority of the peasants refused and they were forbidden to practice any other religion as a punishment.

After endless harassment, people who had practiced Buddhism or Caodaism stopped going to the temples altogether. My maternal grandmother and Uncle Phan no longer dared to visit the Cao Dai temple. Left vacant, the building was from time to time used as an interrogation centre by Constance Garrison. The government also started a military campaign with the most bizarre slogan, “Joining the ARVN to protect Jesus Christ.”

Viet Nam, throughout its long history, has been deeply influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism. Buddhism upheld a powerful inner life, while Confucianism provided a political philosophy and a stable set of rules of conduct for an orderly society. The two went together without tension. Vietnamese Buddhist monks had earlier established a reputation for scholarship by their mastery of language and literature. They were royal advisers and emissaries. For centuries, it was the Buddhist elite who had established schools and taught the country’s new leaders, generation after generation. Unlike Catholicism, the strength of Buddhism lies not in highly structured organization but in its deep psychological and moral values. It is more an inner attitude, a spiritual disposition rather than a specific program or ideology.

Because Buddhism appears formless, it is much more difficult for a political regime to suppress or destroy it. Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu once referred to Buddhist monks as “those miserable unarmed bonzes”. Yet those bonzes were seen as powerful and Ngo Dinh Nhu had to use military forces to crush them, which led many monks and nuns to make public protests against the regime. Some even burnt themselves to death in a desperate call for peace and reconciliation.

* * *

The Strategic Hamlets – a tragic experience for those of us who were forced to endure it – were the brainchild of Diem’s two top American advisors, Professor Wesley Fishel of Michigan State University, and Colonel Edward Lansdale, the CIA’s man in the field. Years before, in the immediate aftermath of Dien Bien Phu and even as the Diem regime was assuming power, Lansdale and his men began operating in the North, encouraging Vietnamese Catholics and the Catholic forces abandoned by the French to “flee” to the South. Lansdale and his local supporters took advantage of the Vietnamese belief in astrology by organizing the printing of the “Sach Lich Nien Giam 1955”, a popular astrology yearbook. In this edition, all of the predictions carried the same message, “the bleak future of North Viet Nam.”

Following the distribution of this and similar leaflets, “refugee” registration went up to 860,000, of which 700,000 were converted Catholics. The remaining were soldiers left behind by the colonial army and their immediate family members. They would be given special privileges by the Diem regime during their resettlement in the South. Lansdale initiated a campaign of terror against the remaining opposition. He sent several hundred anti-Viet Minh political activists to Clark Air Field in the Philippines for training, then infiltrated them into the Vietnamese countryside, North and South, to conduct sabotage operations and murder prominent members of the Viet Minh. Among his schemes was a plan to sabotage the railroad system of the North by means of hundreds of mines that resembled charcoal balls used to fuel locomotives. He had secretly transported these mines from Sai Gon to Ha Noi.

These campaigns of terror failed to destroy the rural opposition to the regime. If anything, they consolidated the sometimes uneasy alliance of political and religious groups that joined forces to form the National Liberation Front in late 1960. In the Mekong Delta, efforts to combat the NLF’s hold on the villages had the opposite effect. So, some five years later, the ARVN regime and its CIA masterminds introduced the Strategic Hamlets.

* * *

It was a cool morning in May 1961. I was fishing in a village stream with Dzung. I had not been able to go fishing for a long time but that day my mother offered to look after my two brothers. I was happy to get out of the house. The sky was clear of morning mist but the grass was still wet from heavy rain the previous night. Sitting on the bank, each of us was wearing a conical hat – in case it might rain again.

We sat patiently, waiting for a catch. The peace and the quiet of our surroundings were broken only by the sound of the current rippling over the stones along the creek, the occasional jumping of a fish and the chirping of birds in the trees. All of a sudden, from afar, we saw movements. A long column of people was heading rapidly in our direction, led by a man in civilian clothes holding a loudspeaker. Behind him marched about two dozens ARVN soldiers carrying rifles. Dzung and I put our heads down, stared at the ground, pretending not to notice. How could we dare to look at government soldiers? We could feel the vibration of their stamping feet on the dirt road as they went by and we could smell their guns. I started to tremble. So did Dzung.

We lifted our fishing rods and picked up the baskets, wanting to get home as quickly as possible. We were too afraid to go in front of the soldiers so we followed them, not daring to speak, keeping a goodly distance between the last soldier and us.

A voice burst out of the loudspeaker, “Attention! Attention! All countrymen must move into the Strategic Hamlet within three days!”

Dzung and I could see my mother in the distance, standing in the doorway, holding my two brothers in her arms, her eyes were searching for us. The soldiers stopped in front of the house, and we too stopped, transfixed. We couldn’t hear what they were saying to my mother, but she appeared shocked. The soldiers continued on their way and she spotted us. She called out, instructing us to put our fishing gear away. Then, once she judged that the soldiers and the man with the loudspeaker had gone beyond the riverbank where my grandmother’s house was situated, she hurried us off in that direction. There, we found Uncle Muoi, Uncle Phan, their wives and several of the children, crowded into the living room in a state of bewilderment. Uncle Muoi, face twisted in anger, was deep in conversation with Uncle Phan. They were arguing about moving into the Strategic Hamlet – whatever and wherever that was. My grandmother and Uncle Phan kept saying that we had to obey the authorities but Uncle Muoi and his wife insisted we stay where we were. Later my aunts, Di Nam and Di Tu, arrived with their husbands. They took Uncle Muoi’s side.

Uncle Muoi said, “We will fight! All of us will fight! We’re not going to give in to this stupid government!”

“That’s a dangerous decision, Muoi,” Uncle Phan answered calmly. “We’re going to have to think about it very carefully and look at all the alternatives.”

Uncle Muoi didn’t want to hear this and walked away.

“How can we abandon our houses, the rice paddies…the land… the graves…?” This was Aunt Di Tu speaking. She broke down in tears. My mother also started to cry, but too restless to sit still, she got up and walked away to the kitchen hut. Mo Muoi, who looked even more distressed, followed my mother. I heard Aunt Di Nam say to my grandmother, “Exactly one hundred square metres, that’s what each household will be given, regardless of how many people in the house.”

The new fortified village, it turned out, was about five hundred metres from Constance Garrison. Di Nam was right, small or large family, it didn’t matter; each would get the same allocation of land. There would be no financial assistance from the government. People would either use the same materials from their existing houses, or gather new woods and palm leaves from the surrounding jungles to build new ones.

The three-day deadline of the soldiers’ ultimatum went by. A few families traveled to the new location with their construction materials and personal belongings. Uncle Muoi, meanwhile, went to the rice field to work as usual. Every morning before sunrise my mother and I took my two little brothers to my grandmother’s house, and we stayed there for an entire day. She said that it was better for the whole clan to be united in case the soldiers returned to harass us.

On the fourth day, a series of gunshots broke out in the middle of the morning. My grandmother shouted, “Down to the shelter, children! Hurry up!”

In no time, we were standing in the underground shelter, all except Uncle Muoi, who stood leaning against one of the windows up above, gazing in the direction of the gunfire. Then we heard the tramp of heavy footsteps approaching and knew that armed troops had arrived. Holding our breath, we listened to the panicked voices of Uncle Phan’s wife and the neighbours, but soon the shouting voices of the men prevailed over them – angry voices we didn’t recognize. The adults inside the shelter hesitated – my grandmother, my mother, and Mo Muoi – unable to decide whether we should stay where we were or get out. They waited for Uncle Muoi’s instructions.

Finally Uncle Muoi came to the edge of the shelter and called down quietly to us, “You all can come out. Take your time now.”

He reached out his arms and lifted my grandmother and the children out. We followed him to the front yard.

On one side of the yard – next to the poon tree – stood Uncle Phan’s family and all the immediate neighbours. On the opposite side were a dozen soldiers, each holding a rifle firmly and staring at the group. Our hamlet chief was standing in the middle between the two groups. Before he started speaking, Aunts Di Nam and Di Tu arrived with their husbands and children, followed by several more families. They came to stand with us next to the poon tree.

“Fellow residents! This is the last call! You all must go to the Strategic Hamlet! To protect your own lives and those of your children, you must go. There is simply no other choice.”

Many residents lowered their eyes and stared at the ground; several bowed their heads; a few gazed at the soldiers in deep shock. Uncle Muoi stepped forward. “To protect our lives and the lives of our children, you must let us remain where we are. Our lives are full of hardships already and we cannot afford to abandon everything we have and simply move away …”

The soldiers stared at Uncle Muoi in disbelief, and the hamlet chief, irritated, interrupted him, “This is the government’s order and you should not challenge it. It may cost you your life!”

“Tell your government that we challenge them!” Uncle Muoi retorted, giving as good as he got. “Our answer is no, we are not going to …”

A soldier stepped forward, his rifle raised, ready to use it. Uncle Phan quickly stepped in front, shielding Uncle Muoi, and Mo Muoi reached for her husband and pulled him toward the rear of our group. My mother took his other arm, and the two women struggled to hold him. But they couldn’t quiet him.

“Justice has to be done,” he cried out, “and I’m not afraid.”

Uncle Phan immediately raised his arms then bowed to the soldiers. “Please, please ignore what he’s saying! He’s overwrought. We will talk things over among ourselves. I beg you all to give us some more time…”

Mrs Lua, our elderly neighbour, stepped out and joined Uncle Phan. She said calmly to the soldiers, “We all will be grateful to you, young men! Please let us live. I am sure you have families like ours, and you understand.”

They hesitated, and the hamlet chief took a few steps back. Uncle Phan, Mrs Lua, and now my grandmother bowed to the soldiers and begged for more time. Their sergeant stepped forward.

“Those who continue to resist will be arrested. Your houses will be burned to the ground. You have until tomorrow morning to make up your minds. Tomorrow morning is your deadline!”

The sergeant signalled the hamlet chief to move on, and as the soldiers left, a voice called out from the throng of villagers, “Justice is one sided, and freedom means repression.”

Around mid morning the following day, Uncle Phan and his wife were tearing down their house’s roof and walls when they saw fire burning along a row of houses. They could see people rushing out into the road and the rice fields. They ran to look for Aunts Di Nam and Di Tu, but when they came near the scene of burning they saw the same group of soldiers we had met the day before. Uncle Phan and his wife wanted to avoid being seen by them again, so they hurried back and continued dismantling their house. Later that day we learned that the soldiers had set fire to the houses with grenades.

At my grandmother’s house, Mo Muoi was still packing some personal belongings. My cousins and I stayed with grandmother. We formed a ring around her on the wooden divan. She was sobbing. Uncle Phan and his wife came over and started taking apart the palm leaf walls. About an hour later, my grandmother and the rest of us were still sitting in the same place – on the wooden divan – directly under a cloudy sky.

Uncle Phan, his wife, and Mo Muoi continued tearing down my grandmother’s house. Then Uncle Muoi told my mother it was our turn. We went home. Uncle Muoi and my mother began taking our house apart while I looked after my two brothers. The palm leaf walls were removed and Uncle Muoi climbed onto the roof and began disconnecting the wooden columns supporting the house. He said, “We must save as much as we can. Columns like these are hard to find.”

My brothers and I were squatting at the foot of the gardenia tree in the front yard, gazing up at what remained of the roof under drizzling rain. Uncle Muoi’s face wore the saddest expression. He sat on the roof beams by himself, trying to hold back his own tears. I watched him and wept.

When he came down to shake loose the columns from the foundation his despondent eyes were still bloodshot. We were wet and shivering and my mother went to a large bamboo basket and dug out two towels which she handed them to me. I wrapped one around each of my brothers. Uncle Muoi picked up a section of the palm leaf wall and made a tent for us at one corner of the house. We crouched under it together, listening to Uncle Muoi telling our mother about his recent trip to Ca Mau. Mo Muoi had relatives and friends there.

The very first Strategic Hamlet had been built in the Ca Mau peninsula. It is the Southern tip of Viet Nam, mostly surrounded by the Jungle of Hell. At the beginning of the Diem regime, nearly all the villages in the Mekong Delta had pledged their support to the Nationalists. The introduction of the Strategic Hamlets only reinforced the peasants’ resentment toward the government. When the project in Ca Mau began peasants were ordered by a Catholic official to work around the clock on the construction of churches. When the churches were completed the peasants were ordered to dismantle their houses and move. They refused, and as happened in Truong An, ARVN troops were sent in to intimidate them.

Within a matter of days, the people of Ca Mau moved into the Rach Gia forests. Forest Villages (Lang Rung) began to mushroom there. The government sent troops to raid the Forest Villages. A series of massacres followed, after which thousands carried the dead bodies back into Ca Mau in open protest. The government declared the residents of the Forest Villages “Viet Cong” and “Viet Cong Sympathizers”.

Two years earlier the government had created Agrovilles, known to the Vietnamese as Khu Tru Mat. They were not as prison-like as the Strategic Hamlets but had a roughly similar purpose, which was to deprive the Nationalist forces of easy contact with local people.

The very first Agrovilles project had been designed and implemented in Thanh Chau. Before its construction, the transportation ministry where my father worked created new channels and also filled up existing land. Thousands of workers were conscripted without pay – it was their “duty to the homeland,” they were told – first to tear down existing concrete buildings and clear the debris away, then to build the Agroville, sufficient to accommodate the six thousand residents of the town and its nearby village. Diem was indifferent to the fact that the rice fields were left untended while the project was built. He wanted all the work to be completed within fifty-five days, and it was. Diem himself came to Thanh Chau for the inaugural ceremony.

The following poem was circulated in secret in my home district:

Whoever returns to Long My and Thanh Chau

Will certainly see a total destruction, a heart-rending sight

Tombs and graves were dug up and scooped out mercilessly

Houses suddenly became vacant,

And all have been destroyed

Rice fields and fruit farms are now deserted

A dying and grieving village scene

Every where people are weeping and lamenting

The Americans and the Ngo dynasty are tearing our life apart

Our deep resentment will go with the wind to heaven

The night before we abandoned our village my mother took us to my grandmother’s house. There was nothing left but the bare foundation. Uncle Muoi had used several sections of the palm leaf walls to create a big tent for us in the banana garden, supported by the banana trunks. It was raining and cold and Mo Muoi built a fire to keep us warm through the night. None of the adults could sleep, and the children did not fall asleep until the early hours. My grandmother was in tears most of the evening and the children all circled around her, inside the damp, white mosquito net. Chewing betel leaves and areca nuts, she talked about her long-dead parents and the colonial distribution of land in the early days, how they had suffered at the hands of those Vietnamese who had collaborated with the French. She was still grieving over that loss and felt bitter that she could not hold onto even a tiny piece of land in the destitute village. Its value was nothing compared to what her parents had owned but it was all she had. She hated foreigners – first the French, and now the Americans, who had come to impoverish our lives. She told us a story of Governor-General Paul Doumer and his land re-distribution in the Colony. This was a history but it was his scheme that had ruined her family.

She described, “Before that white monster visited the delta in 1901, he had already developed quite a reputation. He was clever, scheming, ruthless, and dictatorial. But he attracted a very large crowd the day he arrived in our province – people just came from everywhere, even the peasants with torn clothes and tattered straw hats. They were curious to have a view of this powerful foreigner.”

Instead of taking over the Governor’s mansion, which had been reserved for him, Doumer was invited and agreed to stay at the provincial chief’s villa. For his first public appearance Doumer wore plain clothing – four-pocket shirt and simple tailored trousers, all in white, designed for the tropical climate. On the other hand, the local dignitaries who greeted and accompanied him – particularly the socalled Major Landlords, appeared in their finest silk gowns, heads under elaborate parasols held by servants, feet covered with highly ornate shoes. These haute bourgeois were very proud of themselves and their new wealth.

To show maximum respect for the Governor-General, the provincial chief had arranged for a well-known orchestra from Sai Gon as entertainment, followed by a famous dance troupe. The finest cuisine of all the region’s delicacies was offered throughout his visit. Before leaving the delta, Doumer rewarded the provincial chief with two thousand acres of land in Thanh Chau.

The local people started to wonder when they learned about the gift of land. Whose land would be taken over to allow such a reward? No one dared make it a public issue, for the risk of retaliation was too high. My grandmother told us, “This new provincial chief had come from Ha Noi and he knew nothing about this region. But he had been chosen intentionally; the French wanted someone loyal to them and not to the local people.” Over time, the provincial chief continued to acquire more and more land for himself and his family. She recited a poem to us that expressed the reaction of the victims:

Over such immeasurable land,

The storks have boundless space

To fly with their widest of wings.

Over such immeasurable land,

The dogs have endless distance

To run their tails off without restraint.

The running dog is a person, not an animal. He is the servant of the colonial regime. The stork is not the benevolent deliverer of babies as known in the West. In Asian cultures the stork is treacherous. If you raise one, the legend goes, it will peck your eyes out.

When my grandmother finished the story, Uncle Muoi asked us, “Who is the stork in the story? Can you tell us?”

We all answered him at once, “The French!”

* * *

Over several rainy days my mother transported the dismantled materials from our house by sampan to a bare and muddy patch of ground already assigned to us. On her last journey, we came with her. I held Trung, while she was paddling with Nghia between her knees.

For the first few nights we slept on top of a simple bamboo frame erected by my mother, with our feet covered in red mud. Because of heavy rains, the ground was soft and sticky and there was no way to keep our feet clean. My mother and all maternal relatives toiled in a state of deep despair and profound resentment, as did all our former neighbours.

Before the enforced relocation, most of the young men in Truong An who had not already joined the NLF went over to it. They did so by moving to the neighbouring village of Vinh Vien to live and work. This was part of a Nationalist zone (free from ARVN control) at the time. As a result, the majority of residents living in the Strategic Hamlet were the elderly, women and children.

We were all subject to restrictions. Every day at sunset, all sampans had to be pulled onto the bank of Constance Channel where they were closely guarded – to prevent the Viet Cong from using them, we were told, but also to keep us from traveling at night. The authorities gave each person a yellow card. Every time a person left the Hamlet he or she had to exchange this for a blue card. Everyone had to have a personal record book in possession at all times. Each family was required to submit photographs of all members for daily security check. If a person returned home late or was still visiting relatives somewhere else, other family members were hauled in for interrogation.

In the evening the residents were required to attend political lessons, which they disliked intensely. Every political lecture began with the banging of a brass gong. Any adult who failed to attend more than once was labeled “Viet Cong” and endured punishment. My mother was sometimes able to make her excuse as she needed to look after us children at home. They did not harass her because my father was a government “official” in Sai Gon. For Uncle Muoi and Uncle Phan, who were farmers, there was no excuse.

The government had classified us into groups according to our political backgrounds. Those who were suspected to have immediate family members in the Nationalist force were concentrated in the section closest to Constance Garrison for daily surveillance, while Catholic families were placed at the further end of the fortified village. We were assigned among the Catholic families while Uncle Muoi’s family and my grandmother had to live closer to the Garrison.

Young children were unhappy in the new living arrangement. The lack of trees, most of which had been cleared away to make room for the new residents, made it impossible to find shade from the intense daytime sun. Children mostly stayed indoors, using whatever they could find to entertain themselves. Girls would gather bamboo chopsticks and a small nylon ball for a new game. They would throw the ball toward the ceiling while turning the chopsticks at a high speed, then catch the ball in time. With white chalk boys could draw a pattern of squares on the floor to play a game of rubber bands. Given the confined space inside the house children often hit various objects and even caused damage to the furniture. The adults complained about the noises they made.

Lien and Cam were free to play but my mother kept me on a tight rein. At ten years old, I was fully responsible for my two brothers, while she did her sewing. Her outbursts of anger grew in frequency and violence. My failure to be mindful over the tasks would result in a beating – her consistent form of punishment.

Even in a war zone, and even being confined to a small crowded area, many village children still enjoyed some of the carefree moments of childhood. But that was never my experience in those days. I had an angry mother, an absent father, and a lost grandmother.

PEASANT REVOLTS

For blood in torrents pour

In vain – always in vain

For war breeds war again

John Davidson

In the summer of 1962, Strategic Hamlets’ residents in various provinces were busy secretly debating possible ways of “destroying” the prison-like compounds. They voted on the most difficult and the most dangerous method of all – destroying each compound entirely, for good, and thus, preventing any possibility of returning in the future.

The residents of all provinces chose 15 September as the date for the total destruction of the Strategic Hamlets. It would be known as the General Uprising – the Dong Khoi. In Truong An, the first attack began in the early hours, when a unit of the Nationalist forces kidnapped a senior ARVN officer and took him into the jungle. They shot him while the sky was still dark.

Shortly before sunrise, a squad of soldiers from Constance Garrison came out on patrol. Half a dozen of them were gunned down immediately and several were captured. Terrified, the rest of the group rapidly withdrew into the Garrison.

Wives and mothers of soldiers drafted into the ARVN learned from the grapevine that Constance Garrison was going to be attacked that day. They rushed to the area, calling and begging their husbands and sons to escape or surrender before the attack. Ranking officers in the Garrison tried to stop the soldiers from fleeing. They made threats and even beat up some of their own troops, keeping them from meeting their families waiting outside.

Meanwhile, hundreds of civilian men, women, and children from the Strategic Hamlet, armed with homemade weapons, joined the uprising. They carried brass drums, copper horns, wooden mo, knives, choppers, axes, scythes, bamboo poles, and white banners denouncing the Americans and the Diem regime. They marched towards the Garrison behind a leader with a loudspeaker, “ Clear away the Strategic Hamlet! Tear down the Strategic Hamlet!” From the Hamlet I could hear the rapid clicking sounds of the mo, the repeated banging of copper trays, and the uninterrupted ringing of brass bells, all chimed in with the harmonicas blown by the black-uniformed soldiers along Constance Channel.

Uncle Muoi had gone out early in the morning. We saw him among the crowd near the Garrison, holding a big axe. We also spotted Aunt Di Nam, armed with an iron hoe and Mo Muoi wielding a large bamboo spear. My mother and I decided to join the village women. We ran back home and I took a bamboo pole. My mother snatched up her giant black iron scissors. Grandmother and Uncle Phan decided to stay home to look after the little children with Mrs Lua, my grandmother’s elderly neighbour.

Urged on by the loudspeaker, the Nationalist troops started firing at the Garrison and civilians crawled under the barbed wire fences and tried to break in with their homemade weapons. The besieged troops in the Garrison responded with heavy gunfire.

Both Dai and his brother-in-law, Van, were members of the NLF. Van was beating a wooden mo Uncle Phan had made for him. He and several others were calling upon the soldiers inside the Garrison to surrender but the ARVN soldiers ignored them and fired back. I heard Van shouting out to his troops, “Advance further! Further!”

Van continued to beat the mo rapidly after each bout of firing from the open fields and from Constance Channel. Two black figures from the Channel jumped up, their arms arcing high with grenades. Immediately two explosions rocked the walls of the Garrison. Return fire flashed from the Garrison’s loopholes. Both grenade throwers were wounded. One struggled to lift the body of his comrade out of the water and dragged him along the Channel into a sampan.

Heavy fighting continued throughout most of the day. Dead and wounded, young and old, mostly soldiers but civilians too, were scattered around the Garrison terrain. In keeping with the Nationalist tradition, none of the wounded cried out, a result of their training, in which they learned to tolerate extreme physical pain and hardship in silence, in order to maintain secrecy. In the afternoon, Dai’s father and Uncle Phan helped lift the seriously wounded into sampans to transport them to emergency field-stations. Although Uncle Phan had not participated in the morning uprising, he left his house to assist with the wounded. Hien had told him he was needed. Aunt Di Nam, Mo Muoi, and my mother delivered hot meals to the Nationalist fighters. Uncle Phan’s wife remained at home with her two daughters-in-law cooking.

My mother gave us some rice and chicken soup on the battlefield.

* * *

Late into the night, the sounds of wooden mo, brass drums, and people shouting could still be heard. The return fire from Constance Garrison appeared to weaken. When midnight arrived and passed, the shooting stopped. The Garrison fell silent. The Nationalists made their final assault cutting through the barbed wire fences and entered. Inside, the air still thick with the smell of gunpowder, they found dead and wounded bodies. Weapons and people were scattered on tables, chairs, beds, and on the bloodsoaked ground. A few suffering minor injuries pretended to be dead while others moaned and screamed. Those who could escape had made their way out.

Meanwhile, Hien and I were at Aunt Di Nam’s house waiting for Dai. Di Nam and Van’s wife became increasingly anxious. Di Nam, unable to relax, busied herself restlessly around the house and pestered her daughter to prepare rice, fish and vegetable soup for the young men. They were so on edge that neither of them could eat. Di Nam would go to the hammock to sit down but immediately got up again. Then she took betel leaves and areca nuts out of a copper bowl and started polishing the bowl again and again, trying to hide her fear and anxiety.

It was morning when Dai and Van returned, ravenously hungry, with their torn clothes covered in mud and blood. Hien and I had fallen asleep, but the two women were there to greet and feed them, having stayed up the whole night.

Following the uprising, all the adults in the Strategic Hamlets went to work frantically – taking apart their houses while there was still time. Everyone feared that new ARVN troops would soon arrive to fill Constance Garrison.

As always, Uncle Muoi helped my mother. Hinh and Dai also returned from the jungle to help us rebuild our house in the old village, over the same foundation as previously. This house was built more cheaply then its predecessor, a house that had itself been cheaply built. We were becoming poorer and poorer. A few months later, with savings from my father, Dai and Hinh helped my mother build a large kitchen hut, which turned out to be almost as big as the main house. At the same time, she and I restarted our vegetable garden at the back of the house.

My cousins – those who had not already joined the NLF – were anxious to do so now. Women and children gathered weekly along the village roads leading to Constance Garrison to protest against the Americans and the Diem regime. They carried white banners written in bright red ink, “No more Strategic Hamlets! “Imperialist Americans! Get out of Viet Nam!” At night – the work went on secretly for three consecutive years – women of all ages joined in the digging of fighting trenches (chien hao) around the Garrison, which were then concealed from view by camouflage. The trenches spread in four directions, about a hundred metres from the Garrison. Hinh was involved in the supervision of the work so that he was able to come and see us more regularly, even during the day.

The General Uprising to break down all the Strategic Hamlets in the South had been masterminded by Nguyen Thi Dinh, one of Ho Chi Minh’s heroines. By the end of 1963 eighty percent of the Strategic Hamlets had been destroyed. In some areas such fortified villages had been built and torn down and rebuilt and torn down again at least thirty times.

Nguyen Thi Dinh had joined the Viet Minh during the French colonial era and formed the Women’s Army of the Coconut Jungle (Nu Chien Si Rung Dua) when the French War broke out in 1946. During the second phase of this war, when Granduncle Cuong was working in the Mekong Delta region, many women of the Coconut Jungle received intensive medical training from him in order to aid Viet Minh troops. To train them in warfare Dinh introduced the Three Arrows of Close Combat (Ba Mui Giap Cong), which involved direct attack, persuasion of the ARVN soldiers, and a political strategy. After Dien Bien Phu, she continued to build her guerrilla force in her home province of Ben Tre and many battles took place in ensuing years along the Upper Mekong River. By a terrible irony of war, from 1958 to 1961 Dinh’s army – consisting mainly of women – was fighting against the ARVN Marine division of my Uncle Nam.

The Three Arrows of Close Combat policy was implemented by the women of Truong An village, who found how easy it was to persuade ARVN soldiers to give up their guns, and the deserted men would become new members of the NLF. My two maternal aunts, Uncle Muoi’s wife, and other civilian women volunteered their time and effort. Nearly every day they cooked meals and delivered them either in the jungles or to the underground shelters connected to the peasants’ huts. As well as providing food and shelter, they participated in weekly public protests against the American-backed regime. * * * Following the General Uprising to break free from the Strategic Hamlets, Nguyen Thi Dinh received secret assistance from the ARVN Lieutenant colonel Pham Ngoc Thao, who was the new provincial chief of Ben Tre. A devoted nationalist, Thao was a master spy for the National Liberation Front but because he was a Catholic the Diem ruling family trusted him. Meanwhile, Uncle Nam was appointed by Ngo Dinh Diem to be head of Tay Do – a newly created province south of Can Tho. My home village of Truong An now became part of this new province. Nam was a lieutenant colonel at the time and his appointment was paralleled by Thao’s ascendancy in Ben Tre. He had no idea that Thao was a double agent. He was amazed at Thao’s popularity with the people of Ben Tre, as much a stronghold of NLF resistance as was Tay Do, whereas he, for his part, continued to encounter tough resistance from local residents.

Prior to Thao’s appointment the government had tried to crush the General Uprising in Ben Tre by sending in thousands of troops to raid villages, using children as human shields to protect government troops. Following the assaults, the residents of Ben Tre organized public protests and fighting went on for weeks. Subsequently, the Diem regime announced that the “Viet Cong” had organized the riots. Diem also reported that the Viet Cong “had destroyed La Mo Church, attacked the Virgin Mary, and murdered a priest.” He made an appeal to the international Catholic community for sympathy and also sought the world’s support for his regime.

Once Thao, the secret agent, had become provincial chief of Ben Tre, the Women’s Army of the Coconut Jungle was upgraded, strengthened, and re-named the Long Hair Army (Doi Quan Toc Dai). It welcomed women of all ages from various backgrounds. By 1968 the province of Ben Tre had more than three thousand women in the regular army and sixteen thousand in the irregular force, responsible for the transportation of food, supplies and ammunition to battlefields. The Ben Tre women’s army was considered a role model and responsible for helping other provinces set up their own forces.

In my home province of Tay Do, with Uncle Nam as its chief, the women’s army was secretly reorganized and strengthened, but in much more difficult circumstances. Under constant surveillance by Nam’s troops, it still managed to become a part of the Long Hair Army’s network. By 1968, after seven years of recruiting and training, Tay Do province had more than ten thousand women in its regular and irregular forces. Six of the female companies were based in Truong An. By then Hien had already left the village to join them.

It was the arrival of American troops and weapons in ever-increasing numbers during the 1960’s that had the effect of channeling thousands of women into the NLF ranks. There were new factors that came into play, causing the percentage of female soldiers to rise. Firstly, Vietnamese losses during the nine-year war against the French had been high. Secondly, in honouring the Geneva Agreement of 1954, Ho Chi Minh moved his forces back to the North, leaving only a nominal male resistance force in the South. Thirdly, under both Diem and Thieu regimes, a huge number of men were killed and imprisoned. As prisons and graveyards steadily filled with the broken bodies of their male loved ones, the hearts of many suffering women swelled with deep resentment and anger, thus motivating them to avenge the fates of their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. By 1968, the total force of the NLF had grown to more than a quarter of a million and forty percent of these were women. Recognizing their strength, Ho Chi Minh awarded them the title “Southern Women, the Bronze Citadel” (Phu Nu Nam Bo, Thanh Dong). While promoting Nguyen Thi Dinh to the post of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the NLF, he proudly announced, “Without the women there will be no victory.” The women’s tasks included direct combat, transporting heavy weapons and food supplies to battlefields, managing emergency medical services, constructing trenches and tunnels, and demoralizing the enemy through skills of persuasion. In addition, from the very beginning, children were recruited to perform a variety of tasks.

One day Dai called the village children to an urgent meeting and asked us, “You all know what the helicopters do, don’t you?” Before he ended his sentence we all sang out loud:

Whenever the helicopters appear

They lower themselves in the air

And shoot down without caring

where…

“We must find a way to discourage them,” Dai asked. “Do you have any idea how we can prevent them from coming low enough to shoot at people? ”

After much discussion, we came up with a solution. We strapped several bamboo poles together, end to end, then wrapped dried hay around the topmost pole to make it look bulky. We then stuck them into the ground wherever there was open space. It worked! Every time helicopters arrived, they were kept from flying lower because of the vast number of our bamboo contraptions pointing at the sky.

Young children in every family contributed to the cause by raising bees for combat. Dozens and dozens of giant beehives were hidden in village trees and connected by fine nylon strings, forming a “beehive chain” along each village road. Every child who participated in the scheme had a string from the chain connected to his or her house or to a hidden location. Between my grandmother’s and Mrs Lua’s houses were several large trees and shrubs. Dzung and I monitored the beehives there. We had the strings tied to my grandmother’s old sampan moored at the side of her house.

At the beginning of a raid by government troops, Dzung and I were to pull the strings to release the bees, then quickly withdraw into the house from the sampan. The army of bees would go into battle by themselves and we would sit quietly and watch. The children had a representative who worked with a village informant, and often he would know in advance if a raid was about to occur. As soon as government troops approached our area, we would get ourselves ready to receive the signal of “Ra tran!” “Battle begins!”

It was a great day when we first got the message. We waited anxiously by the sampan, others waited in their own hiding places, all of us holding our breath until a platoon of soldiers – about thirty in all – had reached a key spot on the road near the trees. Then came the signal – “Ra tran!” – and the children quickly pulled the strings to release the army of bees!

Hundreds of buzzing bees escaped from the bursting hives and landed on the soldiers’ heads! Shocked at the sudden attack, the soldiers ducked and tried to cover their faces with their hands. But it was too late. The soldiers were stung all over. They beat angrily at the bees with their rifle barrels while trying to run away but their violent behaviour only provoked the bees further. One soldier lost control. He lifted his rifle and fired repeatedly at the bees. Doang! Doang! Doang! B-z-z-z! B-z-z-z! B-z-z-z! Doang! Doang! B-z-z! B-z-z! Angry soldiers! Angry bees!

Black smoke filled the air. The soldiers’ faces and necks were red and swollen. They staggered about like drunken men. A few plunged into the river, carrying their rifles with them. Others fled, only to encounter many more vicious bees along the same road. Meanwhile, we children watched with amazement until the screaming voices gradually diminished and the bodies and guns finally went out of sight.

* * *

The National Front for the Liberation of South Viet Nam (Mat Tran Dan Toc Giai Phong Mien Nam), better known as the National Liberation Front had been formed on 20 December 1960. Nguyen Huu Tho, a French-educated lawyer, was chosen to be its leader. Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, a long time political activist, was put in charge of foreign affairs. The NLF began to absorb and unify various groups working against the Sai Gon government, the biggest being the Nationalist fighters themselves but also including a number of religious groups that came under attack by the Diem regime.

The dividing line between the Communists and the NLF was not always clear, given the particularly nationalist nature of the brand of Communism developed by Ho Chi Minh, but the division did exist. Because of this, and because Nguyen Huu Tho was avowedly a non-Communist, the NLF attracted into its membership a large number of the Vietnamese intelligentsia looking for a base from which to take a stance against the external domination and control of their country. The NLF also attracted many who had served in the ARVN but who had become disenchanted with the American-backed regime. During Diem’s last years, the NLF grew in numbers and strength and by the time his regime collapsed, they had established a strong presence in nearly all rural communities of South Viet Nam.

My grandmother was very proud of all those who fought in our family, telling us children that they had gone to serve the motherland. The four brothers of my friend Lien also joined the NLF. It was impossible to stay neutral and if, during daylight hours, the remaining civilians in the village pretended obeisance to the Sai Gon regime, the night belonged to the Nationalists. Meanwhile, a good two-thirds of our male youth had become members of the NLF while the rest – Catholics or newly converted Catholics for the most part – joined the ARVN. “Convert yourself to Catholic and have rice to eat,” was one prevailing slogan. It carried a warning too: “If you refuse to be converted you will go hungry.”

Toward the end of 1962, the Diem regime mounted a new campaign called “The Rural Pacification Movement” (Binh Dinh Nong Thon). As part of an attempt to “pacify” the delta, four more garrisons were built in Truong An. These were “branches” of the re-built Constance Garrison. Constance had a maximum capacity of one hundred men while each of the smaller garrisons could accommodate up to thirty men.

The Rural Pacification Movement called for a return to the Strategic Hamlets, but throughout the Mekong Delta, angry villagers rebelled, this time with their own counter-campaign, “The Movement Against Rural Pacification” (Chong Binh Dinh Nong Thon). More bloody confrontations ensued between villagers and government troops. Thousands of peasants in the Mekong Delta perished.

For Truong An village – still under Uncle Nam’s rule – the government failed to move us into the Strategic Hamlets for the second time, as in late 1962 Constance Garrison suffered a major attack, this time by a powerful NLF force – the guerrilla army of Truong An being augmented by a formidable battalion from Can Tho. Uncle Nam sent four helicopters to Truong An to aid the ARVN force. Two were shot down and the remaining two quickly flew away. The entire ARVN force of Constance Garrison was completely wiped out. The small garrisons also lost most of their men.

* * *

Five months into the Year of the Cat, 1963, a series of events triggered the downfall of the Diem regime. The first of these was the 2,527 th birthday of the Buddha. In Hue, the old imperial capital, the residents, most of whom were Buddhist, raised the Buddhist flag at their temples and also in front of their houses – this practice had been carried on for many centuries. The week before, the Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, Diem’s elder brother, had celebrated the 25th anniversary of his own ordination and many Catholic flags and banners had been displayed all over Hue. Thuc had wanted the flags and banners to stay on after the Catholic celebration. He had also made a request to the mayor of Hue to forbid the flying of Buddhist flags during the Buddhist celebration the following week.

Now several thousand Buddhists gathered near the Hue radio station, where the Venerable Thich Tri Quang addressed them, talking about the difficult times for the Buddhists. As soon as Thuc heard about this, he ordered the police to take down all the Buddhist flags – their presence interfered with the Catholic flags. The residents of Hue became angry and started fighting with the police. Thuc demanded that troops be sent to the radio station. Members of the Special Forces (the secret police) arrived with five armoured cars. They fired into the Buddhist crowd, killing eight and injuring five. Seven of the victims were children. The following day the Diem regime announced that the incident was “another Viet Cong massacre”.

Then, on 11 June, the Venerable Thich Quang Duc went to an intersection of two busy streets in Sai Gon where he sat down in the lotus position. His saffron robe had been soaked with gasoline and he set fire to himself. His last plea to the Diem regime, before he burned himself to death, was to show understanding and compassion for other religions in the country. Hearing this, Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu – Diem’s sister-in-law and officially his ‘political advisor’ – pronounced, “Let them burn themselves, and we will applaud!”

Two months later, the same Madame Nhu’s Special Forces, armed with rifles, submachine guns and tear gas arrived at the Xa Loi Temple – the main Buddhist sanctuary in Sai Gon. Madame Nhu herself wore a military uniform and rode in her Mercedes alongside the armed troops. She ordered the attack. In all, thirty monks were killed, four hundred arrested, and hundreds of people rounded up in neighbouring streets. Before destroying the contents of the temple, the soldiers took out the Buddha’s precious stone eyes from the largest ancient statue in the sanctuary. Madame Nhu and her troops then moved on to attack the An Quang Temple and the Sai Gon Theraveda Temple both on the same day.

The public became increasingly outraged. The next day, more than four thousand university and high school students took to the streets of Sai Gon with banners, denouncing the government. Government troops opened fire on the students. One of the student leaders, Quach Thi Trang, who was fifteen years old, was gunned down. Her white ao dai was soaked in blood as she lay dying. Surrounded by armed troops, hundreds of students were taken into detention. They endured interrogations and torture at the hands of the secret police.

Quach Thi Trang instantly became a heroine. The mourning public made a white bust of her and placed it on a pillar near the Ben Thanh Central Market in Sai Gon. It was the symbol of their struggles and suffering under the universally despised Diem regime.

On 1 November 1963, General Duong Van Minh (Big Minh) led his ARVN troops and surrounded the Presidential Palace, ready for a coup. Diem’s bodyguards telephoned various army commanders for help but not a single one arrived. Diem made a desperate plea to the American ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, but all Lodge could offer was temporary shelter for Diem while arranging for him to leave the country. Lodge added that he and the ARVN generals had already made their deal. Enraged and disappointed, Diem decided to handle the crisis alone.

Diem and Nhu went into hiding at a Catholic church in Cho Lon. The following morning, one of Diem’s bodyguards finally got hold of General Tran Thien Khiem, who had saved Diem from a coup exactly three years earlier. Diem told Khiem on the phone that during negotiations with the dissident generals he had already agreed to leave the country. Khiem told Diem he would arrange two beds at the Joint General Staff Headquarters for him and Nhu, and in the meantime he would send a car to collect them at the church. Khiem added that from the Joint General Staff Headquarters Diem and Nhu could leave for the United States the next day.

Several other generals, however, had their own plan, and in the debate over Khiem’s, one of them argued, “When we pull out weeds, we must remove all the roots. We can’t listen to Khiem.” So it was that, at four in the afternoon, the armored M-113 Khiem had sent to collect Diem and Nhu from the church arrived at the Joint General Staff Headquarters – with the bodies of Diem and Nhu lying dead on the floor of the vehicle, covered in blood. The following day, all the ARVN commanders and provincial chiefs telephoned the new Military Revolutionary Council to congratulate them on a successful coup. One of the callers, whom we also heard on a live radio broadcast, was Uncle Nam. ***

Interestingly, six months later, on 30 June 1964, US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge “explained” to the American public in a piece in the New York Times that, “The overthrow… of Diem was purely a Vietnamese affair. We never participated in the planning. We never gave any advice. We had nothing whatever to do with it.” President John Kennedy had been assassinated on 22 November 1963. The Americans, now under the leadership of President Lyndon Johnson, were sending more and more troops to Viet Nam. By this time, my family and I had already left Truong An and moved to Sai Gon. My maternal relatives in the village reported that every time the American-backed regime tried to move the peasants back into fortified villages, severe fighting broke out again. In the meantime, under the advice of the Americans, the “Open Arms” (Chieu Hoi) policy was conducted throughout the South to persuade members of the NLF to change sides. This campaign failed too, as did its successor, the “Rally, or Angel of Death” (Chieu Hoi, hay Tu Than), implying that any “Viet Cong” who refused to switch sides would find death waiting for him.

In Truong An, ARVN troops forced the villagers at gunpoint back into the Strategic Hamlet shortly after my family moved to Sai Gon. All their efforts failed. The residents refused to be herded again and many were labelled as Viet Cong or Viet Cong sympathizers. Then American B-52 aircraft, loaded with bombs, arrived, and massive destruction followed. This still didn’t deter the villagers, who were determined to stay and risk death. Parallel with this – to prevent the Viet Cong from hiding – a chemical defoliant known as Agent Orange was sprayed freely by American troops over the village, rice fields and the surrounding jungles. Those who had refused to move were blown to pieces. Others became horribly tainted by the chemical. With nothing left, the survivors now made their way back to the Strategic Hamlet.

To prevent people from returning to their “old” village, search and destroy missions, air raids and artillery firing continued for two more years, until nearly all village roads were blown up and demolished. Clear water from rivers, lakes, creeks, and streams became contaminated and poisoned. Rice fields, fruit trees, and forests were ruined indiscriminately. Farm animals and wild life suffered as much as village people.

With highly advanced weapons of mass destruction and extreme brutality, the combined US-ARVN forces finally won their battle and the peasants once more were confined inside the fortified villages. But the Americans and the regime could never stamp out the NLF. They failed totally to win the hearts of the Vietnamese people. They would achieve the exact opposite.

TO SAI GON

She grieved to go

They grieved to stay

Tears stained the steps

As parting broke their hearts

Anonymous

In 1961, when Uncle Nam was put in charge of my home province, I was too young to understand the complex war situation. I thought of his important new role and the suffering of people in my village, and wondered what he would do for us – all of us, the village people. Would our lives be saved by Nam?

Much later, I learned from my father that what he had done was completely contrary to what I had hoped. Nam – my Uncle Nam – with his great skill in artillery, would instruct his men to fire relentlessly at Truong An village from Thanh Chau during his years as our provincial chief.

Shortly after accepting this new post, Nam made an expedition to Constance Garrison on a small gun-ship. He’d heard of a well-organized gambling ring inside the Garrison and of ARVN soldiers staying up through the night, drinking heavily. He ordered his troops to arrest the entire ARVN force of Constance. They were all taken to a prison in Can Tho because the prison system in Tay Do was not yet ready to accommodate the inmates. Nam immediately replaced the ARVN force of Constance with one hundred highly trained men. But all of them would be killed in the following year’s battle, while the gambling soldiers survived!

When Nam came to Truong An, he never met us nor did he acknowledge our existence as his relatives. No one knew of our connection with him. He was our provincial head – a deadly enemy of the NLF and of the village in general. If people had known, things might have been very different for us. As my father told me later, “Your mother and you would have been interrogated and possibly even killed by the Viet Cong.”

Nam did see my father shortly after his trip to Truong An and urged him to move us to Sai Gon. He feared for our lives if we continued to stay in the village. In Truong An there was no way he could protect us.

When my father mentioned the conversation during a later visit and Nam’s concern for our safety, my mother retorted, “Who needs him to protect us?” She again told my father that she would rather die with her relatives than leave them behind while she took care of us. And we – thank you very much – could take care of ourselves!

Such was the end of my father’s attempt to move us. But he was forced to lie to Nam in early 1962 by saying that he had already moved us away from Truong An and that we were living in a town in Long My. This was to prevent Nam from putting further pressure on him.

My father had lived in Sai Gon since 1956. He came back to see us several times a year but from 1961 his trips to the village were less frequent. This was because most of his work for the transportation ministry was no longer in the delta region. Waiting desperately for his infrequent visits, I sometimes feared he would abandon us altogether. My mother seemed to have accepted the situation. She continued to be deeply imbued in country ways and in her wish to be surrounded by relatives.

In the spring of 1963, my mother abruptly changed her mind. It happened so fast that all our relatives and friends were astonished by the news. Furthermore, my mother was pregnant at the time.

That morning – the one she made a decision that would greatly change our lives – dawned dry and warm. We ate a simple breakfast of rice and fish soup and fresh fruit after which my mother picked up her palm leaf hat and bamboo basket. She told me to look after my two brothers, as she was going out to buy some sweet potatoes. A potato merchant came to our village about once a month from Vinh Vien. He always moored his sampan at the side of a canal, some distance away from our house.

When my mother came back, her expression was one of anxiety and anger. I was puzzled but didn’t dare ask questions. She dumped the basket of sweet potatoes on the kitchen floor and told me we were going to see my grandmother. On the way there, I stopped off at Uncle Phan’s house to visit Dzung, and he and I went out fishing.

The minute my mother arrived at my grandmother’s, she announced, “I saw the sweet potato man this morning. He is also a fortune teller. He said my husband has a concubine in Sai Gon. I knew it! I knew it all along! I’m packing tonight. The children and I are leaving for Sai Gon tomorrow.”

My grandmother didn’t understand why we had to leave so quickly, but my mother’s mind was made up. One thing that preoccupied her was what to do with the house.

“Don’t worry about that,” my grandmother said. “We may end up having to move into the Strategic Hamlet again anyway. Just leave the house as it is. Muoi will know what to do.” She encouraged us to leave. She said that joining my father in Sai Gon would be a good thing for the whole family.

I returned from fishing with Dzung and heard the news. I couldn’t believe my ears. Sai Gon! This was my long-held dream. But I was wide-awake. My mother said that I was to quit school that afternoon but saw no reason to inform my teacher and classmates. “The fewer people who know about it, the better for all concerned,” she said.

