CHAPTER 19

HAVANA, CUBA

THIS IS PROGRESS?

OCTOBER 1986

Before my first full day on Cuban soil had elapsed, I had to be rushed to the hospital designated for foreign visitors. That is when I realized that while Havana’s climate was moderate compared with Vietnam’s nearly year-round sweltering heat, it was not stable, and my scars protested immediately. Being an island, Cuba is subject to the whims of the wind, and how fickle Atlantic winds could be!

This trade-off—milder temperatures in Cuba for predictable wind patterns in Vietnam—was one I was not sure I wanted to make. But here I was, beginning a new chapter in a new city, with new opportunities awaiting me. I wanted to make the best of things—once I got out of the hospital, anyway.

My weeks-long hospital stay was problematic for several reasons, not the least of which was I did not speak Spanish. This came as a terrible shock to me. When I was flying to Cuba, I had studied the fold-out airline map en route, surprised by how close I would be to the United States. Naturally, I assumed that Cubans spoke English. I did not know English very well either, but I knew it better than I knew Spanish. Now, not only would I need to settle back into a rhythm of studying, attending classes, and taking exams, but I would need to master an entirely new language. And these things could only happen once I was released from the hospital.

More than anything, I did not want to be seen as a troublemaker by the Vietnamese embassy officials who had taken charge of me when I arrived in Cuba. What if they determined that I was unfit to manage this new life and shipped me back to Vietnam? I could not allow that to happen. I had to get well, get stronger, become sturdier.

The whole reason I had come to Havana was to pursue the education I deeply desired. I had not had the chance to attend even a single class before being hospitalized for observation and rest. This was hardly the path to take if I ever hoped to get where I wanted to be.

Although Bac Dong had assured me that I would be free from oppressive “minding” by Vietnamese officials in Cuba, an embassy man named Hoa had been assigned to me from the start, visiting me in the hospital almost daily, checking in on my goings-on, gathering details to take back to his superiors. I feared that life for me in this new locale would fall into the same pattern I had grown accustomed to back home, one marked by distractions, abuses, and false starts.

When I finally was released from the hospital into the bustling city streets of Havana, my enthusiasm was short-lived. Hoa, the only person I had met so far who spoke fluent Vietnamese, took me to my new home, a small room shared with seven other girls. The room was located on the fourth floor of a giant building containing university offices and student housing. My floor housed twenty-four girls, with one washroom for all of us, which contained one shower, one toilet, and one sink.

Due to water rations throughout the country, water only flowed through the tap for an hour each day, and it was never the same hour two days in a row. Hopefully during that hour someone on the floor was home to hear the flow of water gurgling through the pipes, turn on the tap, and capture as much as possible in the fourth floor’s large, metal cistern.

It was critical to wake early in the morning to brush your teeth or wash your face before the cistern ran dry. When nobody was available during the hour when the tap was flowing, my fellow residents and I were relegated to carrying pre-purchased pails down to the first floor and outside the building to beg water off of the Cuban residents who lived nearby and whose taps ran more often than ours.

I doubt that Bac Dong knew about these conditions when he relocated me to Cuba or the challenges I would face. It was imperative for me to shower every day. My scars demanded to be soothed. But I was always stressed, thinking, Is the water on? Is the cistern full? Is my pail handy? Will someone take pity on me? I must shower—there is no other option.

These moment-by-moment considerations were a heavy burden, but they were not the weightiest part of my grief. During that last conversation with Bac Dong, I had felt relief, believing once I left Vietnam, I would be able to grow spiritually. I would experience the joy of being transformed. I assumed I would have more discretionary time, and I would find a God-honoring church to attend. My assumptions were all wrong. There were no Christian churches in Cuba, no warm, welcoming believers with whom I could learn and serve and grow. There was only me and the Bible that Thuy had given me. That would have to be enough.

