CHAPTER 10

TAY NINH

LEAVING, FOR GOOD

AUGUST 1979

I was sixteen years of age, just a second-year high school student, the first time I boarded a boat to escape from Vietnam. For twenty years following the war, especially during 1978 and 1979, more than two million Vietnamese refugees fled our homeland[4] in hopes of resettling in safer lands. They loaded themselves in groups five to ten times more than capacity, onto large round rafts, onto rowboats, onto fishing boats, onto any seaworthy vessel, really, and made for a middle-of-the-night exodus. Like baby Moses floating along the river in that vulnerable basket of reeds, they placed their fate into the hands of a big-hearted princess they trusted would miraculously appear. And yet for a high percentage of those escapees, the voyage would end not in rescue, but in death, either because of swelling sea storms, untreated disease, pirate attacks, starvation, dehydration, or their boat simply not proving strong enough to make the dangerous trip.

Perhaps this is why neither my ma nor my dad ever spoke of escape; they saw what happened to those who tried and figured it was not worth the risk. Or else they could not get past the fact that we did not possess the funds necessary for such a voyage. There were fees required—monies due to the trip organizer, to the boat captain, to the merchants selling survival gear for the journey—and financially we were already pressed on all sides. Only later would I learn that at one time we had plenty of money set aside, that at one time we could have escaped.

Across the years, whenever travelers stopped by Ma’s shop for soup, more times than not they asked for local currency, in exchange for the selling of their wares. Figuring those goods would someday be useful, Ma was always willing to trade. Day by day, then, Ma released her stash of Vietnamese dong for all manner of valuable things—gold bars, gold jewelry, Cambodian china plates—and then buried those items under a bamboo tree on our property to keep them safe, to keep them ours.

What Ma failed to take into account were those Viet Cong tunnels and the digging each of them required. Sometime during my stay in the hospital, my great-uncle went with Ma to the site of that bamboo tree and dug until their hands were sore, only to find the earth giving way underneath their feet and opening up a tunnel where those riches used to be. All Ma’s earthly possessions, gone.

But truly, even if my parents had the funds to leave, would they actually have boarded the boat? Our family was in Vietnam. Our earning potential was in Vietnam. Our life was in Vietnam. Where were we to go? For me, at least, the answer was a simple one: The same land that had destroyed me could not help build me back up. If it was true that the best way to take on an opponent was with the same weapons or tactics that that opponent had used against me—“fighting fire with fire,” or in my native tongue, lay độc trị độc—then I would choose to turn my back on the country that had turned her back on me.

At age sixteen, oh, how I fantasized about that journey onto the South China Sea and then north to Hong Kong or east to the Philippines or south to Malaysia. I did not care where we went; I cared only that we went.

I dreamed about the freedoms I would enjoy outside of Vietnam, about the people I would meet, about the new realities I would enjoy. At the time, I said nothing of these fantasies to my ma or dad, knowing that they would put an end to any such plans. Still today, they do not know that I attempted to escape! There will be words, once they read this book.

Part of my secret motivation, I suppose, was that I knew full well how occupied both Ma and Dad were with their respective daily concerns. Ma needed to keep her shop going, and Dad needed his kids to survive. At some level, I figured that my departure would provide some relief—one less mouth to feed. To be sure, I was fearful of leaving my family’s province without my parents’ knowledge, of the vastness of the ocean, and of what the police would do to my friends and me if they caught us trying to escape, but there was no life for me in my homeland. I had no choice but to escape.

“It will happen tomorrow night,” a fellow student whispered to me one day at school. “Please, Phuc, be prepared.”

Because the province of Tay Ninh is far from the coast, I would need to take a bus to reach the location where I would then catch the boat. My friend’s parents, who also were fleeing Vietnam, had made all of the arrangements for us girls—purchasing our bus fare, organizing the plans—and as my friend stared into my eyes that day in class, I knew what the look conveyed. This is serious, Phuc. Life or death, to be sure. Bring nothing with you—no clothes but the ones you are wearing, no identification, no handbag, no suitcase, no food. Just yourself, and nothing else. You must leave empty-handed from this land.

During the worst of times in Vietnam, a common sentiment echoing throughout the myriad provinces was that “if the street lights had feet, even they would leave this place,” which explains why so many of us were willing to risk life and limb to get out.

As my friend had instructed me, I arrived at the bus terminal in Tay Ninh at the appointed time, caught the bus headed to the center of Saigon, and disembarked with clammy hands—Where was the man who was supposed to transport me to the beach? “He will be wearing red jeans, a black jacket, and a black hat,” was all that I had been told. “He will get you to the boat dock, but that is all that you may know.”

I nervously scanned the attire of each person in the terminal, eventually locating the man I needed. “Yes,” I whispered upon approaching him, “I am one of your passengers, sir.”

The drive from Saigon to the unnamed beach took less than an hour’s time, but oh, how those minutes crawled by. I was as scared as I ever had been. Who can I trust? Who should I talk to? Who will tell me what to do next?

Within moments of arriving, another stranger rolled something across the sand toward me, whispering urgently, “Go! Get into the tube and into the water. Paddle out to the boat you will see.” I had never seen an inner tube before but did as I was told—and quickly, not only because of the risks associated with the experience, but also because the thick black rubber tube absorbed the sun’s blazing heat and was nearly too hot for me to touch.

The boat was idling perhaps half a kilometer away, but given the fact that I didn’t know how to swim, it might as well have been as far away as Mars. How I wished my friend was at my side for moral support, the one whose parents had arranged this attempt. “Kim, affinity groups must not escape together, for it makes capture more likely still,” she had once explained to me. “This is work we must do alone.”

Despite the forty or fifty others paddling out to the boat in front of and behind me, I felt completely “alone.”

Eventually, I neared the boat, and as I queued there in the water, waiting for my turn to be lifted from my tube, I heard the captain of the vessel shout, “Go back! You must go back!”

Alas, the police had discovered our plan and would surely surround us if we tried to board that boat. We were instructed to head for shore and scatter—in other words, “Run for your life!”

And so the first time I fled, I was forced to disappear into the crowd, make my way to a bus terminal, and use the last few bits of my allowance from Ma to catch a ride back home. The second time I fled, the police discovered that I was up to no good and chased me from the beach, waving metal sticks in the air. And the third time, the captain of my assigned boat was somehow injured. Word spread to those of us planning to board that night that the mission had been aborted and we had to quickly return to our homes. Three strikes, and I was very, very out. Or very in, I should say. As it related to Vietnam, it seemed, there was no getting out.

In fact, in the homeland I was trying to flee, it is customary that after you try something and fail three times in a row, you must stop trying to do that thing lest you incite the rage of the gods. Perhaps I should be grateful that my escape did not pan out that first time (or the second or third times either), for the simple fact that based on statistics, I would likely be dead.

And so I set aside my fantasy regarding escaping my country and went back home, deflated, to Tay Ninh. I focused as best I could on my schoolwork, eventually completing my high school requirements and setting my sights on entering university later that year, following in the esteemed footsteps both of my older brother—Number 3—who had studied agricultural science, and my sister—Number 2—who, of course, had studied education. It would take me two (but thankfully not three!) attempts to pass my college entrance exam, but at last, in 1982, I was admitted. Against impossible odds, medical school was now a real possibility for me. I will complete my undergraduate studies, I resolved. I will enter medical school. I will work harder than any other student. I will chart a new course for myself. I will thrive.