In the evening, nonetheless, our house was filled with relatives and neighbours. The adults visited with my mother indoors and I took my friends, Lien and Cam into the back garden. We stood under the guava tree. We were chatting in the dark and they told me, “What a lucky girl you are, Hoa Lai! You have a father living in Sai Gon and your life will soon be so much better than ours.” Before saying goodbye they went inside to see my mother who told them, “All of you children please take care of yourselves. I will bring Hoa Lai back for visits whenever I can.” Standing on the stone steps, the farewell was painful, and we hugged and cried.

I went inside the house and saw Dzung, sitting quietly on the floor, his back to the kitchen wall. He was clearly in distress. Kerosene lamp in my hand, I led him to the side of the house where I kept all the live fish.

Will you please take most of them?” I asked him as we gazed down into the fish tank. “Mother won’t have time to cook them, and we can only take a few with us.”

Dzung didn’t answer. He turned his face away, tears running down his cheeks. I assured him that we would see each other again, that I would return for visits. He scarcely heard me. I took my basket and filled it with as many fish as I could. When I gave it to him he started to sob uncontrollably. I felt the pain inside my chest.

Dai arrived, running toward me with a forced smile on his face. He put his arms around my shoulders and started to cry. He released me and wiped away his tears, then said calmly, “It’s good for you to have a new life in Sai Gon, Little Sister! Will you write letters to us?”

“I will write to Grandma, but she won’t be able to read. Will you read my letters to her? And I will write to you too.”

Hung was the most upset among my cousins. He said little to me at the time. He uttered broken words to Mo Muoi, “ Mo…ther! I… don’t think I will… see… h… er … again.” I thought about his seizures and found myself unable to say anything. The words were locked inside my throat.

The one person I didn’t see was Hien. She had left home to join the NLF and her husband Than, and had begun one of the most lifethreatening missions in the underground tunnels. I missed Hinh too. I imagined him in the jungle, sleeping in the new hammock grandmother had made for him. She’d had it delivered to him about a week earlier, after he had told us that his old hammock had rotted through. One night, he’d tied each end of the old one to branches of a large mangrove tree, as usual, and curled himself in it. When he was sound asleep, the old hammock broke, dumping Hinh into the water below with a loud splash. His nearby comrades were violently awakened, convinced they were under enemy attack.

I went to bed, overwhelmed by both anxiety and excitement and unable to sleep. As it turned out, though, it took us another day before we were able to leave. First we had to pack. Suddenly a man from the NLF showed up at our house.

He accosted my mother.

“Is it true?” he asked harshly. “Are you leaving for Sai Gon?”

“The children really miss their father terribly,” she said. “It’s natural they want to be with him. I hope you will understand.”

“We know it’s not that,” he said, his voice growing hostile and accusatory.

“You’re going to join the enemy! You’re going to be one of them!”

She pleaded with him, “I assure you, I won’t do that. How could I become one of them? You know all my relatives are here. How could I do such a thing to them?”

“Are you certain you want to leave?”

“Yes.” she answered him, tears in her eyes.

“You realize you’re abandoning us,” the man growled, “Once you go, just make sure you never return to this village!”

He walked out of the house and my mother hurried us along in case he or his superiors changed their minds.

Mo Muoi had prepared a farewell dinner for us. Neither my mother nor I could eat a thing, but we stayed at my grandmother’s house until very late and came home one last time to sleep.

Mother woke me up at four in the morning to get ready. I dressed the way I did for school each day – white cotton blouse and black cotton trousers. Then Uncle Muoi and Dai came – Uncle Muoi was accompanying us on the first leg of the journey – and they both helped my mother load the sewing machine into the sampan. Trung and Nghia were still fast asleep. Dai carried them out to the sampan. We had one bag of clothes for all of us, the sewing machine, and a bucket of live fish. With my mother in tears, we all got into the sampan.

I waved goodbye to Dai, who was standing at the bank of the stream holding a kerosene lamp. His face was solemn. In the semidarkness, a gust of wind fluttered the collar of his badly faded cotton shirt. I felt pity for him – for the ongoing hardship of his life and the dangers that awaited him. Would I ever see him again?

“See you later today!” Uncle Muoi called out to Dai.

“Good bye, Auntie! Good bye, Little Sister!” Dai called, his voice trembling. He waved with one hand and with his other held out the kerosene lamp so that Uncle Muoi could see while paddling away from the riverbank.

The sampan moved away from the bank. Slowly – ever so slowly – Dai and the flickering light disappeared behind us. Goodbye to you, dear Brother Dai! Goodbye to my house, to the stone steps, to the flowery paths, to the lily pond, to the streams, to the river… Goodbye to you all.

Uncle Muoi paddled carefully and steadily. I couldn’t see his face under the conical hat in the dark but he had the usual white-and-black checked scarf around his neck. I sat behind mother, holding Nghia in my arms. I was numb – completely lost. Trung was asleep on a rice husk pillow next to me. My mind was a bundle of knotted threads – one of regret, one of grieving, one of anxiety, one of happiness…

The indigo sky grew lighter but the view ahead was still dark and misty. We heard the buzzing sound of mosquitoes and the steady splashing noise of the paddles in and out of the water. We saw another sampan going in the same direction, ahead of us – toward Thanh Chau. Uncle Muoi called out to them and they waved at us. The journey through the vast water-palm jungle was a long one. Slowly, the familiar scent of wilderness, the peaceful river, the rustling water palm leaves … disappeared behind us.

The sampan is moving upstream

The waves sing a mournful melody

Sadly, I watch the sky joining with the earth

Sadly, I watch the river flowing to the sea

Sadly, I watch the water palm waiving goodbye.

We arrived in Thanh Chau before sunrise. The morning market was as busy as ever. We had breakfast there, after which my mother asked Uncle Muoi to wait with us and our belongings while she went to the post office to send father a telegram. When she came back, Uncle Muoi took us to the houseboat of Mrs Truong, a widowed friend of my mother. There we said our farewells to our faithful Uncle Muoi.

Mrs Truong invited us to stay overnight in the houseboat before leaving for Can Tho. She had a daughter named Nha, born in Truong An five days after me. Nha had never known her father. He had been killed in an air raid, the same raid that had killed my mother’s best friend when I was nine days old. In the afternoon, while my brothers were taking their nap, Nha and I strolled along the riverbank. She introduced me to her neighbours, who also lived on houseboats. Several of them invited us in for snacks and a chat.

That evening, when Trung and Nghia had gone to sleep, Nha and I stayed awake. We lay side by side on a reed mat, watching all the lights from the other boats along the river. It was warm and humid, with the odd cool breeze. We talked and giggled while my mother and Mrs Truong carried on a deep conversation at the other end of the boat. I loved the soft fresh air and the idea of sleeping on the water. The boat’s gentle movements reminded me of the time I was rocked in a hammock by my grandmother many years before.

We left Thanh Chau the next day, shortly after sunrise. My mother bought some sticky rice cakes and sugar cane juice for us. We boarded a small passenger bus for Can Tho, fifty kilometres away. It seemed like the other end of the earth. Can Tho is the largest city in the Mekong Delta, known as “the capital of the western region.” My father was to meet us at the bus station. Finally, suddenly, incredibly, gazing out of the window, I spotted him! There he was! I thought my heart was going to leap out of my chest! Neither Trung nor Nghia recognized him – they’d seen so little of him. The second we got off the bus, I jumped up to greet him and flung my arms around his neck.

We took two cyclos to Uncle Nam’s house. My father and brothers went in one; my mother and I went in the other, taking the sewing machine with us. I was sitting between my mother’s knees and holding one leg of the sewing machine to stop it from sliding off. Short as the ride was, I must have strained a muscle in my arm as it was completely numb by the time we arrived.

My father and I entered the house first and were met by the maid, a chubby woman in her twenties with very pale skin. Nam’s wife, the maid informed us, wouldn’t be home until evening. She added that “Madame” – his mother-in-law – was in Sai Gon that week.

I stepped into the front garden. My bare feet felt the heat from the concrete floor. I stood behind the main gate, under the shade of a lantern tree loaded with beautiful red flowers. It was a sunny morning, bright, hot, and humid. I was again fascinated by the fast-moving traffic and the city people. My mind returned to 1956, when we had first visited Nam’s house – and my old dream of living in a city. Six years had passed. And now here we were. I was about to start a new life in the capital. And I was soon to be reunited with my grandmother.

A jeep arrived at the gate and pulled to a halt. There in the passenger seat was Nam in full army uniform. He stepped out and greeted me, “You have just arrived, little one!” I folded my arms and bowed to him, “Good morning, Uncle!” He took my hand, gave me a kiss on the forehead, and we walked straight into the house. The driver parked the jeep at the side of the house.

Nam was delighted with our move to Sai Gon. He invited us to stay in Can Tho for a few days. My mother, ill at ease in this house, said we couldn’t. Nam insisted we at least spend the night, and, until Nam’s wife appeared that afternoon, even my mother relaxed and enjoyed Nam’s jokes and good humour. He told her – she was obviously pregnant – that he was hoping for a baby girl. Then he said to me, “I’ll want a full report on your schooling, Little Hoa Lai, when I visit you in Sai Gon.” I was wondering what Nam did at his office every day but I did not dare ask him – what I had foremost in my mind were the dead and dying people in my home village.

That evening, after dinner, Nam offered to take my two brothers and me to a playground near the popular riverbank of Hau Giang – known by the French as the Bassac River. Nam’s wife had joined us by then, She said she wasn’t feeling well and excused herself. Before we left, I saw her standing near a sink outside her bedroom and brushing her teeth with a fancy toothbrush. An interesting scent emerged from a white paste she squeezed from a tube. When she placed the tube on the sink’s counter I could see the picture of a black man’s face on it, smiling and showing his own perfectly white teeth.

What went on between my mother and father that night I couldn’t say. They were always formal with each other, at least in front of us children. I knew that she had been angry with him before we left our village because of the “concubine.” I remember, on the bus the next day, my father making some joke about wanting to thank the sweetpotato man for us being there, and he was guffawing loudly. Embarrassed, my mother shouted at him, “Master! Will you shut up?”

For my part, I was thrilled to be reunited with him. He seemed happy too as he pointed out all the sights to us – the town of Rach Dao, for example, where my grandmother and granduncles had been born, and the Ben Luc Bridge, not far from the famous Nhat Tao River where the French warship, Espérance, had been set on fire by a local hero, Nguyen Trung Truc. It was Truc, my father quoted to us, who, before his execution by the French in 1868, had made the inspiring statement, “As long as grass still grows on this land, our people will continue to fight against foreign invaders.”

We entered Black Hill (Go Den), which was well known for its glutinous rice wine, called ruou de, and passed through Can Duoc province, which contained Rung Sac – the strategic jungle of the Nationalist forces during the two wars. Finally, we reached National Route 1, heading directly for Sai Gon.

Before we got to central Sai Gon itself, I was overwhelmed by the endless number of shops, businesses, and restaurants along both sides of a wide and long boulevard. Each had a large name sign over its entrance in both Vietnamese and Chinese. “This is Chinatown,” my father explained, “it’s called Cho Lon.” The closer we got to the centre of Sai Gon, the more imposing the buildings, all in the colonial style. The people I saw on the streets were fancily dressed, far more sophisticated than even those I’d seen in the city of Can Tho. I was in awe of them. How would I ever dare speak to people like that? How would I ever survive in this huge, noisy and incredibly dusty metropolis?

At the bus station we took two cyclos and headed toward Uncle Nghiem’s house. It was a thirty-minute ride, my father estimated. But as we moved off a giant truck bore down on us from the opposite direction. To this day, I don’t know how it avoided squashing us, My eyes were closed tight in sheer terror. When I opened them, the traffic was coming at us from all directions – side streets, behind us, ahead of us. I cringed every time a car or motorcycle raced past us. Then, just as we were clearing the heaviest traffic, our driver lost sight of the other cyclo and went off in the wrong direction, even though he had Uncle Nghiem’s address. Once again, I had to hold the leg of the sewing machine all the time to stop it from sliding, and once again my arm muscles went numb. By some stroke of luck, or divine intervention, my father and his cyclo driver found us again.

The two cyclos made a turn down a long and narrow road. We slowed, side by side, and my father called to us that we were almost there. I tried to calm down and not show any emotion or expression – that was my training – but I felt my throat start to constrict.

And then we were there, at Uncle Nghiem’s house, and another maid was greeting us at the entrance. She led us to the back of the house. I experienced a welling inside me, a sense that I was going to cry, or explode, or lose all control, or all of these together. Even before we reached the kitchen, I could feel grandmother’s presence. We went down a long hall lined with terra cotta tiles and I caught my first glimpse of her. There she was, standing at the kitchen counter, a large spoon in one hand.

“Grandma!” I cried out and ran toward her.

I felt her arms around me.

“My child!”

Both of us tried to suppress our tears but how could we? I could sense her special smell. A great lump welled inside my throat.

My parents and two brothers caught up with me. Everyone started talking at once. My grandmother was in the middle of preparing a special children’s fish dish, I always referred to as “fish flowers”. She said there was ample food in the house and would make us dinner. Mother offered to help and we all sat together at the table – the first time in six years!

And, ah, what a meal! My grandmother had prepared a memorable meat loaf of minced pork, beaten eggs, anchovies, onions, and spices. She served it with steamed rice, bowls of fresh vegetables. There was fresh fruit of all kinds for dessert.

We never ate with Uncle Nghiem and his wife. Their dinner was delivered by a catering service every day around seven-thirty – a common practice at the time in Sai Gon for working couples. Grandmother cooked all the meals for Nghiem’s two children, herself, and the maid. She and the children always had dinner at six.

I remember hearing the sound of an engine outside that evening. It was Uncle Nghiem’s motor scooter – a light blue Vespa. Nghiem himself hurried in, with a big smile, followed by his wife. Nghiem was a slightly heavier version of Nam and was wearing a dark Western suit, with a very white shirt. His wife, a chubby woman with a bobbed haircut, wore a body-hugging Western-style dress and high heels. She was fashion conscious and I would never see her in the traditional Vietnamese ao dai. She greeted my mother, studied her from head to toe, then surveyed the rest of us. She obviously saw us as country bumpkins, beneath her own class. In fact from that point on, she rarely spoke to us.

It was only after dinner that I found myself alone with my grandmother. “Can I sleep with you tonight, Grandma?” I asked.

She smiled at me.

“Well,” she said, “if that’s what you want, I think you should get ready for bed now.”

Her bedroom was behind the living room. I was exhausted and fell asleep immediately on her bed. When I woke up it was pitch dark – about four in the morning. I began to cry softly – tears of relief which my grandmother heard. She turned, held me in her arms, and wept herself.

The next morning I took Trung outside to play with Uncle Nghiem’s two daughters. In the backyard I saw a cluster of iron pipes and asked the maid what it was. She said that it was to pump water from under the ground. I was amazed at the crystal clear water and wondered how deep the hidden well was. A few yards from the pipes was a golden bamboo hedge at least ten metres long, dividing the land between Nghiem’s house and a neighbour’s. On the sides of the house were wooden fences. Nghiem’s and most other houses in the area were made of stucco in the French style, with red tile roofs and French doors and windows. I wondered if my father could ever afford anything like this.

When all the children were playing in the back yard, I began to tell my grandmother about life in the village, about the Strategic Hamlet, the ARVN raids and how we’d nearly been killed. My mother had forbidden me to report any of this to my father because she was afraid that if he’d known what was really going on, he would either have forced her to leave or taken us children away from her. I had obeyed her. But now, for the first time, I had someone I could tell, someone I could trust, someone close to me who hadn’t been there. That day, and in the nights that followed, the stories came pouring out of me.

She heard me out, mostly in silence, as I recounted the years, still unable to control the tears of relief, joy, and sorrow. The important thing, she now kept reassuring me, was that I would be perfectly safe in Sai Gon. I was no longer in a war zone. I should have no fear of death. And beyond that, she and I would not be separated again. And my dear father would be living with me every day from now on. And I would be going to a city school, a much better one.

In her mind, she told me, she already imagined me becoming a wonderfully educated young woman.

“You’re twelve and you’re beginning a totally new life, Hoa Lai!” she said.

And I believed her. It was a dream come true – a dream beyond all expectation.

CITY LIFE

“For a young woman to really achieve self-rule and self-protection, she needs a careful educational regime, less she fall quickly into the pits of decay and subjugation”

Pham Quynh

When the French invaded Viet Nam to begin their century of domination, Sai Gon was known to them as Fôret des Kapokiers, or the Forest of the Kapok Trees. The kapok produced a silky down, known as silk-cotton, and was used as stuffing or insulation in the tropics. For centuries, Sai Gon simply meant “fields of silk-cotton trees”.

When I arrived, Sai Gon no longer had the lovely stands of white silk-cotton trees I had imagined. It was filled with impressive colonial buildings, strange and sophisticated people, bustling traffic jams, and unremitting noise. There was no doubt in my mind that these people were rich and Uncle Nghiem was one of them.

Nghiem’s house had a small flower garden in the front – with a huge hibiscus bush at one corner, laden with lustrous red blossoms. I was tempted to pick them but didn’t dare, imagining that Nghiem’s unfriendly wife would be angry. One morning, I stepped out into the garden, held a hibiscus blossom and smelled it. To my surprise, it had no fragrance and I lost interest. Later I told my grandmother about my disappointment and she said, “That is just like a girl without a proper education.”

My father had been living in a small apartment located between the Joint-General Staff Headquarters and the US Army hospital. After a few days at Uncle Nghiem’s house, father found a house to rent for us. It was a tiny wooden house, built on stilts, immediately above a muddy swamp filled with beds of water-spinach, yellow lilies, waterweeds, and families of snails and frogs. There were fish and tiny silver shrimp. Poor children caught them in little nets while trudging through the mud. The muddy scent of the swamp reminded me of our water-lily pond in the village. The way to the stilt-houses neighbourhood from the main road was via a long, narrow, twisted dirt path. At the crossroads was a carpenter’s workshop where men in patched shirts and shorts toiled during the long day, sweating in the heat and dust. The smell of sawdust was reminiscent of Uncle Phan’s.

Nghiem’s wife was happy when we moved out but when she realized that my grandmother was going with us she became very upset. Not that she deigned to speak a word of it to us. Grandmother had been looking after their two daughters exceptionally well. From now on Nghiem and his wife would have to do without her. Too bad. That day – the day my grandmother packed her belongings – I was quiet as a mouse yet my heart and mind were filled with great excitement and happiness.

We moved into our new house and my father sorted out our sleeping arrangements. He bought an attractive camp-bed with green canvas for my grandmother and a big wooden bed for the rest of us. He also purchased a nice wooden cabinet with a lock and gave the key to my mother. On the same day, I went with him to his apartment to help pick up his belongings. We walked up to a two-and-a half storey building near a stretch of shops. He lived on the top floor and to reach it we had to enter a Buddhist meditation room – open for the public, he told me. His possessions were packed in two suitcases. He also had a small table, a short-wave radio and an electric fan.

Not long after we moved into our new house my mother gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, whom my father named Hau, meaning Generous. He was the first one in our family to be born in a hospital.

Uncle Nam offered to lend my parents enough money to buy a better house but they refused. Neither seemed much bothered about not having “a better house.” The stilt house, to them, for the time being, was not that bad. I myself was all too conscious of how poor it was, even more so when I began to make friends.

Father sent me to a one-room school in the neighbourhood and when Nam learned about it he was most displeased. Didn’t my father intend to send me to a better school later in the year? My father assured him this was only a temporary arrangement and that he was planning to eventually send me to a proper district school.

My classmates were very nice to me. They were from the same neighbourhood and all poor. I had textbooks for the first time. My teacher though was a strange and mean-spirited creature, whose eyes had a wicked gleam when he looked at little girls. He would call girls up to his desk and he would try to get his hands inside their clothing and fondle them. When he did this to me I told my grandmother. She flew into a fury and never allowed me to return there again.

My father registered me at another school, a much bigger one next to Ba Chieu market, with multiple levels and a small, treeless yard. My class had a hundred students, boys and girls, with one teacher, Mrs Chau. She looked fragile and had a whispering voice. Often she had to shout at the students because of the noise they made. Mrs Chau had particular problems disciplining the boys in the back rows. I felt completely lost there and was afraid of the boys. I sat quietly and listened, but most of the time I could not hear or understand what the teacher was saying.

I was fearful of everything on the hectic streets near the school and began to feel homesick for my village. I missed the country paths, the rivers, the paddy fields, the buffaloes, the water palms, the wilderness, and above all, the tranquility.

My classmates talked about me behind my back and ridiculed the way I stumbled in shoes, not knowing I’d had a lifetime of going barefoot. They mocked my hairstyle, a basic ponytail typical in rural villages.

I did poorly in school and told my grandmother that going to school made me ill. My mother said the solution was simple: there was no need for me to attend school at all. “Don’t you already know how to read and write?” she said disparagingly. One evening my grandmother took me aside and said, “My child, we are indeed very poor and we may have to eat the earth to survive. However, your father expects you to be at school. He believes education is the greatest gift of all and he wants you to have it. It will last you for life. Money won’t.”

My father went to see his aunt, Di Ha, the principal of a prestigious high school for girls in central Sai Gon. Di Ha arranged for me to attend an elite elementary school for girls near our area. This school was named after the famous battle of Chi Lang, in which the Chinese had been defeated. It consisted of three separate one-storey buildings forming a U-shape, with a huge courtyard under shady phoenix trees bearing brilliant red blossoms. There was also plenty of open space to the sides and at the back of the buildings, with a long line of food stalls under a red tiled roof, with friendly hawkers.

My teacher was an attractive lady in her late thirties. Her hair was braided and tucked neatly and elegantly at the back. Charming and pleasant as she may have appeared, she was also a tough teacher. All of the teachers were women, who wore the traditional ao dai. Students were required to wear a uniform of a white blouse and black trousers.

I did well at the new school. My classmate, Cam Van, and I were the two top students, though I felt she was socially superior to me. Her family was well off and she had a happy home life. I went to her house but she never visited mine. The truth was that I never invited her or any of my classmates home because of my mother’s violent rages.

Every month the teacher chose the six best in the class of 64 students and gave out honour cards, called bang danh du. Cam Van and I were invariably first and second. We were highly competitive, she being extremely good at mathematics while I often beat her at history, poetry and writing. Once I won the school’s writing contest with a story about my home village. My grandmother rewarded me with a small amount of cash and I bought a few books for myself. I kept them hidden in the attic. My mother considered reading a waste of time, only making an exception for textbooks.

I met Uncle Nam during the Lunar New Year and he gave me a wad of bank notes – brand new bills, without folds or wrinkles. I saved it all and kept it locked away. Never before had I owned so much cash. But I didn’t realize then that the value of Vietnamese piasters would decrease rapidly due to a run-away inflation rate.

Uncle Nam’s appointment in Tay Do province was coming to an end. He was to be transferred to Tay Ninh, closer to Sai Gon. He was to be the commander of an ARVN infantry division and would be living with his family at the Joint General Staff Headquarters in Tan Son Nhat. His wife continued to be distant toward us but I became increasingly attached to him. He was always interested in my education and my welfare. But it would be several years before I could bring myself to share with him the details of my home life and the miseries inflicted by my mother.

In early 1964, the military regime in South Viet Nam changed its leadership again. In March that year the US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara visited Viet Nam to vow support for the new government of General Nguyen Khanh. However, in November, General Maxwell Taylor, the new ambassador to Sai Gon, urged Khanh to leave the country as the public had no confidence in him.

The Women’s Union for the Liberation of South Viet Nam, set up in 1961 by Nguyen Thi Dinh, recruited thousands of women to join the Nationalist forces. The women used their persuasion skill to demoralize the ARVN forces. In 1964 more than forty thousand ARVN soldiers dropped their guns and deserted the army. Pleased with the outcome, Ho Chi Minh praised Dinh, “She is a heroine. There are no others in this world like her.” The Women’s Union began organizing English lessons for young women as part of their persuasion skill training. Their effort proved worthwhile, as illustrated in the following example.

In early 1966, during the campaign “Pacification of the South”, the American military advisors in Sai Gon asked for a new army base to be built in Binh Duc, My Tho province. This was to accommodate the US Army’s Ninth Division. While the construction was under way, government troops were sent in to “flush out” Viet Cong elements. They raided the four villages twenty times, killing many civilians. Deeply angered, the villagers and the NLF planned their retaliation and quietly re-organized their local forces. In December that year, as new troops began to patrol, usually made up of both ARVN and US soldiers, they would meet minefields, booby traps and lines of pickets. The women’s army was trained to surround the harassed troops from hidden positions and to pour artillery fire into their ranks. The entrapped troops, able only to fire wildly at invisible targets, would often surrender.

Away from the battlefield, in off-duty meetings with local women, ARVN soldiers would find themselves in subtle discussions about their loyalties. Many were persuaded to desert, or at least to avoid killing their own people. Americans were less directly susceptible, given the language barrier, but there is evidence that black American soldiers might have felt more sympathy for the cause of the local people.

In one incident in Binh Duc, where thirty- eight Americans had been trapped, the woman NLF commander announced to the mixed group of American and ARVN prisoners, “All of you men can rest in village houses tonight. We and our men here will not harm you. In return for your own safety, you must honour this agreement and not carry out attacks on the four villages here ever again.”

At this encounter, black soldiers had been the first ones to surrender, followed by the white soldiers. The next morning, before sunrise, all were assisted to leave the area, unarmed. The reluctant attitude of black soldiers was confirmed by Tran Van Giau, a veteran revolutionary, “On many occasions, the black soldiers refused to carry out the attacks. They would find a hidden place inside the peasant’s hut and stay there. Some even fell asleep, while the raid was going on.”

In Tay Ninh, as soon as the presence of powerful artillery forces commanded by Uncle Nam was known, the NLF decided to strengthen their own artillery power. They appointed a second female artillery expert to the two special mobile companies in the Cao Dai temple area. Under the leadership of the two women, To Thi Hoa and Phan Thi Coi, they confronted Nam’s forces. Large numbers on both sides paid heavily with their lives. The US Army’s Junction City campaign – one of the largest campaigns during the war, would suffer heavy losses in Tay Ninh. This province had a small population but the area was strategically important to the Nationalists. Tay Ninh was the home base of the NLF throughout the American War.

* * *

We left the stilt house in early 1965 as my father had purchased a small house in Xom Gieng – a communal well neighbourhood. We befriended a middle-age couple who lived opposite our new house. The man sold mosquito nets, which came in various sizes and colours – white, off-white, blue, pink, lavender… One day I told him, “I’d love to have a lavender net, so when I have the money I will buy one from you.” When my grandmother heard about this, she went to him and asked, “Can we trade one of my china pieces for a net?” The man was thrilled. I loved the beautiful net, not realizing that the man had gotten a fantastic deal from my grandmother. Later he bought a few of her precious china bowls with cash. She had managed to take ten perfect pieces of the remaining china sets when she left the village in 1957. They all eventually ended up in the hands of the mosquito-net salesman.

I recovered from asthma but started having digestion problems. My grandmother took me to a trustworthy doctor. Dr Phan Quang Dan, a Harvard trained medical doctor, who practiced in a humble clinic at Ba Chieu market. His clinic was situated on the same row as shops selling bicycles, leather goods, lighting, perfume and fine jewellery. I went to him for several years, and I was curious about his missing front teeth. Then one day he told me he had been imprisoned by the Diem regime.

Nearby were a pharmacy, several hair salons and restaurants. The little Chinese restaurant of Mrs Troi was at the very far end, opposite the fish and meat stalls. Mrs Troi often brought home her unsold delicious steamed buns (cha siu bao) – filled with meat, egg, and vegetables – to give to my brothers and me.

My mother did sewing for a woman who had a ready-to-wear garments stall. It was near a stretch of shops selling fabrics, bedding, lingerie, shoes, cosmetics and handicrafts.

At the edge of the market, facing a busy street, there were six bars with decorative kiosks selling drinks to men at night. During the day the kiosks were closed. Around seven in the evening, when the rest of the market quieted down, at least a dozen young women, dressed to seduce, came on the scene and served behind the bars. Their cake-like faces with bright painted lips were glowing under neon lights. These were the bargirls.

As the war escalated and with the arrival of American troops, the bargirls started serving American GIs, and Vietnamese men ceased to be their customers. American men spent generously at the bars. Our neighbour, Mrs Bay Ca, had a black market stall nearby, where she and her daughter, Duyen, operated late every evening. They sold American goods, which came indirectly from the commissary and the PX – electric fans, radios, televisions, cosmetics, various brands of beer, canned meat, instant coffee, shampoo, soap, paper tissues, etc. These were gifts from the GIs to local girls, who had traded them in for cash.

One rare evening I came to visit Duyen. We watched two American customers arriving at one of the kiosks. “Hi Mimi! How’s it going?” Shouted the younger soldier, as both dropped their army caps on the counter before sitting down on the high stools.

“Bad yesterday, John, you didn’t come.” Complained the woman.

“Oh! I am sorry. I was on duty.”

“No sorry.” she responded, her eyes narrowing. “Drink?”

“Sure!’ He answered eagerly.

She turned to the other soldier, “You OK Dave? Drink?”

Dave nodded his head. He looked sad, as if something was bothering him that evening. He wiped away the perspiration from his face and stared at the busy traffic. Before John finished his first drink, Dave had already ordered a second drink for himself. Moments later,

John was busy flirting with Mimi. She had on a low neckline nylon blouse in red, neatly tucked inside a white miniskirt, and very high heels. She was sitting on John’s lap, winking her false eyelashes, while her hand was playing with his greasy-looking red hair. John looked up, squeezed her hip and kissed her. After he had several drinks, she whispered to him, “Stay with me tonight?” with her eyes half-closed.

John nodded his head with a smile, “OK”. He looked tipsy. She looked happy.

An older woman came out from the back of the kiosk and walked over to Dave. She had on more heavy makeup than the other woman, and a coarse voice,” You want young girl tonight? Honey!” Dave didn’t seem to pay attention to what she said. She bent down and said louder, “A young and beautiful girl. Look after you. Very clean.” She was the mamasan of the establishment.

At the next kiosk, several soldiers were laughing out loud. One woman had her hand – with bright red long fingernails – on the shoulder of a very young soldier, “You Number One! Hey!” He responded with a half smile, rather reluctantly, and didn’t look up, didn’t speak. At the roadside, a group of Vietnamese soldiers travelling on motorcycles appeared, honking at the bargirls – perhaps with disapproval – as they went past.

To the Americans and the local bargirls, the world around them didn’t seem to exist when they exchanged sex for American dollars. Four women in Xom Gieng worked as bargirls elsewhere, to avoid being seen and gossiped about by their own neighbours. Of those four, two had children with American men and would eventually resettle in the US. One woman and her child were to be abandoned by the child’s American father.

* * *

At the back of our house there was a large bamboo grove bordering on a cemetery. It never bothered us. The front of the house was rather close to the back entrances of Mrs Buoi’s and Mrs Troi’s houses, and their sewage drains. We often had to pour water into them to stop unpleasant odours arising, particularly when the weather was dry and hot. Buoi’s husband sold scrap iron for a living. They had adopted two little boys. Troi and her husband owned the Chinese restaurant at Ba Chieu market. They had no children. It was not long after we moved into the neighbourhood that my mother and Mrs Buoi had a fight and swore violently at each other. A few days later, as if nothing had happened, they became friends again.

Being at the back of other houses with their sewage drains caused my grandmother and me discomfort and embarrassment. We kept these feelings to ourselves lest we upset my father, who was trying his best to support us. We shared the same toilet with four other families. It was adjacent to the cemetery, above ground, made of cement with solid wooden walls. Everyone had to take a bucket of water to flush it.

We had no space for a bathroom. My mother put a simple curtain up near one of the water tanks in the kitchen area in order for us to shower every day. During the monsoon season my brothers took showers in the open. They would stand happily under the heavy rain in the little alley between our house and that of Bay Ca. Along the wall we had several giant ceramic containers collecting rainwater.

There was no spare land for a garden, something I missed greatly. I started growing houseplants of various kinds and had them all over the house. I even had a few rows of orchids hanging from the attic balcony. We had no electricity and used only kerosene lamps at night. This made concentrated work like studying or sewing difficult. It was only ten years later that I had electricity installed. The main water source, as for most people in Xom Gieng, was a well. It was my responsibility to collect water every day.

My father went to work by bicycle. It was wonderful having him living in the house again. However, he had no interest in material possessions. I doubt if he ever felt the pain of extreme poverty we endured. On the other hand, he was very generous with his time and effort in helping other people. Back in the village he had volunteered to teach children. Here, in the city, he volunteered to assist our neighbours. Most of them had little or no formal education and they were unable to write necessary applications for jobs, marriages, or for their children to enter school. There were no pre-printed forms to fill in then. Each application had to be written by hand. Previously people had had to go to a special office and pay someone to do it for them. Now they had my father, willing to spend his evening hours several times a month writing on their behalf. My grandmother was very proud of him and called him a role model for “poor but unstained, torn clothes but great integrity” (ngheo cho sach, rach cho thom).

The sewing my mother did, for the owner of the stall at Ba Chieu market, was to make pyjamas, blouses, shirts and shorts. Every day after school I helped her with the work. During the first two years I made buttonholes and sewed buttons, all by hand. Later, when I’d learned to use the sewing machine, I was able to sew pyjama trousers and the hems of shorts and shirts.

Our pay was low and inflation was rising rapidly. We were forced to work long hours in order to supplement my father’s income. On most days, my mother sat at the sewing machine for at least sixteen hours. I always left for school at seven in the morning and returned by one in the afternoon. My workday began after lunch. I spent at least an hour washing clothes by hand, then carried water from the well to our house, which took another hour-and-a-half. Then I sewed until late evening. I also looked after my brothers while my grandmother prepared supper.

I resumed sewing work from eight until ten. Only when I needed to study for exams was I exempted from sewing in the evening. Most days, however, I got up at four or five in the morning to do schoolwork. My mother and I never rested at weekends, and no one in the family ever took a vacation.

My brother Nhan, or Harmony, was born in the Year of the Snake, 1965. The birth of another child added to the family’s financial burden and I could not help worrying.

Before completing my last year at Chi Lang in 1965, I told my parents I wanted to continue with my education. My teacher offered a private summer class to all her students to prepare them for the three-day comprehensive exams to enter high school. I wanted to take this course, but my mother said she didn’t have the money to pay for it. She told me that my father would soon be dismissed from his government job.

My mother could give me no explanation about my father. However, later I overheard a conversation between my parents and learned that he might be arrested. They mentioned the words ‘politics’ and ‘Communist sympathizer’. I asked my father about it and he told me, “Don’t worry until I tell you to worry.” I did not ask any further. I had several sleepless nights before I overheard my father assuring her that he wouldn’t be arrested. Someone powerful in the investigation bureau protected him. He was able to keep his job.

My mother still objected to the idea of me going to high school. She wanted me to do sewing full time. I understood the financial dilemma, but I also remembered what my grandmother had said about a future without a proper education. My grandmother was as distressed as I was and said she would sell all her remaining china pieces to help pay for my school things.

My father and I discussed ways of convincing my mother to let me take the three-day entrance exam to high school. We waited for an evening when the weather was cool and my mother in a better mood. She finally agreed, saying, “Well, it’s a tough exam, I doubt you’ll pass it. If you do, I suppose you can go.”

Over two thousand girl students would take the Comprehensive Exams for Le Van Duyet high school that year. There were fewer than four hundred places available. The exams lasted three days and were closely monitored by teachers and assistants to prevent cheating. In Sai Gon, there were three elite high schools for girls – Gia Long, Trung Vuong, and Le van Duyet. All of them subscribed to the French system of education but lessons were taught mainly in Vietnamese. Those who failed the entrance exam had three choices: retaking the exams the following year, going to a private school and accepting lower standards of teaching, or discontinuing their education altogether. With the exception of two very expensive colonial schools where the teaching was conducted entirely in French, Vietnamese private schools were considered much less desirable. Classes were large, teachers not well qualified, and boys and girls were not separated.

Failure would mean the end of my education. There was no money to pay for a private school, and my mother would never let me study to retake the exams a year later. I worked harder than ever, determined to make it. I prayed to Quan Yin every night.

* * *

On the morning the list of successful candidates was to be posted, I went to get my friend Sen. We walked to the school together in great anxiety. A huge crowd of parents and students were waiting at the main gate.

The gate swung open an hour later and people flooded in. We had to force our way. At last I stood in the front of the list of winners. My heart was pounding and my eyes suddenly blurry. My fingers raced down the list until I found my name at number 257. The list ended at 329. Overwhelmed with happiness I felt like jumping up into the air. However, right next to me was the distressed Sen, whose name wasn’t there. I tried to calm myself down out of sympathy for her. Then we slowly walked home together, a study in contrasting emotions. Why only 329 lucky ones out of a population of more than two thousand girls? Why didn’t the government set up more high schools? I felt sad for several of my classmates who had done reasonably well in their studies, but who were left behind. Out of sixty-four girls in my class, only five made their way to the prestigious high school. And I was one of them.

When I arrived home, my mother was at her sewing machine. I gave her the great news. She was surprised I’d passed. For the briefest of moments, I saw traces of a smile on her face. It didn’t last. My grandmother started to cry as she gave me a big hug, “My child! I am so proud of you.” That day my father returned from work early. He wanted to see the winners’ list himself and asked me to walk with him to the school.

I pointed out my name. His eyes brightened, he exclaimed, “Superb work!” He looked through the entire list himself. I told him that five students in my class had passed the entrance exam. He asked me who they were and where they lived. On our way back, he promised that during the two summer months he would save enough cash for my new clothes and books for the coming year.

My mother bought three metres of white silk for my ao dai, and four metres of satin for two pairs of trousers - one in white and one in black. An old lady in the neighbourhood offered to sew the dress as my mother said she didn’t have the time to do it. I needed two white dresses, which she said was too costly. Besides, she said, what if I dropped out? Wouldn’t it be a waste to own more than one dress? A month later, though, my grandmother miraculously came up with enough money to buy three metres of silk for my second white ao dai.

Nearly all of the teachers were female; their dress code was the traditional Vietnamese ao dai. They always dressed beautifully. The teacher of modern literature (kim van) was a strikingly beautiful woman – a writer herself. She introduced us to short stories and popular novels by prominent Vietnamese authors and translated works by well-known Western writers. First we had to learn the style differences between an Eastern novel and a Western novel. A Western novelist usually paid a great deal of attention to the psychology of the characters in the book, while in an Eastern novel all the characters were stereotypes representing concepts. In other words they symbolized roles understandable in the local culture, and these fitted into surrounding roles to make the full pattern of Vietnamese social life. A flowering of original Vietnamese plays, novels and short stories from the early 20th century had taken place – written in Quoc Ngu (Romanised script), many influenced by Western writing ideas and styles. The translated works I read during the first year of high school included La Fontaine’s Fables, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, and Le Malade Imaginaire by Molière.

I enjoyed ancient literature (co van) and appreciated various forms of poetry. My teacher was a sharp-tongued poet, whose father had been a classical Confucian scholar and a senior mandarin at the Imperial Palace. She taught us the different categories of Vietnamese poetry and verses. We read some of the major works of literature written originally in Chu Nho (Vietnamese writing with Chinese characters) and Chu Nom (still borrowing Chinese characters but adding Vietnamese ideas and concepts). From the 16th century Chu Nom was developed as there was no other form of writing available besides Chinese characters. There was a great collection of outstanding pieces of literary works. My favourite ones included the book of National Poetry (Quoc Am Thi Tap) by Nguyen Trai and The Warrior’s Wife Ballads (Chinh Phu Ngam) by Doan Thi Diem.

I loved The Tale of Kieu (Truyen Kieu). This was considered a masterpiece in Vietnamese literature. It contained more than thirty-two hundred lines of verse telling the life of a beautiful and talented young woman whose fate was doomed by the machinations of a mandarin. When I read it for the first time as a class assignment, it never occurred to me that a few years later I might be part of a parallel story.

In the civilisation class (cong dan), we studied the different forms of government and philosophies of East and West. In my seven years at high school, I read world histories, essays on various civilizations, and, not surprisingly given the French legacy in Vietnamese education, biographies of Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. French texts were translated into Quoc Ngu by the prominent scholar Pham Quynh, a Court Minister to Emperor Bao Dai.

History lessons had a patriotic tone. The country’s long struggle for liberation, the heroes and heroines and incidents of that struggle, were our subject matter. The long centuries of submission to China, and the eventual release in the early 19th century, were built into our textbooks. We came to understand the origins of many place names in our motherland: streets, towns, schools and institutions. We became patriots, even more than we might have been earlier.

Although the French had dominated and exploited Viet Nam for a century, history classes in both junior and senior high schools avoided discussing that. The school curriculum for South Viet Nam had been designed under the Diem regime, who favoured the French. The subsequent ARVN regimes during the American War did not make any attempt to change it.

I began English lessons with a strict teacher. We studied textbooks imported from England and the United States. I had a terrible time with English syntax and all the different tenses – tenses that do not even exist in Vietnamese. To my huge embarrassment, I did poorly in class and the teacher sometimes gave me zero points for my weekly work, with no more than a few points on my monthly exams. I was reduced to tears every time a classmate teased me. My long struggle with English would eventually come to an end when I met Robert.

The French teacher was educated in France. She spoke the language elegantly and without an accent. Since the writing of Quoc Ngu had been developed by a French Jesuit, the pronunciation of each letter in the alphabet was exactly the same as that in French. It was, therefore, easier for most Vietnamese to learn French than English.

Mathematics was taught by a distinguished lady, who was multilingual. Chemistry and physics were taught by one male teacher. He was a good teacher but the students showed him little respect as he was dating one of the girls in the senior class. Whenever they saw the girl perched behind him on his motorcycle, they made disapproving gestures.

My least favourite subject in school was biology and I never obtained a good grade for it.

As in the West, we learned Western music theory, modern arts, drawing, home economics, and sports.

* * *

I still did my sewing and other household duties meticulously. Despite a lot of homework – as under the French system – I did as much sewing as I could in the afternoon and in the evening. Each day, though, the task of carrying water from the well was a hardship that required both physical strength and patience. I had a large pair of tin buckets and a solid bamboo shoulder pole. My family required fourteen buckets of water every day. We had three large black metal tanks, and lifting the buckets to fill them was no easy task.

Mr Tu, who carried water for a living, was physically small and thin, but very fit. His bare feet were always stark white because they were immersed in the water all day long. He was the only person who dared to go down and touch the bottom of the well. Each year I watched him descending the slippery internal red brick wall and feared that he would not come up again.

People were injured at the well from time to time. The earth around it was always slippery. Sometimes conflicts broke out – usually over whose turn it was – and women used their shoulder-poles to strike each other. I fell down with the shoulder-pole and two full buckets of water more than once. One such accident left me with a crooked spine. On another occasion my ankle was badly sprained and I was unable to walk for several weeks. My mother took me to a traditional healer who made a cast, but the ankle never returned to its original position.

I was once nearly abducted by a gang of youths when I was at the well.

My neighbour, Bay Ca saved me. It was Sunday and I went to collect water right after lunch, thinking that other people would be taking their afternoon nap and I would not have to wait in line. As I was releasing the rope from the pool, suddenly four louts appeared in front of me. They were sloppily dressed, some with no shirts. They made jokes about my looks and there was lust in their eyes.

One of them moved forward and put his arm on my shoulder, staring at my wet chest. He whispered into my ear. I led him towards the house of Bay Ca, his arm around my waist. The others followed behind. I politely asked him, “Big brother! Where do you live?” He let out a sarcastic laugh. At that same moment I saw Bay Ca, who was sitting in the front porch. I cried out to him, feigning delight, “Uncle Bay! Uncle Bay!”

He looked up and immediately knew exactly what this gang had in mind. He got up and stepped forward, with fire in his eyes. The lout bent his head and apologized. The others stared at the ground. Then they drifted away. Perhaps they knew that Bay Ca had led a gang of pirates. His domain had been on an island long known to the French as Iles des Pirates, in the Gulf of Thailand.

I was most grateful to Bay Ca. He was known in our neighbourhood as a violent man. He regularly punished his wife and children in ways no other husband or father would. In a fit of rage against his pregnant wife one day, he seized her long hair and tied her to one of the wooden columns on the front porch. Then he beat her until she passed out. Then he untied her and announced to the neighbours who had witnessed the episode that he was going to make love to her. He carried her from the patio to the living room and shut the door. Nobody dared intervene. They had six children, four girls and two boys. He punished the girls regularly, leaving them with permanent injuries.

* * *

Early in 1966 my father hired a local man to build three concrete walls for our house, replacing the mud and rattan ones. The back wall was omitted, however, because of a luxuriant giant bamboo hedge that had become part of the kitchen interior. Pots and pans were hung to the knots of the live bamboo poles. Above the rows of cookware I had a few clay pots – also tied to the live bamboo – where I grew mint, parsley, pennywort, and even tomatoes. To prevent the bamboo bush from multiplying on the side facing the kitchen, from time to time I cut out the tender shoots and used them as vegetables. I made various stir-fry dishes and hot and spicy noodle soup with them. Years later, when I had the second storey of the house built, we managed to get a wall into that tight space, after we had uprooted a large section of the bamboo hedge.

I had a round window put into that back wall, on the second floor. The cemetery now became more visible from the window – something I had secretly wanted, ever since we moved into the house. It was because of the dead soldiers. A number of young men killed in combat were buried there so that their disembodied spirits could be near their families. Whenever a burial procession was taking place, I would stand quietly by the window and watch the solemn lifting of the ARVN flag – bright yellow with three red stripes – before the coffin was lowered into the ground. I was deeply shaken by the terrible ending of another young life. I would grieve for him, a soldier I did not know. From that evening, and night after night – in my halfawakened state, I would hear a violent wind and see soldiers with grim faces glistening in the moonlight – the powerful winds carrying war’s dead souls in the murkiness of night.

* * *

In the summer of 1966 my maternal grandmother came to Sai Gon to visit us. It was her first trip to the capital. She brought some live chickens, a few bags of rice, several dozens eggs, mangos, pineapples, and bananas. Unfortunately, the cyclo driver, being dishonest, dropped her off on the wrong street, then rode away with all her goods. With our address in her pocket she finally arrived in the most distressed condition.

Mother sent me to the market to buy betel leaves and areca nuts to replace the lost ones. My parents tried to remain calm but I was very upset. After dinner, the two women crouched together on the bed, and they fell asleep shortly afterward. Early in the morning, at about four, both of them woke up and sat inside the mosquito net, talking softly. I woke up and could hear my grandmother sobbing. Quietly, I stepped down from my attic perch and joined her. She was giving an account of deaths in the village.

I was in great shock to learn that both Hung and Dzung had died a few months before. My grandmother described Hung’s death, “During one of his seizures he fell into the fish pond at the back of the house. When I found him, his body was floating in the water. The rest of the family had been working in the fields that morning and I thought that he had gone with them. The poor thing had suffered so much with seizures before his death. A month before that he had fallen over a ceramic container and it crashed into pieces. He was hurt with several cuts and marks on his face and neck then.”