Indeed, those first months in Cuba, I felt as though I had been dropped on a deserted island and left to fend for myself. I did not have good health, I did not have good friends, and I was not having a good time at all. I imagined the locals all looking at me in pity, whispering, “Who is this strange person we see?”

I attended class each morning at the yearlong language institute in which I had been enrolled (still, I was not in “real” school), and paid attention as best I could, trusting that over time I would sort out the meanings of key words—escucha, trabajo, examen . . . listen, work, exam—and from there, perhaps, sort out my life. That was easier said than done.

Between my studies, my attempt to get the sleep my body required each night to promote healing for my wounds, the issues surrounding personal hygiene, and the requirement for us students to be at the bus stop an hour before morning classes began, I never had time for breakfast—not once in my six years in Cuba.

My classmates and I would attend classes until two-thirty each afternoon and then finally eat. And even when I was able to eat, I had trouble choking the food down. To go from the mildness of rice, vegetables, and fresh fruit to spicy Cuban cuisine was quite a jolt indeed. Still, I did my best, realizing that it was that or nothing. I had had enough of nothing. “Come on, tummy!” I would encourage my stomach. “You can do this! You must do this for me.”

Those meals were few and far between, with the portions ever shrinking, as more stringent governmental rations were enforced. So my willpower to get the spicy food down only went so far. I was always hungry—dreadfully ravenous.

One day, a classmate of mine suggested that we venture into Havana proper and get ice cream at Coppelia. Coppelia was named after the famous nineteenth-century comedy ballet, which was why the ice cream shop’s logo featured a dancing ballerina. It was one of the most popular places in Havana, and people stood in line for hours. We were no exception.

By the time we reached the counter to place our order, I was so hot and famished that I asked for ten full bowls of ice cream. “Si, me gustaría diez bolas de helado, por favor,” I said confidently, as I handed over the five pesos that it cost. I selected chocolate, mango, walnut, vanilla, strawberry, malted crème, pineapple glacé, caramel, guava, and banana. I carefully balanced the small glass dishes on my tray, keeping them from clinking against each other as I made my way to the patio where my classmate was sitting at a table. My classmate, who had ordered half the amount I had, sat in shock as I proceeded to eat every last bite in a matter of minutes, a very foolish thing for me to do. In fact, it was nearly fatal.

Leading up to that ice-cream-eating extravaganza, I had had very little food—nothing for breakfast, a few bites of beans and tortilla for lunch, maybe another half-cup of beans and some onions for dinner. The following morning, having eaten all of that sugar and milk at once, I got horribly ill and had to be taken to the hospital. The doctor at the hospital that afternoon told me in no uncertain terms to lay off the sugar—“You have diabetes!” he said with a stern expression.

“I was just so hungry,” I explained, to which he replied, “Hungry enough to land yourself here?”

Ah, he had a point.

For a week, I remained in an in-patient clinic, where nurses could monitor my blood sugar and nutritionists could provide education regarding how to manage this diabetes I did not know I had. “You need animal protein!” I remember them saying time and again. I did not tell them how long I had been a rigorous vegetarian. Oh, the trouble that truth would have caused!

No, I simply did as I was told: I took my daily pill, I incorporated meat into my diet whenever it was available, and I never again looked Coppelia’s way.

In Cuba, the government had two priorities: education and healthcare. This meant that the university and a visit to the hospital were both free. Once those two benefits were extended to a person, there was no additional aid to be found. For a long time, the Soviet Union and several of the Eastern Bloc countries supported Cuba’s economy, but after the Soviet Union fell, that support quickly dried up. Cuba no longer could fund its own well-being. Degradation was bound to occur.

Tourists who frequented the island enjoyed every modern convenience, but for those of us who called the place home, it was a despairing, impoverished existence at best. Water and electricity were not guaranteed, food was taxed out of reach, roads in dire need of repair were never fixed, and gasoline for the buses that took us to school could dry up in a flash.

I distinctly remember Fidel Castro ordering thousands upon thousands of bicycles for students to ride to and from school when many of the buses no longer ran. This may seem like a noble effort, but none of my classmates knew how to ride a bicycle, and so time and again, a student would fall from a bicycle into the crush of traffic and be killed on the spot. When a bus was available, it was overflowing with people, with others simply jumping onto the side of the bus as it took off, holding on for dear life as it jerked and swerved through crowded streets.

As hard as it was to believe, I wound up feeling more controlled, more handled, in Cuba than I had in Vietnam. Certainly, fewer people in Cuba knew who I was, what I had endured, or why my story mattered to the media, but I was still required to report my every coming and going daily to the Vietnamese embassy in Cuba.

“Where have you been today?” Hoa would ask me each afternoon. “Class,” I would reply every time, hoping to keep our conversation brief. “Until tomorrow, then,” Hoa would say, expressionless.

“Someday, we will have no ‘tomorrow,’” I wanted to tell Hoa, determined to spring free of his grip, even though I would never in a million years verbalize that thought. What was it Thuy had said to me? “Let wisdom be your friend.”

I look back on my time in Cuba and see a bird in my mind’s eye, a bird who had flitted from one cage only to land in another. One evening I sat on the tiny balcony of my dorm building with the tattered pages of my Bible in my hands, rereading the account of my friend the apostle Paul’s suffering.

I looked at the waters below me as the sun sank deep into the inky abyss, and I wept. A scene that should have been stunning to me was not, due to the plain fact that I was still living inside communism’s cage. During my years in Cuba, I witnessed students jumping from that same balcony into the waters below, their despondency too much to bear. What a tragic ending to life; how such an ending must grieve the heart of God. “No, Kim,” I would tell myself between sobs. “You must not give up on this life. There has to be a better way.”

I had been in that place before, and I had found the better way. I simply had to choose God, moment by moment.

For the next six years that I lived in Havana, I was challenged almost to the point of despondence every day. But I determined to choose God, which meant seizing every spare moment to read his Scriptures, letting him put his law into my heart.[19] As I sat with my Bible and allowed its truth to penetrate my flared-up defenses; as I let my shoulders fall, my breathing slow, my fists unclench; as I anticipated experiencing the same innocent joy I had known over reading The Monkey King as a child to show up here and now; although nothing about my situation was altered, I was made brand-new. The peace I began to discover preserved me from outright despair. While I was in Cuba, the terrible circumstances I faced taught me to more fully trust and obey God. I would read and reread the apostle Paul’s explanation of how he had trained himself to be content with whatever he had or did not have.[20]

“Oh, Father,” I would pray through tears, “please teach me to be content like Paul. Teach me this special secret of living so that I am not overtaken by despair.”

It was not long before people began to call me “the girl who is always smiling!”—further proof that something supernatural was underway. No, I had not stumbled upon freedom that the world could detect—freedom from communism, freedom from oppression, freedom from pain. But inside—on the level of my soul—I was settling into a type of contentment that paid little mind to external things.

One of the passages that never failed to comfort me when I was feeling especially down was the list of blessings Jesus proclaimed to his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. There he says, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”[21] I would run my finger along those phrases, wondering if those words could really be true. If I pursue your ways, God, will you really satisfy that which is hungry in me?

What, exactly, did I hunger for back then? That which we all crave, I suppose: safety and security; provision and unshakable peace; hope in the quietest of moments; the sense of family, so far from home. Partway through my first year in Havana, God’s blessings in my life shifted from being frightening leaps of faith to visible, tangible gifts. At the top of that gift list was my being invited to move from my campus dorm into a quiet, apartment-style home on the west side of Havana that was much closer to the language institute, where I would report for classes for another five months.

My Spanish professor was the one who saw plainly that the challenging living conditions on campus were less then helpful for me, given my health issues. With thousands of students residing in one tight block of dormitories, the setting was always bustling, chaotic, loud. And so when a student moved out of the West Havana home, freeing up a slot in one of the bedrooms, I was encouraged to take the spot. I would have constant access to water, I could use the shower whenever my itchy skin needed it, and I would enjoy a break from the noise of dorm life.