I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. My mind returned to the day we had gone to the water palm jungle to pick coconuts. Hung had saved me from drowning. Now five years later, it was he who drowned. He was all alone.

While we were all in tears over Hung’s death, my grandmother gathered her courage and talked about Dzung.

She said that shortly after we left the village Dzung spent most of his time on the rice fields and didn’t go fishing any more. One day a group of soldiers from Constance Garrison saw him sitting on the back of his buffalo and they asked him for information about the “Viet Cong” in our village. Dzung said he did not know any “Viet Cong” anywhere. He told them he never understood what “Viet Cong” meant. The soldiers didn’t like what he said. Why was he challenging them? He must have something to hide, and he was lying, and so they arrested him. At the Garrison he was interrogated and beaten. But they couldn’t find any evidence against Dzung and had to release him. He was so angry that he joined the NLF following his release. After two years in the army Dzung became a platoon leader. He was eighteen.

Dzung participated in several major battles in Truong An. In August 1965 his platoon joined forces with others and they encircled Constance Garrison. The Garrison called in helicopters from Thanh Chau. While these aircraft were circling above the Garrison, they poured down heavy gunfire, and Dzung fell with serious wounds to the chest. Two members of his platoon came to aid him but as they were lifting his body onto a stretcher they too were shot. Dzung died on the battlefield. Meanwhile, Uncle Phan and his wife had escaped to Thanh Chau with other relatives. The news of Dzung’s death reached them while they were still away. His mother broke down but Uncle Phan warned her not to cry because she would be arrested by the authorities – relatives of Nationalist soldiers were forbidden to mourn for their dead. Frustrated and angry, she shouted at Uncle Phan, in tears, “If this puppet government forbids me to cry here, take me to the jungle and I will cry for my son there!”

Constance Garrison kept a closer watch over its surroundings after the battle. To discourage relatives of the dead enemies from locating the bodies, they dumped piles of dried hay over them. The head of the Garrison announced that they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot relatives, whom they considered as guilty as the victims themselves. It was Van who took the horrendous risk of uncovering Dzung’s decomposed body one evening. They buried him quietly and secretly in an unmarked grave.

Before the end of my grandmother’s visit, a severe depression had taken hold of me. I had a strong urge to return to the village – to visit the graves of Hung and Dzung, to mourn with my relatives. But my father discouraged me from going, saying that it was now an active war zone and too dangerous.

My paternal grandmother took me to a Buddhist nunnery – the Ngoc Phuong temple, for healing. There I met Sister Huynh Lien, the Mother Superior. The senior nun offered to see me weekly for a month. I arrived at the temple each week with a bunch of lilies or marigolds and placed it below the marble statue of Quan Yin at the main entrance. In her office, the head-nun instructed me to sit in the lotus position, on a soft cushion on the tiled floor. We would meditate for half-an hour in complete silence. Then she read me some poetry.

The following year, 1967, my maternal grandmother came to Sai Gon for the second time. She brought with her live chickens and ducks, big bags of rice, several dozens eggs, and an assortment of fresh fruit. To everyone’s great relief, she arrived at our house safely.

When she had gone, my mother and I contemplated a trip to Truong An. My father again discouraged us from going.

Shortly before the New Year of the Monkey, 1968, we received a telegram from Uncle Muoi, informing us that my grandmother had died. My mother and I packed in a hurry, and we headed off.

VILLAGE REVISITED

“Oh! This war without end, war without end. Tomorrow or today, today or tomorrow. Tell me my fate, when will I die”

Vietnamese soldier

“What good is the talk of freedom and democracy, if one is not alive to enjoy it?”

Vietnamese peasant

The sky was pitch-dark. My mother and I, each with a small traveling bag, walked briskly from our house to the main road. Neither of us had had breakfast because it was too early. I couldn’t find anything meaningful to say to my mother. From time to time I slowed down my speed to accommodate hers. In the stillness of the early morning hours, we only heard our own footsteps. Mother was wearing a silky purple blouse, black satin trousers, and a pair of wooden clogs. Her hair was coiled into a neat bun. She hadn’t forgotten her conical hat, and she looked very much the same as she did four years earlier – the look of a typical peasant, with the exception of her wooden footwear. She had always been proud of her rural background and resolutely refused to dress like city people. I was wearing a white cotton blouse and beige khaki trousers and black leather sandals.

We turned towards the large theatre near Ba Chieu market. The street was still relatively quiet, with very little traffic. A cyclo appeared and we signaled it to stop. My mother and I shared the seat. She instructed the driver, “Directly to the bus depot in Phu Lam, Cho Lon. And no scenic route, please.” I felt most uneasy during the half-hour journey on the cyclo, being squeezed next to my mother.

It was five-thirty when we arrived at the bus depot, and we were the only passengers on the bus. Sitting in a middle row, my mother was in the most solemn mood, speaking very little. I was uncomforta- ble being so close to her but I dared not change my seat. I observed my surroundings in semi-darkness through the bus windows. Not far from the bus terminus there was a Chinese cafe where a few men on footstools were gulping down noodle soup and rice porridge. There were men smoking cigarettes and chatting. I could see a vehicle repair shed run by two cheerful men in shabby, oil stained clothes. Other passengers soon arrived and filled some of the buses. Women hawkers appeared with trays of freshly prepared food -- sweet corn on the cob, hot steamed buns, French bread sandwiches, steamed glutinous rice wrapped in banana leaves, slices of watermelon, pineapple, green mango, and various types of fresh fruit juice. I felt hungry. My mother had already made a decision, “We will buy something to eat in Can Tho. Everything is cheaper there, and better.”

The bus started up, now so full that several young men had to cling onto the steel rails and rims on the outside. We were moving so smoothly that I thought the bus was being propelled by the wind. We passed by a long row of shops, offices, cafes, and restaurants with signs written in both Vietnamese and Chinese. They somehow looked less intimidating than before, when I’d first arrived in Sai Gon.

The early morning sun was shining and I breathed in the fresh cool breezes. We reached the province of Long An. Again it reminded me of my paternal grandmother’s birthplace. Behind the wide green fields I imagined hidden pineapple farms, one of which had been a secret meeting place of Granduncle Cuong and Madame Thap to begin their journey on foot to Ha Noi. Had I been sitting next to my father on this bus, I would certainly have asked him more questions. It was here that a culture of local poetry arose to unify opposition to the Strategic Hamlets scheme, and where the local residents would rely on their women’s talents and artillery skills in combat.

Our rice fields have become our fortress

Our pineapple fields are now hidden battlefields

The villagers have become guerrilla soldiers

Family and family are united with one heart

The American aggressors will bury themselves here

Under the feet of the soldiers of Rach Dao

The American aggressors will have no way to escape

From the ‘magical crossbows’ of the women of Tan Chau

Mid morning we arrived at a ferry to cross the Front River (Tien Giang), also called the Upper Mekong. Standing on the ferry with many other passengers and the local food hawkers, I held onto the iron rail and watched the sparkling white waves, my hair billowing out in the wind. The vast river was gleaming, milky with silt, but reflecting the blueness of the sky. I bought a French bread sandwich filled with barbecued meat and pickles, and two clusters of sugar cane. My mother didn’t seem to have any appetite. “I don’t want anything right now,” she said in a low voice.

I fell asleep. The bus crossed the Back River (Hau Giang) and passed through Can Tho. I woke up to find we were already at the Long My open-air market. It was early afternoon and there were still many vendors and customers, laughing, shouting and bargaining. Not long after, we arrived in Thanh Chau and found Uncle Muoi and his son Thanh, waiting by the river. Each had a white shirt on. Their black sampan was bobbing up and down in the water under the blazing sun. I had always seen Uncle Muoi in all-black before and was intrigued by the change. Anxious to know the cause of Grandmother’s death, my mother asked Uncle Muoi and he invited us to sit down on the riverbank before he reported:

That evening Mother went to see Big Sister, who had been ill for weeks with a chest infection. Because of heavy rain, she stayed until it was quite late, and on her way back she fell down in the rice paddy, about twenty metres from your old house. She was hit by a strong gust of wind, fainted, and wasn’t able to get up. It was unfortunate that nobody from Mrs Hoang’s household knew about it. After waiting until past mid night, Thanh and I went to search for her. But she was gone by the time we found her…

Uncle Muoi’s voice trembled and I could see drops of tears from his gloomy eyes.

My mother burst out crying with both hands covering her face, “Oh dear Mother! My very dear mother! Why did you leave us? Why did Heaven take you away? I am now lost in mourning. I will always treasure you, Mother… and your sacrifice…and those trips to Sai Gon. You had saved all the chickens, all the ducks…” Uncle Muoi tried to comfort my mother, as if she were a little girl, “Cry no more Sister! Mother’s spirit hasn’t left us. Every night we will light the incense and her spirit will come home to be with us…”

We rose and our feet advanced along the riverbank. None of us spoke. Soon we heard voices of the food vendors and customers. My mother quickly wiped away her tears and put on a forced smile. She invited Uncle Muoi and Thanh to have bun bo kho, beef noodle soup, with us. This dish consisted of fresh noodles made from rice flour and small chunks of lean beef simmered in coconut milk, lemon grass, cinnamon, garlic, onion, chili, and curry powder. It was served with fresh bean-sprouts and herbs. The delicious aroma had always tempted my mother, but she didn’t seem to enjoy it this day. After the bun bo kho mother ordered four green coconuts. We drank fresh coconut juice before getting into Uncle Muoi’s sampan.

It would take many hours from the town to Truong An village, and in our state of mourning, we sat quietly. Uncle Muoi and Thanh would paddle the sampan all the way. My mother offered to help but they refused. Every time they plunged their paddling blades into the smooth water, I thought of the hardships they had to endure, and how the burden of rural life and the war seemed to go on forever. The sky gradually darkened and the sampan continued to glide swiftly and smoothly through the channels and water-palm jungles. There was no wind. Every palm leaf stood silent and motionless in a somber mood. I heard the buzzing sound of mosquitoes and startled voices from another sampan. With a coconut shell cup, I was scooping out the water that had come into the sampan from a small hole in the hull.

We arrived at my grandmother’s house – soon to belong to Uncle Muoi – around ten in the evening. He moored the sampan and we walked to the kitchen hut. Mo Muoi had kept a hot meal for us. She was sitting on a wooden stool next to the terra cotta burners, with the fire still glowing. She served us grilled chicken with lemon grass, bitter-melon soup, and steamed rice. I ate little, anxious to go outside to look for the poon tree. I went on my own, since Uncle Muoi’s children had gone to bed. They had been waiting for our arrival but were too exhausted to stay awake any longer, as they had stayed up very late on previous nights for my grandmother’s funeral.

Outside there was no moonlight or starlight but I could hear the steady movement of water in the river. I followed the sound and blindly traced my way through the darkness to the beloved poon tree. It had grown enormously, and its top now formed a giant umbrella overhanging the riverbank. I wrapped my arms around its trunk, then slowly let go of it.

I ran to the other side of the house, near the kitchen hut. In semi-darkness I saw some shiny banana leaves fluttering in the wind. I made blind steps towards the banana grove. A man stood in front of me. I stopped dead and almost screamed. At that moment the wind blew what seemed to be the shirt’s sleeve. I realized that there was nobody standing there after all. It was just a shirt over the banana trunk. It belonged to Gai, Uncle Muoi’s eldest son. He’d apparently been working there in the afternoon, perspiring heavily, and had simply hung his shirt there.

I went to sleep that night – or tried to – in the bed of my deceased grandmother, a simple wooden platform that had been erected by Uncle Phan after we returned from the Strategic Hamlet. Next to the bed, on a small table, were a kerosene lamp and a copper tray meant for betel leaves and areca nuts. The lamp was lit that night as usual, but the tray had been emptied by Mo Muoi. Beside these and a few articles of clothing, my grandmother had had no other possessions. This humble bedroom of hers had a small window facing the stream at the side of the house, where Uncle Muoi kept his sampan at night. The tangerine tree outside her window bore luscious fruits and had always been her delight.

What a harsh life she had endured! She had been born into comfort but had lived nearly all her life in extreme poverty. I never felt as close to her as to my other grandmother but I did love her. When she died, Mo Muoi found several of my letters in her blouse pocket, carefully wrapped in a piece of clear plastic. She said that my grandmother had saved all my letters. However, when I sorted through them there were several missing. Some had never reached her.

I heard my mother’s weeping in the next room. She was comforted by Mo Muoi with cups of green tea. My mother was upset that my grandmother had been buried before we arrived. Uncle Muoi explained to her why they had waited for only two days and not longer, “We feared that if an air raid occurred, or if the village were to be attacked by artillery, we would be at high risk of having to abandon Mother’s body.”

As soon as I woke up, I heard Mo Muoi’s voice asking my mother, “Sister, have you brought a white blouse with you?” Mother replied, “Oh! I didn’t even think about it. No, I don’t own anything white. I have other colours but not white.” Mo Muoi frowned and then hurried to her bedroom to fetch a white blouse of her own and asked my mother to put it on. The authorities, she explained, had instructed the villagers to wear white tops in order to distinguish them from the “Viet Cong”.

I’d brought with me two white blouses, two pairs of trousers, one in black, the other in sandy khaki. I also had a pair of pyjamas in white cotton, with some blue embroidery. I brought along soap powder to wash my clothes, and a dozen soap bars and six tubes of toothpaste as gifts for my relatives.

Although I had worn sandals during the journey, when I woke up in the morning I wanted to go barefoot like everybody else. I rolled my trousers up to the knees. Thanh and I started off toward Uncle Phan’s house but before we got there the bottoms of my feet started hurting me terribly. I could no longer go barefoot. It was then I realized I was no longer a country girl.

That morning Uncle Muoi took us to my grandmother’s grave. She was buried next to my grandfather, who had died when my mother was a little girl. The large mound of earth was still fresh next to my grandfather’s old cement tomb. Uncle Muoi assured my mother, “I will soon arrange to have the new mound covered in cement as well. It’s my responsibility and you need not worry.” My mother sobbed loudly for a long time. I placed a lotus on the mound and wept silently, thankful that my grandmother was now at peace.

Hung’s tomb was in the same plot of land and made of white cement. Squatting at its foot I called out his name. If I hadn’t left the village he would still be alive, because I had regularly looked after him. Weeping, I talked to him now. I told him how sorry I was to have abandoned him. I sat for a long time, sensing his presence. I could hear his voice, his laughter, his feet stamping when we ran together in the open field to chase dragonflies and grasshoppers. I could hear him fall from a seizure and see bubbles oozing from his mouth… but he would soon get up and we would play again. But not now. His face, his smiles, his soft voice, his pale skin, his fragile frame… so dear to me. My dear cousin! My dear friend! I had never intended to leave you.

Dzung had been buried at a secret location, his grave unmarked. It wasn’t possible for anyone to go there for fear of harassment by the local authorities. I wanted to go anyway, but my mother cut in, “You may not get into trouble, but after we leave, Uncle Muoi and everybody else in the family will suffer. You’re not to go!”

Instead, I asked Uncle Muoi to show me where the grave of my adopted brother Son was. He took me through fields of reeds and bamboo, but when we got to where he thought it was, the ground was flat, completely covered with thick reed. I tried to hide my distress – how could he have “lost” my brother’s grave? He must have sensed it because all the way home he was very sad.

* * *

Uncle Muoi and Gai started their day at four-thirty in the morning. Soon after, his two younger sons, Thanh and Minh, followed them into the field. They had a hot breakfast of rice porridge, eggs, fish, condiments, and fresh fruits. Mother and I had breakfast with Mo Muoi and their younger children. Mo Muoi told us Uncle Muoi had become the hamlet chief on the order of Constance Garrison. One of his duties was to maintain security for the hamlet by reporting the whereabouts of “Viet Cong” in the village. I asked her, “Does that mean Uncle has to report on his own nephews?” “You know he would never do that,” she said. Then she changed the subject and asked about my father and my paternal grandmother in Sai Gon.

While we were out in the rice field, Gai instructed me to sit inside the thatch hut. There I watched the men and the buffaloes ploughing the muddy ground. At lunchtime we ate sticky rice seasoned with roasted sea salt, fresh coconut flakes, and palm sugar. Everyone drank hot tea from a flask but, thanks to Gai, I was given my favourite drink of young coconut juice.

After lunch I announced, “ I am going to walk over the muddy field with my bare feet, going from one end of the field to the other like I used to do. I will love it!”

“No, Little Sister!” my cousins warned me, “You know that dozens of fat leeches are down there and they will glue themselves onto your legs, and those awful creatures will suck your blood out. No, we will not let you sink your feet into the water. Absolutely not.”

The thought of leeches horrified me. I realized how much I had changed in four and a half years. This thought was accompanied by a growing sense of guilt. Why should I be better off than my cousins, my blood cousins? What had I done to deserve such a privileged life, while they were enduring hardships? Sadly, their pattern of life would go on, with little opportunity for changes – day after day, season after season, year after year, generation after generation. Only I had the opportunity to move on toward a better life.

* * *

Dai brought over two giant prawns the size of lobsters and gave them to Mo Muoi. While they were being prepared, Dai and I had a long talk about life in the capital, about what I was studying in school, and so on. We’d maintained our contact through writing, but some letters, it turned out, were lost on their way to the destination. That afternoon, the sadness was obvious in his eyes when he arrived from the jungle, for he was still grieving over the deaths of dear friends and neighbours.

Dai had to leave after lunch. He promised to tell Hinh about our visit and would see us again before we returned to Sai Gon. I followed his hurried footsteps. He disappeared into the woods and suddenly I was struck with fear – I feared for his life and even imagined him dying, like Dzung. I tried to blot out such terrible thoughts, but they kept coming back, night after night.

Thanh offered to accompany me to the old family house. Under a full sun, we walked briskly along and from time to time stopped to rest under a large tree. I was trying very hard to calm myself. The first two days had already filled me with much sorrow. Now I was about to enter my childhood home, to find the remnants of those past years. The house now belonged to the family of Mrs Hoang, who had been our immediate neighbours previously. She and her husband had two sons, both of whom had already joined the NLF.

Mrs Hoang caught sight of Thanh and me as we came along the edge of the rice paddy leading to the back of the house. She stood by my coconut tree and waved at us with a smile. I told myself that both of us – the coconut tree and I – would be seventeen in the following spring. My feet started to feel awkward, as if they were being pulled down by an unknown gravity, and I was a bit dizzy. Before we reached the guava tree I stood still and took three deep breaths, in an effort to control my emotions.

“Look at you!” Mrs Hoang greeted me. “You’ve grown up! You’re blooming! I am so happy you are back, Hoa Lai. Everybody had been wondering if we would ever see you again. Come in!” She took my arm and led me into the kitchen hut, “Let’s have some tea first! Then we will have a chat.”

While she was making the fire to boil water, I darted into the main house and glanced at everything quickly. The Hoangs’ furniture consisted of two bamboo beds, a wooden table with four footstools, and a hammock. I stepped into the kitchen as she pointed to the three terracotta burners near the back wall, “I still have one from your mother’s. The other two had been destroyed by bullets.” I sat quietly in the hammock, contemplating my previous existence in the room – traces of my family were still there. I stepped out and went to the coconut tree. My arms stretched out to hold its trunk – now bearing several bullet marks. I gazed up wistfully at the clusters of green coconuts at the top. I tried to hide my tears and turned away from the house.

As she walked out with the tray of tea and sweets, Mrs Hoang asked how my parents were. I told her briefly that my father worked in an office and my mother had a sewing job at home, and that both were very well. I added that mother would come around later to visit her. “And how is your grandma?” asked Mrs Hoang, who had placed the tray at the foot of the guava tree. I started to cry.

“Is she not well, dear?” Mrs Hoang asked.

I wiped away the tears and answered, “Yes she is very well. She is happy living with us again. Just …just now, when you put the tea tray there, it reminded me of her days in this house, in the vegetable garden, I mean.”

Mrs Hoang sighed. “Oh! I understand, you’re feeling homesick for those times… We all remember her, your grandmother. She is such a dear person and everyone loves her. I don’t imagine we will have the privilege of seeing her again, not in this shattered village. She has no reason to come back. Have some tea now before it gets cold!”

She went on to say that my grandmother had been very protective of me. “When you were a baby you were her nugget of gold. She always kept you very clean. You had a bath and fresh clothes every day, and whenever I wanted to carry you she made me wash my hands first!” She let out a loud laugh, then said, “And you, when you began to talk, oh! You chattered like a sparrow… You were her little sparrow and she adored you, her little Hoa Lai. Drink your tea now! Have some little cakes! I made them just this morning. Later will you take some back for your mother too?”

Mrs Hoang talked about the vegetable garden, which now contained only mint and lemon grass among masses of weeds. My mind went back to the days my grandmother and I worked together along the vegetable paths, when she showed me how to recognize and pull out the weeds. And how we sweated from the heat! She had jasmine tea and I had fresh coconut juice for our breaks. It was there, at the foot of the guava tree that I asked her all my questions and she told me her stories.

“Grandma, why are the caterpillars and the worms eating our eggplants? I just hate them.”

She would smile, and after a moment of silence, answer, “Well, while we are taking a rest, I want to tell you this story and you may understand.” At this she launched into the cautionary tale of Chau Chau, the greedy grasshopper, and all the trouble he had caused the other animals, until the Buddha himself had to intervene and pass judgment. And now, all these years later, I could hear an echo of her gentle voice as if she were sitting there, under the guava tree.

We left Mrs Hoang’s house – my old house – before sunset. The intense heat had reduced and the air was cooling slowly, with occasional breezes. Thanh and I walked along a winding country road beside the large stream where Dzung and I had gone fishing years earlier. The stream’s surface sparkled with the lingering sunlight. The wavelets of an incoming tide were washing the reed-filled bank and making steady lapping sounds. In the distance a farmer was moving back and forth in the middle of the current, chasing his white ducks. On the other side of the road, the paddy field was already taken over by flocks of white storks, immersing their beaks into the water searching for food. Others stood quietly – each perfectly balanced on one leg. We sat down on the bank and I told Thanh about Dzung and our fishing days. He listened quietly, only asking an occasional question. With our feet in the water, we watched the last remnants of the sunset and the hazy sky. We sat this way until darkness fell.

I stepped into the slow moving stream and dipped my hands into the warm water. I held them gently against my face. My feet rested on pebbles while the duckweed brushed against my knees. I saw Dzung and me, with our bamboo baskets, our fishing gear, and our straw hats… Our world had been one of cloudy morning mists, golden sunlight, gentle breezes, heavy falls of rain. We walked along that riverbank, we sang, we laughed. And we parted.

* * *

It was late afternoon and the bright sun was shining in the front yard of Uncle Muoi’s house. My mother and I were sitting on a wooden platform talking to Mo Muoi. Uncle Muoi and Gai were working in the back garden. I thought I heard the sound of an aircraft engine and waited for someone to say something, but the sound faded. At that very moment Uncle Muoi came in, alert but calm, and instructed us to go to the underground shelter. Mo Muoi cried out to Thanh and Minh who were still outside, urging them and their younger brothers and sisters to go underground. My mother and I rushed to the shelter. There we observed a lot of water at its bottom. Thanh said there might be leeches inside the shelter, but nobody seemed afraid. They all jumped in, the children excited as if it were a great game. I was hesitating at the edge of the shelter and my mother scolded me, “Are you more afraid of bombs or leeches?” I forced myself into the deep shelter. The water was above my knees.

Uncle Muoi and Gai had gone back outside to look at the sky. In deadly silence, we heard very clearly the roaring of an engine, coming in from Thanh Chau. Above the ground Uncle Muoi and Gai shouted out, “Bomber! Bomber!” I raised my head above the shelter and Gai pulled me out for a quick look. I could see a giant grey fish diving into the air below it, making a deafening noise, with a trail of black smoke behind its tail. Then a second fish appeared with the same deafening sound and started diving toward the tree- tops.

I ran back to the shelter and heard Gai shouting, “Another bomber! Two of them now…they are just above the trees!” For one moment I thought of the leeches but it didn’t matter any more. In a few minutes, a series of high-pitched whistling sounds passed above us, followed by two powerful explosions. Uncle Muoi and Gai fell backward into the doorway. The first two bombs, they thought, must have dropped near their rice field. Immediately after that the ground was shaken by a series of explosions. Terrified, I covered my ears with my hands while my skin turned ice cold.

The dark underground shelter came alight with flashing fire from the orange flames in the sky. Then part of the house’s roof blew off. Black smoke came from all directions, accompanied by a sickening odour. I pressed my stomach in with my hands. While the explosions continued, my ears buzzed, my head hurt, and my limbs were shaking. My entire body felt like it was being pressed down by a giant force. I had become part of the shuddering earth. I called out to Quan Yin.

Suddenly there was complete silence. My mouth had gone dry with a bitter taste, and I was desperate for something to drink. I had forgotten the leeches until now when everyone in the shelter started to touch their legs. Thanh pulled something off my knee and I immediately realized what it was. He held up the black leech, still wiggling, and dripping blood. The rubber-like creature was shiny and resembling a tiny eel. My mother pulled two leeches off her legs. She remained cool, reminding me to check myself thoroughly from head to toe.

When we came out of the shelter, the first thing I heard was the cursing of my grandmother’s elderly neighbour, Mrs Lua, standing on the road, “The God of Lightning who slays evil people will strike you all, and the King of Hell will punish you, Constance the lackeys!” She continued her wailing, “You all are a bunch of demons, most wicked demons. I am too old now to have any fear…”

The minute she saw me, she rushed over. I gazed at her tear-stained face and shattered expression. I hugged her, and she gave me a sad smile. The short path from Uncle Muoi’s house to the main road was buried under muddy soil from the badly damaged road and broken tree branches. All the trees had been blown up. Only their trunks were left standing – leafless and bare – as witness to human cruelty.

I walked further out to the main road in front of Uncle Phan’s house. Its surface was broken and large lumps of earth lay scattered all over the muddy ground. Most of the road was flooded with water. Floating in the river were piles of partially burned palm leaf roofs and walls from various houses. We checked at Uncle Phan’s and learned that no one had been killed. Everyone sighed with relief. However, we learned later that one of the neighbours had been killed. Missing her child in the shelter, a mother had panicked and against all advice had leaped out onto the road to search for him, where a bomb obliterated her.

Uncle Muoi went around the village in his sampan to check for casualties. A couple who had been working in the rice fields lost their lives. One family of five had lost all its members because a bomb exploded right above their underground shelter.

For the remainder of our visit, my maternal relatives refused to let me or my mother out of the house. Whether this was because they feared for our safety or because they wanted to spare us the horrible scenes following the raid I can’t say. I was hoping to get onto the roads and walk down to my old school near Constance Garrison. I wanted to put my bare feet on the monkey bridge and watch the wildlife beneath. I had also planned to ask one of my cousins to go fishing with me along the village streams. But it was not to be.

* * *

Dai arrived with Hinh in a sampan one evening to see us, their heads carefully disguised under water-palm leaves. It was raining and cold, and Mo Muoi had kept firewood burning in the large stove. Hinh wiped the rain from his forehead and greeted me with a smile, “Hello Little Sister!” I shouted, “Big Brother!” and took his arm. Hinh looked exactly as he had years earlier. He wore his usual black uniform, with a rifle at his side. His skin was dark and smooth, his eyes bright and shining. He had a confident and calm look.

Mo Muoi prepared dinner for us. We took our seats on the living room divan. Hinh always sat with dignity and his voice was clear and even. He asked me what I planned to do after I had finished school. I told him I didn’t know and he advised me not to take any kind of job that involved politics. Dai cut in. What I did with my future, he said would be entirely up to me. Aunt Di Nam would have liked me to continue my sewing work – a perfectly suitable career for a young woman, she said.

The discussion shifted to the war and the foreigners. Uncle Phan’s wife, sitting in a hammock, joined in, “Before there were the French, and now we have the Americans. Have you seen any Americans in Sai Gon?”

“I’ve never met any, Auntie, and I don’t plan to,” I replied.

Gai looked at me straight in the eyes and warned me, “Stay away from all Americans, Hoa Lai. You know that they rape women in rice fields and sometimes kill them, but the Sai Gon prostitutes are after them. You know that, don’t you?”

The remark brought me up short. What did he know about the Americans? Or the rapes of women? Or the prostitutes? Or me?

“Little Sister,” he went on in a low, hostile, insinuating voice, “I hope never to find you doing what those women in Sai Gon do.”

He was all but openly accusing me! I stood up and went out through the back door, followed by Dai, to the orange tree next to the banana grove. There, Dai tried to apologize for Gai, “It is the war. The war and the Americans, and the people who collaborate with them in Sai Gon. Gai isn’t accusing you of anything personal. He is just afraid for you.”

I finally calmed down and we came back inside. Gai, however, had gone off.

* * *

I woke up at the rooster’s crowing. Still lying in bed, I was visited by Uncle Phan’s youngest daughter, Sac. She brought freshly steamed glutinous rice cakes, known as “banh tet”, for me and my mother. I got out of bed, greeting her, and started unwrapping the banana leaves. The condensed sticky rice, green from the banana leaves gave off the most delicious aroma. This particular savoury cake contained mung bean paste, meat, red beans, and coconut flakes. My mother used to make them with Mo Muoi a few days prior to each Lunar New Year, and I was a little surprised that Uncle Phan’s wife had made them this early. It was then I overheard a conversation between Sac and Mo Muoi. Sac confided that she and her mother had stayed up all night to make enough glutinous rice cakes for Uncle Muoi. Why for Uncle Muoi? Why would he need so many? I wondered.

Outside, I saw Mo Muoi loading the sampan with bags of glutinous rice cakes. Sac’s mother was assisting her. The two women appeared to be in a great hurry. Their bags were laid neatly in a row, then covered with a large plastic sheet heaped with un-husked rice. That morning Uncle Muoi had gone to the rice field to work but he came home for lunch. He was holding an ARVN flag, which he placed strategically at one end of the sampan. Its bright yellow background and the three red stripes were clearly visible from the house. With this, he could pass safely if he were spotted by government troops.

He quietly poled the sampan away. When he came back, some two hours later, all that was left in the sampan was the un-husked rice.

THE BATTLE OF NEW YEAR’S EVE

The Truong Son Mountains are trembling

The Mekong River tides are swelling

On this eve we pledge to die for the motherland

Nothing is more precious than a free country

Ngoc Lien, of the Long Hair Army

We left the village after the day of the kitchen god, exactly one week before Tet – the Lunar New Year. My grandmother had made the annual offering of flowers, sesame cookies, and peanut bars to the kitchen god. As soon as we got home my mother hurried to sew new clothes for my brothers. Despite our poverty, they always had new and colourful clothes during the Lunar New Year holidays, a Vietnamese tradition.

My grandmother and I went to the flower market on Nguyen Hue Boulevard for an ornamental orange shrub, also bought branches of white and pink cherry blossoms for the front entrance of the house. According to ancient Vietnamese belief, the orange tree will bring good luck and the cherry tree will scare evil spirits away. Cherry trees were too scarce for every family in the city to have one, so branches were used. If cherry branches were in full bloom on New Year’s Day, it was considered a good omen.

The day before New Year I went shopping with my mother. We bought a huge bunch of assorted flowers, half a dozen watermelons, bananas, tangerines, vegetables, two live chickens, several live fish, pork, and ingredients for making banh tet – the savoury glutinous rice cakes all Vietnamese love. In North Viet Nam, they are called banh chung, and the shape is square rather than a long tube.

I washed and ironed red cloths for the altars and tables – red and gold have always been the traditional colours for Tet. After cleaning the house thoroughly, I helped my mother with the food preparation. The day passed quickly. After sunset the house was alight with candles and incense sticks. While banh tet simmered in a large iron pot, a vegetarian meal was prepared as offerings to our ancestors. Grandmother would lead the prayer at midnight. In the past, fireworks had been used to celebrate each New Year’s Eve but now, as the war escalated, this practice was forbidden by the government.

Around ten my brothers pleaded with me to start cracking red-dyed watermelon seeds. We sat on the floor and I began to tell them the legend of the red watermelon. My mother busily arranged the food for the altars. It was almost midnight.

The clock on the wall chimed twelve clear tones. We had entered the Year of the Monkey, 1968. Grandmother listened out for the first animal’s sound in the first hour of the New Year – which would suggest either a good or a bad coming year. There was none to be heard. Instead came a series of explosive sounds. Could they be fireworks after all, even though fireworks were banned? We looked at each other, perplexed. Another series of explosions followed, louder this time, then more, more, continuous volleys of sound. We found our neighbours gazing intently at the fire-lit sky. We saw arrows of orange flame and mushrooms of black smoke rising into the air.

“War! War is coming to Sai Gon! Alert everyone!” shouted Mr Tu, the water carrier.

People burst from their homes and ran to the main road. My brothers and I followed, made a left turn onto another road and we saw ARVN troops and a row of tanks on the far side of the Blue Bridge. From there, we could hear the screaming of sirens. Everyone panicked and was confused. They ran back into their houses, searching for valuables. My brothers and I hurried home. People milled about frantically, not knowing which way to run. A few minutes later I saw families with bags and pillows racing toward the cemetery. Bay Ca’s family arrived at our front door. His tearful wife said their house had no concrete walls so it would be safer for them to be with us. Bay Ca had stayed in his house, telling his family not to worry about him. We all squatted together on the floor, the adults holding the little children in their arms, our ears deafened by the explosions.

The noises diminished and we all waited … in spooky silence. We heard nothing more, not a sound, not even the whispering of the wind or the stirring of a leaf.

Unusual flashes of light went past our front window, followed by steady footsteps approaching our house. We held our breath and waited. I looked up and saw two human shadows, with guns silhouetted against our living-room wall.

They didn’t move. My father and I stood up and peered out of the window. Two soldiers, in ARVN uniform, now turned their eyes toward us. The dim-light from our kerosene lamp glowed on their faces. I could see their most intense eyeballs – moving vigilantly and cautiously. Trying my best to remain calm, I said, “Hello Big Brothers!”

One of them answered with a soft voice, “Little Sister, please tell everyone inside not to run away. Please stay where you are.”

I nodded. They quietly moved on, heading towards the dark alley that led to the cemetery. Whatever the truth, I felt they weren’t from the ARVN forces we’d seen near the main road. My father agreed. They must have been Nationalists.

I whispered to the others. Bay Ca’s wife was most upset. If there were Viet Cong soldiers in our neighbourhood, there would be a direct confrontation with ARVN troops at any moment. We all rose to leave the house. My mother and I put all our money inside my handbag. My father took a pile of papers out of a cabinet and tucked them inside his shirt. Grandmother packed a few banh tet. We took two bags of clothing with us. My brothers Hau and Nhan, aged five and four, each grabbed a live chicken and, holding the chickens in their arms, they ran with us across the cemetery. So we escaped the area.

We found shelter at the school I had attended briefly in 1963, occupying a classroom on the ground floor with ten other families. Next day, the battle that came to be known in America as the Tet Offensive resumed, but there were quiet periods in which people managed to get some rest and sleep.

One of the chickens had run off and the remaining one became my brothers’ pet. It was guarded very closely. We ate the banh tet and some French bread, and drank water from a sink. It wasn’t drinking water but luckily no one fell ill. My brothers kept asking for rice and for meat. There wasn’t any, and even if there had been, it was impossible to do any cooking. The price of French bread had doubled and my mother was very anxious about the food situation. Ba Chieu market next to the school had been closed down.

The next morning I was surprised to see several families preparing meals in the schoolyard. Classroom chairs had been chopped up for firewood. Heaps of animal hair suggested a cat or a dog had been butchered. Seeing other children eating hot food, my brothers started begging for the same. I volunteered to go home and collect some provisions. My mother told me to go quickly and hurry back.

* * *

The air was calm as I strode along the roads. I saw no wounded or dead bodies until I reached the long alley leading to my home. There, I noticed traces of blood around the garbage dump. It was then I saw a male body dressed in civilian clothes, face down and arms splayed out as though in the act of grabbing something. Terrified, I covered my eyes and ran home. As soon as I entered the house a bullet flew past me like a gust of wind. Its fire hit the glass jar of sugar on the kitchen table, which smashed into pieces. I fell to the floor, my body frozen in terror. Bullets were suddenly pouring like a rainstorm outside the house. Each time I opened my eyes I saw darts of fire at the windows. Sobbing, my hands covering my face, I called out to Quan Yin.

In the brief silence that followed, I smelled the thick burning air as I raised my head. There were bullet holes in the walls. I grabbed a pillow from the bed, covered my head and crawled to the kitchen counter. I found the can of US Army sausages Bay Ca’s wife had sold us a few days before. I pulled down an aluminium pot from the rack, crawled to the rice barrel and used it to scoop out rice. On all four, I left the house just as a new hail of bullets erupted.

I made my escape by a different alley the other side of Bay Ca’s house. I wanted to avoid the dead body on the garbage dump. I spotted some people wandering about – possibly thieves. I recognized none of them. One man was on a motor scooter. The engine stopped suddenly. I watched him being taken away by a group of ARVN uniformed soldiers, leaving his motor scooter behind. With the pot of rice and the can of American sausages on my right shoulder, I crawled, squatted, walked, ran, biting my lip. Suddenly right in front of me, blood stains spattered the wet and muddy ground. A headless body lay alongside a human arm and a handbag. The head was at some distance, next to a heap of garbage, half a face visible under a pile of hair. It belonged to a woman. One eye wide open, gazing in disbelief. Her broken flesh and skin were like those of a pig on a butcher counter.

I suppressed my screams and ran … as if the dead woman’s angry spirit and her own wailing voice were chasing me. I tripped, fell forward, then clambered to my feet again, and my eyes stinging with tears, I ran on in overwhelming terror.

At the junction between the alley and the main road I stopped, took a deep breath, and waited. Then I ran as fast as I could, past the theatre, past Ba Chieu market, ignoring all the deafening sounds. The rice in the pot spilled out along the way. My clothes were spattered with mud. When I got to the school’s main gate, my grandmother and brothers were standing there, waiting. My father scolded me. How stupid I was to have done what I had! I gave my brothers the American sausages, which they managed to open. They quickly gulped down its contents.

Eventually, the New Year battle came to an end. Weary people straggled out onto the road. Holding the hands of my two youngest brothers, I forced our way through the crowd. All we wanted was to go home.

When we got there, we found the door wide open. Clothing scattered all over the floor. They had been urinated on. There were piles of human excrement in each corner of the room. We were forced out of the house. We went to talk to neighbours. Their houses were in the same disgusting condition. They told us how ARVN troops had occupied the neighbourhood. Several of us went to the well to collect buckets of water. We forced ourselves to go back into the house to start the cleaning process. Photos from family albums were scattered all over the kitchen floor. On the back of one of my photos was the hand-written message, “Hello girl! I wish I could fuck you. I haven’t had it for months.” I tore the photo in pieces. Like thousands of young women in Sai Gon, I had fantasized that I would one day meet and fall in love with a newly graduated officer from the military academy. Now the dream was shattered.

* * *

Before the Lunar New Year, thousands of NLF soldiers had infiltrated a hundred towns and cities in the South. Commandos moved arms, ammunition, and explosives into Sai Gon from their main base near a rubber plantation north of the capital. Senior women of the Soldiers’ Mothers Association, an NLF organization, were responsible for organizing the transportation of weapons into the city. A sixty-eight year-old woman, Mrs Ranh, known as “The Iron Mother of Cu Chi”, had obtained a dozen truckloads of rice, foodstuff, clothing, and medicine for the Nationalist troops. Mrs Ranh’s eight children had joined the NLF and all had been killed. Her devotion to the cause was fierce. In Central Sai Gon, an elderly woman, Mrs Chanh had supervised the movement of weapons into Sai Gon by sea in two large boats covered with pineapples. Additional weapons were stored in private houses and shops in Sai Gon and guarded by elderly women. According to General Ho Thi Bi, dubbed by Ho Chi Minh as “the Eastern Region’s Heroine”, and whom I interviewed after the war, the NLF forces attacking Sai Gon had been assisted by 235 civilian families who formed into groups at twenty-nine locations. Altogether, the guerrillas established four hundred bases in Sai Gon and its immediate surrounding areas. They aimed at nine strategic locations: the Joint-General Staff Headquarters, the Presidential Palace, the National Radio station, the US Embassy, the Tan Son Nhat airport, the National Police Headquarters, the Special Military Zone, the Navy Command Department, and the Chi Hoa prison.

In the vanguard of the Nationalist forces was the platoon of the Long Hair Army under Le Thi Rieng, who had received assistance from General Ho Thi Bi’s forces based in the suburbs of Sai Gon. During the battle at Tan Son Nhat airport, fifteen woman commandos fought against the Americans for an entire day. The remaining members of the Spearhead platoon attacked the US Embassy, some seventeen commandos, five of whom were under Sister Dieu Thong – one of the nuns of Ngoc Phuong Buddhist temple. They assaulted the embassy early in the morning using civilian cars, AK rifles, and dynamite. Once they’d entered the embassy compound, they fired on the guards and quickly seized control of the first three floors. Above the rooftops, US and ARVN troops poured heavy gunfire from helicopters.

Le Thi Rieng had been captured with two members of her platoon and once the ARVN force identified who she was, they executed her immediately. As if Rieng had predicted her own death, she had left a poem for her two young children prior to that Lunar New Year. Sister Dieu Thong and her team suffered no serious casualties. Altogether, thirty-two women of Rieng’s Spearhead platoon were killed in the battle. The head nun of Ngoc Phuong temple, Sister Huynh Lien, held a secret memorial service for the dead. A long poem was dedicated to Rieng. Memorial services for her were also held by the NLF and by the government of North Viet Nam. Her death was a major loss to the Nationalists.

American troops in Long An, on the outskirts of Sai Gon, also came under surprise attack during the Lunar New Year’s Eve. With assistance from a male infantry unit, the Long An women artillery team inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans in the night. The US Army retaliated with an air raid. All the women managed to escape unhurt through a muddy field. During the attack, when the women directed fire at a GMC convoy, the cannon fire also hit the residence of a provincial chief and damaged his jeep. Unhurt, the chief then made a public announcement, “Whoever finds the woman who led the attack will receive a large sum of money as an award. The quantity of cash will be as high as the height of this woman.”

* * *

The government ordered a nightly curfew throughout the South and closed down all the schools for several weeks. My mother and I had no sewing, and since the French bread bakery was near our house, I decided to sell bread.

Before sunrise Trung helped me carry fifty loaves in a large bamboo basket to a busy street corner near Ba Chieu market, where I sat until early evening. Trung and Nghia fetched more bread from the bakery before lunch. I sold at least one hundred loaves a day. Most of my customers were ARVN soldiers. Sometimes they passed along the main road in army vehicles and bought all my bread at once without bargaining. Vietnamese soldiers at the US-ARVN headquarters also walked all the way to my stall to buy bread. A woman with a large assortment of bread and sandwiches next to my stall became angry, “This wicked little girl is stealing all my customers.” Often the soldiers came to the stall to flirt with me. I imagine they felt obliged to buy my bread. Some even refused to accept their change after giving me a bill worth more than the price of the bread.

I saved a small sum of cash and one day decided to give myself a treat. I bought three metres of pure silk in purple and had an ao dai made. It was my first coloured dress. Instead of a traditional highnecked collar, I chose a boat neckline – more fashionable and cooler for summer wear, I thought. I also bought three metres of black satin for a pair of trousers, and a purple umbrella to go with the dress. I kept them in my attic room, for a special occasion.

I met my ancient-literature teacher at the market. She invited me to a summer party at her house. I could wear the new purple dress. When the day came, Trung and Nghia took my place at the bread stall in the afternoon. I promised to buy each of them a little present by way of thanks.

I went home to change my clothes. My grandmother but not my mother was home. I stood in the front of the mirror. I thought I looked most elegant. I even put on lipstick and face powder, for the first time. I took the purple umbrella with me.

The people I met at the party were my teachers’ friends and relatives. They were kind and hospitable and complimented me on my dress. When I left the party that afternoon, I went to the stall to check on my brothers. They had already gone home, having sold all the bread.

When I walked in, my mother was sitting at her sewing machine. The moment she saw me she dropped her giant black scissors and they landed with a loud bang on the sewing machine’s cabinet. As if she was in shock, as if I had committed a terrible crime, she stared angrily at my dress, then at my face.

I stood still, head down, not knowing what to do or say.

She rose, knocking over her chair. “

You whore!” she shouted. “You look like a rotten whore!”

In her rage, her eyes bulged and the veins popped out on her forehead. I made a rush for the attic staircase. I heard her shouting behind me.

“What’s happened to her? Why is she dressed like a whore? Is that what I gave birth to? A common whore?”

I changed my clothes with trembling hands, quickly wiped the makeup off my face, rushed down from the attic, picked up my brother Nhan and fled the house. I stopped in the alley next to Bay Ca’s house, chest heaving. I could hear my mother’s rapid footsteps behind me. Then she was upon me, her bamboo stick raised. She tore Nhan from me and thrust him back toward the house. He cried out when he saw her grab my hair and start beating me. The more I struggled, the more she struck me. My terrified brother continued screaming and wailing. She beat me till her strength gave out. Then she dropped the bamboo stick and took my hair in both hands. Shouting that a whorehouse was the only place I belonged, she slammed my head against the wall. She would have killed me if my grandmother hadn’t arrived on the scene, followed by Mrs Buoi. They shouted at her to stop. She called back contemptuously that I had come from her womb, disgusting as I was, and that she had the right to do whatever she wanted with me. Finally, telling Mrs Buoi to mind her own damn business, she let me go and stomped back into the house.

My body ached all over, and though wretchedly tired, I was unable to sleep that night. Anger was boiling inside me.

I never wore the purple dress again.

* * *

Life went on, cruelty or no cruelty. I had no choice but to work alongside my mother. One day, at her sewing machine with me squatting on the floor, trying to hand-stitch the hemline of a blouse, there came a moment when the sewing machine stopped. A voice outside was asking which was our house. I looked up and saw a fragile old man in dark clothes, his face partially covered by a conical straw hat. Behind him was a boy, looking amazingly like my cousin Thanh. Next to them was a cyclo driver.

I went to the door.

“Could that be you, Thanh?” I said.

It was. He recognized me immediately. Holding the old man’s arm, he gently guided him toward our house. The poor man was limping and could barely walk. He glanced up, and for a shocking moment my mind registered the possibility that this was Uncle Muoi. But his eyes were protruding and he seemed to have lost his sight.

“Father kept asking me to bring him to Sai Gon to see you,” Thanh said. “So here he is.”

My mother was standing next to me. At his words, both of us went suddenly numb. Neither of us could speak. Thanh handed me two live chickens, then walked to the cyclo and lifted out a large bag of rice. All were gifts to us from Uncle Muoi.

Thanh supported Uncle Muoi up the steps. I put my arm out to help him to the wooden divan near the sewing machine. Pushing the sewing to one corner. I invited Uncle Muoi to sit down. He hadn’t said a word.

My mother’s eyes filled with tears. She asked Thanh, “What happened? What happened to your father?”

Thanh looked down at his feet and said in a weak voice, “He has been badly tortured. He nearly died. Terrible.”

Then I whispered, “Where?”

“At Constance Garrison first, then at a torture centre, then in Thanh Chau prison.”

My eyes were smarting, my head spinning. Uncle Muoi stayed mute. Our eyes flooded with tears, like silent rain. When I lifted my head and looked toward Uncle Muoi, he was still silent. By this time Thanh had removed his conical hat. I saw the face of an old man – a dying old man.

“Uncle, would you like some tea?” He nodded.

I said, “And then would you like to lie down for a rest?”

He nodded again.

My mother sat by him. I went into the kitchen to boil water for tea. I added some ginger candies on a tea tray and placed it on the divan. Thanh was sitting on the floor, legs folded. I sat next to him and asked him about his mother and other relatives in the village. He said that they were all “fine”.

Thanh later told us ARVN soldiers had been in the middle of celebrating Tet, eating and drinking, when the NLF launched an attack. Assisted by villagers, the Nationalists encircled Constance Garrison, taking the ARVN totally by surprise. Fighting went on for four weeks. During this period my maternal relatives cooked hot meals around the clock and secretly organized emergency care for NLF soldiers.

A local Phoenix Program’s agent had informed on Uncle Muoi and he was arrested and interrogated at Constance Garrison. Uncle Muoi was charged with spying for the Viet Cong while holding his position as hamlet chief. His captors held him in a cell at the Garrison and every night brought him to Constance School for interrogation and torture. Unable to get any information from him, they transferred him to a notorious torture centre in a village near Thanh Chau, where he was subjected to even more severe forms of torture. They hanged him upside down and forced liquid lime into his nose. They beat him until he was unconscious and blood spilled out from his mouth and nose. After a month in the torture centre they still couldn’t get a word out of him. He was then transferred to a prison in Thanh Chau where they applied electricity to both sides of his forehead and charged it until his eyes popped out of their sockets.

The local authorities raided his house and threatened his family. Mo Muoi and the children escaped to another village. In hiding, she looked for ways to get Uncle Muoi out of prison. With help from relatives, she managed to come up with a large sum of money and bribed the town police. Uncle Muoi, now a pile of broken bones, was released. When his wife went to get him in Thanh Chau, she saw large numbers of inmates in the prison compound, both male and female. Some were awaiting execution. Uncle Muoi had been kept in a dark and tiny cell. His daily diet had consisted of two small bowls of rice dotted with slivers of dried fish. When she came to collect him, he was lying on the concrete floor, unconscious. His crushed hands were bleeding, his feet were bound with iron chains.

We kept Uncle Muoi inside throughout his visit. We told no one. My mother and he had their deepest conversations at night, when everyone was asleep. Later she said to me, “Walls have ears.” My parents were afraid to send him for treatment at a hospital lest we too would be persecuted by the regime. The risk was too great. My mother swallowed resentment and bitterness as she nursed her brother and witnessed his suffering. My father came home from work in a sombre mood. He would find a corner, often in the tiny living room, where he sat alone and in silence for a long time. His eyes and his overall expression revealed his intense agony. He would lie in bed with his right arm across his forehead and in the night would get up and pace noiselessly around the room. One evening my brother Nhan crawled into the bed with him. He stretched out his arm blindly to hold him, without even looking at the child. There were tears in my father’s eyes and I knew he was in great pain. I had seen him weep only once before, back in the village, when my grandmother told him I had missed him terribly and how much I had suffered during his long periods of absence.

Uncle Muoi stayed only three days. It was his first and last trip to the capital. Putting the conical straw hat on his head was a struggle for him. His trembling hands were just skin and bones. He was thirty-nine but looked more than double his age. He said goodbye to my mother and me, “Having seen you all, I am now happy to die.”

These last words stayed lodged in our hearts and minds. And in truth he did die, shortly after returning to Truong An. Like my cousin Dzung, he was buried without a funeral, and in an unmarked grave.

We went into profound grief and mourning. I returned to Ngoc Phuong temple to see the Mother Superior. My mother refused to go to any temple for help, though, and for months afterwards she wept in desolate silence.

Meanwhile, the calm passivity of my father made me wonder about his political beliefs. The influence of my maternal relatives had stopped when I was twelve, on moving to Sai Gon. I was now a citizen of the ARVN regime and had absorbed its education and political viewpoints. All the media I had been exposed to was strictly controlled by the government. No conflicting views were allowed to get through. I was a long way from the world of Uncle Muoi. But he was my very dear uncle and we all loved him. The treatment of him in captivity and the continued suffering of people in my village now devastated me. I wasn’t able to sleep for weeks afterwards. Night after night I was torn between the two opposing forces. I was walking on a rough road and did not know which way to turn.

* * *

Dai informed us by letter that following the death of Uncle Muoi the authorities at Constance Garrison ordered his widow to cut down the poon tree. They said the tree had been a shelter for the Viet Cong, hiding them from helicopters. In an area so full of jungles, this order was clearly made out of spite, against a family they could not bring under control.

UNCLE NAM’S HOUSE

For secrets are edged tools,

And must be kept from children

And from fools.

John Dryden

While my family was secretly mourning the tragic death of Uncle Muoi, we appeared to fit in reasonably well with the current political system. We were in regular contact with my paternal relatives who were pro-American and who had successfully advanced within the Sai Gon regime. Meanwhile, my father had become a senior staff member in the Ministry of Transportation. He traveled regularly with the task of improving and maintaining waterways in the southern provinces.

My mother’s violent outbursts made life increasingly miserable for all of us. But I had my paternal grandmother as my guide and confidante. It was she who comforted me in times of trouble and crisis. By the end of 1968 two significant events occurred. First, the beginning of my monthly period, and second, the revealing of the astrological chart my father had drawn for me at the time of my birth. Several of my friends, especially Nu, were intrigued that my period had started so late. They were equally intrigued by the forecast of my future.

My paternal grandmother had kept the astrological scroll all those years. The analysis contained the first sixty-years of my life, divided into three stages, with a summary at the end. During the first stage, I was to suffer “a hellish time”. But, my mental strength would be “as tough as steel” in the second stage. And during the third, I would enjoy “prosperity and success, even honour”. It prophesied that I was not supposed to live in the household of my biological parents. It also predicted I would seek “wealth” far away from the country of birth. On the subject of love and marriage, it foretold, “a hard lot, a great tragedy” up to my third life stage, when I would marry a man of distinction. The reading concluded with the phrase, “This subject will blossom late.”

I told my grandmother it was too late for me to be adopted by another family, and that the only way for me to get out of the family home would be through marriage. However, I wasn’t ready to get married. I certainly didn’t want to be married if I was going to have such a tragic time of it. The love-life aspect troubled me greatly. Why should it be a tragedy? Should I believe in it? What about the fact that I had been born in a red sac?

I showed Uncle Nam the astrological reading. He studied it, then assured me I would have a great future, regardless of circumstances. He told me not to waste time worrying. On several occasions Nam had offered financial assistance to my parents, and to support me through school, but my mother had repeatedly refused.

The previous year, when the Americans launched the Phoenix Program, Nam was transferred from Tay Ninh to the Mekong Delta. He was to command an infantry division in Bac Lieu and Ca Mau. The west side of the area he controlled faced the Jungle of Hell, and the east side was the South China Sea. He stayed in the delta until mid-1969.

I saw Nam in Sai Gon every Lunar New Year and at other times during the year. In the summer of 1969 he invited me to live in his house while going to school. I didn’t know then that he had been heavily involved in the Phoenix Program or that his conduct of widespread terror in rural villages had earned him the label “the thug with a blood debt.” I had no idea that the NLF was determined to eliminate him.

I continued living at my parents’ house. Once school had closed for the summer, I started preparing for the First Baccalaureate examination. The three-day comprehensive exams demanded a huge effort and a great deal of concentration. I continued selling bread at the same street corner with my brothers. Following the New Year attack on Sai Gon, the country had suffered a much higher inflation rate and my family’s financial situation had deteriorated even further. My mother was again pregnant. She told me that after the Baccalaureate examinations, whether I passed or failed, I would have to terminate all my studies. I resented the fact that she kept getting pregnant every few years. My grandmother noticed my reaction, and commented, “Every time she becomes pregnant, you become depressed.” A great many responsibilities fell on my shoulders. But my mother wanted more children to make sure that in her old age she would be well looked after. She even said to her friends, “Other families are endowed with wealth, we are endowed with children.”

Her mood swings during the early stage of pregnancy were unbearable. I felt weighed down and imprisoned – month after month, year after year, without end. To keep going, I had to numb my feelings and turn deaf ears to her abusiveness and insults.

While I was studying for the exams, father took some time off work to help with the care of my brothers and the household tasks. But my mother’s behaviour discouraged me to the extent that I felt like quitting and looking for a job. Nu was aware of my distress, and one day she offered to take me to an old Buddhist monk and astrologer, for advice on my education. I refused at first but in the end she succeeded in getting me there.

The monk used an astrological text in Chinese characters. He never asked for any payment but would accept small donations if anyone wished to make one. He saw his work as a free form of counseling for the needy. Nu did not have a reading done. She feared it would influence her attitude while studying for the exam. I gave the monk my lunar birth date and family name. He studied my features, then became absorbed in meditation.

Concerning the exams, he did some calculations, and said, “You will pass the exams with glory! So please continue with your studies as usual.” The monk asked if I had any further question and Nu answered on my behalf, “It’s wonderful that she will pass the exam, but what about her future, her marriage, dear Thay?” The monk did more calculations, and told me, “You will marry a foreigner.” I burst out laughing. “Will he be Chinese? or Cambodian? or Thai?”, I asked. He said that he couldn’t be specific. We bowed and bid him goodbye. I said if I passed the exam I would return with some flowers and joss sticks for his Buddhist shrine.

On our way back I said to Nu, “When you asked him about marriage, he never mentioned ‘tragedy’. Maybe he didn’t want to tell me?”

But Nu quickly explained, “It could mean that you will become a widow before you’re forty. That happened to my mother, a terrible tragedy.” Her father, I knew, had been an ARVN officer, killed in battle a few years earlier. After his death her widowed mother took her and her younger brother to live on the small farm of her maternal grandmother in a suburb near Cho Lon. ***

All the examination rooms were closely supervised by teachers and assistants. We were searched thoroughly on entry each morning and each afternoon. Students were under tremendous pressure to achieve. Compelled to cheat, some of them wrote what they thought important on very small pieces of paper, which they hid somewhere in their belongings. If they were desperate, they would make an excuse to go to the toilet and look at their notes. If a student was caught cheating, he or she would be forbidden from retaking the examination for three years.

For boys it was crucial to pass the First Baccalaureate. This allowed them either to enter the military academies of Thu Duc or Dalat, the sure route to becoming elite military officers, or to continue on to the Second Baccalaureate and apply to university. The strategy was to delay being drafted into the ARVN or, when they were eventually drafted, to obtain non-combat assignments. However, due to the difficulties of the exams and the extremely limited number of university places, most young men ended up being drafted directly into the ARVN.

The three-day exams ended and we were all exhausted, physically and mentally. If I were lucky enough to pass, I would ask Uncle Nam to help me further my education. My dream was to obtain a university education eventually. But should I fail, I would look for work.

My mother was pestering my father, “ What about introducing her to people at your work place? She may be lucky and find a secretarial job there.” My father reluctantly agreed. Another option was to do sewing full time. In her narrow view, sewing was a perfectly satisfactory way for me to earn a living, despite the fact that we were paid next to nothing for the work. I preferred to find a job somewhere else. It would not be with the Ministry of Transportation and it would never be with my mother. I said nothing about it.

One evening my mother told me to remove all my books from the shelves on the wall, “I’ve already told you, whether you pass or fail, you will not be going to school again.”

I stared back with a stony face.

This angered her. “You decide now. Either you stay and the books go, or the books stay and you go.”

My brothers started to take all the books down from the shelves. They asked me if we could sell them to the paper-recycling woman. I managed to hide a few in the attic. The rest I carried to the house of a classmate, who later refused to return them, which ended our friendship. With the books gone, my mother found another use for the shelves. That night I entered in my diary:

All becomes firewood, those dear shelves

I am forbidden to read a book again

My ears are filled with vicious cursing

Arguing only invites more beatings

I am a pickup truck, loaded with abuses and insults

I no longer wanted to see the exam results. I no longer cared if I passed or failed. I lost the desire even to think about it. Meanwhile my mother insulted my grandmother for having rich and powerful relatives in the ARVN regime, again and again. The inhumane treatment of Uncle Muoi and his early death continued to enrage her, and she addressed all her anger at us. My grandmother said, “Angry at the fish, your mother strikes the cutting board.”

Nu went to the school to find out the results but she couldn’t find me there. She saw both her name and mine on the list of those who had passed. She was overjoyed and ran all the way to my house to share the news.

On the way, she met my neighbours, Mrs Buoi and Mrs Troi. From the look on her face, they could tell what it was all about, before Nu could get her words out, “We’ve both passed!” They were so excited. My grandmother and I joined them in the celebrations. I may now have become the object of much resentment to my mother, but to the residents of Xom Gieng I was a star. Rare honour had just come to our poor neighbourhood.

I wrote a long letter to Uncle Nam, now based in Sai Gon. We met. He was thrilled by my achievement. He suggested that I move into his house to live, the sooner the better. He talked to my parents the following day, saying he’d be happy to support me in the remaining year of high school and then at university.

My mother didn’t show any strong reaction in front of Nam. My father said the decision would be entirely mine. Grandmother simply glanced at me quietly with a knowing smile.

When Nam had gone, my mother refused to speak to me.

That night, after packing, I was too excited to sleep. I contemplated going down to talk with my mother, but I was scared she’d find some way to stop me from leaving. My grandmother was as happy as she could be for me, and my father was too, because Nam was like a brother to him. My brothers were upset at my departure but I calmed them down, promising I’d come back every week to see them and they’d be given a reward if they didn’t cry. One more night, I kept thinking, only one more night and I would be out of the oppressive household that had imprisoned me for eighteen years. In bed that night, I listened to the sound of the bamboo leaves in the sighing wind and my heart filled with joy.

After midnight, while everyone slept, I moved noiselessly around the attic room, making sure everything I was leaving behind was in its place and tidy. Like my grandmother, I had throughout my life been obsessed with cleanliness and tidiness. I was easily disturbed by a disordered room. I found myself standing at the little window saying goodbye to the dead soldiers – through the dark curtain of night. I went back to bed, closed my eyes, and listened to the rustling of the bamboo leaves. Thousands of soldiers on horseback appeared in my dreams, galloping up from the cemetery, marching and chanting behind Uncle Nam, the great warriors’ commander. As they galloped past, clouds of dust swirled in the wind and arrows of red flames shot into the murky sky. The fearless soldiers were advancing at twilight along the fading horizon. They were crossing a vast forest, ascending a high mountain trail, descending into the grassland, and plunging into the black sea… I woke up and wondered if that was a bad omen for my uncle and his military career.

I arrived at Uncle Nam’s house. He introduced me to Mai, a fifteen-year old girl whom he and his wife had recently adopted. She came from the Mekong Delta. He told us we should treat each other as sisters. Mai had delicate features, with a round face, and lustrous long black hair. She would soon be starting a vocational program because, as she told me, regular school was beyond her. She was sweet and polite and always anxious to please Nam’s wife, who was a domineering force in the household. Their two sons had been sent overseas to further their education and they had no intention of returning to Viet Nam. My aunt-in-law ran a real estate business and did very well financially.

I was driven to school each day by one of the drivers, who also took my aunt and her clients to various places in Sai Gon. Uncle Nam had a different driver who drove him to work in a jeep. In their house all telephone conversations were recorded. When I realized that one of my calls had been recorded, I never dared use it again. At the front entrance Nam kept a fully loaded gun in a small cabinet attached to the wall. He told Mai and me about this and other matters of house security but he never showed us how to use the gun.

The prime minister and his family also lived in our compound, and our immediate neighbours were army generals and their families. As a result, access was strictly controlled. A general who lived next door was extremely wealthy. His wife resembled a giant plastic doll. They had several servants and half a dozen cars. Their children held noisy parties at least once a week. The spending habits and the food consumption in their household were to me unbelievable. Uncle Nam’s wife, by contrast, was more interested in acquiring money than spending it. She lived and dressed simply most of the time, and the household was habitually quiet except when she shouted at Mai or struck her with a broom stick.

The house was French colonial, two storeys high. There was a flower garden in the front, and a fenced area in the back – where Nam’s wife raised a few chickens. Their bedroom and Nam’s large office were on the second floor. My bedroom was on the ground floor, a few steps away from the large dining room. The living room was furnished in the French style. The kitchen was also large. It had its own dining area. Mai’s bedroom was nearby. The floors, upstairs and downstairs, were covered in squares of colourful French tiles.

My aunt-in-law had lent me her sewing machine and I made a pair of floral lavender curtains for my bedroom window. My bed quilt had patterns in pastel shades, lavender, green, and soft yellow, like sweet peas. I polished my desk and kept it quite tidy. The walls were white, like those in the rest of the house.

The driver picked me up from school each afternoon and when I got home I helped Mai with housework and dinner preparation. One of us would make a big glass of fresh fruit juice and leave it in the refrigerator for Nam, when he returned from work. He rarely drank alcohol. His wife’s schedule was flexible and neither Mai nor I could predict her coming and going. At dinner, in her domineering way, she would tell us about the various money making schemes she had launched, using Nam’s power and influence in the government.

According to Mai, her father had been an officer under Nam and had a serious drinking problem. Her mother had borrowed money from my aunt-in-law but found herself unable to repay the loan. Mai was sent to work for Nam and his wife to cancel the debt. Nam, however, cared for her like a blood relative. He changed her name and adopted her. She called him “Father” and his wife “Mother”. Although Mai felt intimidated by my aunt-in-law, she was devoted to Nam. Mai returned to her home village from time to time to visit her mother. But her life circumstances remained mysterious.

Uncle Nam’s mother and siblings disliked his wife intensely, because she had done away with their investments. At the beginning I didn’t believe them but gradually I noticed that she had become alienated from most of them.

One day, my aunt-in-law lost a bag containing a large amount of American dollars. That morning the driver had dropped me at school as usual, then driven her around Sai Gon to visit houses and apartments. She insisted she had left the bag inside the car. She questioned the driver again and again in an attempt to blame him. He maintained his innocence throughout. She was upset and went to see a fortuneteller but was still unable to identify the thief. Then one day I overheard her saying that my presence in the house had caused nothing but bad luck. Uncle Nam retorted that that was not an appropriate thing for her to say. She became angry with him, “You are taking sides with her again! I am so sick of all your relatives. We keep helping them but they never feel grateful to us, or for the fact that this house is their way, their only way, to heaven.” From that day on, the tension between her and me grew a thousand fold.

Uncle Nam subsequently decided that his driver should bring me to and from school in the jeep. He and I would leave the house and I was dropped off first. When my classes finished I stayed behind to do homework until he and the driver arrived. Sometimes we would stop at a large bookstore and Nam would let me choose as many books as I wanted. Like my father, he was well read, and his tastes included military strategies, romantic novels, and humorous stories.

Whenever my aunt was in an irritable mood, she would lash out at me, her husband, and Mai for no apparent reason. She would tell him again how much she hated his “parasitic” relatives. She punished Mai with a bamboo stick and on a few occasions she spoke ill of Mai’s mother as well. Mai would go to the backyard and weep. One day she told me that I would no longer be allowed to talk to Mai, “You two are evil girls who gossip behind my back.” We tried our best not to speak to each other, whether my aunt was present in the house or not. We feared that our conversations might also be recorded, like the telephone conversations.

One morning my diary disappeared. I looked for Mai and we both stepped out to the backyard for our conversation. I asked her if she’d seen my diary. She said she hadn’t. Perhaps my aunt had taken it? But why? Mai and I went searching everywhere and finally gave up. When my aunt returned that night she was in such an unpleasant mood that I was afraid to say anything. I was upset all night and couldn’t sleep. The next evening, it was Friday, and she told me, “You should go home and see your parents this weekend.” This surprised me. She had so often discouraged me from doing just that, preferring me to stay and help Mai with the housework.

Her driver took me home on Saturday morning. As soon as I walked in, my mother fell upon me viciously.

“You idiot! You whore! You insulted me in your diary, didn’t you? Well, now I’m going to punish you!”

With teeth clenched, she grabbed my hair with both hands and struck my head against the living room wall.

“Get out! Get out of here and go live like a whore!” She screamed loud enough to make the neighbours come running. Mrs Troi and Mrs Buoi stepped between us and tried to calm my mother down. But she became all the more excited.

“She can go and live in a whorehouse,” she shouted. “We don’t want her in this house any more! Whoring is all she’s good for!”

I hated my mother. I hated her ugliness – ugly in every sense of the word.

At the same time, I was so filled with resentment for my aunt. What had I done to her? She had insulted me (and Uncle Nam) and I had endured it all in silence. Why did she punish me in such a way?

I wrote a letter to Uncle Nam, telling him I would not return. His wife wouldn’t want me there anyway. He did not abandon me. He came to see me every month and continued with his financial assistance until I started my first office job in 1971.

I never told my relatives in the village about living at Uncle Nam’s house. I had no idea how much they knew about him. By now I had already drifted toward Nam’s political position. At school my classmates stopped mocking me. They no longer accused me of “being fed by the ARVN regime while worshipping the ghost of Communism” (An com Quoc Gia nhung tho ma Cong San). However, I felt a great deal of resentment toward the government and the treatment of its people.

* * *

Dai wrote and informed me that American troops had entered Truong An in July 1969. He described:

They descended from the sky in their floral and brilliant white parachutes. As soon as they landed, one of them took out a map of the region and asked the villagers for names of all rivers and channels and where the waterways were leading to. When Mo Muoi heard news of the Americans, she was so scared and withdrew into her house, shutting the door for the entire day. Mother greeted them, however, and she asked my little brother to accompany them to the waterways and explained everything to them through their interpreter.

Shortly after their reconnaissance trip, the combined US-ARVN troops conducted a series of raids. Two Americans who were part of the US military training team were killed during the campaign. In one of these raids, they left behind two American soldiers. The abandoned soldiers were completely lost. In their frantic effort to hide they managed to get under a huge pile of water palm leaves outside the house of Kim, the niece of Di Nam’s husband. They desperately hoped to be rescued by their fellow Americans or the ARVN force of Constance Garrison. But their hope was futile. Nobody knew about the Americans in hiding. The villagers were in deep mourning for their own losses.

Two days after that raid, while the residents were burying their dead, some tried to return to a normal life. Kim, in her somber mood, decided to spread out the palm leaves for drying under the hot sun. While she was carefully taking each bunch of leaves out of the pile, suddenly two white human bodies emerged from underneath. Frightened, Kim dropped to her knees and landed next to the Americans. One of them tried to help her get up. While she gazed at them in terror, the Americans signaled to her not to be afraid. Each man pointed fingers at his mouth and stomach, showing his hunger. Still fearing the Americans, Kim retreated slowly and backward all the way to her kitchen hut, her eyes still staring at them. She came out of the hut with two bowls of rice and some salted fish, and purified rainwater in a large glass bottle. They were extremely thirsty and asked her for more water. So grateful to her that they bent their knees, with hands clasped in front of their chest. Kim bowed to them and made her way back to the house. Other people rushed to the scene to see the Americans. Members of the NLF arrived and quietly took them away.

The destitute villagers tried to make the best out of every wreckage. A left-behind white parachute would be made into a mosquito net. Aunt Di Nam once commented, “The material is known for its durable quality.” Jungle green parachutes would be given to the Nationalists for camouflage purposes. US Army uniforms taken from deceased or captured Americans would also be used for deceiving the enemy during the war.

* * *

From the time I left Uncle Nam’s house, there was nothing I could possibly do to make peace with my mother. Punishing me and insulting my grandmother became a regular occurrence. She beat my brothers and provoked shouting matches with the wife of Bay Ca, Mrs Buoi, other neighbours, and the vendors at Ba Chieu market. They started calling her the madwoman of Xom Gieng and avoided her. One day my father, trying to calm her down, was punched up against the wall and she said awful things to him. He did not strike back. Instead, he said, “For the way you behave toward others, one day, in your old age, you will be confined to your deathbed and your mouth will rot.”

We did not know to what extent my mother’s earlier head injury had affected her personality, and no one could explain her habitual use of obscene language. My two maternal aunts, despite their lack of formal education, had never spoken a profane word in their lives. Sadly, my mother’s pattern of behaviour persisted right through her life and alienated all her children from her.

I thought about running away from home for good. I could not endure the home life any longer. Where would I go and where would I live? An obvious path at the time, one which a good number of young women had taken, was to become a bargirl, a prostitute. In a world in which people were committing horrendous crimes and atrocities every day, and when the war was tearing our whole society to shreds, there were worse things than living the life of a prostitute. Or so I told myself. The only danger, if I took up that path, would be to succumb to venereal disease. Granduncle Cuong had been a specialist in sexually transmitted diseases. My grandmother used to tell me that Cuong’s patients had included prostitutes catering to French soldiers. The same was happening now among the bargirls serving American soldiers. But wasn’t life full of risk and danger anyway?

I started preparing myself emotionally and mentally to become a bargirl. I felt that in order to move on with my own life I would have to turn my back on the past, severing all old ties with those I loved. The prospect frightened me. I feared the new and the unknown. I thought of carrying a venereal disease for life and how I would suffer from it. I thought of my grandmother and her concern and distress over me. What of all the lessons she had taught me, all her efforts to educate me from our earliest days in the village? I loved her dearly. How could I bring myself to betray her?

After many sleepless nights, I reluctantly decided to make one – just one – last attempt to resume my studies, less for my own sake than for those I loved and cared about – my grandmother, my father, my friend Nu, and Uncle Nam. The diary came up now and then and my mother always used it as an excuse to punish me. I questioned my own judgment for having written diaries, any diary at all, and decided to shred the remaining ones before burning them. But I would not forget the very last entry, which I had written during that anguished night in the attic.

Late night alone, next to the dim kerosene light

I try so hard to read, but my mind is not at peace

Angry muttering curses are ringing in my ears

I could not stop thinking about the life of bargirls. I imagined myself as one of them. More freedom. More independence. More danger.

MEETING THE AMERICANS

Next year we are to bring the soldiers home

For lack of money, and it is all right

Places they guarded, or kept orderly

Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly

Philip Larkin

June 1970, Year of the Dog. We were busy studying for the Second Baccalaureate exams. One afternoon, while traveling in a cyclo, my classmate, Phuong, was hit by a US Army jeep. The lower half of her white ao dai was soaked in blood and she became unconscious. The Vietnamese police had been called to the scene, and they wrote down the name of the American driver – Steven H. Sullivan, and his jeep’s number. They let him go and took Phuong to the nearby Vietnamese hospital.

I rushed to the hospital. Phuong was bundled up in white cloths, and looked as if she was in a coma. After three days, she was still in a deep sleep. I went with her family to see the head of the intensive care unit. The doctor, with a somber look, invited us to sit down, and he informed us, “Her bladder has been damaged. It’s a serious injury.” Phuong’s mother asked the doctor, “Is she going to live, doctor?”

After a moment of reluctance, the doctor said, “We will do all we can, the best we can. But…we can’t guarantee that she is going to make it.”

At that, Phuong’s mother burst into tears. And so did I. Although we had felt that Phuong’s condition might be very serious, we still hoped we had been wrong. Now the doctor’s statement confirmed our fear, leaving us with little hope for her recovery. After a night filled with anxiety, I got up at dawn and went to a telephone booth to call Uncle Nam. I described everything and he sounded worried. He advised me, “There is an American military hospital, just a short distance from here (the Joint-General Staff Headquarters). Do you still remember us passing by there; I pointed it out to you sometime ago?”

“Yes, I remember, Uncle! How do I get the help from them?”

“First, you need to go to the US Army administration office and talk to the Americans there about your friend’s situation. They should refer her to the American hospital. The US Army personnel department is located inside the government building at the junction before you turn to your school. You know what building I am talking about?”

“Sure, I know where it is. Sometimes I see Americans going in and out of the big gate.”

“That’s right. You will need to show the Americans the paper from the police, with the jeep’s licence number and the driver’s name. I think the American hospital is a much better hospital, and they may be able to save your friend’s life. Now, my dear, in case you have problems getting in touch with the Americans, you must telephone me again. Let me know later how you get on.”

I remained in the phone booth and imagined my encounter with the Americans – American men in army uniform and guns. No. I was too scared. How would I communicate with them, with my poor English? Perhaps I should abandon the whole idea of going there. I got up and could not decide what to do. As I walked slowly along the road, images of Phuong – a bundle in white cloth, her internal wounds and suffering, her imminent death – kept flashing through my mind. I felt increasingly distressed.

The more I thought of Phuong’s death, the more I was driven to do something for her. I respected Uncle Nam’s advice. Meeting the Americans could be an exciting adventure.

* * *

I got up very early, in a state of great anxiety. I waited until mid-morning, then put on my normal school clothes – white ao dai and white trousers. I walked slowly to the main road. The thought of meeting the Americans made me feel increasingly uneasy. I went past the theatre, a long stretch of shops, a herbal medicine clinic, Ba Chieu market, a high school for boys, a public park, and several distinguished colonial houses with beautiful gardens. At the busy traffic junction I stopped for a moment to work up my courage. I turned to the right and in front of me was the large entrance to the heavily guarded U-shaped building, occupied by both the ARVN’s and the US Army’s non-combat personnel. I thought I might run into some ARVN soldiers there. They had often come to my stall to buy bread the year before.

I was stopped by two Vietnamese security guards. I described the situation and showed them the paper from the police. They let me pass through the high security gate and pointed to the right wing, which housed the US Army Department.

I was met by a very tall black officer. He spoke a whole phrase of English, which I failed to understand. I asked him, “Kyan yew spik Vietnamiz, suh? I kyan understand Inklish but not wary well.” He answered with a smile that he only knew English but would repeat his sentences and speak slowly. He bent his head, “Miss, now please tell me what I can do for you!” Holding the piece of paper from the police, I said, “Dee driver, Meester Stifan Egg Soolivan ran oover mee girlfriend wid hiz jeep and she iz now in de hospiz-tan” He took the paper from my hand, “ Steven H. Sullivan. Is he the jeep driver who ran over your girl friend?” I nodded my head, “Yes suh! Dat’z him” He let out a sigh, “Oh dear! Please come with me!”

We entered a huge room filled with American men in army uniform. Some of them looked up, saying hello and even smiled at me. The black officer pointed at a chair below a window and told me to sit down. “Would you like a drink, Miss?” I nodded and smiled politely. He walked away but quickly came back, holding a red-orange can. He popped open the top, handed it to me and walked away again. It was the first time in my life that I tasted Coca-Cola.

The black officer took me to the office of a senior-ranking officer, who sat dignified behind his desk. Near him was an interpreter. The senior officer started asking me questions. He appeared decent, polite, even charming – in contrast to the devilish image of white men stuck in the back of my mind. His face was striking, his nose prominent, his skin like ivory. I noticed the three golden stars on each of his shoulders. His spotless army uniform reminded me of Uncle Nam. He said he’d be happy to help, but would need to speak to the American Public Health Advisor. He made the telephone call and explained the situation to the person on the other line. Then turning to me, he spoke in a pleasant voice, “Please wait, Miss. Dr Purdue will arrive shortly”. The interpreter disappeared. I saw him talking to another American at the far end of the room. My eyes kept glancing at the interpreter, as I was anxious for him to come back. I thought the senior army officer might wish to start a social conversation of some sort while we were waiting. I deliberately avoided eye contact. I was feeling too embarrassed with my poor English.

To my great surprise, in less than twenty minutes, the Public Health Advisor appeared and stood very tall in front of us. His hazel eyes were unusually bright, and his gray hair neatly in place, perhaps he was in his mid-fifties. The officer got up and introduced me to Dr Purdue, who smiled and was ready to shake my hand. I was so pleased. But I was somehow conscious of the doctor’s sharp and pervasive eyes, directed at me, as soon as he walked into the room.

The interpreter came back. After explaining things to me through the interpreter, the doctor said he would authorize the transfer of Phuong to the US Army hospital in Tan Son Nhat.

I left with Dr Purdue and the interpreter to see Phuong at the Vietnamese hospital. After completing all the necessary papers, the doctor and the interpreter drove straight to the American hospital while I travelled in the ambulance with Phuong. I kept thinking how generous and efficient the Americans were. I had seen them before at Uncle Nam’s house, but I had been too terrified of them. I used to withdraw into the kitchen with Mai every time American generals and colonels arrived at the house for dinner. I was now beginning to see them in a different light.

Dr Purdue and the interpreter were waiting for us inside the entrance of the American hospital. When the ambulance arrived at the gate, the interpreter walked over and talked to the ambulance’s driver, instructing him where to park. Dr Purdue saw me trying to get out of the back of the ambulance. He rushed over, offering his hand. He took my hand as I jumped out of the door. I thanked him and he gave me a pleasant smile. Again I couldn’t help noticing his sharp and penetrating eyes.

Dr Purdue introduced me to the officer in charge of admissions. Phuong was admitted to the intensive care unit. Her nurse was a beautiful blond woman, so pleasant and accommodating that I felt a huge relief. The superiority of the American hospital completely overwhelmed me – the comfortable wards, the advanced medical technologies, the impressive staff, and the hygienic condition. The Vietnamese hospital Phuong had come from only demonstrated how poor our country was. I couldn’t help wanting to know more about these Americans and to see something of their prosperous and advanced world – the world of science and technology that was beyond my comprehension.

I accompanied Dr Purdue to the hospital a few times. He drove a civilian car each time I went there with him. During one of these trips he invited me to his apartment to meet his wife. I took along my pocket Vietnamese-English dictionary. I practiced English with his wife. She was very patient and every time I made some progress with either the grammar or the pronunciation, she was very pleased.

One time I arrived while his wife was taking a bath. Dr Purdue offered me a Coke and we went out to the balcony for a chat. He gazed at me with piercing eyes, and a smile that seemed not entirely sincere, “You are such an attractive young lady and I find it so hard to resist the temptation.” I didn’t respond. But I was left feeling confused between the rare pleasure of such blatant flattery and the reluctance to behave in any way against a marriage I had observed at close hand. I had never dreamed of involvement with a man so much older. It was simply that I was intrigued by them and their Americaness. I was not looking for a boyfriend or to have an affair.

That small incident alerted me to the physical inclination of so many otherwise well balanced individuals in the artificial conditions of Sai Gon. It was a clear signal that to be alone with a man could be dangerous. I thought about this a great deal afterwards. How would I stop Purdue from making another pass at me? It would be awkward and difficult to turn him away without offending him. But I was so interested in the American world that I decided to take the risk and stay in touch with them.

Phuong recovered and just before she was discharged I made another visit to Dr Purdue’s apartment. He gave me a welcoming kiss. Then, with an unmistakable look in his eyes, he seized hold of me, lifted my face, kissed me forcefully, and started fondling me.

“You’re a beautiful girl, Jasmine. Oh! How I wish that my wife would understand and forgive me.”

I pulled away angrily.

“Me only nineteen.” I accused him. “I tink you ah even older dan my father. Yew mustn’t doo dat to me again!” He let me go, clearly annoyed.

From that time on, I would arrive at his place either with one of his secretaries – Cuc or Kim, or with Phuong.

One day, when the secretaries and I came to his apartment. I mentioned that I had met Dr Pollock, a cosmetic surgeon, at the hospital. Hearing this, Kim said she wanted to have her nose fixed. If she could get a referral for it, the surgery would be free of charge at the American hospital. Kim talked to Dr Purdue who agreed to help her – much to his wife’s annoyance. In her mind, that day, we were a bunch of silly Vietnamese girls pestering her husband. By now she was jealous. While we went on talking, Mrs Purdue got up and walked away toward the kitchen. He followed her. They were talking and I saw his back to us from the distance. I moved from my seat and went to look at some paintings on a wall. I heard his wife’s acid voice, “This kind of request is too much. Are you really taking her there?

“It’s no trouble at all, honey! I’ll be back shortly.”

“But she is taking advantage of you, and the system. She is wasting your time. Don’t you have better things to do?” She was even more annoyed.

My two friends were busy talking about Kim’s anticipated nose surgery and neither of them heard the couple’s conversation.

Purdue came out of the kitchen and said we could go to the hospital with him that very afternoon. We didn’t have the chance to say goodbye to his wife. Her comments didn’t bother me at all, as I was not involved in the cosmetic surgery. I liked Mrs Purdue and felt grateful to her for helping me with my English. It was a golden opportunity to learn something new.

Kim was given an appointment at the American hospital. She went through with her nose surgery. We all found the result too sharp for her Asian face. A few years later I lost contact with Kim, but Cuc remained a close friend. It was Cuc who introduced me to my last office job in Sai Gon in 1974.

By now I had met a few doctors and nurses at the American hospital, with whom I could carry on rudimentary conversations in English. To get through the hospital’s security gate on my own I required a medical appointment slip, but I had no illnesses or any reason to justify one. I accompanied Phuong when she went for her eye examinations and became acquainted with the eye doctor, Major Briskly. He was full of energy and loved to talk and correct my English pronunciation. He also appeared childish and carefree, some- one not to take seriously. I asked him for a stack of referral slips and he asked me why. I answered him, “So I kyan come here often, to spik Inklish wid yew.”

He thought I was joking but I took a stack of appointment slips from his desk and stuffed them in my handbag. From that time on, whenever I wanted to go to the American hospital, I would write my name on one of the slips and signed Briskly’s name myself.

A few weeks later, however, Briskly gave me a big shock. One afternoon, while we were chatting between patients’ visits, he asked if I would stay on at the clinic after his working hours. I said I would be pleased to, in my naiveté; he was a pleasant, non-threatening army doctor. After the last patient of the day, we both sat down and had a drink. Then he got up, closed the door, unzipped his trousers and pulled them down. I saw clearly the object between his legs – poking up like a handgun.

He stood there, without a word. I acted before he did. I was quickly on my feet and dashing past him, out of the room. I never went to the eye clinic again.

I now concluded that behind the American stereotype lay some very human beings. I stopped thinking of Americans as uninvited and threatening outsiders. I began looking at them as individuals -- with both strengths and weaknesses.

* * *

I’d been introduced to Robert, a first lieutenant, at the hospital’s cafeteria by one of the doctors. I met him again a few times during the period I was visiting the eye clinic. One afternoon, taking Phuong for her medical follow-up, I ran into him in the hall. He invited me to dinner that week. He had impressed me as a gentleman and I did not hesitate to accept the invitation. I knew Robert was married with two daughters and that his family lived in a beautiful house somewhere in the States. At the cafeteria he showed me a photograph of his two attractive daughters playing in the front garden of his house. He never mentioned his wife and I never saw a picture of her.

The dimly lit restaurant was run by the US Army. It was almost full. I wore a white cotton dress and Robert had his army uniform on. He was tall and handsome, with a manly, dignified look and an unusual air of purity. “Did you have a pleasant ride in the pedicab?” He asked. Reluctantly, I admitted, “I am nervous riding a cyclo in heavy traffic. I think of Phuong and her accident every time I take one.” Quickly, he said, “I will send you home with a taxi tonight. I don’t want you to feel unsafe while traveling on the road.” I felt that I had entered a new world – Robert’s world – endearing and considerate.

That evening, by the side of every American man there was his local female partner – mostly in heavy makeup, giggling and laughing, much to the amusement of their men. I glanced through the reception area. There were six other such couples. My mind suddenly returned to the conversations with my cousin Gai two years earlier, in my home village – the rapes of women by American soldiers, and the Sai Gon prostitutes. My mind struggled to downplay this sudden rush of fear and embarrassment but it must have shown on my face. Robert turned to me, as if he was aware of my uneasiness, “I am very happy that you could come this evening.” His gentle words and expression were reassuring. I relaxed.

A Vietnamese waitress directed us to a table next to a window. I was overcome with clumsiness. Never before had I been to such a high-class restaurant, and especially in the close company of a white man. Despite the comfort of the ambience and Robert’s attentiveness, I found myself adjusting warily to the scene, trying not to make my unfamiliarity too obvious. When the waitress returned to our table, she gave me a menu in English. I didn’t understand the names of most dishes or how they might be prepared. Robert explained the menu but I still could not decide what I wanted. He ordered a beefsteak, cooked rare. To be on the safe side, I asked the waitress for a salad, with fish and green beans. She asked me, “What dressing would you like for your salad?” I didn’t know what she was talking about. What had dress to do with food? I asked her to repeat the question and she said it exactly the same way again. I replied, “Just prepare whatever you think you’d like for yourself.”

She presented Robert with a gigantic plate bearing a giant beefsteak, a huge potato, and some greens. The potato was partly covered in a silver sheet and oozing some puffy white stuff. The size of his beefsteak reduced my appetite. I had never eaten with a knife and fork. I kept watching Robert and his silverware. I managed to get most of the fish and vegetables down, but it was a struggle. I tried to be polite to my host, saying, “It was very good.” The waitress appeared again at our table with the menu. After explaining the variety of American desserts, Robert suggested, “Would you like to try some apple pie with vanilla ice cream? I think you may like it.” He was right. This combination, I would never forget.

Robert asked me about Viet Nam and my family and listened attentively. The question that intrigued me most was to do with what I was planning for my future. Nobody had ever asked me that, nor in Vietnamese culture would any man be likely to. I told him that my ultimate dream was to sit in a classroom in a university, but my chances of doing that were remote. That evening was the first time I ever heard a man describing a woman’s beauty. I replied that accord- ing to Vietnamese tradition, I was neither beautiful nor even attractive. I was too tall, my complexion too dark, my nose not refined enough, and the shape of my face and the size of my mouth were seriously wrong.

The Vietnamese believe that high cheekbones presage an early death for one’s husband, the term used being “sat chong”, meaning “killing husband,” and a mouth that is too large will destroy the family’s financial fortunes and is referred to as “tan hoang cua nha”, or “bankrupting household”. Vietnamese people prefer a moon shape or an oval face for a woman and her mouth should be as small as possible. An ideal complexion is pale. Dark skin is connected with people who work outdoors, the poor labourers, the lowest class.

I never liked being photographed. Whenever I did have a picture of myself taken, I would use a black ink pen to round up the shape of my face, erasing the two cheekbones completely. With my height problem, I never wore high-heeled shoes. My paternal grandmother tried very hard to make me feel different by reminding me that I had been born in a “red sac” but I still believed I had a “bad luck” face and would never find a decent husband.

Robert seemed flabbergasted. He found the Vietnamese concept of beauty totally strange. He tried to convince me that my height was just right and that being shorter was undesirable. “Please wear high heels!” he said. I quickly answered him with a half-dismissive smile, “To stand next to yew, yes. But I kyan not do so if I am wid a Vietnamiz man.”

I learned that evening that high cheekbones and a broad mouth, together with a tall, slim body, were considered ideal for a woman in the West. A tan was taken as an enviable sign of health. This was radically new to me.

“You clearly don’t believe me, do you?” he said with an amusing look at me.

“No, I kan’t believe your words. Yew just flatter me because yew are a man.”

I felt much more at ease with him toward the end of the evening. We had several amusing conversations and good laughs.

We arranged to meet again the following week, and I would begin English lessons with him. He was looking forward to a cross-cultural friendship and to understand more about the Vietnamese people. He could speak some Vietnamese and thought he could improve it by speaking it more often. He gave two kisses on my cheeks, bidding me goodbye. I felt them all the way home.

Much later he admitted that when he first met me he was deeply moved by the mixed expressions in my eyes, or, as he described it, “a little sadness, a little sorrow, a little happiness, a lot of affection, and unyielding determination.” We began seeing each other once a week. My English improved rapidly, although I had great difficulties with English grammar and pronunciation. Our friendship was platonic and he was always happy to see me. He shared his feelings of loneliness and how terribly he missed his two daughters back in America. The war itself was one subject we never talked about. Finding a suitable meeting place was difficult. I was reluctant to go to that same restaurant and afraid of being seen in the city centre by someone who might recognize me. I would not go to his living quarters either, as that would be improper and unwise for a young and single woman. We usually ended up at one of the hospital’s cafeterias.

Robert was aware of my reservations. It took me a long time to get used to being seen with him. On one occasion we went to the botanical gardens. I was quite nervous the whole time. There he took more than a dozen photographs of me. I had never smiled in a photo before and when they had been developed, I was amazed by how I looked.

By this time, after a particularly bitter incident with my mother, I had run away from home and was staying at Ngoc Phuong Buddhist temple. Robert would take me back there in a taxi. The driver was instructed to drop me off at a distance from the temple. Robert would wait in the taxi until he was certain I had safely entered the building. He never took me back during daytime. The daylight contributed to my intense anxiety at being seen with a white man by the Vietnamese. Because of this, whether we met in the morning or in the afternoon, I would always go back in the evening.

We discussed the different cultures and lifestyles of East and West. He said that I lived in time and he lived in space, that self-denial was my secret while self-assertiveness was his strength. He was full of curiosity and interest in Eastern philosophies and Buddhism. He introduced me to American literature. I began with Hemingway’s short stories and toward the end of the year I decided that Pearl Buck was my favourite author. A Nobel laureate, she had been born and raised in China by her missionary parents. Her novels revealed the lives of Asian people and had a special appeal to me.

It was a surprise to find out that we were mentally well matched, despite having grown up in two contrasting cultures. Physically Robert kept his distance, but what seemed to be politeness was a misleading indication of his true feelings.

* * *

One evening, we sat quietly having a drink on the rooftop of the army restaurant. It was the first time I had seen Robert in civilian clothes – white shirt and navy patterned trousers. I commented on his clothes. He suddenly looked more serious and said to me, “Jasmine. I want to speak to you about something that has been on my mind for several weeks. Would you mind?”

Intrigued by his sombre look, I smiled, mischievously, “Yes, Lieutenant, I am ready to listen to anything that you wish to say.”

He told me somewhat awkwardly, “I believe that I have fallen in love with you. I didn’t really expect this.”

In shock, I instantly responded, “Oh dear! Oh Robert! I never expected this to happen either, between you and me.” Without warning, I found myself in the most delicate situation. Robert added that he was conscious of the fact that he was already married, he feared that by declaring his love for me I would break off our friendship.

I felt troubled and overwhelmed. I got up from the table and walked away, not realizing I had left my shoes behind.

I stared into the city lights. Why was I afraid of a man’s declaration of love? Was it because he was already married? But hadn’t I earlier decided I might have to become a bargirl serving American GIs? My heart and mind were filled with contradictions.

Robert had got up too and now stood behind me, arms around my shoulders. He said softly, “I’m very sorry, Jasmine. I know it’s impossible.”

I turned to look at him. The sight of his sad and tender eyes moved me and I stepped closer to him, saying with a trembling voice, “I am sorry too. I like you very, very much.”