Adjacent to the apartment was a small dorm that held perhaps one hundred students, and university officials told me to feel free to join those residents for meals anytime I wished. On my first day in that comedor, I met another language-school student, Yami Diaz, a native Cuban studying German in hopes of landing a job in Germany someday. Yami and I were fast friends, a welcome shift from the isolation I had felt for so long, and soon enough, she was inviting me to accompany her home on the weekends to enjoy time with her ma and dad.

After a few weeks of visits, Yami’s parents said I was welcome to call them Mami and Papi—Mom and Dad. It had been months since I had received a letter from my own parents, so Nuria and Manuel Diaz’s gesture carried great significance for me. Soon after, when I received my father’s update from Vietnam, I could feel the distance between us. I had hurt my parents so deeply by leaving my family’s religion that I feared in coming days this Cuban couple might be the only mother and father I would be able to claim as my own.

Mami and Papi were, practically speaking, Jesus with skin to me. I still am unsure of where they stand spiritually. But in terms of accepting me for who I was and promoting my growth and development toward becoming all I was meant to be, they loved me about as well as a person could be loved. All those evenings spent with the entire family gathered together, as Papi gently rubbed cream into my scars. All those lengthy discussions with Mami regarding boys and marriage. All those rides to and from school with Yami, basking together in the joys of young womanhood. The Diaz family did not just accept me—they embraced me. They enveloped me with care. And because they valued me so highly, I was compelled to start valuing myself.

I would part ways with Yami following our year in language school, but her family’s imprint on my life and heart I carry with me to this day. In fact, it was their influence back in the late 1980s that singlehandedly carved out in me a greater capacity for chasing my dreams. Certainly, I had determined by this point that a career in medicine would be too rigorous an educational path to take—it was for this reason that I had landed on English as my chosen degree. But then I began thinking. Maybe I could find a compromise, something that still helped people with health issues but was not as taxing for me. Pharmacology! If I could not oversee diagnoses or surgeries, interventions or therapies, at least I could send ailing ones on their way with medicines to assuage their pain. This course correction meant a move back to student housing, but I figured it was worth it if it meant a meaningful career in life.

So in October 1988, I gathered up my belongings and headed back to the heart of Havana, excited to enter school in earnest, ready to study and learn.

Of course, returning to student housing had its downsides. There were frequent brownouts, for example, and on those occasions, no taps flowed—at any hour of the day. All of the dorm residents, including myself, had to take our individual pails to the ground floor of the building and have them filled by an emergency generator that was pumping water. To make the long, laborious process even worse was the fact that without electricity, the elevators could not run. For me, no elevators meant trudging up six flights of stairs lugging a heavy pail of water. Because of my scars, the entire left side of my body was weak, and relying solely on my right side proved too difficult for my back. I should have foreseen the folly in attempting such a feat, but I was young and believed myself to be up to the task.

Sadly, I was not.

A few hours later, I was laid up in a hospital bed again, writhing in pain. Suddenly, the overseer of the Vietnamese students at my school dropped by for a visit—a “courtesy call,” he explained. “The next time you need water hauled up six flights of stairs,” he said to me with sincerity and gentleness in his eyes, “an assistant will be present to help.”

I was the only female Vietnamese student at the university, so I do not know if the man’s motivation was pity or chivalry, but within the hour, four of the male Vietnamese students, all hailing from the North, had been assembled and informed that from that day forward, they would rotate as my assistants, always available to meet my needs. I would conclude my classes each day and find one of the four of them waiting—to carry water for me, to drive me someplace, or simply to keep me company. What a gift this was to me.

On day four of the arrangement, I stepped into the comedor in my building following my morning classes to get something to eat. I selected rice and beans, and when I turned to find a seat, I noticed a very handsome Vietnamese man seated at a table nearby. Oh, this must be the fourth one in the rotation, I reasoned, approaching him and asking to sit down.