My face was against his chest. Confused by a violent torrent of emotions, I found myself saying, “You know that my life is already full of problems.” The moment I said that to him it was as if a giant needle pierced my chest. Perhaps I already loved him but was consciously forcing myself to deny it, and the pain of the mental tension became physical.

I had never expected to fall in love with a white man. I had a strong need for meaningful friendships and affection and these were much more important to me than satisfying any sexual need or desire. Although Robert never talked to me about his wife, she was always there in my mind, and in fact her very presence served as a useful and convenient barrier for me.

I became conscious of something else too – that I had led a man on, then cruelly frustrated all his desires. That night I said to Robert that perhaps it would be better for us not to meet for a while. He said little, but the following day I received a letter from him delivered to the Buddhist temple. In it he described my heart as a “sweet flower” and said it was impossible for him to part with it.

I went to see him again and we resumed our meetings, now only twice a month. He continued to pour out his emotions by writing to me, as if he had found a real soul mate. Each of these letters was beautifully written and contained mostly his feelings and affection for me and my country. In response, I wrote to him - mostly in verse, and sometimes a few short notes. My message to him was always of longing and affection, with an underlying sadness. It was impossible to lie about my feelings. The desire to see each other had been strengthened and we soon resumed our former schedule of meeting once a week.

I began to understand him better – his emotions and sensitivity to the war-shattered environment surrounding us. He had a deeply felt need for peace and harmony in a world of aggression, conflict, greed, and vulgarity. I worried about the negative long-term effects of military life on him. I knew that he desired the comfort of my presence and affection. He was alone in a foreign country.

Since I had stopped keeping a diary, much of the expression of my emotions was transferred to Robert. I found him highly perceptive and intuitive. He could appreciate the depth of my feelings better than anyone I had known.

Every time I read his letters my feelings intensified and his images appeared vividly in my mind: the handsome lieutenant, the sensitive gentleman, the charming tutor, the dear friend, the romantic dinner partner, and the sensual body. I yearned to be close to him, for us to shed our clothes, to have his lips touching mine, to have his bare chest against my bare breasts, to feel part of him inside me, to melt and disappear with him into the earth. My desire for him tormented me. I took deep breaths, I stood under cold showers, I knelt in front of Quan Yin. I tried very hard to bury him inside my heart, not wanting him ever to emerge again.

Robert invited me to a formal dinner party, offering to buy me an evening dress. I told him I could easily sew one for myself. He wanted to take me to a silk shop to buy the fabric. I told him, “Oh no, I don’t tink so. Not dis time.” He asked me what I meant but I didn’t tell him. He was disappointed, wanting to buy something special for me.

The elder sister of one of my classmates owned many long evening dresses. She agreed to lend me one, a beautiful white dress with lace around the bodice. It fit me perfectly.

On the night of the party I arrived at the Bachelor Officer Quarters. Robert was waiting for me. The atmosphere was festive. He greeted me with a happy smile, “Here you are! My princess.” He stretched out his arms for me. He showered me with kisses.

The evening proved happy, full of good food and laughter. There was nothing deep or serious to take us below the fragile, glittering surface. I loved that evening gown and the next day when I returned it, my friend’s sister ended up selling it to me.

A few months later Robert invited me to another formal party. I went to see my friend’s sister again. I told her I could not wear the same party dress a second time, as I was going out with the same “boyfriend”. This time I chose a white dress with soft pink lace from the waist up to the neckline. I had never been to a formal dinner party before I met Robert, and I had never heard anyone saying that I was beautiful. It took me months to half-believe that I might be attractive. He would say, “beautiful young lady”, “my beautiful sweetheart”, or simply “beautiful”. My response was to laugh nervously.

Robert devoted much of his attention to me. He told friends how proud and happy he was to have known me. His affection and genuine caring were enough to convince me that I had become a real part of his life. I once overheard him saying to a friend that upon leaving Viet Nam he would be leaving his heart behind. I wasn’t certain what this implied. Every time he called me “my sweetheart”, “my princess”, or “my angel”, the word my tore me apart because I knew I could never really be his, given our life circumstances.

Dear Quan Yin, I feel ashamed of myself that I love a foreigner. But he loves me dearly. Looking at our astrological signs, we are highly compatible – when a cat meets a snake, there is true happiness. Can you please bring us together in our next life?

It was Robert who finally convinced me that I was a worthy person. For years I’d thought I was mentally inferior to other people, despite efforts to improve myself. By forcing me to change my own self-perception, he induced other profound changes in me – my whole view of life, my perception of Westerners, my hopes and dreams, what I wore, the way I walked …

I constantly worried about him. Ngoc Phuong was not just an ordinary Buddhist temple. It was a major centre of secret opposition to the government and the Americans. I knew Robert wasn’t conscious of the danger. No one else in his position would have thought of this, since we were in the capital, not in a war zone.

I knew of individual Americans being killed or hurt, and I felt a pang of sympathy. Each of them could have been Robert. And the soldier in this poem could have been him too.

Fate of an American soldier

The American soldier is stumbling in the mud

He pulls one leg up, the other one sinks deeper

Everybody, please come and watch him!

His neck and his head are covered with mud

He screams in anger, his hands are clawing and tearing at random

The more he writhes violently, the deeper he sinks

Beat him, beat him harder, the American aggressor

Beating the American until his body is fully submerged,

From head to toe…

This was my fear, the fear of a young woman in love, in a city about to be engulfed by war.

REVOLUTIONARY CELL

Bong! Bong!

I am the temple bell, on the peak of a mountain

Bong! Bong!

When you hear my sound, a new dawn arises

Bong! Bong!

When you hear my sound, please smile a half-smile

Bong! Bong!

When you hear my sound, please look with compassion On all that live…

Anonymous

I failed the Second Baccalaureate exam. This was a personal disaster, but at least it provided grounds for the end of the struggle with my mother over my education, and precipitated my surrender to the inevitable. My father could see I was in much distress even though I tried not to show it. He asked if I wanted to take the entrance exam for a two-year training program to become a registered nurse. I wasn’t interested. With my fear of blood, I felt that this kind of work would not be suitable for me. He said he would explore some other career possibilities for me through his government contacts.

I telephoned Uncle Nam and told him the exam result but he didn’t seem upset. He said calmly,“ It was a very tough exam and I know that you would have done your best. Tomorrow let me arrange for you to take a special English exam at the USAID language centre. If you pass the test, they will send you to the United States for vocational training, and on return they will recommend you for a job with the Americans. Would you like to try that?”

An arrangement was made by Uncle Nam, and I took the English test the following week. Unfortunately my score wasn’t high enough for me to be accepted. This didn’t surprise me, as I had not done well in my English classes while in high school. I enrolled in a typing course but could only get my speed up to nine words per minute. I tried a second time but still there was no improvement. The instructor thought I had problems with hand coordination and told me to quit.

Now in the category of unskilled labourers, I returned to the road to sell bread. The ARVN soldiers whom I had known came back. They asked me where I had gone for so long. “We all missed you, sweetheart,” they said.

Phuong was discharged from the American hospital. My mother expected her mother to pay special respects to my family. She maintained that I had given up a great deal of time from studying and sewing in order to help save Phuong’s life. Phuong’s mother came to our house but she failed to convince my mother that she was sufficiently appreciative. Her physical appearance was an added irritant to my mother – fancy clothes, long red fingernails, curly hair, and heavy makeup. Phuong’s mother and the children were living in moderate material comfort – provided by Americans GIs. Phuong’s father had been admitted to a mental institution for life, while her mother tried to support the family on her own. Without skills, and with good looks, she became intimately involved with American men for the family’s survival. This strained the motherdaughter relationship and upset Phuong, who viewed her family situation with shame and a loss of face.

When Phuong’s mother left the house, my mother started making rude remarks about her, “All she cared about was her own sluttish appearance. You should have no more to do with that lot.” I told her that Phuong was my friend and it was my duty to help her, regardless of what her mother did or didn’t do. This just added fuel to my mother’s fire. For once I had asserted myself.

Amazed at my defiance, she turned to the only resort she understood – violence. She went into one of her rages and nearly killed me. She raced through the house, grabbed a kitchen knife and came at me with it. I ran into the alley. Knife in hand, she chased after me until I was nowhere in sight. Her screams brought out the neighbours. She retreated into the house where her ranting and cursing continued. I thought my mother had become an insane woman.

Once I was safely out of her reach, I slowed down to a walking pace, thinking where to go. Only one destination made sense as a refuge – Ngoc Phuong Buddhist temple.

The temple was only three kilometres from our house. It would still take me over two hours on foot, as I avoided traveling on the city streets, in case my mother sent someone to follow me. Instead I took a circuitous route along footpaths off the main roads. The temple was near the edge of a hilly rural area in the northeast of Sai Gon, known as Go Vap, or Stumbling Hill. I walked through an area where they grew fungi for export. Dozens of large bamboo trays, containing many varieties of mushroom and tree fungus, were placed in each front yard to dry in the sun. It was extremely hot that day. My eyes were blinded by the blazing sun. I passed through a large field of tall areca trees and a betel leaf plantation. Then clumps of fruit trees appeared. The delicious aroma of ripened guavas, longans, custard apples and tangerines filled the air. Comforted, I moved northward along the dirt roads until Ngoc Phuong appeared.

Sister Dieu Thai came into view. She was sitting in the lecture hall listening to a poetry reading. She came out to say hello and saw tears in my eyes. She immediately took in the situation.

“You can stay at the temple tonight, can’t you?” She asked while we were walking along a path in the vegetable garden at the back. I had met Sister Dieu Thai three years earlier. She had been an orphan. Her Indian father had abandoned the family and her mother died when she was a child. She lived at the temple and taught at a private kindergarten.

The temple took me in. I believe now that my act of defiance, such a significant step in my slow escape from a chaotic and repressed childhood, would not have been possible if Robert had not persuaded me of my worth. I now had new ground on which I could stand and try to build a future self.

That was July and the middle of the monsoon season.

That evening, after a light vegetarian meal, Dieu Thai and I went out for a quiet walk around the temple. We talked about my situation and what I could do to make a living. If the temple did not let me stay for a longer period, the only option left for me would be to become a bargirl. I refused to return to my parents’ home.

While Dieu Thai and I were deep in conversation, the sky suddenly turned black, dark clouds quickly filled the horizon, and lighting flashed. Large and heavy raindrops began spattering on the roof tiles, accompanied by powerful gusts of wind. Branches and leaves yielded to the wind and we heard cracking noises. We started to run, nearly blown off the ground. Once inside, blasts of wind kept coming, one after the other. Bamboo shades rattled against the windows. Rainwater came bursting through cracks into the dormitory. Kerosene lamps were blown out. In the dark, we tried to close the French shutters but the wind forced them open again. Crashes of thunder and lightning continued to hammer the earth. The rain poured down like a waterfall. The kerosene lamps were re-lit, I knelt behind one of the dripping windows, looking out through an open crack. I watched the white curtains of rain moving downward. The sky kept roaring, moaning and screeching. How I wished to be swallowed and melted by the storm! I wanted to disappear from the earth, to end living.

When we had finished wiping the rainwater off the floor of the room, Sister Gioi made chrysanthemum tea for herself, Dieu Thai and me. It was soothing. The symphony of rain and wind and thunder continued until midnight. By then many of the nuns had gone to bed, having to get up before the rooster’s crow for their morning meditation. I bade good night to Dieu Thai. She turned to look at me and saw some tears clinging to my eyelashes. She dashed to her clothing cabinet and quickly took out a white handkerchief.

“I will be all right, Sister,” I said to her. “Good night to you.” Through the remainder of the night I lay listening to the sounds of raindrops over the temple’s roof and each gentle motion of the passing wind. The room was cold and I shivered under the blanket Dieu Thai had placed at the side of my bedroll. Most of the night I thought about Robert. A relationship without future. A dead-end road.

Morning came, and with it the need to find new routines. Dieu Thai suggested that I make vegetarian steamed buns to sell at a road junction and she would lend me money to buy the ingredients. In the meantime, she would ask the senior nun to provide me refuge. The following morning I produced my first fifty steamed buns, each stuffed with tofu, quail eggs, mushrooms, peas, cabbage, and bean sprouts. They were nearly as large as a rice bowl. Some of the nuns commented that I was far too generous and suggested that I increase the price. I sat on the roadside every morning, wearing Dieu Thai’s clothes – a knee length cotton blouse in dark gray or brown, and matching trousers. My long hair was braided, rolled up at the back, and covered by a dark cotton scarf, which also covered part of my face. I looked like a novice. Afraid someone would recognize me, I was always alert and refrained from talking to passers by. Luckily, I encountered no one who knew me.

During the two months of sanctuary at the temple I made some new clothes for myself. One of the nuns sewed an ao dai for me and I sewed two Western style dresses, all in white. The money for the fabric came from my own income. Sister Gioi worried about my getting cold in the night so she began knitting a sweater for me, the colour of incense smoke.

I bought two pairs of leather shoes, one black and one white. They had fairly high heels. My life now was one of opposite extremes: cruelty and kindness, sorrow and joy, old and new, East and West… On the one hand, I was the humble looking young girl in the temple’s faded clothes and dusty sandals; on the other, a young lady in an elegant white dress and high heels at the side of a dignified gentleman in the affluent American setting.

To prepare for my date with Robert, I would return early to the temple from the dusty road. If Dieu Thai – my “guardian” – was in, we would have a chat. Then I’d take a bath in filtered rainwater and wash my hair with soap-berry shampoo produced by the nuns. One of the nuns had made for me a jar of rose-scented water from rose petals, which I sprinkled myself with after the bath. Each jar of rose water took six large roses. I wore very light lipstick and little powder on my cheeks, no mascara or hair spray. My nails were always kept in perfect condition. Robert once described this look as “pure and elegant beauty”.

The sisters were very tolerant. They overlooked rules in my case and appeared to trust my judgment. One of them even said, “I wouldn’t mind having an opportunity to practice English with your American friend.” When I was all dressed up for a date with Robert, my appearance shocked some of the senior nuns. However, several of the younger ones seemed to be tempted by my “sin” and wished that they could just once have a good time outside. One of them dared to accompany me to the Bachelor Officer Quarters. On arrival there she whispered to me, “I’m completely overwhelmed by the world of white men and their uniforms and all the decorations”. The words “white men”, spoken by a fellow Vietnamese, suddenly made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t want anyone to see Robert as a “white ghost”. I still remember, when I was a child in the village, how my grandmother, and most everyone else, referred to people they had hardly had any contact with as white ghosts or white monsters. It made them mysterious, sinister, and different. But to me Robert was real, tangible, and attractive. The difference was simply a matter of geography. He was a Westerner, and that was all.

We left the BOQ and went to an Italian restaurant. Robert wanted to speak Vietnamese with the young nun, but she was anxious to practice her English. Every time he asked her a question in Vietnamese, she answered him in English!

The nuns were always busy, with their morning and night meditations, sewing, knitting, cooking, growing vegetables, and soliciting public donations. I learned that many of them traveled regularly, but I never got to know where they went or what they did. I never asked. Ngoc Phuong was founded in 1958 by the head-nun, Sister Huynh Lien, and it soon became the inspiration for over one hundred Buddhist meditation centres throughout the South, including the Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands. The temple, built with public donations, consisted of three buildings of French design, each with twostoreys, occupying approximately twenty-five hundred square metres. Surrounded by flower gardens, shady trees and courtyards, the buildings had a white exterior, with soft-yellow borders and religious motifs. The bo de, or linden trees were favourites of mine and I would often sit at the foot of one, reading a book or enjoying a conversation with one of the nuns. These trees provided cool shade and produced fragrant yellowish-white flowers in abundance. The interior walls of Ngoc Phuong were painted white and soft yellow. There were beautiful floral French tiles on the floors. The chinh dien, or central chamber was on the first floor of the middle building. Toward the back was a large shrine with the Buddha sitting on the lotus throne. The giang duong, or lecture hall, where the Mother Superior delivered all her speeches, was on the ground floor. The same hall was also used during the war for public meetings and for organizing public demonstrations.

It was a major centre of covert resistance. Regardless of rank order, there seemed to be an unspoken difference between the nuns who were politically active and the rest. I had particularly good relations with those who weren’t political. The Mother Superior always treated me with respect. One day I asked her about her views on various religions. We had a long discussion and she explained that Buddhism appealed to many Vietnamese people because they had been exposed to so much pain, suffering, and turmoil throughout the country’s long history.

The Vietnamese have a strong desire for happiness, she said, yet they also have a considerable capacity for renunciation, which is the Buddhist way of life. The Buddhist view of happiness is of a total happiness that only occurs beyond the earthly world. When the Buddha became enlightened, he is said to have reached the door to undying, or Nirvana. At the temple the senior nuns always empha- sized the practices of “right eating, right drinking, right breathing, right concentration, and right meditation”. They believed these were far more important than simple beliefs. Systematic meditation lies at the heart of the Buddhist life and leads to mental comfort and tranquility. Meditation helps the mind to become an instrument capable of seeing things as they really are. Genuine Buddhists do not worship the Buddha as a god. They respect him as a great teacher.

At home we had a small Buddhist shrine in the attic, the highest place. My father didn’t go to his temple on a regular basis, but my grandmother and I used to go to Ngoc Phuong each Full Moon and during most major Buddhist festivals. We traveled in a simple version of the horse-drawn carriage, with humble cushion seats and a modest canvas hood, led by an old horse and its emaciated owner. Grandmother wore either her black or dark blue silk ao dai. Her white hair was tied into a simple bun at the back. She carried a black umbrella. As a woman of the city, she would never wear a conical hat. I always wore a white ao dai. For every trip to the temple our basket held an offering of incense sticks, fresh marigolds or lotus, and some fresh fruits.

As my grandmother became more fragile with age, her monthly visits to the temple came to an end and she only went at Lunar New Year. The horse carriages became a thing of the past. Taxis and cyclos were considered too much of a luxury for regular use. Since the temple was outside the city, there were no buses. It was difficult for her to travel on the lambretta, also known as motorcycle-taxi, or tuk tuk. When this vehicle moved, it shook up and down and produced loud squeaking noises like a wounded animal and emitted a trail of dark smoke. Often the number of passengers exceeded the seating capacity.

During my refuge there I met many of the nuns, but learned nothing of their family backgrounds, except for Sisters Dieu Thai and Gioi. As the most junior nuns in the temple, they wore gray or brown instead of saffron coloured robes. Gioi was a beautiful woman in her late twenties, who had been saved from deliberately drowning herself. Her ARVN soldier boyfriend had deserted her when he learned she was pregnant. She gave birth in the temple; but the child did not survive. Dieu Thai had comforted her and so became her best friend. Gioi worked as a nurse at my high school’s clinic.

Sister Dieu Thai and I spent time outdoors most evenings, especially when there was a moon. We sat on the green grass at the back garden, under a luminous sky. The rising moon flickered through the graceful leaves of the linden trees. We breathed in the slight breeze and talked for hours, like devoted sisters.

The night before a Full Moon, between four and five in the morning, we would get up and go to the kitchen. For early breakfast, we each helped ourselves to a bowl of rice and mung-bean porridge, with mustard cabbage pickles and salty bean curd cakes. Many of the nuns would be there, getting things organized for the feast of the Full Moon. I was assigned to the team that prepared vegetarian spring rolls and would fry tofu cakes, roast peanuts, and slice mushrooms and vegetables. I also helped with the preparation of puff eggplants, one of the temple’s famous dishes. Dieu Thai’s team made a chunky soup of pumpkin, fragrant squash, coconut milk, and fresh cashew nuts. Varieties of cooked tofu, salads, preserved radishes, pickles, dumplings, noodles, porridge, and bread were beautifully prepared. There was glutinous rice with a fruit puree for steaming, which brought out the flavour as well as the fragrance of the fruit. The rice was shaped into a dome over fresh banana leaves.

Around mid-morning, hundreds of followers of Buddha arrived at the main entrance, mostly women and young girls, beautifully dressed in the traditional Vietnamese ao dai in all colours of the rainbow. The nuns greeted them, led the way, then helped them arrange the vast quantity of fresh bouquets and numerous trays of fresh fruits – both inside and outside the temple. In the main courtyard, below the white marble statue of Quan Yin, women took turns saying their prayers. Some wept over the untimely deaths of loved ones. Their long dresses fluttered in the wind in the misty gray of the burning incense.

Inside, on the first floor, women knelt in front of the large Buddhist shrine and chanted prayers. A little later they descended to the lecture hall and took their seats on soft cushions. After an inspiring lecture on the teachings of Buddhism by the Mother Superior, people gathered in the gardens for the vegetarian feast. The head nun was a poet who often composed in the same office I had gone to find consolation following the deaths of my cousins. She was highly respected.

Sister Huynh Lien was also a political activist who regularly organized public protests against the war. For years she made the temple a temporary shelter for female political prisoners after their release. Most of them became incapacitated from torture. In the early sixties, when the Americans began sending their troops to Viet Nam, Sister Huynh Lien secretly joined the National Liberation Front. While she led many anti-war protests with other nuns, she failed to influence the ARVN regime. Ngoc Phuong became the main distribution centre for food and medical supplies for Nationalist troops in three major strategic locations: War Zone D (Bien Hoa and Long Binh), District IV of Sai Gon, and the Long An province (a revolutionary cradle and the birthplace of my paternal grandmother and granduncles).

Ngoc Phuong quickly became an ideal location for secret meetings and hiding senior members of the National Liberation Front. Earning the nickname Tong Hanh Dinh – General Executive Headquarters – the temple was the main communication base for public demonstrations against the war by women and students in South Viet Nam. From the mid-sixties on, small groups of nuns started leaving the temple, abandoning their religious life to join the NLF. Some of the nuns of Ngoc Phuong played an important role during the Battle of New Year’s Eve.

Toward the end of the war, street protests resulted in more and more bloody confrontations with the police. Many of the nuns and their followers were killed, imprisoned, or executed. In October 1974, the government sent troops to blockade the temple with razor wire and intimidate the nuns, labeling them “disguised Viet Cong”. Some of the surviving nuns managed to escape and the temple remained vacant until the end of the war. Meanwhile, in November 1974, Sister Huynh Lien, assisted by Mrs Ngo Ba Thanh, a prominent lawyer and political activist, led the remaining nuns in their final anti-war protest. Sister Huynh Lien described the confrontation with the police and the treatment of the nuns in her poem:

The police struck savagely at the nuns

Who were falling down and shedding blood

Immediately fellow countrymen and women rose up

The streets were now filled with a huge crowd

Army reinforcements quickly arrived from Xom Ga

Nuns of Ngoc Phuong whom they attacked…

As traffic was moving across Vo Di Nguy Street

They found two dead bodies among the wounded nuns

That summer I knew little of the temple’s underground activities and did not realize how committed Sister Huynh Lien was to the NLF. But I was certainly aware of the presence of women who had been political prisoners, and couldn’t help noticing the regular absences of sisters allocated to various parts of the country. I was fully aware of the nuns’ public protests against the regime. One day, I saw the following poem (by the poet Che Lan Vien) on a wall in the dormitory.

Awaiting an Execution Order

While waiting for the execution order

She decided to knit a cardigan

Her knitting was now completed

But her execution was delayed

Quickly she ripped the cardigan apart

And began to knit it all over again

What if they execute her suddenly tonight?

There were several stories told by the nuns among themselves, including one in which the Mother Superior had sat as a medium for a deceased NLF leader, wanting to send messages to the living.

The Americans then in Sai Gon, at least individually, seemed only vaguely aware of the forces ranked against them and the dangers they faced walking the streets. Sympathy for the Nationalist cause was far wider than it appeared, and the Southern regime had deluded itself into thinking they were up against a group of Communists who could be isolated by ideology. They were actually dealing with national pride on a large scale. The Southern army of conscripts fought without a sense of purpose. Stories of widespread corruption in the local administration only made the soldiers’ morale worse. The Nationalists, on the other hand, were beginning to sense their victory. Meanwhile, solitary Americans were at increasingly high risk of being attacked and kidnapped.

I lived in both worlds and moved between them daily. The more people were oppressed by the regime, the more I understood the nuns’ nationalist sympathies. But my heart was with an American lieutenant. Nothing made much sense. My involvements with the Americans had removed the national perspective. It was now substituted by the much more complex human factor.

I was beginning to sense, even if he didn’t himself, that Robert’s life had become much more precarious. I began to fear that he might be kidnapped by the NLF. Maybe, having experienced so much loss, I had come to anticipate the worst. But then according to Bay Ca’s daughter, Duyen, Uncle Nam took too much risk coming to our house every month in his army uniform. She thought it was too dangerous. Several government officials in charge of security in our area had been taken away in the night and executed.

If the NLF ever kidnapped Robert, I thought to myself, I would go to the Mother Superior for help. Although I knew only part of her activities against the Sai Gon regime, I sensed that I could count on her. If they sent him into the jungle, I would join him and be willing to suffer with him.

My country was caught between two great opposing currents and I felt myself drawn into the whirlpools between them.

FAREWELL TO A DREAM

“Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need to know of hell”

Emily Dickinson

On my way back to the temple, after having sold all the buns, I heard footsteps and voices behind me, “Big Sister! Big Sister!” Turning, I saw my brothers, Trung and Nghia. They rushed towards me and I stretched my arms out wide. After two months of worry and distress, my grandmother had guessed I might be at the temple, and so had sent them to look for me. “Grandma is weeping nearly every night. Sister please come home!” They told me my father was very angry with my mother. She assumed that I’d run away and sold my virtue to survive. Uncle Nam stopped by the house one evening and my mother told him, “There will be no need for you to come back here next month. She is gone, and gone for good.”

“What did Uncle Nam say to Mother?” I asked.

“Not much,” Nghia said. “He just looked very sad and walked out of the house.”

“He looked angry too,” Trung added.

I told my brothers that I had no desire to return home, but they cried and begged me to forgive my mother.

I knew her too well. If I continued at the temple, she would come and make an embarrassing scene in front of the nuns. I had to leave as soon as possible. I thought of lying to my brothers, telling them I would be back later that day, and after they left, I would simply disappear. But where would I go to live? And what about Robert? I reluctantly came to the conclusion that the only choice was to go back home. “I will be home later tonight. Will you tell Grandma that?” They both cheered. That evening I went to see Robert.

* * *

I’d been having strange and frightening dreams. I couldn’t stop thinking of him surrounded by increasing danger. In one dream, we were being detained in the jungle, mired in mud and it was raining heavily. Our clothes were torn. He held me in his arms and kissed my breasts. My body was as cold and passive as a corpse. We floated away on a powerful current and disappeared into a silent river where dead men floated by in batches. The water was sticky and gruesome, like spilled blood.

In reality, the theme of death was all around us. I can still summon the sad and mournful voice of one of the nuns after everyone had retired to the dormitory. In the dark and still night we heard her haunting lament wafting on the chilly wind. She sang out several war-poems, including one by the poet Nguyen Du about foreign soldiers, who never returned home.

Sad for them, souls of the lost thousands

They must set forth for unknown shores

They are the ones for whom no incense burns

Desolate, they must wander night after night

To me, the thousands of lost souls were Americans who had lost their lives in my homeland.

Though I was in love with Robert, I felt he should be out of the country and the sooner the better. Like the majority of Vietnamese, I felt the Americans were not likely to win their “Vietnam War” and the risk for them was too high. Firstly, most fighting took place in farms, homes, and villages, with guerrilla aggression on one side and “search and destroy” missions on the other. There were very few large pitched battles clear of civilian areas, and never a clearly defined front line dividing the combatants. Often more innocent civilians were killed than members of the guerrilla army. Secondly, the Nationalist forces were fighting with a strong sense of mission – ready to sacrifice their own lives to defend their homeland. Thirdly, they had thorough knowledge of and familiarity with local climate and terrain, which the American troops found threatening. Lastly, the Americans could never be absolutely certain that they really held the territory they had fought to possess. They were never really sure of their enemy’s identity or location. Frustrated aggression would easily turn friends or neutrals into enemies.

Viet Nam’s countryside was filled with Americans in military uniforms. They did not know the country’s background, the culture, or the way of life of the Vietnamese. Whenever the peasants saw an NLF soldier tied up and followed by American soldiers holding guns and bayonets, their sympathies certainly ran with the captive.

In a “cordon and search” mission, where shooting and destruction were rife, a US Marine described, “Their homes had been wrecked, their children killed, their rice confiscated, and if they weren’t pro- Viet Cong before we got there, they sure as hell were by the time we left.”

Carrying a thirty-kilogram pack in intense heat and humidity, often through swamps or dense jungles, harassed by insects and leeches and snakes, and in fear of booby traps or sudden enemy fire, the American experience on the ground often sparked anger and violence.

An ARVN soldier during the late sixties revealed his own ambiguity and frustration while fighting alongside American troops:

You, my friends, have come to Viet Nam

You, my friends, have drunk the water of this tiny nation

But, you, my friends, have not understood the soul of its people.

You have not been willing to see their burning desire

You are not deaf, my friends, and you are not blind

Then why do you keep on fighting?

Oh, my US soldier friends Haven’t you asked yourself?

With all the corpses of your comrades

With all the wealth of your nation

With all the modern weapons that you use

Why haven’t you achieved victory?

Letters found on dead American soldiers in remote mountains and jungles often conveyed the distress of their situation in this foreign land. Here are some examples:

“It was an unbelievably large group – the Viet Cong. We were attacked by them and already lost a few battles…When we raided an area there was no sign of them, but as soon as we went past, so many of them appeared all of a sudden and attacked us from behind… ”

“Our troops are fighting against many small armies hiding themselves in jungles and mountains. They have already inflicted huge casualties on our forces… ”

“We are wondering about the meaning of this war and our own sacrifice. So far it has been such useless effort to win over the enemy.”

“The local people are so fearful of us. Whenever they see us they run away, as if we are carrying deadly and contagious diseases to them.”

“One day when we have our children we will make certain that they will not be sent to this horrible country.”

When members of the Nationalist army found unsent letters of dead American soldiers, someone who knew English would read them. Out of respect for the deceased, each letter would be buried with the body. Very often the finder inserted the letter into a container found nearby, such as an empty coke or beer can, or a bottle, and placed it next to the body in the grave. Vietnamese culture holds that once somebody is dead, the burial must be treated with a certain level of respect, if circumstances allow, regardless whether the deceased is a friend or an enemy. The dead are on a level above the living. One time a returning nun described how a friend had tried to preserve a letter by wrapping it with a small plastic sheet. She placed the letter on the chest of the American before burying him.

I was stirred up with my own anxiety and asked the nuns, “Why didn’t the Viet Cong give those letters to their superior so they could be mailed to the men’s home country?”

The nuns gave me a surprised look. One of them said, “They couldn’t do that, Little Sister.” “Why couldn’t they?” I insisted. “It was important for the men’s relatives in America to receive the letters.”

But the nuns went on, “Just think of the costs to mail those letters, dear! Where would they get the money to buy stamps? They couldn’t even obtain enough food to survive themselves. And what a hardship to guard the letters and transport them from such remote areas to the outside world?”

I was reluctant to ask more questions. I didn’t really want to know more.

One night I overheard a conversation between one of the nuns and an invalid woman asylum seeker. The woman said something about captured Americans being subjected to “paying” with their deaths when the rural villages were bombed. I learned that often the Viet- namese spy networks aided the Nationalists with information about the date of an air raid – from a few hours to a few days or weeks or months. They would send a few American prisoners to the targeted zone -- to be killed by their own fire. In North Viet Nam, where American aircraft started bombing in 1964 and where it was intensified under Nixon’s order in 1972, every time the Americans launched another merciless bombing mission, a number of American prisoners would be taken out – hand cuffed and legs tied to a tree or a pole – and left to die under the pouring bombs. The prisoners, mostly pilots, had been kept in Son Tay and Ap Lo compounds, a remote forested area northwest of Ha Noi. When the Nationalist intelligence informed the Ha Noi government that the Pentagon would conduct an air raid to rescue the prisoners in November 1970, the captive Americans were moved to another secret location.

* * *

The pressure from my mother seemed to have eased. A few days after I returned from the temple my father arranged an interview for me at the Ministry of Transportation. I was accepted into the accounting department, to start work the following month. The salary was small, but I would be pleased to be away from home all day. And naturally it was much better to have an office job than do manual labour.

Robert was again sent to a war zone. American soldiers were dying in large numbers, or missing, and he never told me where he was going or where he had been after he came back.

After he left I became ill with a high fever, a severe headache, and nearly lost my voice. Although we had planned to meet after he returned to Sai Gon, I was too ill to see him. We had no telephone at home so it was impossible for me to contact him.

A week went by. I knew he must be back. The fever and headache were fading and my voice was nearly back to normal. I would go to the BOQ the next day.

That afternoon, to my great surprise, he suddenly appeared in front of our house. I’d written my home address in his address book months earlier but had not expected him to find it. I was lying in bed when he arrived. Seeing Robert in full army uniform standing at the door, I nearly stopped breathing. It was absolutely insane of him to be wandering alone in my neighbourhood, especially in an army uniform.

My mother was surprisingly hospitable to him. I translated for them. She made him a huge glass of fresh lemonade. Robert and I kept smiling at each other, although my level of inner discomfort was as intense as when I had first gone to the army restaurant the previous summer. We lived in such different worlds and he had never before been inside a place like mine, in all its simplicity.

I made sure his visit was short and asked Nghia to take him back to the main road. I wanted badly to go with him, but I couldn’t bear the idea of the neighbours’ eyes following us with disapproval and criticism. My little brother returned, very pleased, with a five-dollar bill.

The entire neighbourhood began to gossip about me and the American. In the evening I overheard my mother saying to my father, “That young man is very polite. And he is good looking and manly. It’s a good thing. There is no use dating a coward.”

I’d often in the past heard my mother hinting that my father wasn’t manly enough. In praising Robert, she was also insinuating criticism of her husband. But my father showed no sign of being upset. With a serene smile, he said to my mother how sorry he was to have missed Robert, and that he hoped he would have another chance to meet him.

I recovered from my illness – was it the shock from Robert’s visit? I went to see him the next day. He took me into his arms and squeezed me so hard that I felt I might condense to nothing. He said he’d missed me terribly while he was away and when there was no sign of me on his return, he had become so anxious he had to find me.

He’d gone shopping in the city centre. He’d searched through all the fashionable fabric shops on Tu Do Street and bought me a piece of white silk, three metres long. The texture of the silk was exceptional and it contained a delicate misty-white floral pattern. I had an ao dai made and wore it to the Guillaume Tell restaurant. That was the first time that I’d gone to a French restaurant. The experience was all the more notable since I was going with a foreigner. I was now willing to go out with him to places I’d been reluctant to go before, including a few reputable Vietnamese restaurants. Still, every time someone stared at us I could feel disapproval.

Robert bought lots of white fabric for me, so much that I teased him about it, saying that he was the “clearing-house” for all the white silk, cotton and linen in Sai Gon. I had two white shirts made for him by a tailor, and I hand-embroidered his initials on each of them. I also made a dozen white handkerchiefs, with his initials at one corner. In my most private thoughts he was like a cherished husband.

One day he surprised me with a very attractive purple raincoat and matching floral umbrella. The raincoat fit me perfectly; he commented that I was a “perfect 10.” He had not been able to find a white raincoat but thought the purple one was pretty and would look good on me. Two weeks before, he had asked me, “Sweetheart, can you please tell me why you wear only white?”

It was a difficult question to answer, but I told him, “White helps me to feel physically calm and to maintain some peace within myself.” There were other reasons but I couldn’t tell him. One day, as we were having a drink at the hospital’s cafeteria, he plucked up the courage to ask, “Can I buy some bathing suits for you?”

The words “bathing suits” coming from his mouth made me a little embarrassed. I concealed my reaction with a quick answer, “Snoproblem!”

“Say it again!” he said pretending not to understand.

“No problem!” I said giggling. “But” – hesitating – “it may not be a good idea”.

“Why?”

“I may not wear them.”

His face fell, so, after a few moments of awkward silence I said to him, “Yes, I’d like to have some bathing suits.”

“What colours would you like?”

“White. But I don’t think they make them. You decide.”

It took me nearly five months to agree on a trip to Vung Tau. But we enjoyed our trip very much and didn’t hesitate to go again.

Vung Tau had been known under the French as Cap Saint Jacques, located on the South China Sea, some one hundred and twenty kilometres southeast of Sai Gon. We would get there before noon and stroll along the seashore, climb up into the nearby hills, or visit a pagoda. We had lunch at a seafood restaurant specializing in crabs roasted with sea salt and giant prawns sautéed in fresh garlic. My favourite drink was always fresh coconut juice. Robert liked Vietnamese food but chopsticks defied all his efforts to hold them properly.

In the afternoon we would go to the Back Beach, a long stretch of sand under hot sun. Robert went into the water and took a quick swim while I got ready. I would run into the water, jump over the big waves until I reached him and fall into his arms. He used to duck me in the water. He swam very well but I preferred to stay close to the shore. He would come in from time to time to carry me out further into the sea. I loved to stand in the deep water with him, our bare skin really touching. He would kiss me differently then. When this happened the first time, I recorded:

The way you kissed me today was different

It was sharp like silver and hot like fire

Now you stir up my mind and unsettle my heart

Oh dear Lieutenant! You have just become a devil

Afterwards, we lay side by side on the golden sand under the sun. Once I fell asleep and woke up to find his arm so stiff it could hardly move. It had become numb from the weight of my head. He told me, “I didn’t want to wake you up my sweetheart.” “Next time I will bring along a little pillow!” I said, at which he held me closer to him and whispered, “There’s no need for a pillow.”

These rare moments of closeness gave me much happiness but also a deep sadness. Vietnamese women were raised to suppress themselves sexually in order to preserve their chastity until marriage. In my grandmother’s generation, it was even worse. A woman was strongly discouraged from remarrying after her husband died. When I was in high school, all the girls had to learn the Family Training Ode (Gia Huan Ca) in literature class, and we had to recite such poems and learn them by heart, supposedly for the rest of our lives.

Behold virtuous women of chastity

Whose iron will shields them from lustful fire

A pious, gentle daughter gives her parents peace of mind

Brings praise to her family to last a thousand years

It was a very hot and humid day. I put on a thin short-sleeved white cotton dress. After I had arrived at the BOQ, Robert took me to the army restaurant for dinner. We went to the restaurant’s roof terrace afterwards. Sitting at our usual table, we started my English lesson, then we discussed a book that I was reading. In a moment of playfulness I put my feet over his knees under the table. Soon his hands were caressing my ankles. I felt a burning sensation. Embarrassed, I tried to withdraw my feet but he wouldn’t let me. I blushed. He seemed to enjoy watching me struggle. Whenever I had blushed before, he would gaze at my face with amusement. This time his look was different, more serious. At that moment, I couldn’t help but feel physically drawn to him. I really wanted to be touched by him, from my face down to my neck, where he had already caressed and show- ered me with kisses. But I wanted him to be at my breasts, and even closer, so our bodies could feel pleasure. A deep instinct caused me to check myself. I felt the sharp pain inside my chest.

I could not bring myself to look at him. I lowered my head to the table. He got up and walked to the balcony, his eyes staring at the city buildings below. I left the table and went to his side. He was dreaming and faraway, as if no longer living in the real world. He turned, gazed into my eyes. He was close to tears.

“You know I love you very much, Jasmine. And I always will. I never want to upset or hurt you.”

* * *

I started my job in the Ministry of Transportation, reporting to the head of the accounting department, who in turn reported to a Frencheducated Vietnamese director. I had to work each Saturday morning like the rest of the employees. There wasn’t any annual vacation for the staff. Robert and I would spend the rest of Saturday together, meet on Sunday. Sometimes we shared an evening at a restaurant.

The Vietnamese director, my father’s immediate supervisor, was more French than Vietnamese, with an extravagant life style. Soon I would learn about the conflicts between him and the American Advisory Unit and the rampant corruption. My English had improved substantially and I could understand the Americans much better. Eventually I would be caught in the middle of their conflicts, and would change from being the young woman Robert knew and loved. A huge trauma was waiting for me.

Robert gave me a beautiful Swiss watch for my twentieth birthday. In the Western horoscope my sign was Pisces and he had remembered it. He fastened the watch to my wrist. I put my arms around his neck to thank him. He kissed me and wished me a happy birthday. I had often dreamed of kissing him and making love to him but in real life I was too shy to kiss a man on the lips. Maybe one day when we were lying in bed together it would be different. I didn’t believe that day would ever come. I loved him and there were times when I thought of giving up my virginity. He never said how he felt about these things, but I knew he was making a huge sacrifice for me.

One evening Robert suggested an early dinner so we would have more time to “talk” afterward. I looked at him suspiciously but he said with a half-smile that it wasn’t about “loving”. In any case, he said, it would be better to talk after dinner. I had no idea what he had in mind but when we left the restaurant and walked up to the roof terrace, I could see he was sad. We leaned against the balcony, his arms around me, my face resting on his chest. He lifted my face, kissed me, then reluctantly broke the news that his assignment in Viet Nam was not to be extended.

Earlier his superior had suggested that he would be promoted while in Viet Nam. We both hoped he might stay for another tour. Most officers were sent home after a space of two or three years. However, one of his senior-ranking friends had been promoted in Viet Nam and allowed to stay on. In my mind I wanted the Americans to leave Viet Nam, but in my heart I didn’t want Robert to go.

It was like being stabbed. We sat down and neither spoke. I took in a deep breath, staring at the little table between us. Robert rose and stood by my side. He reached for my hand. Kicking my shoes aside, I got up. My head fell on his right shoulder and I wept. I could feel the strength of his arms around me for a long time. By the time I lifted my head his shirt was soaked and smeared with makeup. His face was drawn, his eyelashes were damp with tears. Dabbing my eyes with his handkerchief, he held my head against his other shoulder. He whispered, “Your crying breaks my heart.”

Three weeks passed in a blur, and then we were sitting on the restaurant’s roof terrace again, talking about anything that came to mind. Yet so much was left unsaid. I was less discreet than I would normally be and toward the end of the evening I asked him certain intimate questions.

He confessed he’d had a sexual encounter with a Vietnamese woman. He said he desperately longed to be physically close to me. This tormented him. Consequently one night he’d taken up with one of the bargirls pestering him outside the BOQ. He said what he had done was “impure,” that he hated himself for it afterwards, and that he had no feelings whatsoever for her. He didn’t want to see her again and wanted to put the whole thing behind him and forget it.

He thought I would understand his problem and forgive him. For better or worse, I couldn’t. I let out my disgust and anger at him, “I hate you now. You repulse me. You are not sincere and I no longer trust you. How could you love one and sleep with another? Who knows how many women you said you love or have slept with.” I went on accusing him. He didn’t let out a word. Finally he lifted my chin against my will, gazed straight into my eyes and said, “You are my only love. I have loved nobody else.” There was anger in his voice. It was in his eyes too. Moments later he seemed to regain the warmth and tenderness I had previously known.

I was too confused to ask more questions. Why did he say so forcefully that he loved no other woman? What about his wife? Had he married out of convenience rather than love? How could he write letters to me each week with such intensity of feeling if he loved someone else?

He took me home. When we got into a taxi, neither spoke. I looked through the window, my chest like a heavy stone. He wanted to hold my hand but I wouldn’t let him. A little while before we got to my house he held my shoulders, then lifted my face toward him, saying gently, “Won’t you forgive me, my angel?”

I didn’t answer. I wanted to collapse on his shoulder and cry, in the knowledge that this might be our final goodbye. He said something about a farewell party – it would mean so much to him for me to be there – but I didn’t respond. I wanted to say no but couldn’t bring myself to.

That night I had another strange dream. Sitting at the edge of a bed, I called out, “Robert dear!” He came and put his arms around me. I looked up into his deep eyes, “With all my heart I love you. I am ready to give myself to you, without any condition.” He bent down and kissed me. He moved toward my legs, peeled all my clothes off and kissed me. He reached for my hand, wanting me to undress him. I woke up. I was sweating. The painful reality flooded back. It was too late.

I stayed home the night of his farewell party, in torment. I kept wondering if he was as heart-broken as I was. I wanted to punish him for betraying me but I also wanted him – wildly – to come and sweep me off my feet.

He didn’t.

Shortly afterwards I received a letter from him from America. Robert had written it during the flight home and mailed it at the airport when he landed. His despondency left me distraught. He said the pain of separation was too much for him to bear.

I wrote to him immediately.

Robert dear,

Very deep regret on my part. It was foolish of me not to allow us to enjoy love, enjoy it to the fullest. Please forgive me, before we go on with our own lives. I myself have already forgiven you. It is extremely painful for me to read your feelings and not be able to see you. It is extremely painful for me to write to you. The current pain is tearing me apart and it will take a very long time to heal - if it will ever be healed.

I love you. Jasmine

That year I had composed dozens of poems. I dedicated them to him in response to the passion he expressed in his love letters to me. He was now safe and I felt relief. From time to time I took out the picture he’d given me of the two girls, his daughters, and knew that, despite my fantasies, there was no way I could ever break up the life he’d gone back to in America. ***

After Robert’s departure I turned my attention to the village and wrote a series of letters, asking my maternal relatives about life and death in Truong An. Dai wrote and said that American troops had returned to the village in 1970. He described the following:

When the US Marine Corps arrived, they started shooting wildly across the village from ten gun-ships. Then they landed and marched inland, entering people’s houses, shooting as they went. Many peasants managed to escape and went into hiding in the jungle. While occupying their houses, the Americans seized their pigs and chickens and cooked their meals there. The Marines were accompanied by the ARVN force from Constance garrison, who knew the area well. The ARVN soldiers did what they were told to do. They were the servants and the Americans were their masters.

The Marines left much destruction in their wake, then went to raid other villages. The peasants were left contemplating ways of retaliating. The villages that had been raided by the US Marines organized three women to attack American troops in Rach Rang, Ca Mau. The women transported two bombs, each weighing seven hundred pounds to the port where the US-ARVN forces were in control. Both bombs exploded, killing dozens of American and ARVN men. Six gun-ships were damaged. The remaining gun-ships left the area in a hurry. Later a poem was dedicated to the three women:

Attacking the enemy’s warships in day light

You sisters, a group of heroines!

Already a legend when you were masters of those rivers

Nine months have passed and the enemy dared not return

The combined US-ARVN forces made numerous attempts to herd the residents of Truong An into the Strategic Hamlets for good. But the peasants tore down the hamlet compounds each year. By then nearly every family had a son or daughter in the National Liberation Front. A few of them also owned a radio, and they would gather secretly at New Year to talk about loved ones in the jungles, share their grievances, and listen to Uncle Ho’s New Year messages from Ha Noi.

APPLES TOO PRECIOUS TO EAT

My innocence is lost - a broken vase,

My body shall pay off my debts to life.

Kieu

In the autumn of 1971 my grandmother went to sleep forever. My father and I were at work and my mother telephoned him from a public phone booth to say that grandmother had failed to wake up and was no longer breathing. He immediately telephoned Uncle Nam, then we both got into a taxi and hurried home.

I knelt at her bedside and put my hand over her chest. It was still warm but there was no heartbeat. “Grandma! Grandma!” I called her as I held her right hand and squeezed it gently. There was no response.

Standing solemnly behind me were father and Uncle Nam. My father stated that grandmother was dead but Nam, more distraught than I’d ever seen him, refused to accept it. He put his ear to her chest, listening for a heartbeat. He exclaimed, “The heart is still beating! I’m going to get the doctor in now.” Then he dashed out and went to his car.

We knelt at my grandmother’s bedside. Father said to me in a gentle and comforting voice, “Your grandma had always wished that in her old age she would die in her sleep. I suppose eighty-three is a good age to leave this world and to join the ancestors.”

In less than half an hour, Uncle Nam rushed in with one of the best Western-trained doctors in Sai Gon. The doctor speedily examined my grandmother. He even tried to revive her and I thought I saw some life in her for a second or two. Then her body went stiff. Nam looked at the doctor and demanded him to try again. The doctor shook his head. There was nothing he could do. He bowed his head and bade us goodbye. There were tears in Nam’s eyes.

He then surprised us by turning on my mother. He explained that “cruelty” had contributed to my grandmother’s “poor health” and shortened her life. “She could have lived much longer!” he declared.

This sudden sharpness in his voice took my mother aback. She burst into tears. Pretending not to notice, Nam continued to scold her until she got up and left the room. I watched her go out into the alley through the kitchen door. Nam took a chair and sat next to my grandmother’s bed, not saying another word. I brought him a cup of tea but he declined. He was in army uniform, but the stern cast of the prominent military commander had gone from his face and been replaced by sorrow.

To the Vietnamese, dying in one’s sleep in old age is considered most fortunate. We were equally pleased my grandmother hadn’t died away from home. The Vietnamese believe that carrying a corpse home is bad luck. There are no funeral homes in Viet Nam, and therefore, if a person is seriously ill with little chance of survival while receiving hospital treatment, family members rush the patient home before he or she dies.

Nam wanted to pay the funeral expenses but my father resisted, saying that he and I would pay. Furthermore, he said, my grandma wouldn’t have wanted an elaborate funeral. I was disappointed that my father had refused Nam’s help. I said nothing. When Nam left, my parents talked about the funeral expenses. They decided not to use our savings. Instead, my mother offered to sell the gold bracelet my grandmother had given her when they first met eighteen years earlier in the village. The jewellery shop weighed it at two taels of solid gold. About half of the cash was then used for the funeral and burial costs.

My mother and Nam’s sister, Co Hai, washed grandmother’s body with scented lotion. They then dressed her in her blue silk ao dai and black silk trousers. Her face was covered with a piece of white cotton cloth, a symbolic barrier between the deceased and the living. It was also meant to shield family members and relatives from emotional outbursts. I trimmed her nails and placed the cuttings in four small sacks, one attached to each hand and foot. Three years later her body would be exhumed, a common Vietnamese practice, and the bones transferred to an earthenware container for a final burial or cremation. The nail clippings would help to identify the correct bones.

I placed a bowl of uncooked rice on the lid of the coffin – in the belief it kept the dead body from arising. My brothers and I took turns standing guard, in case cats or dogs came into the house. It was said that if an animal jumped over a coffin, the body inside was revived temporarily and behaved strangely so as to scare the wits out of anyone present.

Because we were poor, my grandmother’s coffin had not been bought in advance. Earlier generations of my paternal relatives had always bought coffins for senior family members ahead of time and kept them in the house for months, even years before the person fell ill and actually died. When my great grandparents died, each was buried temporarily in the back garden for several months before being moved to a permanent location. This was to prevent thieves from stealing valuable items from inside the coffin. The practice of buying coffins ahead of time by well-to-do families was followed by Nam and Nghiem. They acquired coffins and also had graves constructed in advance for Granduncle Ba and his wife.

Vietnamese Buddhists, believing in re-incarnation, are not supposed to fear death. Without death there is no rebirth. Grandmother used to say that dying is a natural life process on the Wheel of Rebirth. It is understood that life is not a straight line of birth leading to death but a circle of life and death, repeated.

For three days following my grandmother’s death we gathered in front of a specially erected altar near her coffin and prayed. We made an offering of food to her spirit. On the altar, the oil lamps, candles and incense sticks were kept burning all the time. We dressed in long white cotton gowns with white funeral headbands. Flower wreaths arrived from relatives and friends with sympathy messages. We placed them in rows alongside the walls. Every night a Buddhist monk in a saffron cassock held a prayer ceremony for grandmother’s soul. On the fourth day the monk and my father led the funeral procession. The coffin, surrounded by the wreaths, was transported to the cemetery in a black van. We walked behind all the way to the cemetery, a two-hour journey. Along the route, golden votive papers were scattered as symbolic money for my grandmother to use in heaven. My father didn’t hire musicians for the funeral procession. A thay dia ly, or geomancer, had been consulted to choose a burial site.

* * *

I took stock of myself now as the dutiful eldest daughter in our very modest house, with a quiet father, four younger brothers, a baby sister, a scowling mother, noisy neighbours, and some distinguished relatives. We lived in relative poverty as the war that had killed many of our family and friends crept slowly closer and closer. Our standard of living was better on my new salary but my mother feared the rampant inflation would catch up with us. She moaned about it.

The Ministry of Transportation where my father and I worked had a management structure which included an American Advisory Board. The head of the Board was an American named George. He was heavy-set, grey-haired and in his mid-fifties. His office was at one of the USAID buildings in central Sai Gon. He came to the agency once a week to meet with his two American subordinates (who had their office in our building) and the Vietnamese director. Officially he was the advisor to the Ministry.

I wanted to study English at the USAID English language centre. To be accepted as a student there the application had to contain the signature of a sponsoring American. George offered to sponsor me. I thought now that Robert had gone there would be no one to teach me English. I worried that what fluency I had acquired would deteriorate.

Eight months after I had started my accounting job, the Vietnamese director found out about my English skills and promoted and transferred me to the American Advisory Board, working directly with the two Americans. George approved the transfer. I received a big increase in salary. Although the director never said anything directly to me, I sensed that in his mind I would become his ally in his dealings with the Americans. I felt dubious. How much could a twenty-one year old help him? But I was willing to go along with it because I preferred working with Americans and the raise I had received significantly improved my family’s financial situation.

Whenever George came to the agency for meetings he would refer to me as “the charming young lady”, without calling me by my name. I quickly learned that he bore a lot of resentment towards the Vietnamese director and to a senior American who had a much closer working relationship with the Minister of Transportation than George himself. According to him, all of them – the minister, the other American, and the director --were seriously corrupt and ought to be in jail. He also scolded me, “You work in the accounting department. You must have known that they are cheating.” He showed me an accounting report from the Vietnamese director and pointed out the suspicious money losses.

Meanwhile, the director expected me to be on his side and to speak “positively” on his behalf. He wanted me to gather useful information from the Americans. The situation became increasingly sensitive and I found myself being pulled in opposite directions. The director had his own source of resentment, telling me that the Americans were making far too much money and he was getting only a fraction of it for all the work he did. To deal with such inequality, he asserted, the Vietnamese resorted to their only remedy – corruption.

Some weeks later, George informed me the minister was planning to take action to remove him from his advisory position at the ministry. He suspected – correctly – that I might have talked to them about his resentment and the evidence of corruption he had been collecting. I confessed. I apologized, explaining that I had been hopelessly caught between two forces.

On a number of occasions George asked me to meet him confidentially at his office. One day, after his regular visit to the ministry, he suggested that we have dinner at a French restaurant. I was his ally, he said, someone he could talk to, someone who understood him. I hesitated but as he persisted I agreed. He offered to pick me up from my house in his car, but I persuaded him to let me take a taxi to his apartment first. We would then go to the French restaurant in his car. To return, I’d already planned to take a taxi straight home. This way I would avoid gossiping in my neighbourhood.

At George’s apartment, I rang the doorbell and waited for him in the entrance hall. He opened the door and invited me in for a drink in his large living room, which I could see had an attached study. He took out photo albums from a drawer in the study and began telling me in detail about his family. He was very proud, he said, to be a grandfather.

Sitting in his study, I glanced into the living room and noticed that my beaded shoes were on the coffee table. Upon arrival, I had placed them near the entrance door according to Vietnamese custom. He had moved them and put them on the coffee table. This was strange but perhaps there was some American custom involved that I knew nothing about.

I carried one of the photo albums into the living room and sat on the couch. In front of me was the coffee table with my pair of shoes. I took both off the table and placed them underneath.

He came over and handed me a soft drink. He complimented me on my white silk ao dai – the misty-white one Robert had chosen. We carried on a conversation during which he asked me if I had a boyfriend. I said “no”. He seemed surprised by my answer, saying that I was beautiful and ought to have a boyfriend. The conversation led to the subject of dating, sex, and marriage. I told him that the Vietnamese custom was for a bride to be a virgin. He laughed, Americans, he said no longer believed in such outdated ideas. He told me that his son had married a woman who had already had a child out of wedlock. I asked, “Did they have a wedding ceremony?” “Yes,” he replied. I told him that this would not have been possible in my country.

“Well”, he said, “there’s no need for an American girl to remain a virgin before marriage. Girls are supposed to have a good time too.”

I didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken, so I picked up the photo album. He leaned over, pointing out who was who. Then he put his hand on my shoulder, his other hand pointed at a photo of his son. I took his hand off my shoulder and moved slightly away from him.

“Sorr -- ee!” he said, emphasizing the word as if to suggest that I was overreacting and that he was simply being friendly. “No,” I said awkwardly, as though I were the one who had been at fault. This was my superior after all, my big boss, not some doctor I’d run into in the hospital. Certainly George wouldn’t be so foolish as to harm me or to do anything against my wishes, especially when I’d just explained the Vietnamese custom to him.

I still felt uneasy. I closed the album and stood up, saying to him, “It’s time to go to the restaurant!”

He said he hadn’t yet drunk his beer.

I sat down again on the edge of the couch to wait, while George was half-reclined now, and seemingly relaxed, he gazed up at me. I watched him down his beer. Then I stood up again.

“We should go now,” I said to him politely. With a sudden movement he reached out and, grabbing me by the forearm, pulled me to him and tried to kiss me. I grabbed his head and banged it against the back of the couch. Then I made an effort to run out of the apartment.

I beat him to the front door but he had locked it. I pulled at the doorknob, holding onto it as he tried to pull me free. “I won’t hurt you! I won’t hurt you!” He kept repeating. I started banging on the door, still holding onto the doorknob, praying that his neighbours would hear me. But there was no response.

I ran past him, away from him, searching desperately for another escape route. I raced past his bedroom. The only window I could jump from was in his bathroom, directly above the front entrance hall to the building. I tried to climb up from the bathtub but he caught hold of me, grabbing me around the waist and pulling me down into the tub and tearing one side of my dress. I was screaming by then, but there was no one to hear me.

He dragged me to the next room and threw me onto the bed. I kicked and fought, but my struggling only excited him even further.

I found myself pinned by the weight of his body. The thing between his legs terrified me. I bit my lip and closed my eyes. A sharp pain suddenly pierced me like a sword. I burst into tears.

Finished. Over.

He had torn my dress away below the waist. In shock and halffainting, I called out Robert’s name.

He lifted his body off the bed. I ached all over and could not get up. I opened my eyes and saw him sitting in a corner.

He was holding his head in his hands.

“God, I’m sorry,” he kept saying. But he also said, “How come there was no blood, baby?”

What was he implying? That I wasn’t a virgin? I said nothing, then slowly made my way into the bathroom. I cleaned myself again and again with soap and water but the smell of his semen filled my nostrils. I felt nauseated. In a daze, I filled half of the tub with hot water and eased myself into it. I had never before used so much soap to wash myself as I did that night, but the smell still wouldn’t go away. I dried myself then looked for pins to hold my dress together at the waist. I walked back into the bedroom and gathered up my belongings. I couldn’t find one of my earrings.

“Please let me take you home,” he said.

“No thank you,” I replied. “If Robert were here, he would shoot you in the head.”

“Who’s Robert?” he asked, puzzled.

I opened the now unlocked door and walked out of the apartment.

When I got home that night I went straight up to the attic. There I sat motionless until past two in the morning. Only then did I lie down, and only then did the tears flow onto my pillow. I was now dirty, useless, a piece of garbage. George may have announced triumphantly that there had been no blood, but I myself knew that I had been a virgin until that evening. Robert had never touched me there, nor so much as seen me naked. In my half-awake state, I cried out, “My dear Robert, my beloved, I am now destroyed.”

My closest friend at work, Lan, tried her best to comfort me. Physically ill, I forced myself to go to the office every day, as there was no comfort to be found at home. I was only twenty-one but I believed that I had just endured the ultimate painful and humiliating experience and that all my aspirations had been shattered.

* * *

I folded the misty-white ao dai and trousers and wrapped them inside a piece of newspaper. It was a crescent moon night – shortly after midnight, when I slipped out of the back door and stole quietly into the silent cemetery. Kneeling on the ground between two graves, I carefully placed the package down and lit it with a match. Yellow flames burst out, rising, like a cry of defiance. The flickering flame withered and diminished. No trace of silk was left. A gust of wind blew the misty smoke and the grey ash away.

Returning to bed that night, in my dreamlike state, I saw images of Robert again. Virginity, a traditional Vietnamese virtue, had been a central component of my identity. Strong cultural taboos and years of influence from people I loved and respected had made it sacrosanct, even in times of severe poverty and war, even under the powerful forces of real love. Forced to give it up for a crude and unworthy man, I now fell apart. I had lost a central defining aspect of who I was. My behaviour became erratic and totally contradictory.

I still do not fully understand it, and remembering it now makes me shudder with shame, but my partial and deliberate reconciliation with the man who had violated me is an undeniable fact. Putting it in its simplest form, I needed help to keep my family from starvation, and who else did I know?

About a week after the event, I received a package from George at my office, delivered by messenger. In it was a letter from him, apologizing for his behaviour, and a large bottle of Chanel No 5. I threw the box in my office drawer and later gave the perfume to Lan.

A few days later, he arrived at the office for a meeting. At first his eyes avoided me, though from time to time I was aware of him glancing surreptitiously at me. Before leaving he handed me something.

It was another letter, again apologizing.

It was Lan who put the idea into my head that I should make George pay for it by becoming his mistress and demanding support from him. In our culture, if a girl is raped by someone the family knows, she would end up marrying him, as no one else would want her. Psychologically this would also help reduce the effect of the trauma. By becoming George’s mistress I would at least help my family. Lan and I agreed that, after first dating Robert and now having been raped by George, I had become a symbol of shame.

Over the succeeding weeks my worries for my family overcame my rage. I decided to make him pay. I stopped feeling sorry for myself. There was a great deal more pain and misery elsewhere, I said to myself. My mind returned to an earlier sermon by Sister Huynh Lien, in which she reminded us, “Life is an ocean of suffering.” When I considered my own tragedy, I considered relatives risking brutal torture, having serious wounds treated without anaesthetic, living on starvation diets in the steaming jungles, and being shot and left to die in the battlefield. I thought of the anguished mothers in the village not knowing the whereabouts of their children, and those grieving for the dying loved ones.

My trauma looked trivial in comparison. I was still alive. Despite much anger, I had to move on, however limited my options were.

George again asked me to dinner at the French restaurant we were supposed to have gone to previously. I made it clear to him that I would not eat with him there. And because I wanted him nowhere near my neighbourhood, I went to his apartment. He kept his distance, and we chatted coolly. He asked if he could take a photograph of me. That picture still speaks eloquently of my resentment.

Perhaps it was inexperience at business matters that thwarted me but when I tried to explain that my family was in great need, there seemed to be no way in which I could turn his remorse into an agreement to help. He was evasive, deliberately not understanding. He even seemed to reject the idea that he had done anything wrong. There had been no blood, he argued, so what really was he guilty of?

So, without commitment from him – other than claims that he was seriously interested in me and hints that he might divorce his wife – we drifted into a relationship of convenience. Love was out of the question and his part of the unspoken bargain was always a matter of hope on my part. During the two years I was with him he gave me a desk clock, some fancy underwear and two woolen blankets.

And the apples.

One day he gave me a bag of apples. I took them home for my brothers. They decided the apples were too precious to eat and sold them to the wife of Bay Ca, who then re-sold them at her black market stall. When I told George, he said that every month he would give me ten American dollars worth of apples as an allowance.

I was contemptuous – even a former bargirl I knew got a substantial cash allowance each month from her American man. But George insisted that he wasn’t earning enough money to support a mistress in Sai Gon and a wife and a young daughter in Virginia. Abjectly, I took whatever he gave me.

Trying to make sense of how I came eventually to move in with him, all I can say is that I found comfort, time, and space for myself in his spacious apartment. The contrast with living conditions at home was dramatic. He worked late most evenings and I had plenty of quiet time for myself. Dieu Thai and Phuong came to visit me often. In addition, whereas I had started in the accounting department at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month, after my transfer to the Advisory Board this was increased to fifty dollars a per month, of which I gave twenty to my family, as well as the ten dollars we got for the apples. It cost me virtually nothing to live with George. I was able to save most of what was left over each month. Some years later part of my savings would be added to my father’s to remodel our house in Xom Gieng.

I could get along with George tolerably well but I never in any way connected to him emotionally. When he went back to America on leave to see his family, I began to look for a way out of the relationship. My sense of self-worth was slowly re-surfacing.

* * *

Wallace, a young American lawyer who lived next door to George and who didn’t like him, invited me to a dinner party at his place while George was away. I was introduced to his bachelor friend Jerry. Jerry was from New Jersey and at that time was working for the American Management Association. His assignment in Viet Nam was only for six months. He had about four months left. Jerry was very tall, with a handsome face and a happy personality. He told me that he had a girlfriend back home, but didn’t give the impression that he was passionately committed to her. I found myself attracted to him. We fell in love.

I asked Jerry how he could love two women at the same time. He answered, “I’ve realized that I love her like a sister. It’s certainly not the same kind of love that I have for you.” He wrote a long letter to his mother, telling her about me, enclosing two large photographs of me that he had taken. He was waiting for her approval. I sent his mother a pair of lilac-blue hand-embroidered linen cushion covers and a short note. He wrote to the girlfriend and suggested ending the relationship. Not long after that Jerry showed me a letter from his American girlfriend. It was angry and explosive, threatening that she was going to burn down his apartment in New Jersey, where she was living while waiting for his return.

Jerry’s mother advised him to maintain his relationship with the American girlfriend. She didn’t think it would be wise for him to marry a Vietnamese. Jerry, though, didn’t listen to either of them. He wanted to go ahead with an engagement to me. I introduced him to my parents and Uncle Nam and we talked about marriage. At Nam’s house, when we were invited for dinner, his wife said to Jerry she sold diamonds and jade and that he should consider ordering a diamond engagement ring for me. Giving a diamond ring was a Vietnamese custom for marriage. Most Vietnamese women, rich or poor, wear only real gold or precious stones if they wear any jewellery at all.

Jerry paid Nam’s wife a deposit for a good-sized diamond. I would have preferred something much smaller. Marrying him was much more important than any ring itself. I felt that Nam’s wife was forcing him into it in order to make a sale.

After our engagement Jerry took me to Dalat in the Central Highlands – also known as the City of Eternal Spring, for a week’s holiday. We went by plane – only an hour’s flight, but it was my first time traveling by air. Dalat is a favourite honeymooning spot. Under the French colonial regime it was called Le Petit Paris. Daily temperature ranges from fifteen to twenty-four degrees Celsius, offering a welcome respite from the extreme heat of Sai Gon and the Mekong Delta. The skies are sunny most of the year and the beautiful small city is set among evergreen forests dotted with lakes and waterfalls, including the legendary Lake of Sighs (Ho Than Tho), and the famous romantic valley known to the French earlier as Vallée d’Amour. During the American War there was mutual agreement between Ha Noi and Sai Gon to spare Dalat from the ravages of war.

We came back to Sai Gon, The pressure from Jerry’s girl friend and his mother increased. The mother worried that Jerry would find ways to renew his assignment in Viet Nam. She feared for his life in what she called “a war zone”. The American girlfriend worried that he might simply show up in New Jersey with me. Jerry insisted that he wanted to marry me, but said he would have to go home first to sort things out.

Before he left Sai Gon, he asked if I would go for a physical examination to determine whether I was pregnant. “If you are,” he said, “then I promise I will do everything I can to build our lives together.” I now realized that a pregnancy could win me a marriage and was afraid to see the doctor in case I wasn’t pregnant. I stalled until after he’d gone. I thought my belly was growing, but to my great disappointment, my period came two weeks late.

I didn’t tell Jerry. I worried that he might change his mind because I wasn’t pregnant. I continued to receive letters from him. He said he was trying to return to Sai Gon and began sending me money through the Bank of America. I don’t know whether he thought I was pregnant when he decided to send the money, but in case he did, I left it untouched. Ironically, the Bank of America pulled out of Viet Nam before the end of the war and I was never able to touch the money. In the chaos of those days, the bank book remained in my office desk drawer.

George returned to Sai Gon and learned that I was seeing another American and much younger. He was mad but tried to reconcile with me. I agreed to see him briefly and occasionally – a tactical as well as moral mistake on my part. One evening, while dining with George at a restaurant in the city centre, I ran into Humphrey, a friend of Jerry, who had agreed to keep an eye on me. Here I was with another man. And obviously I wasn’t pregnant. We didn’t say much but I sensed the disapproval in Humphrey’s eyes. Whether he wrote Jerry about this encounter or whether the pressure of his mother and girlfriend won out I can’t say. I never heard from Jerry again.

I went to see Uncle Nam’s wife to ask her for the deposit on the ring. She refused. My father went to see her himself. She refunded a small fraction of a quite substantial deposit.

To escape the level of discomfort at my parents’ house, I returned to George’s apartment. My apples allowance went up to twelve dollars a month. He decided to move into a different apartment and the new one came with a maid, a sixty-year-old woman, Mother Chin. At the previous apartment, George had had a maid who only came twice a week, but stingy as he was, he liked Mother Chin and agreed to hire her full time.

When we were introduced, one of her first questions was blunt and direct, “Hoa Lai, you are an office girl. Why are you carrying on a relationship with this man?” I couldn’t answer but later when a good friendship developed between us, I was able to tell her the whole truth. From then on she became as protective of me as if she were my mother. She tried to get George to give me a proper monthly allowance but he just cut her off with a sarcastic laugh.

In mid-1973 he informed me that his three-year contract had ended. He started packing up his belongings and gave me two woolen blankets (which he had rarely used) as a sort of bonus from our two-year relationship. He said he would try to find a new contract and hoped to return to Viet Nam the following year. I knew he was leaving Viet Nam for good. He was an obstacle to any other relationship I might have so I was pleased. For the last month of my allowance, he gave me nearly double the quantity of apples, worth about twenty American dollars. It was a rainy day when I left George’s apartment with my bag of clothing. He had already shipped all his belongings to Virginia weeks before. Neither of us shed any tears at that farewell. I

was now absolutely certain that I would not have a future with a man from my own country. No Vietnamese man would have much respect for me and for what I had done.

I moved back to my parents’ house. My mother’s attitude towards me had changed since I had started working in an office, but I still found myself unable to return to the family atmosphere feeling comfortable. I was now working for a large international travel agency in the city centre. The monthly salary was equivalent to one hundred American dollars, of which I was able to save at least half. After six months on the job I was invited to participate in a joint-investment land project with the director and senior staff. The director was a very wealthy man involved in various land investment schemes. He once told me, “The only way to make big money is to buy more land and to make it produce.”

My work was going very well but toward the end of 1973 I found myself increasingly uneasy with the director. He had been exceptionally generous to me and a few times had given me indications that he was fond of me. I interpreted his attention to me quite wrongly. This was my work place and to maintain a purely professional relationship with him was most important to me. The director was in his late fifties and had a strikingly beautiful wife in her early thirties. The fact that she was so beautiful convinced me he wasn’t really interested in having an affair with me.

It was lunch time and I was trying to finish some work at my desk. The director came in, rather unexpectedly, asking me why I hadn’t gone to lunch. He sat at the edge of my desk. I was nervous; he appeared completely relaxed. I made an excuse to get up but as soon as I left my chair he sat down on it. He took my hand and whispered something and pulled me down onto his lap. Embarrassed, I got out of his hands and left the office and didn’t return that afternoon.

I quit the travel agency. I sold all my shares in the land investment project for an equivalent of twenty-seven hundred American dollars. I converted all the cash into gold taels. When the director found out, he didn’t say anything and didn’t seem to be bothered or upset by it. I despised him as much as I despised the Apple Man.

I worried about keeping so much gold at home. Although I had an account with a Vietnamese bank where my salary went each month and an account with the Bank of America, I didn’t trust them. Like other Vietnamese, I never trusted any bank or financial institution in my country. With an escalating inflation rate, I was looking for the safest kind of investment. So, in early 1974 I used all the gold and part of my savings and bought a two-bedroom apartment being built in Sai Gon. It would be part of a housing complex in a rather modest but pleasant location. Most of the financial resources I had could cover three-quarters of the total cost. I was planning to pay for the rest with my income from a future job. I would live in the apartment with one of my brothers. My mother suggested that instead of buying the apartment, we should sell my parents’ house and buy us all a bigger house. ***

While working at the travel agency I had met a captain in the US Navy, named Julian. He learned that my boss was a stamp collector. And so was he. I arranged the meeting and met Julian in the office. He was in his mid-thirties, well built, wearing glasses, which reminded me of a Confucian scholar despite his Western look. I was intrigued by his seriousness and gentle manners. We had become quite friendly with each other. One day Julian telephoned me, “I am wondering if you are free after work tomorrow?”

“I think so.”

“Would you like me to pick you up? Perhaps we can take a walk and do some sightseeing along the waterfront?”

“Sightseeing… I suppose so. I should finish here around six.”

“Can you wait and I will be at your office shortly after that?”

“Sure.”

When Julian arrived, we walked from my office all the way to the waterfront.

“Have you and my boss made any plan to meet again this week, Joo-lin?” I asked.

“Yes, we have. We’ll meet again tomorrow afternoon. By the way, my name is not Julin. It’s Julian.”

“Jewel-lin. Right?”

He shook his head.

“Joo-a-lin.” I said again, “Joo-a-lin.”

Again he shook his head.

After several failed attempts to pronounce his name correctly, I decided to call him “Captain” and nothing else. And I would always address Julian as Captain in all future correspondence with him.

“Do you have a family in America?”

“Yes, I do. My parents and a sister.”

“Are you married?”

“I was. But I’m divorced.”

Sitting at a stone bench and looking at the river, I suddenly noticed that his white navy uniform had turned into brilliant white under the darkening sky – until now I had not realized how spookily white would stand out in darkness. I wondered whether I should stop wearing white. But I quickly concluded that it would not be possible. Julian asked me about my job and family. I was interested in knowing why he was so passionate about collecting stamps. A few people passed by and stared at us. We got up and made a turn toward Nguyen Hue Boulevard. I was feeling uncomfortable being with a foreigner in army uniform in full public view. Julian noticed my uneasiness and suggested that we go to his place.

He had the strangest diet. He invited me for dinner that evening and served only fresh milk, bananas and sandwich bread. He indicated that this was his regular diet. He never explained why he didn’t eat meat or other food and I didn’t dare ask him. I soon made my excuse, “Captain! I think I must go now. Thank you for a nice evening.”

He looked a little disappointed and asked, “Can we meet again if you are free during the weekend?”

“If you’d like. Perhaps not this weekend … maybe sometime next week.” I answered with some reservation.

His lack of interest in other food concerned me. This kind of diet reminded me of poor Vietnamese, who had often been told by the health professionals they should eat plenty of bananas and tofu to acquire enough nutrition for survival. From the time I started dating Julian until he left Viet Nam, a period of two and a half months, we had five evenings altogether, eating bananas and bread and drinking milk. I told him my stomach couldn’t digest fresh milk and he went out and bought American soft drinks. He had never gone to any restaurant before he met me, and we never went to any restaurant either. Aside from his unusual eating habits, he was a gentleman and demonstrated a lot of affection.

Shortly after the Paris Peace Agreement in early 1973 Julian said he would return to the United States. He assured me he would write to me from Florida. I wasn’t sure if I had fallen in love with him. I sensed that he loved me. I tried to imagine what kind of a marriage one would have with him. What would he be like as a husband? How would he bring up his children? I didn’t think I knew him enough or really understood him.

When we met to say farewell that spring Julian presented me with a package containing two English novels, which he had chosen especially for me. He hugged me as we parted.

“Goodbye! My dear Jasmine.”

“Goodbye! Captain.”

Julian wrote to me periodically and I didn’t always respond to him. But in early 1975 I would receive a long and serious letter from him, at the closing stage of the war, with what would prove to be a crucial offer to resettle me in Florida.

That year – 1973 – the last American troops left Viet Nam in late March, and the last American prisoners of war were released in Ha Noi in early April. In November, Congress overrode President Nixon’s veto of a bill restricting the president’s right to wage war.

In early spring of 1974, Cuc introduced me to the Ministry of the Economy and I was offered a job in the foreign investment division, after competing with several dozen candidates. There were so many unemployed women in Sai Gon those years and any office-job advertisement would attract a large number of applicants. I considered myself very lucky to be given this job. Or was it my destiny?

That summer I met Andrew, an English man from Hong Kong – through my office. From early 1975 I began considering the immediate dangers of the war. Transferring the ownership of the apartment to my parents, and accepting Andrew’s help, I turned my mind to ways of getting out of the country.

FINAL DAYS

“We have finally achieved peace with honour”

Richard Nixon

“They made a wasteland and called it peace”

Tacitus

Spring of 1972, Year of the Rat. One evening, while Nam and his wife were sitting quietly in the lounge and chatting, Mai walked into the room holding a revolver, pointed it at Nam’s wife, and fired. Nam leaped over and tried to grab the gun from Mai but she shot him. His wife collapsed onto the tiled floor. Nam, with blood seeping through his shirt, was still able to wrench the gun from her hands. It was the gun from the case at the entrance of the house. Gun in hand, he stared at Mai in disbelief, but he could not bring himself to shoot her. Hearing the gunshots, members of the security force of the Joint-General Staff Headquarters arrived at the blood-spattered scene. Mai was handcuffed and taken away.

Uncle Nghiem telephoned us with the news. We were badly shaken. We got up, anxious to get to the hospital, but couldn’t go because of the night curfew. My father’s face was creased with pain. I occupied myself by preparing breakfast for all of us. I told my father that I would first go to Ngoc Phuong Buddhist temple, then we would meet at the ARVN hospital where Nam and his wife were undergoing treatment. The hospital was in the northeast of Sai Gon, and one and a half kilometres west of Ngoc Phuong.

After praying for Nam at the temple, I walked to the hospital. Nam and his wife had undergone surgery and the bullets had been removed. They were both in intensive care. Nam was alert and smiled at us, but his wife seemed too traumatized to recognize anyone. We went back to the hospital once more to see them, but were unable to speak privately to Nam because the ward was crowded with other visitors. After they were discharged, my father and I went to the Joint-General Staff Headquarters to see them. His wife was still shaken and too distraught to speak.

Although Mai and I had been quite close, I would never see her again. My father, Nam’s wife, and other relatives discouraged me from going to her trial or having any contact with her. But I couldn’t just let things end like this. I wanted to find out what had happened to her. Later, when I talked to Nam’s sister, I learned that Mai had been brought to trial before a military court in Sai Gon, and the court had interpreted her action as politically motivated. She had endured physical torture while being interrogated. When her sentence to nineteen years of imprisonment was announced, Mai responded with a contemptuous smile, “If, sirs, your regime survives that long!”

There had been two assassination attempts on Nam’s life in the Mekong Delta years earlier. This time his wife urged him to leave the country. His superior felt that Nam should be transferred to a diplomatic post overseas.

Feelings of mistrust started to grow during the final stages of the war. Neither Nam nor his wife talked to relatives or friends about the near fatal event which had led to their departure. They did not even say farewell. When I found out about the transfer overseas, they had already left Sai Gon. Shocked and upset, I thought that I didn’t know Nam at all. My father tried to explain that Nam was living under very difficult circumstances and he stressed how sad it must have been for my uncle to leave his homeland without saying goodbye to loved ones. I could sense at the time that my father was still devoted to him.

Uncle Nam had been a second father to me and my affection for him would remain intact. I loathed Mai for her violent betrayal.

Uncle Nam’s sudden departure was not an isolated event. Many senior government officials and high ranking military personnel feared for their lives and started sending their wives and children overseas, before making their own escape. From mid-1972 the Americans began reducing their troops in Viet Nam. Six months later the Paris Peace Agreement was signed. It promised that all American troops would soon leave Viet Nam for good. Without the Americans, the public anticipated the inevitable defeat of the Sai Gon regime.

The regime itself went into a frenzy of activity with President Nguyen Van Thieu declaring immediately after the peace treaty that the war “has begun again”. With more than two million tons of American made weapons, the government began drafting more than two hundred thousand additional men for the ARVN force in order to replace the departing American soldiers. The Thieu government still held more than a quarter of a million political prisoners in more than a thousand prisons. Unwilling to release them, the regime’s answer was to carry out mass executions in secret.

Angered by this, the National Liberation Front increased its regular and reserve forces. It also supplied arms to civilians in rural districts. Battles between the two warring sides rose in intensity. The people in Sai Gon were subjected to greater dangers and more suffering, with murders and sexual assaults becoming more and more commonplace in and around the city. Those with powerful government or overseas connections, or with enough money, could leave the country legally. Others tried to escape as ‘boat people’, risking piracy and death. Hundreds of thousands of refugees would become witnesses to violence and horrors; and the world’s media, and the files of the UNHCR would be filled with accounts of their tragedies.

* * *

In 1969, the United States began secret negotiations in Paris with North Viet Nam and the National Liberation Front. President Thieu put pressure on the Americans to exclude the NLF from these talks. His efforts failed. Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, an NLF representative, was under attack by the ARVN regime. Thieu claimed that he controlled at least eighty percent of the land in South Viet Nam and that the NLF represented only themselves. When a journalist confronted Madame Binh and requested to know exactly what territory she really represented, she replied, “Anywhere in the South that the Americans have dropped their bombs is my territory.”

The Paris Peace Agreement was signed in January 1973. However, intensive fighting continued between the ARVN and the NLF. Public appeals for peace organized by women and students continued to take place throughout the South. Few men took part. As mentioned earlier, tens of thousands of men had ended up in graves. Those who were still living had been drafted into the ARVN, or had joined the NLF, or they had been incarcerated in the Southern regime’s crowded prisons.

After the Agreement, American troops did, for the most part, withdraw from combat zones. Fighting was handed over to the ARVN. But American weapons and poisons continued to rain down. Aunt Di Nam and Dai’s children witnessed the destruction caused by US made fragmentation bombs, known in Viet Nam as “mother bombs”. That day she had taken the grandchildren to Thanh Chau by sampan to escape an ARVN raid. While Di Nam paddled, she saw four giant “fish” circling in the cloudy sky above. One of the children said to Di Nam, “Grandma, none of the fish seems to mark its target for bombing this time. But I’m still scared.” Di Nam tried to calm the boy and his little sister, “We will be all right, son! We will have enough time to get into the water.” She steered the sampan closer to the edge of the palm jungle. Suddenly they saw eight long silver tubes released by the four fish. The tubes tumbled down at all angles and in all directions. Each tube released hundreds of smaller pieces like black dots. It was as if someone had thrown a bunch of black pepper corns into the air and let them fall to the ground.

“Bombi! Bombi!” The shouting came from passengers on other sampans also on their way to Thanh Chau. Di Nam dropped the paddle, grabbed the two children and held them in her arms. They covered their faces and ears, in terror. There was a series of explosions followed by powerful blasts of wind. One of the gusts hit her copper tray of betel leaves and areca nuts. It flew up into the trees before splashing into the river. The air was thick with burning and the stench of chemicals. Di Nam told the children to dip their heads in the water to clear their noses and lungs. The little girl refused. All the children were crying hysterically but the deafening noises drowned out their voices. Di Nam tried to scuttle the sampan but it wouldn’t sink. In a panic, she tried to scoop water into the sampan. Then using all their strength, she and the boy finally managed to push it below the water. They hid among the water palm leaves, their heads just above the water.

When silence returned, Di Nam and the children gazed at their surroundings in astonishment. Nearly all the greenery had disappeared. The sky suddenly seemed higher. They waited patiently until evening, the children shivering in their damp clothes. Di Nam and the boy were able to re-float her sampan. Afraid to return to Truong An because of its occupation by ARVN troops, they headed toward the village of Vinh Vien, where they found members of the NLF assisting the wounded civilians.

Each of those eight silver tubes had released three hundred “black peppers” – the bomblets, known to the Vietnamese as “bombi”. Each bomblet had the appearance of a huge marble, about ten centimetres in diameter, which in turn sprayed hundreds of steel pellets. An individual pellet was too small to damage concrete, but it could ricochet and do severe damage to a human eye, heart or flesh. The general pattern with fragmentation bombs was to use them right after a heavy ‘normal’ bombing raid when people were struggling to move about and looking for wounded loved ones. The grapefruit-sized bomblets were set to explode unpredictably. Hundreds of them over a wide area could inflict damage on people already in torment. Conventions about allowing time to recover the wounded, or about attacking civilian targets were ignored. ***

While the rural communities remained the main targets of large scale destruction by the ARVN regime with their American weapons, the Nationalist forces continued to gain more and more territory in the South. By the end of 1974 their victory seemed almost certain and revolutionary songs such as the following would be heard in remote villages.

The Liberation Soldier

Nine months out of the year, I lived in the tunnels

My skin was jaundiced, my face was unshaven

A short night stretching my body over masses of reed

Quietly I moved onto the pineapple fields

Then to the underground shelter near the peasants’ hut

Ten garrisons, we wiped out seven

Touching my own skin, I felt like an old man

Three more garrisons, we swept out at once

Now looking in the mirror, the youth of my 20’s finally returns

On the morning of 8 April 1975, an ARVN Air Force pilot named Nguyen Thanh Trung climbed into the cockpit of his bomber at Bien Hoa military airport. His squadron had just received orders to bomb some rural villages in the Mekong Delta – including his home village, where his mother was still living. Thanh Trung was one of a handful of ARVN pilots trained in the United States. He was now a lieutenant. With his charm and impeccable manners, he was trusted by his superiors and popular among his colleagues. But he was deceiving them. His heart had belonged to the National Liberation Front long before his military training in the United States.

Thanh Trung made a second circuit over the military airport. He was perspiring heavily. He thought of his mother, his wife and their two children. He feared for their lives. But his decision had been made. He waited for two other bombers to go ahead. When they were some distance ahead, he turned his plane away, flying toward central Sai Gon. He headed straight for the Presidential Palace. He believed President Thieu was in residence. Focusing intently on the T-shaped compound he targeted the Palace’s right wing. He then released two bombs. He circled back over the city to make a second run before anti-aircraft defences could target him. In this second manoeuvre two additional bombs were dropped on the now panic-stricken palace. Thanh Trung then sped away at full throttle. Thirty minutes later he landed in Phuoc Long, a liberated zone controlled by the National Liberation Front. He was given a hero’s welcome.

The explosions blew up part of the palace and killed several people. President Thieu emerged unharmed, but he was badly shaken.

I was at my office that morning, a few minutes walk from the Presidential Palace. Some of my colleagues had just arrived when we heard the first explosion. We also heard the shouting and screaming of people on the streets and their rapid footsteps. A senior colleague burst into the office and announced he was going to the Palace grounds to see what had happened. I ran after him. Standing near the Two-Soldiers statue on Lam Son Square, we were in time to see the second bombing run. We watched the fourth bomb fall and land on one of the wings of the palace, but it failed to explode. Sirens began wailing and police cars, fire engines, and ambulances started arriving. Fearful, people on the streets began running for shelter. I went back to the office and joined the rest of the staff hiding under desks and tables. Shortly afterwards a government announcement came over loud speakers, and on radio and television, telling people to return home as quickly as possible. A round-the-clock curfew was imposed until further notice.

Nine days later, on 17 April, the evacuation of Americans by the US Embassy began.

On the evening of April 25 the CIA assisted President Thieu to flee the country. They provided him with a convoy of cars bearing US diplomatic licences. The convoy passed Tan Son Nhat airport’s security checkpoint. The president, impeccably dressed as usual, ducked his head to avoid being identified by the security police. The convoy headed straight to a boarding area heavily guarded by the US Army. The American Ambassador Graham Martin was waiting for him, alongside an American C-118 aircraft. With tears in his eyes, Thieu said goodbye to Martin and the CIA’s representative before boarding.

On 27 April, Thanh Trung returned to the airspace over Sai Gon, this time piloting the lead plane of a squadron. That day he surprised his former colleagues and superiors by leading the defected ARVN air force unit Quyet Thang and bombed Tan Son Nhat airport. In the resulting confusion, the political prisoners kept at the airport broke free and tore open the prison’s gates. Among the hundreds of inmates storming out of their cells were Thanh Trung’s wife and their two daughters.

That same day, prison guards at Thu Duc Women’s Prison in Sai Gon, where Uncle Nam’s adopted daughter Mai was held, also broke open their gates; four thousand women freed themselves. Mai walked out a free woman for the first time since the assassination attempt. She had served three of her nineteen-year sentence. She boarded a bus and headed straight for the Mekong Delta, to be reunited with her mother. She was later rewarded with an important position in the new regime.

General Duong Van Minh, now head of the ARVN regime (replacing Thieu), held a meeting with ARVN General Nguyen Huu Hanh, a secret agent for the NLF. Within hours Hanh became Commander- in-Chief of the Joint General Staff Headquarters in Tan Son Nhat, replacing General Cao Van Vien who had already escaped the country with his family. Hanh telephoned the ARVN commanders and ordered them to withdraw their troops from combat. A few dedicated commanders defied his orders and were left on their own. They were quickly crushed by Northern troops.

Again on 27 April, General Minh appointed another NLF secret agent, Trieu Quoc Manh, to be head of the National Police. A lawyer, Manh had been a member of the highest court in the ARVN regime. The next day he delivered a speech to the police force. He ordered the dissolution of its most powerful unit, known as the F5. The men had been trained in the United States secretly during the 60’s. The entire ARVN police was paralysed. The regime swiftly collapsed.

ANDREW

A fable, song, or fleeting shade,

All love, all liking, all delight,

Lies drowned with us in endless night”

Robert Herrick

In early 1975, when Andrew visited Sai Gon a second time, I expressed to him my urgent desire to leave the country. It was the one imperative that drove me. We began exploring all sorts of makeshift and increasingly desperate options.

Nu and I had contemplated a suicide pact; we gave much consideration to finding the least painful method. In light of mounting fears of vengeance from the forthcoming regime, especially against government employees and friends of Americans, and given the degrading behaviour of soldiers of the disintegrating ARVN force, these earlier conversations were far from idle speculation.

I had met Andrew the previous July, and when he came back the following January, in the middle of increasing violence and political turmoil, passion overtook us. He was staying at one of the hotels near my office. We arranged to meet in the hotel lobby.

I arrived in the city centre about half an hour early and went for a quiet walk along the waterfront. I was wearing a white silk ao dai, embroidered with tiny purple flowers. The weather had been warm and humid during the day, but now it was cooled by the currents of an east wind coming off the river. A feeling of freshness came over me, like the fragrance of wet water lilies. An elderly woman sang as she paddled a fruit laden sampan against the lapping of the dark waves. In the distance, some fishing boats were returning. There were no ferries or ships nearby that night and the river seemed vast and deep, almost like the sea. Reflecting the bright neon lights from the riverbank, the water surface gleamed and sparkled like jewels.

On my way back to the city centre, I saw two ageing bargirls giggling and laughing with a foreign man in front of a hotel. I walked faster. I entered the reception area of the hotel where Andrew was staying. There were more women with heavy makeup, and white men, sitting and chatting. I walked past them and stood near an elevator to wait for Andrew. He came down and we greeted each other quite formally. He was wearing a light blue Oxford shirt, a delicate floral tie, and a blue-grey pinstripe suit. “Let’s go to the café on the roof terrace,” he suggested.

The roof’s concrete floor was bordered by giant pots of white and red-pink bougainvillea in full bloom. We sat at a white, round, wrought-iron table next to the white iron balcony overlooking the city and its lights. Other tables were unoccupied. I hoped they would remain so, at least for a while. Andrew ordered drinks and we talked about his research contacts in Sai Gon, which I had helped to arrange.

Andrew presented me a box of Chanel N° 5. I stared at it. Its black lettering looked accusing. I could not but think of George, the Apple Man. I changed the subject, unable in my discomfort to thank him. When we left for the restaurant, I deliberately forgot to pick up the perfume from the table. Andrew picked it up and handed it to me.

One evening, after Andrew had left Sai Gon, when I was alone in my attic room I took out the box of perfume. After staring at it for a while, I tore off the clear plastic cover. I opened the box and lifted out the glass bottle. I began to shiver involuntarily. When I opened the bottle it fell from my hands and landed on the wooden floor. I threw myself on the bed, stared angrily at the ceiling, and began to breathe in the distinctive scent, now filling the room. By the time I picked it up, less than half the perfume was left in the bottle.

The next morning I came to terms with Andrew’s gift and accepted the fact that it was my perfume. I had laid one of my ghosts to rest. I began wearing perfume for the first time.

I had been attracted to Andrew’s physical appearance, his intellect, and his charm from the first time we met. Dinner at a quiet table, in a cozy candlelit restaurant, delicious food, and conversation of depth and intimacy, led to an easing of all tensions. It wasn’t long before my feelings and emotions bound me to him. He later told me that at three o’clock in the afternoon of 5 July 1974 he had come to believe in “love at first sight”. He said the effect was instant, powerful, electric, and that it had not faded.

I imagined that our happiness would be temporary and a great deal of pain would follow. This had been my experience with Robert. Part of me was afraid of becoming too attached to Andrew. I expressed these feelings to him one night and he seemed to understand me with very clear insight. He confessed that his marriage had very serious problems. I respected him for his honesty. We ended our discussion that night with a declaration that left me both angry and sad, “I can’t leave my wife because of the children.”

Andrew made a number of equally brief visits over the next few months. Our main connection was built through an impassioned correspondence. He wrote to me nearly every day and I would reply, even if I couldn’t keep up with the frequency of his letters. I worked hard to express myself in English, encouraged by the sweet words that this serious thoughtful man wrote to me. The intensity had taken us both by surprise. His initial reactions were of amazed gratitude – as he wrote to me in early February:

“It was so beautiful and I am still trying to convince myself that it was real, and that I did not imagine it all. And the wonderful thing is that it was real and every time I sit down and think about it I have the exquisite satisfaction of knowing that you do exist, and that you are not some mythical goddess. And yet you are certainly a goddess. But a real one.”

What followed was based on an unspoken sense between us that we had a clear destination, even though we saw no clear route to getting there. Meanwhile there was love, simple and pure, yet complex and painful in its context.

Andrew stressed, time after time, that this was much more than physical passion. He flattered me extravagantly:

“Let it then be officially recorded that your attractiveness is so very much more than your statuesque physical beauty - it includes, for this slave of an Englishman, your assurance and self-confidence which is at the same time modest; your activeness and capability for initiative; your confessed love of children; your joie-de-vivre in the face of such causes of sadness as the average girl never knows; your enormous, delicious, infectious sense of humour; your honesty and openness; your concern for other people; your ultra, ultra- femininity; your intelligence - despite your speaking to the pillow one night about being ‘stupid’ in the American pronunciation.”

For someone whose self-image had been undermined by years of maternal abuse, this description of me was intriguing and intoxicating. During and after his visit that January my mind and heart were filled with endearing images of him, and also the painful reality of the relationship. I was too occupied with these issues to fully sense the dangers around me. The long-term agony over the war temporarily escaped my mind and the trauma of the Apple Man had faded. I no longer felt repressed, and with someone I truly loved, I would let myself enjoy the pleasure of love. I became my natural self and rose above the intimidating circumstances that had imprisoned me for years.

Our closeness led him to a series of tributes to the fire that had set him alight.

“I want to hear your voice with that delicious characteristic of a chuckling, questioning ‘huh’; with eyebrows raised and eyes wide open – those delicious, magical, gorgeous, liquid, happy, sad, beautiful, beautiful eyes. And your beautiful breasts. Oh. I catch my breath thinking of them. And that delicious, lissome body. And the way you move – so smooth, so graceful, so young and full of life.”

His letters left me on a high plateau. But over time the reality we faced began to make itself felt and the practical issues of getting me out of the country began to occupy our correspondence.

We skirted what we would do if I did get out, and even where I might go. Andrew’s first aim was to save a life – mine – then we would decide what to do with it. Getting married was not an option. We knew what we wanted but we would have to let fate work over a long period before what he called “the mountains that stood between us” could be got over. But we both believed that doing something, even in conditions of increasing frustration and uncertainty, was better than doing nothing.

* * *

Andrew’s last visit to Sai Gon was in early March. Two weeks before that I made a bold symbolic decision. I acquired three metres of deep pink silk for a new ao dai. I also bought floral and green fabrics for a blouse and a skirt. The day I actually wore the pink ao dai – the day Andrew arrived – my colleagues were even more surprised. They asked me for the reason but I didn’t tell. They kept smiling and whispering.

Andrew arrived at mid-morning that day. It was a beautiful spring day, unusually cool, with a bright blue sky. I saw him passing through the immigration checkpoint. My heart began to beat rapidly. When he came out to the dusty and noisy greetings area, I leaned over the railings and greeted him with a big smile. He looked surprised and also amused at the new “me”. He gave me a kiss on each cheek, “You look splendid!” he said. As an Englishman, he was more restrained in showing affection in public, but I knew he had been as anxious as I had, before his arrival.

In the taxi from the airport to the hotel, I leaned my head against his shoulder. He squeezed my hand. “I missed you,” he said. I felt an overwhelming sense of happiness: rare, precious, but temporary. I wanted to remain silent, to feel the current flowing between us. But other images kept crowding – his marriage, the obstacles, the goodbyes, my war-torn country, and my fear of death. I chased them away. The old Renault taxi advanced in a long drawn out series of hesitant lurches along the busy streets. Gusts of dusty hot air came through the jagged hole in the metal floor at our feet. Andrew covered it with his foot and gave me an amused smile.

The taxi stopped in front of the grand old hotel and the emaciated looking driver said, “Miss, if you and your gentleman are going somewhere today, I will be very happy to take you. I will be around here today and tomorrow.” He bowed his head with a grateful smile as Andrew handed him the fare and a tip.

A bellboy picked up Andrew’s suitcase. I walked past the reception area without looking at the people there. After checking in, Andrew joined me at the elevator. Once inside, he pulled me closer to him, with a loving smile.

The first evening, out of nostalgia, we returned to Aterbea for dinner and enjoyed its traditional specialties, especially the Dalat strawberries. Knowing that my birthday is in March, and thinking I would only wear white, he had brought a package of white silk as a gift. He also gave me an amethyst ring.

Each day, after his work was finished, Andrew would wait for me at the same white, round iron table at the café on the hotel’s roof terrace. One afternoon I took a swimsuit with me and we went to the swimming pool on another floor of the hotel. It was a hot and humid day and the water was refreshingly cool. I was tempted to tease him in the way that often happens when one is relaxed. Other couples started arriving and talking loudly – foreign men with their bargirls. I quietly got out of the pool and picked up my belongings. Andrew followed me, understanding my discomfort.

The visit was again a short one and the farewell painful. Meanwhile a time bomb was ticking, louder than ever. I returned to the reality of war and to thinking about attempts to leave the country. I applied for a passport; a matter that was not at all routine.

At the passport office I was told quite frankly, “We can’t give you a passport application unless you can prove that you are marrying a foreigner.”

The government had announced the cancellation of all foreign travel for its citizens, except for “prospective spouses of foreigners.” I went to the travel agency where I had previously worked. They helped me locate a foreigner, an American, with a massive beard and very casual look. I couldn’t tell his age but guessed that he was in his early thirties, and not well educated. He said without hesitation, “I will be happy to help you by marrying you. The arrangement will cost you four thousand US dollars. I will need a deposit of two thousand dollars. I promise you that we will start the paperwork immediately.”

There was no way to find out if he was honest. I had heard about a case of a white foreigner entering into multiple marriage arrangements, taking half of the money from each young woman, then disappearing for good. I was still willing to take the risk and tried to negotiate, “I don’t think I can afford that amount. Will you be willing to accept two thousand dollars for the arrangement?”

“No Ma’am! That’s my price and no negotiation.”

Shortly afterwards I met a Eurasian man with a French passport. Nu and I talked to him. He said he could enter a marriage arrangement with me any time, for two thousand American dollars, but he was oddly vague about other matters. Nu observed him closely and didn’t think he was really single. She also disliked his attitudes and manners. We didn’t pursue the idea any further.

While exploring ways to leave the country legally, I was compelled to tell Andrew the situation in Sai Gon. I wrote to him on 20 March:

“It’s 1:30 pm and I am at my office. Tonight the curfew will start at 10pm and last until 6am. Yesterday we learned that the Viet Cong had already taken four provinces of Central Highlands and people are fleeing to Sai Gon. They are advancing at a fast rate and I think they will take over Sai Gon in a few weeks time. I couldn’t sleep last night because of worry. Did I tell you that I had bought a smart suitcase from the Central Market (first time that I own a suitcase!)? It’s dark pink, with strong gold locks. It’s just about big enough for my new day-clothes, some photo albums, and all your letters.”

The ARVN regime was still in control of two areas in the Central Highlands: Hue, the former imperial city, and Da Nang, the most important seaport in Central Viet Nam. However, President Thieu issued an order to withdraw from Hue and to defend Da Nang, “at all costs.” Ironically, when more government troops arrived in Da Nang, instead of defending the city, they started looting and raping, taking advantage of the chaos as civilians tried to flee. Four days later, a women’s army of the National Liberation Front marched on Da Nang, captured the city, and restored order.

Two days before Da Nang fell, civilians and ARVN soldiers had tried to escape. They fought for space on any plane or ship out of the city. In one of the more violent incidents, ARVN soldiers opened fire on each other. They forced their way onto a plane sent from Sai Gon to rescue civilians. More than a thousand civilians tried desperately to board that plane. It finally took off with two hundred ARVN soldiers, two women, and a baby whose mother had been left behind, crying hysterically on the tarmac. Before the plane left the runway, an angry ARVN soldier on the ground threw a grenade at it, damaging one of the wings. The plane flew into a clear sky and banked southward. It fell into the South China Sea, killing all those on board.

A letter from Andrew, dated 29 March, was full of urgency. He mentioned Mr Terry Cope, a New Zealander, who would be contacting me sometime soon and would get me out. He would suggest marriage as a way of getting me through the immigration formalities, and I was to go ahead with it. We couldn’t afford to be sensitive and Mr Cope, Andrew added, was reputedly a nice man and not looking for someone to sleep with. “As soon as you land in Hong Kong,” Andrew said, “you become my responsibility and he knows that, so you will probably not see him again after his work is completed. That is the arrangement.”

Andrew assumed I’d received my air tickets by this time. In the event I couldn’t contact him about my travel date, he gave me emer- gency phone numbers and addresses of possible contacts in Hong Kong.

“There is a further plan, love, in case anything goes wrong. If all other plans fail, then I will arrange for transit by sea, but that is as a final resort. I am sorry I am going away next week and cannot write from Jakarta but I think we now sit and wait for developments. This is the most difficult time of all, for you Jasmine, and I understand the mental agony you are going through, but I think we are going to succeed. I know you will write, I know I will see you soon, I know you will soon be free. You know that I love you.”

The air tickets came and I was most anxious to meet Mr Terry Cope. But to my great disappointment, he never arrived. He had informed Andrew that there would not be enough time for the Vietnamese government to issue the necessary exit permits or passports. At the same time, a marriage blanc with a Frenchman living in Hong

Kong was arranged by Andrew, but that too failed for the same reason.

Andrew then attempted to secure a passport via the Viet Nam Consulate in Hong Kong by using a friend of his in the Hong Kong Immigration Department as an intermediary. This friend also had a Chinese friend who came to Sai Gon regularly on business and who, in turn, would try to get me out. But this plan never materialized either.

On the evening of 8 April, I wrote to Andrew and described the bombing of the Presidential Palace. I woke up in the night and wrote a second letter to him:

“Two nights ago sixty rockets hit Sai Gon and many were killed, including a family of seven. Some witnesses were interviewed by the media and they said how terrified they were at the scenes. If people don’t get killed, they will die from fear. Shortly after the bombing this morning there was an announcement that all government agencies and businesses will not be open tomorrow. I don’t imagine there will be any letter from you until the 24 hours curfew is lifted and things re-open.”

I received a telegram confirming Andrew’s plan for me to depart by sea on 12 April. He had advised me in an earlier letter to disguise myself as a poor Chinese widow for the journey. He told me not to bring along a suitcase but rather a small travel bag. That day, I waited anxiously at my office and counted the hours, but Mr Law Keung never appeared. When I turned up again at home, my family were shocked to see me. I told them that the ship had not yet arrived and that I was still planning to leave the country to find better work overseas. They were happy to see me back home. My little sister clung to me, insisting that she did not want me to leave home at all.

A series of letters from Andrew continued to arrive about various escape methods, including the following one:

Another plan which I have started is as follows: A Hong Kong Chinese man with a British passport will come, and go through a marriage ceremony. After a time, if the government then allows people to leave who are married, you could then go out. This may be safer than marrying a Westerner because even if the Viet Cong take over the government, they are still likely to let married people out and a Chinese man is likely to go in and out more easily. I will know more about this when my friend rings me tonight and will send another letter about it.

Another plan I have started is through the Canadian Embassy in Sai Gon. My friend has asked his friend in the Canadian Embassy to help you out by whatever means he can. If a Canadian rings you then do all you can to help him. I do not know how he will arrange things but he will be able to judge best.

Another possibility is to transfer you to an American company and exit under American protection. I am having dinner tomorrow night with John Durkin of Esso to ask him about that, but it will depend on how certain the American protection is.

There is another possibility with passports which I do not want to discuss in a letter, but which I am also working on. It is very complicated.

“One of these methods must succeed. But an important thing, Jasmine, is for you to keep trying yourself in Sai Gon, in any way you can think of. What about your American friend who offered to help sometime ago? Can you talk to him? Americans have privileged status and they may approve an exit permit if you marry him. Try it, please, it is so much easier from Sai Gon than from here.”

The “American friend” mentioned by Andrew was Arjay, whom I had met earlier at a USAID party. Arjay was an American civilian with olive skin, in his late fifties. He was highly emotional, and given to outbursts of anger for reasons unknown to me. Sometimes his face would turn lobster red from having consumed a large amount of alcohol. He was fluent in several languages and talked a great deal about himself. He offered to help me get out of the country and suggested I bring my suitcase and stay at his apartment. According to him, the US Embassy would soon gather Americans in groups at a special location, and evacuate them by helicopters in the night. The US authorities did not want to deal with the problem of picking up individuals from his or her residence because of the curfew. Although given no specific date for the evacuation, he believed he would be leaving Sai Gon within a week or so. Arjay said, “If you are not here when they call me, I will have to leave without you. With the curfew, it would be impossible for me to find you or to get you to the departure point at night.”

“In that case, can I bring my suitcase and stay at your apartment from tonight?”

“Certainly.”

I arrived at his place and met his maid, a woman in her forties. After explaining my situation, I asked, “Auntie! May I stay with you in your room until my departure?”

“Of course you can, my dear! You are very welcome to sleep in my room. However, there is a guest bedroom and Sir may want you to stay in the guest room. In either case, I am happy that you come here while waiting.”

Arjay was very pleasant toward me and he talked about his wife and children in America.

When I returned to his apartment on the second evening I found him reading one of Andrew’s letters. I’d told him about my relationship with Andrew and that Andrew was trying to get me out of the country. Caught by surprise, Arjay was now clearly embarrassed. He immediately handed the letter back to me.

“How dare you do this to me?” I said in an angry voice.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered and started to walk away.

I was seething, but I couldn’t find the right words to convey my anger. I simply wanted nothing more to do with him.

Shortly before midnight, while sitting in his guest bedroom with a book and still trying to calm myself, Arjay appeared in the doorway. He invited me to join him for a drink. I thought he wanted to apologize. He’d already had a few drinks and was tipsy. He talked for a long time about himself, then finally rose from the couch and came over to me. I got up and walked into the kitchen. He followed me and tried to put his arm around me.

“It would only be fair to exchange sex for freedom, honey!”

I stood there in silence. He said, “If you’re really serious about getting out of the country, honey! I will be equally serious, but there has to be something in return.”

I was strongly tempted to walk out of the apartment. But I was desperate, and he knew it. I spent the night in his bed, biting my lips with suppressed rage until they bled.

Two agonizing days passed and Arjay announced that he loved me, and he hoped that I would become his mistress when he returned to Washington, DC. I didn’t respond. I fled his apartment on the same day. In frantic haste, I left behind two albums of precious photographs, never seen again.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell Andrew what had happened. He still assumed this “American friend” was still helping me.

The war situation worsened day by day. My boss, the deputy minister, grieved over the loss of his own brother, the brother’s wife, and their four children. They had been hit by a rocket while sleeping in their house. Ba Chieu market near my house had been hit twice, but luckily, neither bomb exploded.

Mother Chin, who had earlier been so kind to me, was now working for a new employer, Colonel Donnelly, who had something to do with security at the American Embassy. After our failed trip to the Cambodian border she said she would see Donnelly and ask for help. She and I would meet him in the evening of 21 April.

* * *

The colonel seemed a decent man, middle-aged, chubby, with a sort of Winnie-the-Pooh look about him. He listened to me attentively, then said, “I understand your situation and will do my best to help you. First I must check with the embassy, to see if it will be possible for you to join me during the evacuation. If I can get you out of Sai Gon, you should be free to travel to Hong Kong. I will let you know about my contact with the embassy tomorrow.”

That night I wasn’t able to sleep. I thought the colonel appeared to be sincere but I still had my own doubts. What if the embassy won’t let him? And he may change his mind too. I have never worked for him and I am not his mistress. Why should he have any obligation to me?

The next morning, to my great surprise, the colonel arrived at my office! The minute he saw me, he pulled out a stack of papers from his briefcase, “Here are the papers from the US Embassy, for you.”

I was so thrilled and I couldn’t believe that he had made such an effort. How lucky I was to have met a thoughtful gentleman, a stranger who honoured his word.

Donnelly instructed me about the papers, “One original and six copies. Each requires an ID-sized photograph. The original and three copies will go to the Mission Warden Office. One copy for the embassy, one for me, and one for you to keep. Can you get seven photos and fill out everything within the next couple days or so?”

“Thank you so much, Colonel! I will get everything ready and will bring them to you by tomorrow.”

He assured me he would arrange to pick me up as soon as the embassy informed him when he was leaving the country. But he warned that he might be one of the last Americans to leave Sai Gon.

I was elated and wrote a quick note to Andrew about Donnelly’s kind offer. Nobody was in the office that morning. I filled in all the papers. Then I walked to a photo studio and had my ID photo taken. I offered to pay double the price for seven copies if they would be ready that evening.

I took all the papers to Donnelly’s apartment and met with him. Mother Chin came with me. He asked for Andrew’s address in Hong Kong and said he would write and let Andrew know about our arrangement. Mother Chin asked him if I needed to stay at his apartment while waiting but he said it would not be necessary. He added that the embassy would give him enough time and he would be able to inform me before the departure.

* * *

On the morning of 23 April, Nhan went to the neighbourhood bakery to buy bread. He heard that elements from the regular North Vietnamese army had already infiltrated into the suburbs of Sai Gon, and that a senior ARVN commander had shot himself. My mother also learned from the neighbours that the chief of our precinct had been murdered by the Viet Cong in the night. I felt a chill in my spine. But instead of staying at home, I left for work as usual.

On that same day, US President Gerald Ford spoke in New Orleans and announced that the “Vietnam War” had finished. In Sai Gon, the last evacuation of Americans under Option IV would begin on 29 April.

ACROSS THE SEA

“None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.”

Pearl S. Buck

I woke up in a state of high anxiety, after a very strange dream: a postman had arrived at the door with three letters from Andrew. One was small and square, the other two were large, rectangular and equal in size. I opened the square envelope first and found a thick green card with my photograph at the top right hand corner, and the message. “Here is your passport, Rabbit!” Delighted, I opened the next envelope, a number ‘2’ was written on the outside in bright red ink and inside there were two little bamboo mats. The third envelope, with a number ‘4’ written on the outside in red ink, contained four little bamboo mats. I placed the first two mats on the left side of a table, the other four mats on the right. Why did he pack only two in one envelope and four in the other? Why didn’t he divide them equally, three and three? I picked up the two large envelopes and placed them side by side, with the number side up. The two red numbers jumped off the envelopes and started dancing: ‘2’ and ‘4’, ‘2’ and ‘4’ again and again. At the same time I heard a woman singing from afar, “Who sends the bird across the sea, to flee its cage, to find freedom? Who sends the bird across the sea…” I woke up with a chill running down my spine. Was it a good or a bad omen? What was the meaning of the bamboo mats? What was the meaning of ‘2’? and of ‘4’? ‘24’? Perhaps, ‘2’ and ‘4’ equal ‘6’? And the song? Did this imply that I would have to take a sea journey to gain my freedom?

It was four in the morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I thought of my paternal grandmother, who used to interpret my dreams and predict their meanings. She had often told me not to ignore warnings from the gods of fortune.

One of my brothers had seen the flag of North Viet Nam – red background with a gold star – in Xom Gieng. Everyone began to panic. My mother calmly and cheerfully said to me, “Didn’t I tell you that when you were a new-born baby, I wrapped you in one of those flags?” Tears came into her eyes, which she quickly wiped away. I stood there in awkward silence for a moment. I then went up to the attic. I heard my mother searching for something in one of the drawers of her sewing machine. She was trying very hard to conceal her emotions. The wife of Bay Ca appeared at our front door and whispered into my mother’s ear, “They’re coming, the Viet Cong are coming. Let’s pack our things now!”

We didn’t know where to go. But later in the day everyone seemed to return to an uneasy kind of normality.

I had tea with Mother Chin in the maid’s quarters on 23 April. Having filled out the papers from the US Embassy, I felt more optimistic about the possibility of leaving. But Mother Chin looked quite disturbed that day. She told me that friends in one of the districts in Sai Gon had been acquiring food for members of the Viet Cong hiding in that area. “The Viet Cong expect victory any time now!” she said. I reported to her what I had heard in my neighbourhood. We began to talk about my plan with the colonel. I told her that despite his promises, I worried he might not succeed in getting me out of Sai Gon. We discussed other things, including my dream. Mother Chin said to me afterwards, “You will be leaving, but I don’t know how.”

The song in the dream reinforced my fear of dying at sea. I thought perhaps the American colonel wouldn’t take a plane after all, and we would end up on some kind of a warship sent to rescue people; or I would have to escape alone by boat.

In fact, it had proved impossible for me to obtain a Vietnamese passport, and without a passport it was impossible to apply for a visa to go to any country. Was the colonel so naive to have made such a promise?

On the morning of 24 April I woke up with a headache. Mr Tu, the water carrier, had told us that Northern troops, spearheaded by the National Liberation Front, were advancing rapidly toward Sai Gon, and that the Southern capital would soon be “liberated”. Mr Tu seemed delighted. He respectfully referred to the NLF as “our liberation army”. This didn’t surprise me at all, given the recent trauma he and his family had suffered. The rape of his niece by the ARVN soldiers was obviously still fresh in his mind. It was clear he loathed the regime.

I had received a long and serious letter from Julian a few days before. He told me the Communists were soon going to take over Sai Gon any time and he was willing to sponsor my evacuation to America. He added that he owned a nice house in Florida and would welcome me there. He assured me that I would be well looked after in America. It was clear from his letter that he was still in love with me. But it was too late for me to start any kind of paperwork with the Vietnamese government. Nu said I’d been foolish not to keep in touch with Julian. He had written to me several times from America, but I’d replied only once. “A marriage plan with him would have worked out if you’d taken the opportunity when you had it,” she said.

My frustration – a feeling of being trapped by circumstances – was like an iron band tightening around my head. I had no answers. I became more and more haunted by the fear of a violent death and by worry over the financial responsibility to my family. What would become of them if the regime collapsed? In deep despair, I sought solace from Quan Yin.

I pray to you, the Goddess of Mercy

May I not be reborn in the Western

world?

May I now become a drop of water on your willow branch?

Whose sprinkling may help reduce my pain and sorrow.

The office was increasingly quiet, hour after hour, day after day. There were no clients, foreign or local. I had no idea where all my male colleagues had gone. A senior member of the team had said goodbye the previous week and had given me an address in the United States. He said it was his American sponsors’ home, where he would be living temporarily. The deputy minister had stopped coming to the office.

I was one of three remaining employees, including the security guard, who still routinely reported to work. Suong – the woman who had studied in Australia – and I spent hours aimlessly tidying, talking, waiting for someone to come, waiting for something – anything – to happen.

But nothing did happen. From time to time Suong would go out of the building and walk along our street to look at shops, or would run some errands for her husband and son. I was often by myself in the office.

On 24 April there were rumours all over the city that the Americans were evacuating. Nobody knew anything for sure. Nu came to see me mid-morning. We went across the street to the Brodard Café and ordered fresh fruit juice and croissants. I didn’t want to broach the subject of our usual conversation, but what else was there to talk about? Two days before, she’d informed me that she and her mother were going to buy their way out of the country by boat. If their gold savings weren’t enough, they would sell their house. This was an illegal arrangement and extremely risky. There was a chance they would lose all the gold without securing their escape.

All I had to rely on was Donnelly.

“I’m afraid it will be too late,” I told Nu in the café. “Everybody says the Americans are leaving and Donnelly says he will be one of the last ones out. What if he isn’t allowed to take me with him at the last minute? I don’t have any kind of relationship with him. He doesn’t owe me anything. Besides, I have no passport. I’ve got nothing.”

Nu listened to my lament without comment. After a long silence, she said, “You realize, don’t you, that neither of us will ever find out what happens to the other, alive or dead?”

We walked down Tu Do Street toward the river. Beneath the giant clusters of the dusky-pink bougainvillea covering the archway next to a stone bench, we sat in silence. The sky was bright and clear and the surface of the river was infused with morning sunshine. Boats and ferries moved about normally. I thought of Nu and her family escaping in the dark of night on this very river. I had no idea what kind of a boat they had arranged for, neither did Nu. I feared they would drown at sea and Nu would be lost forever. This led to thoughts of my own family’s plight and the shocking question that suddenly came out of nowhere, as to why my father had never made any effort to get his family out of the country.

We walked along the riverbank, talking inevitably about our situation. When we arrived inland at the junction of Rue Pasteur and Thong Nhat Boulevard, we were only a block away from the white US Embassy building. Nu mentioned that she’d heard the embassy was helping Vietnamese flee the country.

“That’s what I keep hearing,” Nu said. “Everybody says the Americans are leaving but also that they’re taking people with them. Why don’t you go over there today and find out?”

“You can’t just walk in there,” I said. “You have to know somebody. Either that or you have to have worked for them.”

“But you worked with Americans at the Ministry of Transportation.”

“That’s not the same as being employed by Americans.”

“Well, if I were you I’d go back to the ministry and ask them for a letter proving you had worked with the American Advisory Board. Then take it to the embassy. Why not try anyway?”

“But the Americans aren’t at the ministry any more. And nobody will pay attention to a letter written by the Vietnamese.”

“Well, what about your correspondence with Robert and Jerry? And the letter you just got from Julian? Why can’t you show them the letters and the photos? That’ll prove your connection with Americans.”

“I can’t show my personal things to other people! It’s too embarrassing. Besides, all those relationships are over.”

“Well, what about the Americans who work at the embassy? You must know somebody there, don’t you?”

The more she insisted, the more I came up with reasons why I couldn’t, or why it wouldn’t work. But all her pressuring did finally give me an idea.

“All right!” I said. “There is someone I know there. I’ll try to go see him later today. But I doubt it’ll work.”

Nu made me promise even so, and more to placate her than because I believed it would lead anywhere, I promised. We agreed to meet again at my office the next day.

“See you tomorrow!” my friend said.

These were Nu’s last words, as we embraced. We did not know that this was the last time we would ever see each other.

The person I knew at the embassy was called Robert Barton. He was in charge of the embassy dining rooms. We’d met two years before, when I’d applied for a job in his accounting section. He hadn’t hired me, but he had said there might be something suitable at a later time.

One day I ran into Barton unexpectedly while passing by the gate to the embassy annex. He invited me to his office for a drink. We became casual friends and occasionally I’d stop by his office to say hello. I suppose I still hoped in some vague way he might offer me a job. He never did, though. He always called me “the girl in white.” This made him laugh, and despite his austere air, we always found something to laugh about when we chatted.

Ours was the most casual of relationships, not even a friendship really. How dare I ask him for a favour? And not just any favour.

At the office, I tried to find some work, but there wasn’t much to do. Time was running out on me – on us all – like sand in an hour glass. The Americans were fleeing the country, leaving most of us to fend for ourselves, and Andrew was begging me in his letters to find a way out on my own. Nu was exhorting me to go to the embassy, and Donnelly was telling me he was going to take me with him. I began to have doubts. And the numbers from the dream, ‘2’ and ‘4’, continued to flash through my mind. I finally made the connection.

‘2’ and ‘4’…’2’ and ‘4.’

‘24.’

Today’s date…April 24!

I believe in such things, in dreams and omens. It was five-thirty. I had wasted a whole afternoon. I normally stayed at the office until at least six. I bid goodnight to Suong and the security guard.

Not that it mattered. Not that anyone cared.

I walked briskly along Tu Do Street towards Notre Dame Cathedral. It was an evening like any other, the beginning of the rush hour with all sorts of vehicles pouring noisily into the street, belching smoke and ignoring the traffic rules. Unless you knew otherwise, you’d never have thought that a noose was now tightening around Sai Gon’s throat. Turning into Thong Nhat Boulevard, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a strange sensation.

It was already quarter to six. What if they sealed off the embassy before I got there? Suppose the gates were locked and nobody could get through. Or suppose Barton had left the office. What if he had already fled Sai Gon like so many of his countrymen?

In a panic, I ran, thinking that if I didn’t get there by six, all would be lost. At the same time, I had a premonition – as powerful as it was irrational – that Robert “Bob” Barton was my last chance.

Was I fixated on six because it was the sum of two and four?

I can’t say. I do know I arrived at the embassy gate at precisely seven minutes to six. One of the security guards on duty recognized me from somewhere and let me pass. Barton was at his desk when I dashed into his office, winded and breathless.

“Well, look who’s here!” he said with a big smile. “To what do we owe the honour?”

I couldn’t get a word out. I was gulping air, trying to catch my breath.

“Well, come on,” he said. “Sit down. Relax. Have a seat.”

“Hello Bob,” I finally managed. I sank into a chair in front of his desk.

He was a tall man in his late forties, with a stern face that belied his friendly ways. He waited patiently. Then I launched in.

I asked him directly about the evacuation.

Yes, it was taking place, he said. The Americans were getting out, he too. I somehow managed to find the courage – or was it simply desperation? – to ask him to include me.

I didn’t just ask, I begged.

He was taken aback. Then he became serious and he questioned me sharply.

“Is that what you really want? Do you really want to leave?”

“Yes.”

“Are you absolutely certain?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re not going to change your mind?”

“No.”

“Well, then I may be able to help you,” he said. “But you’re not going to be able to bring any family members with you. Just you only. Is that clear?”

He obviously knew stories about the Vietnamese who always wanted to include a trail of relatives when they sought help at the embassy. I was too dumbfounded by his offer to ask for anything more.

Then I confessed I had no passport.

He said I wouldn’t need a passport. He wanted to know, though, if I knew anybody in the United States who could sponsor me.

I rummaged in my handbag and took out the letter from Julian, still in its envelope bearing Julian’s address in Florida. Barton read the letter. He teased me when he came across the passages where Julian described me as “beautiful” and “serene”. But he was amused and, in his way, pleased at my resourcefulness.

“So you will be joining your Navy captain in Florida?” he asked. “Well, good for you!”

I didn’t dare correct him.

He asked me to wait while he stepped into the next room and gave orders to one of his staff. I could hear some of what he said – “That’s her full name. Just put down that she’s my adopted daughter!”

He then returned and told me to get ready for departure that evening.

“You’re leaving tonight,” he said. “I want you back here at seven o’clock!”

Seven o’clock? I glanced at my watch. That was only 45 minutes away!

Nonetheless, I thanked Barton and in a daze and managed to walk out of his office. I couldn’t believe it. Then suddenly I realized something I’d forgotten to ask.

I retraced my steps. Barton looked up at me from his desk, as though surprised to see me.

“Can I bring a suitcase?” I blurted out. And: “Are you sure that you won’t change your mind?”

He started to laugh but then, realizing my discomfort, he reassured me with a fatherly smile.

“Yes, my dear,” he said. “Bring a suitcase. And I will be waiting for you right here – at seven o’clock sharp!”

I looked at my watch again, worrying about the time but not daring to ask him to delay the appointment. No, I couldn’t ask him for that. Suppose he changed his mind!

I hailed a taxi and told the driver to go as fast as he could. The traffic, however, was impossible – it was still rush hour – and I was in a near-panic at each stoplight, each traffic jam. Like other drivers, my taxi driver was oblivious of traffic rules, forcing his way through the crowded streets. There were no longer any cops to enforce any rules.

Finally, at quarter to seven, the taxi driver stopped at a lamppost on the main road leading to my home. I asked him to wait while I ran through the long alley to my house. Dashing through the kitchen door, I could hardly speak. I shouted that I had a flight out and could not delay. I don’t know how long I was there – no more than ten minutes – feverishly throwing things into a suitcase and trying hopelessly to cope with saying goodbye. There were tears in my father’s eyes and in the uncomprehending grimy upturned face of my little sister. My heart was beating so rapidly I thought my chest would burst. But all the while, I knew that this desperate act was my last chance to save us all from destitution and misery.

None of us knew the future. None of us could speak the words. I ran out into the alleyway with only the simplest and most helpless gestures of goodbye.

I clambered back into the taxi with tears, determination, anxiety, and remorse. I fell back against the seat and the taxi rushed off into the night.

We arrived at the embassy at seven-thirty. Dragging my suitcase, I ran past the half-open gate, ignoring the security guards. One of them came after me, shouting, “Where are you going? Miss! Where are you going?” I turned and pointed in the direction of Barton’s office, shouted back, “To see Mr Barton. He’s waiting for me over there!”

But suppose he wasn’t! Suppose I was too late!

Then I saw him standing in the parking lot next to a white car. His assistant was sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Here she is!” Barton shouted. “Come on, Jasmine, get in! You’re late!”

I started to apologize but he shushed me. The car’s rear door was open and I jumped inside, shouting goodbye. He waved back, smiling, as we drove off.

We headed straight to Tan Son Nhat airport, roughly two kilometres north of the city centre. Though Barton had introduced us that evening, I couldn’t remember the assistant’s name, and was too ashamed to ask him directly now. He was a chubby man in his early thirties, quiet but pleasant and respectful. He assured me that he would see me safely on the plane that night and report back to Barton the next morning. He told me not to worry; he and Barton would be leaving too.

Maybe it was because I was now in American hands that I felt a huge relief as I sank back in the comfortable seat of that big white car. It was as though a magic wand had been passed over me, and I was on my way at last to freedom. Airport security had been tightened for obvious reasons. Every vehicle was subject to search and its passengers to questioning, but even when we entered the security checkpoint, I felt no anxiety. Calmly, at the driver’s instructions, I wound down the window on my side. A uniformed Vietnamese guard glanced at us quickly and greeted me, “Chao Ba!” “Evening, Madame!” Then, without asking a single question, he signalled us to pass.

It was magic indeed. Either that, or seeing me neatly dressed in the traditional Vietnamese manner in the back seat of a car with an American diplomatic license plate driven by an American, he simply assumed I was someone important.

We drove straight onto the brightly lit tarmac, among dozens of Vietnamese people and their suitcases and bags. They stared at me, and watched the assistant’s every movement with great interest. He stopped the car, jumped out and quickly opened the back door. Before I was even out of the car, he had already lifted my pink suitcase from the trunk. Out of the quiet and comfort of the airconditioned car, I returned to the usual noises, heat, humidity, and dust of the tropical city.

“Come, Miss,” he said. “We have to hurry now.” He took the suitcase and guided me with his free hand. We rushed to a waiting area where more Vietnamese families stood near their luggage with papers in hand. Americans in army uniforms were dashing about and there was the roar of engines close by. A military plane took off behind me into the night sky.

The assistant told me to wait while he contacted someone to add my name to the passenger list. I wasn’t to leave the waiting area. I wasn’t to worry either. But the moment he disappeared, panic set in. I felt as though everyone was staring while I stood alone with my suitcase, helpless and vulnerable. A Vietnamese man with a distressed look approached me, begging, “Miss, can you please help us? We are here but without any papers. We can’t board a plane.”

I replied that none of my family members who were back home had papers either. I couldn’t help them. This seemed to satisfy him. He walked away, head down, to rejoin his family.

I spotted the assistant making his way through the crowd. He handed me a piece of paper. It was my boarding pass. He told me the plane on which I was meant to go was full. But he’d registered my name for the next flight, which was due to leave the airport at two in the morning.

The distressed Vietnamese man decided to take another chance. Suddenly he was back, and begging me, “Miss, can you please ask the American gentleman to help us? Please! Please!”

I translated for the assistant, but he said that he had no authority to get him and his family on the plane. I translated back, and again, in resignation, the man slunk away.

The assistant then took my suitcase and led me into another area on the tarmac. He said it would be a long wait. It was now nine o’clock. There, he said goodbye again. “Don’t worry! I’ll be back before you board the plane,” he assured me.

The scene at Tan Son Nhat airport that night was one of seething frenzy, of people milling around and rushing, headlights from jeeps and big cars probing their way forward, and every once in a while, a plane roaring down the runway into the night. Intermittent sounds of distant rocket fire punctuated the din. Everywhere were groups of people sitting on the gravel ground of the tarmac. I found a piece of paper in my handbag and spread it on the ground, huddling down next to a large group of waiting passengers. A boy carrying a basket of French bread made his way through the crowd. He stopped by me, “Please have some bread!” I wasn’t hungry but offered to buy a small loaf. The price was double the normal price, but what did that matter? What use was Vietnamese currency to me now?

I retreated to a darker corner and sat alone. I had changed from my white ao dai into a white blouse and a dark green skirt. I sat listening to the planes and the incessant sounds of rocket fire. Troops were running in various directions, jeeps patrolled to and fro, people wept as they were led this way or that. The worst off were those who had smuggled or bribed their way inside the fence surrounding the airport with their families. They now found themselves without papers. They ran hysterically from one American to another trying to gain access to a plane, shouting in desperation.

Moving quietly and deliberately through the confusion were some who knew they weren’t leaving: the boys, for instance, who sold French bread at double the street price. But for everyone, leaving or staying, this was the end of a world, and it was ending with gunfire, the roar of engines, rushing jeeps, weeping, pleading, and incomprehensible announcements blaring out of loudspeakers.

Barton’s assistant returned around ten o’clock. He recognized my suitcase but not me, since I was now wearing a skirt and blouse, with my long hair braided and tucked in neatly at the back.

“I brought you these,” he said, handing me a package of ham sandwiches and a can of 7-Up. “You must be very hungry.” Then he rushed off, saying he had other people to see to.

I desperately wanted to tell my family I was safe and on my way, but our house had no telephone. There was time, perhaps, to go home and return to the airport, but I didn’t dare. Security was too tight and even with my boarding pass, they may not let me back in. Instead I wrote letters, to my family, to Nu and Mother Chin.

Midnight came and went. I was euphoric, unable to think. In all the tumult, time seemed to crawl, then stop altogether. I thought of the astrologer my father had consulted following my birth, twenty-four years earlier. There were those numbers again, ‘2’ and ‘4.’ Furthermore, it was once again in the Year of the Cat – 1951, 1963, 1975. According to the astrologer, this year would mark another major turning point in my life.

And so it turned out to be.

At one-thirty in the morning, seemingly and miraculously out of nowhere, Barton’s indefatigable assistant reappeared. He had already confirmed that my name was on the list for the first evacuation flight of that day, 25 April.

He walked me to the boarding area where a military aircraft was waiting under bright lights. He said it was a C-141. This section of the airport was controlled by the US Army. Only passengers with boarding passes could enter. Barton’s assistant said goodbye there, handing me my suitcase. We shook hands and he wished me a good flight and then was gone.

Near the stairs to the airplane stood an American in army uniform, holding a list of passengers on a clipboard. He was calling out names. When I heard my name I went forward, my boarding pass in hand, I joined the orderly queue of passengers and made my way up the steps.

More than half of the passengers were Vietnamese. The others were Americans in army uniform. There were no seats and we all – civilians and military, yellow and white and black – squatted on the floor. Minutes later, there was a powerful roar and a shuddering surge beneath us as we raced down the invisible runway and lifted into the sky. My country was disappearing beneath us, unseen. A voice came over the loudspeaker, announcing we would fly across the South China Sea and head for the island of Guam in the Western Pacific Ocean, with a stopover for refueling at a US military base in the Philippines.

I gradually managed to compose myself. I spent the long hours of the flight trying to make sense of this watershed in my life. This ending. This beginning.

I will live in a foreign land, and sleep on alien soil

I will travel far, far into an unknown world.

A NEW LIFE

“Let freedom warm the souls of all mankind, for as I walk in the autumn of my life, I shall reflect on my yesterdays and hope for our tomorrows”

Margot Lindsey

I sent Andrew a telegram as soon as I arrived on the island of Guam. He was so happy I had made my way to freedom. He suggested that I go to Minneapolis as he had some close friends there. From Guam I was sent to Camp Pendleton in California, and in mid June I was received in Minneapolis by Andrew’s old friends, Anne and John. They welcomed me into their home wholeheartedly, like a long lost family member. They became a solid anchor in my new life. I felt most fortunate. In September, I started a full-time job as a junior accountant with Northwestern Bank of Minneapolis, found a studio apartment, and began to take evening classes at a community college.

I contacted Julian the following summer and we arranged to meet briefly in Colorado Springs. He felt disappointment that I had not contacted him upon arriving in Minneapolis. For the trip to Colorado, I had planned to pay my air ticket, but he insisted on giving it to me as a gift. He already knew that I had no intention to move to Florida. We had a long talk while hiking around the mountains and he seemed to understand my situation. At this second farewell Julian presented me with a gift – a beautiful antique iron he had collected in Viet Nam during his tour of duty there. We agreed to maintain our friendship.

Andrew came to Minneapolis that same summer to see me and to thank Anne and John for their generous hospitality. We talked about his absolute commitment to his two children and painfully concluded that I should go on with life without him. It was a very difficult decision for us both, but what else was there? I suffered something close to a nervous breakdown, and my emotions slowly went into a deep freeze. To put Andrew completely out of my mind I talked to Anne. She offered to keep all his letters in a locked drawer at her house. I never thought that Andrew would ever care to keep my letters to him. But to my great surprise, he did. Twenty-one years later he handed them to me in France.

* * *

In 1978, with the help of a kind English literature teacher, Mr Hanson, at the community college, I was awarded an honours scholarship to attend Augsburg College as a full-time student. While enrolled there, I was sent to Europe for a year of study. Although we had ended our correspondence some years before, I wrote to Andrew in August 1980:

Anne might have already told you that I had left Northwestern Bank in September 1978 to study full-time at the Lutheran college in Minneapolis called Augsburg. This year I will be at Schiller College in London for the first semester, then to its campus in Heidelberg, W. Germany for the second semester. If you happen to be in England, please stop by my school for a visit.

Andrew appeared at the campus in London one morning in September and knocked on the door of the room I shared with a Sri Lankan girlfriend. We were just on our way to class. We couldn’t speak much, and I was somewhat speechless anyway. We arranged to meet later that day. Andrew came back in the evening in a taxi and took me to his favourite Spanish restaurant, Martinez. I learned that his family was still living in Hong Kong and he was in Europe briefly. We talked about my life in Minneapolis and my studies. We didn’t discuss his marriage or our relationship. But there was an irresistible desire to keep in touch, even if only casually.

I returned to Minnesota in 1981 and became an American citizen. In early 1982, I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. Unable to find work in the business field in the midst of a recession, I ended up working in a community mental health clinic serving Southeast Asian refugees, funded by the state and managed by the University of Minnesota.

I then enrolled in a Master’s degree program in Social Work at the same university. Before completing the program, I was transferred to the university’s Department of Psychiatry, working under Dr Joseph Westermeyer, a renowned psychiatrist in cross-cultural psychiatry. After obtaining the Master’s degree I continued my job in the psychiatry clinic. My work with various cultural groups was deeply satisfying. It led me to writing, public speaking, and travel. I began to see it as my calling.

In 1984 I married Michael, an American from a distinguished family. This inter-racial relationship was incompatible. There seemed to be a permanent clash of cultures between us. A typical American, Michael had limited knowledge of the Asian world. He showed little appreciation for Asian cuisine and he detested the sound of any kind of Vietnamese music. Meanwhile, he felt that I wasn’t fully assimilating to the American culture and ways of life. He had a habit of making hurtful remarks when things were not the way he wanted. I was deeply unhappy and drifted away from him emotionally. He continued to feel frustrated. Less than three years later we decided to end the marriage.

* * *

Fate threw Andrew and me together again in October 1987. I’d not written to him since 1980 and had moved a few times. It was through Anne and John that he got in touch with me again. He was on sabbatical in Boston and had called them to ask how I was. He said he’d like to see me. Thinking he might want to renew our relationship, I said, “No, I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to meet.” He kept insisting and wrote to say that the meeting would be “important”. Why so important now? If we had been meant for each other, it would have happened twelve years earlier in Sai Gon, or six years earlier in London. No, I had concluded there was nothing more between us. He wrote again with the same request. Then we spoke on the phone. Finally I agreed to meet him in New York City.

On the plane from Minneapolis to New York, I tried to imagine if Andrew had changed, what he was going to say to me, and what I was going to say to him. Part of me was anxious to see him, while part of me felt quite the opposite. I knew there was still a powerful emotional bond between us, but I was too afraid to acknowledge it.

Andrew met me with a warm smile and gave me two kisses on my cheeks. I smiled in return but was unable to find the right words. He was now a stranger to me. My level of discomfort was real but I tried to remain cool and unaffected as we passed through the noisy crowd at the airport. A taxi was waiting outside, with a chatty driver.

Andrew said we were going to Arden House, a grey-granite mansion in the Catskill Mountains above the Hudson River, belonging to Columbia University, where he was staying while teaching a senior executive group. I talked to him about my career in Minneapolis and my American “family” – Anne and John. There were moments of silence in which I wondered what he was thinking and why he wanted to see me.

We arrived at Arden House, and there, at the doorstep, Andrew reached out his arms to embrace me. So confused were my emotions that I almost cried, but at that very moment I saw a man coming toward us. Andrew promptly introduced me to one of his teaching colleagues. The three of us chatted for a few minutes. After a pleasant lunch, Andrew said he would be working all afternoon, but we would go into the city in the evening. Neither of us had remembered it was Halloween.

While Andrew was teaching, I took a quiet walk around the mansion and along the surrounding footpaths. The sky was hazy, with rays of sunshine now and then. The autumn season was well advanced, turning the leaves on the forested hills all shades of gold for miles into the far distance. The mountain air was cool and crisp. I listened to the crunching of fallen leaves and the sighing of the wind. In the breeze more leaves were falling and brushing my shoulders. I found a wooden bench and sat for a long time, breathing in the aroma of the cool season. I began to think of my times with Andrew in Sai Gon. I became agitated and anger and frustration welled up inside me. I got up and chased the unpleasant feelings away. All those lost years – those twelve years I should have been with him.

It was my first time in New York. Andrew wanted to show me one of his favourite cities. That evening we strolled around Greenwich Village before having dinner at La Chaumière, an old restaurant with a fireplace, serving classic French cuisine. He spoke slowly and gently, “I remember it clearly. The date was the seventh of April, this year, while I was shaving in the bathroom. A decision finally clarified in my mind, that I would get a divorce.” I was unable to speak. My eyes were burning and I made an excuse to leave the table. I cried uncontrollably in the lady’s room, then emerged with a controlled expression and returned to the table. I smiled at him. He was anxious to know my reaction to his divorce plan but I couldn’t respond. My emotions and feelings had been frozen for twelve years.

Coming out of the restaurant, we encountered exotic figures in elaborate masks and gowns, witches and wizards. They were marching, singing, cackling, and screeching. A trumpeter was playing on a nearby rooftop. How I wished I had had a broomstick to fly away – to flee from Andrew. Perhaps a mask could conceal me too? Cold air penetrated my skin and as I moved through the crowd, Andrew tried to put his arm around me and keep up. We were soon swallowed up by a Halloween party that seemed to go all the way to Fifth Avenue.

Before I returned to Minneapolis, he asked me again, more specifically, “After my divorce, can I share my life with you?” After a long silence, he asked another question, “How do you feel about it?” I replied, “I have mixed feelings about it.”

He wrote to me afterwards:

Thank you for coming to New York. It was magical. After so many years of thinking about you, it was so delicious to be with you again, especially after such a long period of accepting that it would not be possible again. Life is strangely quixotic.

Although he was ready to share his life with me and I was beginning to dismantle my defensive armour and thaw my emotions, I was still unable to make a commitment. We were to meet several times again over weekends in various American cities, including a return to New York. In the spring of 1988, we were in San Francisco when Andrew offered to make a trip to Minneapolis. He arrived in May. I held a party and introduced him to my friends and some of my colleagues from the university. I was living in a nice apartment on Groveland Terrace next door to the Guthrie Theatre and the Walker Arts Centre, just a few steps from the beautiful Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. I had chosen the place because I was always fond of theatres. I had attended many performances in London while studying there. I rarely missed a play at the Guthrie. In June I visited Andrew in Hong Kong, and spent my summer vacation with him in Hawaii. My heart had come out of the freezer.

But I found it hard to give up everything I had achieved in Minnesota: my job, my friends, and my home. Month after month he waited for confirmation from me. Still I gave no indication as to when I would move to Hong Kong.

Finally, in October, exactly one year from our trip to New York during Halloween, I told Andrew I would give up my job and move to Hong Kong. Delighted, he wrote to me:

I don’t want to appear pompous, but at a time when you are giving up so much to be with me, I would like to tell you how precious that gesture is to me, and how very significant. It is something I will treasure forever.

The astrologer had been right – 1987 was the Year of the Fire Cat, marking another turning point in my life – a new life with Andrew. We were engaged on the Orient Express ship between Istanbul and Venice, before taking the connecting train to London in the summer of 1989. There was a small wedding ceremony in Hong Kong in early 1990.

Shortly afterwards I was given a full time job by the United Nations’ High Commission for Refugees in Hong Kong. As a child welfare consultant, I was to make recommendations on long-term solutions for the many unaccompanied Vietnamese children held in detention centres.

I worried I might have already passed childbearing age. Then, in the winter of 1991, I became pregnant. In 1992, Year of the Water Monkey, our son Edward was born. The boy inherited his father’s natural charm and easily wins everyone’s heart. Highly intelligent and with a happy nature, he is very devoted to his mother. Ever since, my life has been filled with love, affection, and material comforts.

SAI GON REVISITED

In the spring of 1991, after sixteen years living overseas, I contemplated a return visit to Sai Gon. Diligently saving my salary from the UNHCR, early in the year I sent eighteen thousand American dollars to my parents to buy and remodel a spacious house, located in one of the better areas of Sai Gon. My return trip to Sai Gon took place a few months after they had moved in with my sister Hong.

My brothers were all married by then and the old family house was given to Nhan, who would later sell it to buy a better house with help from me. My three other brothers were either living in rented property or with their in-laws. Shortly after the war I learned that my parents had not been able to secure the apartment in Sai Gon – the one I’d had transferred to them before leaving the country. According to them, the construction hadn’t been completed and it had been broken into when the Northern regime took over Sai Gon. The squatters remained there as if they owned it. The new Communist authorities at the time did not intervene because they wanted to protect the “homeless”. The regime introduced a ruthless land reform policy called “danh tu san”, or “attacking private assets” which allowed the confiscation of private houses and other properties from the “capitalists” in the South. In Sai Gon thousands of families were targeted. Houses and properties abandoned by those who had already escaped the country fell into the hands of government officials and senior cadres. Though my family was not well off, they were trapped by this policy.

For several weeks before the return visit, I was subjected to a strange mixture of emotions. I worked hard to remain cool, cheerful, and unaffected. I filled an entire suitcase with gifts and I carried a large amount of cash in American dollars.

The flight from Hong Kong to Sai Gon took only three hours. As soon as the plane entered Viet Nam air space, I gazed down anxiously from the window, as we descended through masses of white cloud. My heart was beating rapidly as mountains, trees, water, land, grass, roads, and vehicles, and finally an airport runway, appeared. I knew my family was waiting at the airport entrance. My happiness concealed my fear. I feared the Communist regime. I feared their reprisals, I feared the unknown – not only for myself but also for my family. I was coming back as an American citizen – a citizen of the enemy. Fear of persecution had prevented me from returning earlier. I’d waited and waited, patiently, for sixteen years.

I’d been told by an overseas Vietnamese friend about the agony of passing through the fourteen desks at Tan Son Nhat airport a few years earlier, for lengthy questioning and inspection. I’d paid attention to every detail as he described them and became increasingly nervous. One piece of advice he’d given me was to take a carton of foreignmade cigarettes. This would smooth the way at the airport.

I stepped down from the plane to board one of the airport buses leading to the immigration area. It was a hot and humid day, and even the most modest building was staffed with intimidating immigration officers in army uniform. The interior was dense with cigarette smoke. Most of the passengers on my plane were non-Vietnamese. None of them seemed to show any signs of anxiety.

When I had applied for a tourist visa to Sai Gon I’d been instructed by the travel agency to submit five ID photos and had to fill in a pile of forms. I was told that upon my arrival at Tan Son Nhat airport I’d need to fill in more papers. At the first immigration desk, I slipped out the carton of Winston and placed it on the desk, “For you, Big Brother!” The man behind the desk tacitly acknowledged it. After glancing through the pages in my US passport, he smiled and gave instructions on how to proceed with the remaining requirements.

As I walked away from his desk another man appeared by my side and offered to go through the entire procedure with me. I imagined he was an “assistant” to the first immigration official. He said, “Big Sister, is this your first time back?” He then said that he would accompany me until the end. When we came to the queue in front of the high counter, where my passport and visa would be carefully scrutinized, he walked off. My heart began to beat rapidly as I waited. This immigration officer stared at me and then at my passport. Although the questions were standard, I felt his contemptuous look, his harsh voice and his overall expression carried a hidden and negative message. The assistant was waiting for me discreetly on the other side of the high counter. I walked past and we both went to the baggage belt. We had to wait a long time. He lifted my suitcases, placed them on a trolley, and pushed it to the next queue. As if he guessed what was on my mind, he said, “Big Sister! All crimes have been forgiven, and you must no longer have fear.” He said that the government was encouraging Overseas Vietnamese Patriots (Viet Kieu Yeu Nuoc) to return, to help rebuild the country.

At the last desk he lifted my bags off the trolley and placed them on the X-ray belt. I declared the contents in my luggage and handbag. The immigration man asked me what sort of jewellery I was wearing. He wrote on the declaration form that I had a pair of jade earrings, a jade bracelet, and a Seiko watch. He looked at me again to make sure he had not missed out anything before letting me go. I picked up my passport, gave two American dollars to the assistant, thanked him, sighed with relief, and wheeled the two suitcases as quickly as possible, through the sliding door.

A crowd – my family was itself a crowd – was waiting at the entrance. My mother, my brothers and sister, their wives and children had come to the airport, eighteen of them altogether. My sister, Hong, said, “Father has to stay home to guard the house. Last night he didn’t sleep at all. For days he has been so anxious.” We left the airport in a large, rented white van, heading to my parents’ new house.

I immediately noticed that Sai Gon was much poorer than it had been during the war years. There were at least four times the number of bicycles on the road. What struck me most was the appearance of the cyclos and their drivers. None of the cyclos had white cushions or polished metal frames as they used to. Now the cushions were torn, dusty, and covered in dark stains; the metal frames were old, rusted, bent, and damaged. Nearly all the drivers were wearing torn and dirty clothes, and their faces were symbols of extreme poverty. My sister told me that the majority of cyclo drivers in Sai Gon had been soldiers of the former South Vietnamese regime, unable to obtain jobs after their release from re-education camps. Even though the government was trying its best to create work opportunities for many of the poor, these men were the lowest on the list of priorities.

My sister rang the doorbell. We heard my father’s footsteps. I heard the clinking of the house keys, knowing he was there on the other side. The folding door was pulled aside, and there he was, with his big smile, bent forward, straining to see us, “Has Hoa Lai arrived?” Shouting, “I’m here, Dad!” I embraced him.

“Father has poor vision these days and eye glasses don’t seem to help.” said my sister. We walked through the patio and entered the living room. My siblings’ families filled the entire ground floor.

Every day from morning to night, the house was full of people. The overcrowded conditions and the constant noise were hard to get used to. I handed my mother tien cho, market money so she and her four daughters-in-law could purchase food and prepare meals for everyone. The American dollars I brought were exchanged for Vietnamese piasters called dong, at a gold shop. Government banks in Sai Gon had their foreign currency bureaux but the exchange rate was too low.

* * *

One afternoon, I told Nhan to buy a new wooden desk for Father. He had his clothes, stacks of personal and household papers, money, hardware tools and everything else crammed inside a small wooden chest. He had difficulty finding anything. This was the same chest that he’d purchased when we all moved to Sai Gon in 1963. The new desk arrived and Nhan helped father to transfer his personal items to the desk. I noticed a beautiful gold frame, and in it a rectangular sheet of rice paper with gold edges, containing inscriptions in calligraphy. I asked him if I could look at the frame. They were revolutionary medal citations – awarded him by the Prime Minister shortly after the American War. He’d been given a high national award. He also had revolutionary medals, confirming his outstanding services with the nationalist intelligence during the two wars (my mother had taken the frame down from the living room wall and asked my father to lock it up before my arrival). I said to my father, “I didn’t know that you had worked for the Viet Cong!” With his usual calm and gentle smile, he said, “We’ll talk about this later, you and I, when we have some quiet time together.”

That evening, like any other evening during my visit, my brothers and their families stayed until almost midnight. By the time they left my parents had gone to bed so we could not talk.

I lay awake in the pleasant bedroom near the back of the house and listened to the soft wind blowing through the lace curtains. The air was filled with the sounds of a tropical city, cats and dogs, the breeze ruffling the bushes, traffic sounds on the road, and from my parents’ bedroom, the steady snoring of my father and the periodic coughing of my mother. A bouquet of white orchids my sister had arranged in a tall ceramic vase stood silently on the little table, silhouetted against the window-side wall. Darts of light from the hall shone on the corner of the ceiling. My mind slowly returned to my childhood in the village and adolescent years in Sai Gon. Looking at myself and my father now, in 1991, the extreme contrast struck me forcibly.

Unlike many Vietnamese in America who had been torn between the two cultures and unable to adjust to the new world, I had been able to adapt and advance myself, and had become Westernised in my thinking and way of life. A university education in the West, a professional career, a Western husband -- all these had transformed me. When I looked at my beloved father, here and now, in the old Sai Gon, ageing and in poor health, my entire framework of understanding began to disintegrate and would need to be rebuilt. Living so long as an American, had I absorbed their views of the war and forgotten my family’s nationalism? Had I never understood the flag I was wrapped in at birth?

I asked my sister to arrange an early dinner the next evening. When the others had gone, my father and I went to the patio on the second floor of the house to drink tea. I sat in the new hammock my mother had made. He was sitting upright in a new rattan chair.

He said that people who had worked in the intelligence service rarely talked about their activities. He had never shared his experiences with anyone outside the small circle of Nationalist colleagues.

I reminded him that he had abandoned us when I was a child and told him I was still angry with him. I could not forget that eighth day of October, that rainy day, he suddenly left the village without saying goodbye.

MY FATHER’S STORY

We sat on the patio for three consecutive evenings. The first evening my father described his activities as a secret agent in the Mekong Delta.

In 1945, at twenty-three, my father followed his uncle, Cuong, and joined the undercover Viet Minh. That year French troops attacked his home region of Can Tho and local residents waged a scorched-earth resistance war – burning down houses and markets to prevent the French from becoming established. The gold shop of his other uncle, Ba, was burned to ashes, after the family moved all their belongings to a family friend. My father, after undergoing intensive training for one year, was elected to the local executive committee and started recruiting young people for the Youth Leagues. In 1947 he became Secretary for the Viet Minh Front in Long My district, south of Can Tho. His motivation was simply patriotic. Restoring the country to its own people was enough in itself.

In 1949, given his respected character and popularity in Long My, my father was appointed by the colonial authorities to be head of the Economic Committee for Truong An village. Secretly he still held the post of Secretary for the Viet Minh Front. Meanwhile, senior members of the Viet Minh in the South had settled in the “Jungle of Hell”, protected by the intelligence network of the Viet Minh Front.

When Ngo Dinh Diem took power in South Viet Nam in July 1954 my father continued his work in the transportation of rice and other commodities in Truong An. It was at this time the new regime started building up the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam and anticipated the need to feed the army. The government was still waiting for confirmation of foreign funds from the United States and my father was asked to come up with a regular arrangement whereby local farmers would sell the food supplies on credit to the government. Local authorities would pay the farmers later.

In early 1955 my father was asked by the Viet Minh to set up an underground intelligence base in Truong An. He enlisted the help of three men with revolutionary ideals – all of the Nguyen family. The eldest, Bay Tot, became my father’s right hand man. Bay Tot’s two younger brothers, Muoi Dien and Tam Bang (and also Muoi Dien’s wife) worked for him in Truong An. The three brothers had earlier provided protection to several leaders of the Nationalist force in the delta region, including the senior revolutionary Ha Huy Giap and the future Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet. My father felt that he could trust them.

My father explained, “To help strengthen the regime, the Americans had assisted Diem’s younger brother Nhu to create a secret network of Catholics who had come down as refugees from the North, and Nhu named it the Can Lao. It contained ten separate and powerful intelligence agencies. Among them, the police force was considered as most crucial. Members of these agencies informed the government about any traitors, spies, or foreign plots, and kept a close watch on government officials at all levels.”

In Long My, my father was able to cultivate the district’s chief, a Catholic appointed by the Diem regime. They got on well and when the government decided to set up a village council for Truong An in May 1955, he asked my father to help. This was when a Catholic friend named Quang became the council chief with my father as his financial secretary.

My father’s secret network continued providing protection to key nationalist members, organizing new locations for bases, transferring intelligence personnel, and monitoring the activities of the ARVN troops at the Constance Garrison. He was under constant threat of discovery or betrayal and in regular torment over concealing what he knew.

One day in mid-1956 troops from the Garrison entered the house of my father’s men – the Nguyen brothers – who were staying with their parents. Both Bay Tot and Tam Bang had just returned home from the jungle three hours earlier and they were having a meal with their parents. Tam Bang got up quickly and ran off. One soldier threw a grenade at him. It exploded just as Tam Bang dived into the river. Bay Tot climbed into the rice barrel in the kitchen but they found him and interrogated him. They struck his head with rifles, trying to force a confession out of him. He remained silent and they continued to beat him until he was unconscious. One soldier rushed to the sun porch and grabbed a hammock. They wrapped his body inside it. Another soldier found a hammer and he started beating Bay Tot’s head and face until his eyes and brain spilled out. Then they took his body, still wrapped in the hammock, to Constance Garrison. At eight o’clock in the evening they shot at his dead body in the back yard.

My father remembered the following morning: the chief of Constance Garrison made a public announcement, “Last night our soldiers tried to arrest Bay Tot but he ran away. He was shot trying to escape.”

When Bay Tot’s hammered body was being shot behind the Garrison building that evening, my father and Quang were sitting in the village council’s office on the bank of the Constance Channel, drinking tea and chatting. Hearing a series of gunshots, Quang said, “We’re still in the period of cease fire. Why are they shooting now?” My father became very tense. Just before Bay Tot was captured my father had given him a stack of blank identity cards, each carrying the seal of the district’s office. Bay Tot had been instructed to “issue” these ID cards to new members of the intelligence network, in order to disguise their real identity. When he learned that they had fired at the body of Bay Tot, my father suffered a great anxiety, “The cards? What did he do with them? Did they find them?”

A few days later there was a typhoon in Truong An. In a friendly conversation with the head of Constance Garrison, my father offered to take an ARVN sergeant out into to the jungle to gather palm leaves to replace the garrison’s roof. He knew all the local channels. He took the sergeant out in a sampan. As they moved slowly along they saw a man on the bank in black cotton clothes, wearing a conical hat. He had his back to the river. The sergeant shouted out, “That’s Tam Bang, he’s Viet Minh!” and raised his gun. My father quickly stopped him, saying loudly enough to be heard, “Don’t shoot without seeing his face. Let’s arrest him to make sure it’s Tam Bang.” Hearing this, Tam Bang rushed into the forest, leaving his hat behind. The sergeant could only fire wildly in the direction of his escape.

The sergeant was angry but my father pacified him. At that time there was a woman sitting near the riverbank chopping wood, and she overheard all that was said.

Later that evening Tam Bang’s mother came to see my father and thanked him for saving her son’s life. My father felt a chill in his spine and cut her dead, “No Madame, I did no such thing.” He signalled her to leave. Tam Bang was captured at a later date, and tortured. He ended up spending twenty years in a ‘tiger cage’ in the notorious Con Son Island prison. Like his elder brother Bay Tot, Tam Bang never revealed my father’s identity throughout his imprisonment. Without their loyalty my father would almost certainly have been executed.

During the early years of the Diem regime the youngest of the three brothers, Muoi Dien, was an important contact between my father and the Viet Minh. One day in 1956 he came to warn my father that someone had reported him. The informer had said that my father owned a radio which he communicated with the Viet Minh. Muoi Dien said that ARVN troops from Phuoc Long would soon come to arrest my father.

The next day, at five o’clock in the morning, my father suddenly heard a series of gunshots, a signal from Muoi Dien. At that time, I was asleep in my father’s arms in the hammock. He told me later, “That night you had been restless and your mother asked me to get you to sleep in the hammock. Muoi Dien’s signal alerted me, and I handed you to your mother and rushed through the back door. I crawled inside a haystack at the back of the Hoang’s house and later escaped to the jungle.”

ARVN troops arrived at the house five minutes later and demanded to know where my father was. My mother remained calm and told them he had not been home for several days. They searched the house but could find no evidence of him. They found my father’s watch and snatched it. The troops stayed until three o’clock the next afternoon before giving up.

My father went to the Long My district chief to register a complaint about the accusations. The authorities in Phuoc Long made an apology to the chief and him. In the mean time my father transferred Muoi Dien to a village in Can Tho. However, led by a local spy, government troops began searching for Muoi Dien to make an arrest. Tam Bang described to me the events leading to Muoi Dien’s death:

“Government troops found him strolling in an open field. He tried to run away but it was too late. They came running after him and shot him in the back. Injured, he kept running – hoping to reach the jungle at the edge of the field. But they soon reached him and finished him off.”

My father resigned his job with the council and left Truong An four days later. His life and work were increasingly in danger and he needed a place with a better cover in Sai Gon. He joined the Ministry of Transportation.

* * *

I do not know about my father’s secret work in Sai Gon – if there was any. But it was clear that he did not wish to tell me more.

The second evening my father described Cuong’s political life, including the dangerous journey to Ha Noi for the First National Assembly of Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary government. The last evening he talked about the revolutionary life of young Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh) and Ho’s thirty years in exile searching for international support to help liberate the country. Father answered my questions, “Why did Ho Chi Minh choose Communism?” “What kind of a leader was Ho?” “Was he a nationalist or a communist?”

He said Communism had entered the picture under two important circumstances. Firstly, a large proportion of intellectuals worldwide in the 1920’s and 1930’s were strongly left-wing or Communist sympathizers, desolate at the slaughter of the First World War and seeking an alternative to the ‘old order’. Secondly, Ho’s search for international support had been widespread but, sadly for later events, only found a sympathetic ear in Moscow.

Ho Chi Minh’s communism had been an instrument to serve a much deeper ideal, that of nationalism. Ho once stated, “I shall follow any international community which supports the liberation of the colonies.” General Vo Nguyen Giap said, “Ho Chi Minh chose Communism in order to save the nation.” Giap also described how Ho provided a version based on opportunity rather than equalization for the Vietnamese people, quoting Ho:

“The poor should be better off and have enough; the average should become well off and some of them rich; the already rich should be able to become even more wealthy. People would be united, with everyone as patriot.”

Above every source of influence stood Ho’s real and central driving force: he was a patriot. That was the name he had adopted in the crucial early years when he formulated his position; he styled himself Nguyen Ai Quoc – Nguyen The Patriot.

My father said Western powers never seemed to understand that the primary driving force of the Vietnamese people has always been nationalism. Westerners failed to acknowledge and accept the fact that the Vietnamese simply wanted to get rid of the foreigners and to run their own country.

I returned to the hammock on the patio and sat for a long time. I stared at my sister’s little garden where she grew white jasmine bushes and flowering apricot trees in huge pots, Hong came and said, “It’s late, are you coming inside to get ready for bed?” I told her I was enjoying the cool breeze and the scent of the flowers and was not sleepy. My father’s story was still too vivid and raw.

After thirty-five years of silence, misunderstanding, and frustration, the father I always loved emerged, finally understood and appreciated. My own conscience began to bother me a great deal from this time. I believed it was me, and not my father, who had chosen the wrong path. Had I known more about my father and Granduncle Cuong, would I have worked for the Sai Gon regime, or been involved with the Americans? The remaining days of my visit filled me with indescribable sadness.

In the stillness of the night, I listened to the whispering of the wind. I watched the geckos on the ceiling in the dim light from the small electric bulb. They made tiny “chit chit” sounds – sounds of regret, as my grandmother used to say. My own regrets gradually seeped into me, as did remorse, and hidden guilt.

OTHER LOVED ONES

From 1992 to 1994 I sent the remaining two-year salary from the UNHCR to buy four more houses in Sai Gon, one for each of my brothers. The reasons were very clear to me at the time: to fulfil the duty of an eldest child, to free them from poverty, and to remove my overwhelming guilt for having left them behind in 1975. This was my way of liberating myself once more, in order to enjoy life in the West without hindrance of remorse. In 1993 I helped them set up a patchwork quilt project, TT Quilts, in Sai Gon, hiring several women from Xom Gieng and several female relatives from Truong An. Later the project was expanded and many single mothers were hired and trained to produce high-quality, handmade quilts for export. This enables the women to work at home while looking after their young children. Part of the profits from foreign sales are donated to the families of these women to help support their children’s education.

Every time I have been in Sai Gon I have tried to locate my old friends and former classmates. I could locate only one, Lan, who’d worked with me in the accounting department at the Ministry of Transportation. She has been working as a hawker, selling beef noodle soup in an alley in Sai Gon. I was told that Phuong, my classmate who’d suffered the serious traffic accident in 1970, and her family, might have escaped to Australia. I couldn’t obtain Phuong’s address, however. When I returned to Ngoc Phuong temple, I was told Sister Dieu Thai might have emigrated to the United States. I tried to search for Nu and was told by her former neighbours that her family had indeed escaped, presumably by boat. But there had been no news from them. Colonel Donnelly’s former place had completely changed. I couldn’t find anyone who knew Mother Chin. She’d given me a pair of pearl earrings in 1975 and they are now still with me, as a cherished remembrance.

BITTER LEGACY

I took Edward to Truong An village in the summer of 2000. He’d asked to see it. This was my first time back since 1967.

It was a sunny and hot afternoon. We arrived in Thanh Chau with my mother, my sister Hong and my brother Nhan, and their children. From the van’s window, we saw sparkling water and then my maternal relatives, squatting in their motorized sampans, looking expectantly in our direction. I recognized Mo Muoi in her white blouse and black trousers and partially-torn conical hat. The minute she saw us getting out of the van, she took off her hat, stood up, and waved at us. Her old sampan was bobbing in the water under a brilliant sun. She ran towards me. I shouted out, “Mo Muoi!” and embraced her. Her face bore the obvious signs of long suffering, and at that moment tears welled up in her eyes. I felt a pang in my chest. “What a miracle to see you, dear child!” She said.

We passed several monkey bridges. When my old neighbourhood appeared, I hardly recognized it. Mo Muoi pointed at a very tall coconut tree behind a small thatched hut – my old family house, and said, “I don’t know if you still remember this tree. Your father had asked me to find a baby tree. He planted it himself to celebrate your birth. Its trunk contains many bullet holes, but every year it never fails to produce fruits.” Edward was fascinated by the tree, and its story.

I saw a frail looking woman standing in her front yard, she shouted, “Hoa Lai! I’m Lien. Your old friend Huyen Lien (Black Lily)!” I looked at her, startled. She burst out laughing, then shouted again, “You don’t remember me! I don’t blame you. It has been more than thirty years.” I smiled at her and shouted back, “Yes, I remember you, Lien!” While I was struggling to get out of the wobbling sampan, she ran over and pulled me up to the bank. We embraced. Lien was very talkative. She took me into her house to see her widowed mother. Lien herself was also a widow. Her husband and all her four brothers who had been members of the NLF had been killed in combat. She reported that our friend Cam Phi – Plump Orange had been killed by a poisonous snake in the underground shelter during one of the raids in the seventies. Both of us found ourselves in tears. That evening I gave her a small amount of American money. She bought for herself a solid gold ring the next day – her new savings.

Hinh was especially delighted to see me. He had told Mo Muoi that if he could see me, he would be “happy to die”. He had been in poor health following a head injury after the war. I gave him cash for medical treatment. Uncle Muoi’s eldest son, Gai, was poorest of all my maternal cousins. I gave him money to construct a well at his house at the suggestion of my mother. She said that Gai’s family had used polluted river water in their cooking and she was reluctant to eat at Gai’s house. His younger brother Thanh, who had accompanied me during my return visit to Truong An in 1967 had died of illness shortly after the war.

One of Edward’s first questions was why our village had no roads. It was difficult to answer but I decided to tell him the truth, that the Americans had bombed the village heavily and destroyed all the roads. The parts that were left were further damaged by floods, and the reason for that was that all trees had been killed by American chemicals during the war.

We stayed at my parents’ little country house in the village of Vinh Vien, the birthplace of my deceased adoptive brother Son. The house is typical of the area – palm leaf roof and walls – but without the typical earthen floor. When I had it built for my parents, I requested a red brick floor. I also equipped it with a modern bathroom, electricity, and a telephone. It overlooks a stream and is surrounded by fruit trees. We found there a dozen ducks and chickens, hundreds of duck and chicken eggs, a tank of live fish, clusters of fresh coconuts, baskets of mangoes and pineapples, and various types of vegetables – presented to us as gifts by my maternal relatives and friends. Each meal was a feast to us and we had a constant flow of visitors, who were most anxious to see me and my Eurasian son. In less than a day, word got out. Even complete strangers arrived to have a brief view of the overseas Vietnamese (Viet Kieu).

I had heard about victims of Agent Orange in Vinh Vien, and while there the local authorities confirmed that there were currently two hundred victims in this village alone. I asked to see some of them and more than a dozen appeared at the house. The sights shocked me. Their conditions were beyond anything the outside world could imagine. When Edward met the first two cases – an older woman who had been infected, with a horrible looking face, and her invalid daughter – he was terrified and burst into tears. He ran into the bedroom, pulled down the mosquito net, and sat motionlessly on the edge of the bed. I went in and took him in my arms, but couldn’t find the right words to explain to him. All I could say was, “We’ll try to help them ourselves. Then we’ll tell other people to help them too.”

The following day he asked me if we could take some of them home with us. In order to have their arms and legs “repaired”, he said. We had arrived in the village with a budget of two thousand dollars, and although we gave only small amounts to each family of my maternal relatives and to Agent Orange victims, the money was gone in two days. On our third day, my sister said, “We must leave the village before dawn tomorrow. If we stay, more people will come and we don’t have any more money to give.” She telephoned the car rental company, telling them that we would be returning to Sai Gon earlier. In the evening, Hinh arrived and we discussed the war again. He gave me the following message:

Millions of Vietnamese were killed and millions were injured in various degrees. The United States added further misery to Vietnamese lives by decades of embargo against Viet Nam. Another unfair treatment took place in the spring of 1997, when the US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin came to Viet Nam and demanded a payment of 145 million dollars, to be paid by the Vietnamese by 2019. This would be the repayment of loans which the Americans had made to the American-backed regime in Sai Gon during the war. The Vietnamese themselves feel deep resentment and argue that even if the Americans decided to use that debt – that sum of money – to pay each family of the American War’s victims, the amount would be less than thirty-six American dollars per family.

After Hinh left, I asked myself over and over, “What can I do for my country?” and “How can I help the Agent Orange victims?” Those who had suffered and continue to suffer are my own people.

The next morning we got up before five. Edward was wide awake but said he didn’t want to leave the village. He begged me to stay and see more people with “poorly arms and legs”. He started weeping again. Hinh came in and gently lifted him off the bed, “Please come with me, sweet child!” We made our way in the dark to the waiting motorized sampan. Edward was carried by Hinh. Everyone could hear him sobbing. But he fell asleep afterwards in my arms. The sampan was passing the palm jungle at a high speed. With two other sampans behind, my relatives accompanied us to a meeting point with the driver and the van. Two hours later we found them – already waiting for us near a monkey bridge.

Major Historical Events

1615 - 1975

1615

French Jesuit, Alexandre Rhodes arrives in Viet Nam with other priests after being expelled from Japan. Aggressive Catholic criticism of Eastern religion and beliefs, with Rhodes’ view of the Buddha as “the Black Liar, to be felled like a dangerous tree.” Romanized script or Quoc Ngu is developed by Rhodes in 1628 and his Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary is published in 1651.

1615 – 1800

Combined promotion by missionaries of Catholicism and trade. Ten percent of population converted to Catholicism by c. 1750. Rising hostility of government mandarins towards missionaries.

1778

Bishop Pigneau de Behaine appoints political and military advisors to Nguyen Anh, and provides significant technical support in a civil war. 1802 Nguyen Anh begins reign as Emperor Gia Long, uniting the country, and founding the Nguyen dynasty.

1820

Emperor Minh Mang (1820- 1840) avoids missionaries and dismisses all French advisors at Court during his reign. Captain John White, first American recorded as setting foot in Viet Nam.

1847

French forces attack Da Nang port in response to Emperor Thieu Tri’s rejection of missionaries. Emperor Tu Duc succeeds Thieu Tri, and plans to eliminate Catholicism in Viet Nam.

1852

Napoleon III takes power in France. He endorses series of expeditions to Viet Nam to protect French missionaries and gain trade concessions.

1857

Napoleon III makes final decision to invade Viet Nam.

1858

French warships attack Da Nang and set fire to the town. French troops rely on the support of 400,000 Vietnamese converted Catholics, who pledge their loyalty to the French.

1861

French forces capture Sai Gon. The Imperial Court still hopes for a peaceful negotiation.

1862

Emperor Tu Duc signs treaty with France, granting them broad religious, economic, and political concessions.

1863

The French take control of Cambodia. French missionaries urge French government to overthrow Emperor Tu Duc. Resistance movements are intensified throughout Viet Nam for ten years. The French execute many resistance leaders.

1873

French forces attack Ha Noi and capture General Nguyen Tri Phuong, who starves himself to death in captivity. The Vietnamese counter-attack and re-gain Ha Noi two years later.

1879

First French governor appointed for South Viet Nam, now France’s colony in the Far East and renamed “Cochinchina”.

1882

Captain Henri Riviere and his powerful troops seize Ha Noi. The commander of Ha Noi citadel, General Hong Dieu, commits suicide.

1883

France establishes Annam (Central Viet Nam) and Tonkin (North Viet Nam) as “Protectorates”.

1884

The French enthrone Ham Nghi, at age 12. His Court is split among those calling for armed resistance and those wanting to negotiate and collaborate with the French.

1885

Emperor Ham Nghi goes into hiding after being overthrown by the French. The Emperor issues the Can Vuong, a widespread appeal to the nation for armed resistance.

1887

France creates Indochinese Union, including Cochinchina, Annam, and Tonkin, and also Cambodia.

1888

The French capture Emperor Ham Nghi and send him into exile in Algeria. The French enthrone Dong Khanh, who dies in the same year.

1889

The French enthrone Thanh Thai, at age 10.

1890

French troops continue to raid villages and push many of the Can Vuong resistance forces deeper into remote mountainous areas. Ho Chi Minh is born in Vinh, Central Viet Nam.

1907

Educational opportunities are made available to Vietnamese women – for the first time in history, with the Dong Kinh Nghia Thuc, a non-tuition school. The school is sponsored by the two revolutionaries Phan Boi Chau and Phan Chau Trinh. It is one of their efforts to help prepare the country for an armed revolution. Emperor Thanh Thai’s secret women’s army is revealed to the French, who suspect the Emperor’s plot against them. The Emperor is deposed and sent into exile in a remote Indian Ocean island. The French enthrone Emperor Duy Tan, at age 7, to replace Thanh Thai.

1911

Ho Chi Minh begins his exile overseas and would not return until 30 years later.

1914

First World War breaks out in Europe.

1916

Emperor Duy Tan calls for a general armed uprising, hoping to inspire the revolt of 98,000 Vietnamese conscripts gathered in Hue on their way to France (for labour battalions) for the First World War. The French depose Emperor Duy Tan and send him into exile in Reunion. Emperor Khai Dinh is enthroned. Khai Dinh yields to all France’s demands and is portrayed as a corrupt leader and a traitor by Phan Chau Trinh and Ho Chi Minh.

1917

Russian Revolution. Ho Chi Minh, then known as Nguyen Ai Quoc, arrives in Paris and stays for seven years.

1919

Ho Chi Minh sends petition for self-governing of Viet Nam to President Woodrow Wilson at Versailles Peace Conference. But American Secretary of State refuses to submit petition on his behalf.

1920

Ho Chi Minh joins new French Communist Party.

1926

Bao Dai, son of Emperor Khai Dinh, who had been “adopted” by a French family and educated in France now returns to ascend the throne, at age 12, under French tutelage.

1930

Ho and other revolutionaries form Indochinese Communist Party in Hong Kong.

1933

The French arrange a marriage for Emperor Bao Dai and Nguyen Huu Thi Lan – daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese collaborator. Like her family, she is a naturalized French citizen and a Catholic.

1936

Popular Front government in France sponsors short-lived liberal reforms in Viet Nam.

1939

World War II begins.

1940

Japan invades Indochina but leaves the French colonial administration intact.

1941

Ho returns to Viet Nam in secret and begins to form the Viet Minh (League for the Independence of Viet Nam) to fight against the French and the Japanese. The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in December.

1944

Vo Nguyen Giap forms the Viet Minh army. This year marks a major shift in the role of Vietnamese women, with their active commitment to the military. Allied forces invade Europe in June.

9 March 1945

Japan takes over the French administration throughout Indochina.

11 March 1945

Emperor Bao Dai proclaims the independence of Viet Nam under Japanese auspices.

12 April 1945

Harry Truman becomes US president

2 September 1945

Ho Chi Minh proclaims Viet Nam’s independence and sets up a provisional government in Ha Noi. Ho and the Viet Minh army demand Bao Dai’s resignation. Once Bao Dai recognizes who Ho Chi Minh is, he makes a respectful gesture and immediately offers to relinquish the royal seal and his sword – emblems of the monarchy.

6 March 1946

French warships attack Hai Phong port. Ho yields to a treaty with VN being a “free” country inside the French Union and part of the Indochina Federation. Treaty allows 15,000 French troops in North Viet Nam but they would withdraw within five years. South Viet Nam would remain a colony and people in the South would make their own choice whether or not to be reunited with the North as one country.

12 March 1946 Credille, the French commissioner for South Viet Nam announces that the March 6 treaty does not apply to the colony.

May 1946

Ho Chi Minh goes to Fontainebleau, France for negotiations.

1 June 1946

While Ho is still in France, the French set up a “separate”government for South Viet Nam, headed by Nguyen Van Hinh. Credile signs an agreement with Hinh, recognizing the colony as a “country of its own”. Resistance movements begin to spread out rapidly throughout South Viet Nam.

14 September 1946

Negotiations in Fontainebleau break down. Ho continues to appeal for peace. French troops attack Da Nang port and raids are continued in Central and South Viet Nam.

23 November 1946

French warship Suffren opens fire on Da Nang, troops massacre 6000 Vietnamese civilians.

16 December 1946

The French send their ‘ultimate’ letter to Ho Chi Minh, ordering the withdrawal of all Viet Minh troops before 9pm on 20 December, leaving complete control to the French military.

19 December 1946

Viet Minh troops open fire in Ha Noi at 8pm. The French War begins.

December 1947

Emperor Bao Dai, living in Hong Kong, offers to negotiate with France to achieve Viet Nam’s independence.

5 June 1948

The French choose Bao Dai as the puppet leader of Viet Nam.

7 December 1949

Mao Tse Tung gains full power in China. The Viet Minh begins receiving military assistance from China.

January 1950

Ho Chi Minh declares that the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam is the only legal government. It is recognized by China and the Soviet Union.

25 June 1950

The Korean War begins. The United States begins military assistance to the French in Indochina (500 million USD per year).

1953

Resistance forces are being increased throughout North Viet Nam. The French set up their stronghold at Dien Bien Phu in September.

29 November 1953

Ho Chi Minh announces in the Swedish newspaper Expressen that the Viet Minh are ready for peace negotiation.

13 March 1954

Battle of Dien Bien Phu begins.

26 April 1954

The Geneva Conference begins. However, talks about Indochina would not start until 8 May 1954.

7 May 1954

The French are defeated at Dien Bien Phu.

6 June 1954

Colonel Edward Lansdale of the CIA is sent to Sai Gon to begin a campaign of psychological warfare against Ho Chi Minh.

7 July 1954

Ngo Dinh Diem’ s return to Sai Gon is arranged by the US government.

21 July 1954

The Geneva Agreement is signed, dividing Viet Nam at the 17th parallel, awaiting a national election to be held in July 1956.

August 1954

Lansdale’s operatives in South Viet Nam begin murdering Viet Minh members and sympathizers.

8 September 1954

The United States sets up SEATO, a group of nations to fight against Communism.

October 1954

Lansdale’s operatives in North Viet Nam begin sabotage activities in towns and cities.

February 1955

Ngo Dinh Diem receives CIA support to persecute Buddhists following their protests in Sai Gon.

16 July 1955

The US government advises Ngo Dinh Diem to ignore the plan for a national election in 1956, which would reunify the country.

1956

The national election specified in the Geneva Agreement is never held.

1957-1959

Resistance forces intensify their activities in South Viet Nam.

1960

American advisors are increased to 685 persons in May and to 900 in December.

11 November 1960

Failed attempt to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem by a group of ARVN generals.

20 December 1960

The National Liberation Front (NLF) is established.

May 1961

President Kennedy begins sending troops to South Viet Nam and orders a campaign of war against North Viet Nam.

October 1961

General Maxwell Taylor is sent to Sai Gon, to become special military advisor, with 3200 American troops.

8 February 1962

A US Army Command headquarters is set up in Sai Gon.

May 1963

Buddhists and university students in Hue hold public demonstrations against the Americans and the Diem regime. Rev. Thich Quang Duc calls for peace and reconciliation. He burns himself to make his protest.

1 November 1963

Americans assist the generals to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem and his brother Nhu are murdered.

22 November 1963

President John Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson succeeds him.

5 August 1964

Two American destroyers, Maddox and Turner claim to have been under attack while they were sailing off the North Viet Nam coast. It is later revealed that the Maddox had been in North Viet Nam’s territorial waters assisting a secret South Vietnamese commando raid. There was never an attack on the Turner as claimed. President Johnson makes this excuse and orders the bombing of North Viet Nam with 64 sorties.

30 November 1964

During the presidential election Johnson promises the American people to “limit” the war. US Army force in South Viet Nam is increased to 23,000 men.

7 February 1964

Eight Americans in a US Army compound in Pleiku (Central VN) are killed. Johnson makes this excuse to start the campaign of intensive bombing in North Viet Nam.

8 February 1964

American troops are pouring into Da Nang.

April 1965

Johnson announces that the Americans are ready for peace negotiations, with South Viet Nam being recognized as “a country of its own”. Ha Noi government refuses to discuss.

October 1965

Nguyen Van Thieu regime. US Army force of 74,000 goes up to 148,000. General Westmoreland announces that he needs 350,000 American troops to win the war.

April 1966

Bombing of North Viet Nam is resumed. The US Army force for South Viet Nam is increased to 463,000 by June.

13 May 1968

Peace talks begin in Paris.

4 August 1969

First meeting between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Viet Nam’s representative Le Duc Tho.

3 September 1969

Ho Chi Minh dies.

1 July 1971

Madame Nguyen Thi Binh announces the Seven Points of the National Liberation Front’s provisional government.

11 October 1971

Henry Kissinger announces the Eight Points of the United States.

31 January 1972

Le Duc Tho announces the Nine Points of North Viet Nam.

9 March 1972

Under advice of Americans, President Nguyen van Thieu authorizes 50,000 ARVN troops to attack Cambodia.

6 April 1972

The US resumes the bombing of North Viet Nam.

8 May 1972

President Nixon orders the installation of mines at all ports and rivers in North Viet Nam.

17 June 1972

American troops in South Viet Nam are reduced to 60,000 men.

12 September 1972

Explosion at Bien Hoa airforce base, destroying 70 US aircraft.

7 November 1972

Nixon is re-elected as President.

18 December 1972

Nixon orders intensive bombing of North Viet Nam for 12 days. Seventeen B52 bombers and ten F-11 bombers are shot down. About 100 American pilots are killed/missing.

23 January 1973

Paris Peace Agreement signed.

29 March 1973

Last American troops leave Viet Nam.

January 1974

President Thieu declares that the war is to begin again.

9 August 1974

President Nixon resigns. Gerald Ford replaces him.

31 March 1975 After capturing Phuoc Long, Ban Me Thuoc, and Da Nang, North Viet Nam directs “the Ho Chi Minh campaign” to take Sai Gon.

23 April 1975

President Ford announces the war is “finished”.

25 April 1975

President Thieu leaves the country. General Duong Van Minh becomes chief of state.

29 April 1975

US Ambassador Graham Martin leaves Sai Gon.

30 April 1975

South Viet Nam is taken by the National Liberation Front and Northern troops.

Bibliography

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Berman, Larry. Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam. New York: W.W. Norton, 1981

Ennis, Thomas E. French Policy and Development in Indochina. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956

Fitzgerald, Frances. Fire in the Lake. New York: Vintage Books, 1972

Hammer, Ellen J. The Struggle for Indochina. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1954

Hertz, Martin. The Prestige Press and the Christmas Bombing. Washington, DC: Ethics & Public Policy Centre, 1980

Ho Chi Minh. Nhat Ky Trong Tu (A Diary in Prison). Ha Noi; Van Hoa Thong Tin, 1996

Hoang Khoi & Hoang Dinh Thi. Giai Thoai ve Phu Nu Viet Nam. (Anecdotes about Vietnamese Women). Ha Noi: Phu Nu, 1978

Hoanh Linh Do Mau. Hoi Ky Tam Su Tuong Luu Vong (Memoir of a General in Exile). Ho Chi Minh: Cong An Nhan Dan, 1995

Hoi Lien Hiep Phu Nu Minh Hai. Truyen Thong Cach Mang Phu Nu Minh Hai 1930-1945 (Revolutionary Tradition of Minh Hai Women 1930-1945). Ca Mau: Mui Ca Mau, 1993

Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996

Jamieson, N.L. Understanding Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam, A History. New York: Penguin Books, 1990

Kobelep, E. Dong Chi Ho Chi Minh (Comrade Ho Chi Minh). Ha Noi: Thanh Nien, 1985

Le Thi Nham Tuyet. Phu Nu Viet Nam Qua Cac Thoi Dai. (Vietnamese Women Across the Ages). Ha Noi: Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi, 1975

Marr, David G. Vietnamese Anticolonialism 1885-1925. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971

Marr, David G. Vietnamese Tradition On Trial 1920-1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981

Marr, David G. Vietnam 1945 The Quest for Power. Berkley: University of California Press, 1995

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Nguyen Khac Vien. Viet Nam, A Long History. Ha Noi: The Gioi, 1993

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Ho Chi Minh: Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1975

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Acknowledgements

No book is the product of a single person. In the ten years it has taken to write Late Blossom, I have benefited immensely from the writings of others, especially those who themselves struggled and survived the wars in Viet Nam. I am further grateful for the many interviews and conversations while preparing the manuscript. For their unfailing courtesy and generous help I should like to thank: General Ho Thi Bi and Madame Nguyen Thi Thap for educating me on the role of women in the military; Colonel Phan Duong for sharing his experiences in the French War and at Dien Bien Phu; Mr Vien Phuong for the remarkable journey to the Cu Chi tunnels; and my father, and his contemporaries Mr Tam Bang, and Nam Van, for providing me with facts, as well as inspiration.

Over the years a number of people have kindly read through various chapters and given me crucial advice. I should particularly like to thank: Andrea Soracco, Rachel Zahn, Angela Redfern, Lady Borton, Tao Hsu, Hannah Judson, Bob Garratt, Anna Vermaelen, Pascale Dey, Inge Schermerhorn, Huynh Hong Hai, Emilio Manso-Salinas, Don and Rosemary Birch, and Xia Yates for their critiques and encouragements; members of my writing group: Christine Poirot, Philip Marchand, Annie Martin, Larry Litzky, Jean Viallet, Tina Joubert, and Dominique Van Peteghem. I thank them for both their challenges and best wishes throughout my writing adventure.

I should also like to pay heartfelt thanks for the invaluable contributions made by: Matt Simpson, for lessons on the economical usage of the English language; Philip Gwyn Jones, for advice on “telling” and “showing”; Kitty Kelley, for teaching me the patience required of every new writer; Diane Law and Cathy Chevallereau for early typing; Leekuan Hong, Christina Siu, Virginie Beasley, and Karen Volpe for their technical assistance; and Dianne Laughlin and Elizabeth Aldridge for their time and efforts to help bring my message to fellow readers. I shall also remain grateful for early conversations with, and guidance from, Sterling Lord.

Finally, I extend my immeasurable thanks to my husband and son, for more than a decade of encouragement, patience and unwavering support.

Laura Lam July 2006

About The Author

A journalist and author, Laura explores her experience of growing up in the Mekong Delta and in Sai Gon during the “Vietnam War” in this autobiography. For three generations, her family was politically divided while her country was fighting wars of liberation against both the French and the Americans. Laura writes from first-hand war experience, with an understanding that deepens from years of living in the United States, Hong Kong, France, and Singapore.

Educated at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, she also earned a master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. Before becoming a writer, she worked for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Laura and her family now live between Europe and Asia.

About Monsoon Books

Monsoon Books is a leading independent publisher of English-language books and ebooks on Southeast Asia. We publish literary and commercial fiction (historical, crime, thriller, kid’s, romance, erotica) and quality nonfiction (biography and autobiography, true crime, food and drink, sexuality, journalism, travelogue and current affairs) from outstanding writers worldwide and we have numerous best-sellers to our name.

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Copyright

First published in Hong Kong in 2006 by Hesperides Publishing, a division of Hesperides, Limited.

This electronic edition first published in 2012 by Monsoon Books.

ISBN (ebook): 978-981-4358-67-5

Copyright©Laura Lam, 2006

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Cover illustration (Cherry Blossom) © Oleksii Popovskyi

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Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Contents

Praise for Late Blossom

Dedication

Author’s Note

Family Tree

Map of Viet Nam

Year of The Cat

Ripe For Servitude

Beginnings of Loss

Taking Sides

The Grasshopper and The Elephant

Organized Death

Scents of War

Imprisoning A Village

Peasant Revolts

To Sai Gon

City Life

Village Revisited

The Battle of New Year’s Eve

Uncle Nam’s House

Meeting The Americans

Revolutionary Cell

Farewell To A Dream

Apples Too Precious To Eat

Final Days

Andrew

Across The Sea

A New Life

Sai Gon Revisited

My Father’s Story

Other Loved Ones

Bitter Legacy

Major Historical Events

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About The Author

About Monsoon Books

Copyright Page