“Vâng, xin!” he said, his eyes brightening. Yes, please! And then he rose to pull out my chair.

I could tell from his accent that he was from the North, which confirmed to me that he had been assigned to help me. But from that first moment of introduction—“Kim Phuc!” he had beamed. “So good to meet you! I am Toan.”—I considered him not a helper, but a friend. Toan possessed an impossibly charming style and knew nothing of pretense or pride. He was a gentle, big-hearted lover of life who bubbled over with selfless questions and generous observations.

“Your smile is so beautiful!” he said to me in those first few moments together. He laughed then, as did I. Who cared that Toan was from the North? All I cared about was that he was here, before me, now.

Toan and I talked about feeling homesick for Vietnam, even as neither of us liked what was becoming of her. “Well, at least now we have each other,” he said. “I will help you in any way I can.”

Toan offered to take my tray following that innocent lunchtime meal, and I let him. I hoped it was the first of a million kind gestures I would be able to enjoy in years to come.

Beginning that afternoon, Toan and I would see each other nearly every day for four years, which is how I came to know and be drawn to his laudable character. “My family suffered greatly during the war too,” he explained to me during one of a hundred walks we took around town. “This is why my education is so important to me. It is my only way out of the poverty I know so well.” Toan had already earned his bachelor’s in English and had been offered an advanced degree in computer programming by the university because of his high marks and diligent work.

“It is how I view my own education as well,” I had told him then. “But my story there . . . it is complex.”

For many weeks our conversations only deepened, until the plain facts stood tall before us: Yes, Toan and I were dear friends, but also, we were falling in love. One afternoon Toan came to me with unexpected news. “A woman from my homeland—she is in Hanoi . . . she is awaiting my return from university, Kim, so that she and I can marry.” I was stunned.

As Toan’s words penetrated my consciousness, all the old fears returned. You are different, Kim. You are unlovable. Your scars . . . they are your curse. You will never find love. You will never marry. You will always be alone. In the same way that a victim of trauma blocks out unsavory recollections, I cannot remember my response to Toan. My first true love, now gone. Really, what was there to say?

“Kim, Kim,” Toan said, jolting me out of my free fall toward self-pity and pain. “Kim, you do not understand. I am telling you this only to explain why I wrote her a letter this week. I told her of you, Kim . . . and of us. I told her that she and I are no more.”

“Oh, Toan!” I beamed at him. “You are my true, true love.”

I loved Toan deeply, and yet I had to admit to myself that things were imperfect between us. It was his drinking, his smoking, and his blatant disregard for the things of God that caused me to decline his first marriage proposal.

“Kim,” he would say to me, “I cannot believe this virgin lady had a child and that that child is supposed to be God. It is impossible!” Or, “Kim, if this Jesus could save people, then why did he not save himself when he was hanging there on a cross?” Or, “Kim, you and your Bible stories. Please, no more stories like that.”

I would just shake my head in disappointment, thinking, Yes, I was in your boat once too.

There was also the conspicuous lack of response from my parents after Toan sent them a heartfelt letter. “Kim and I would like to be husband and wife,” he had written to them. “Would you please give us your blessing for this union?”

“You are a Northerner,” I reminded him, attempting to explain my parents’ silence over the matter. “It would violate everything a South Vietnamese family stands for to openly welcome one who is North Vietnamese into our fold.”

“But you are okay with me being from the North?” Toan then asked, even as he knew full well my response.

“It is just geography,” I told him for the hundredth time.

Part of my relaxed attitude toward the division that had defined my childhood—“We are from the South; our enemy is from the North,” I was incessantly reminded when I was a child—surely is attributable to the Western adage, “Out of sight, out of mind.” I had been in Cuba awhile, where that line of demarcation was nowhere to be found. And for quite some time I had observed Toan with his North Vietnamese buddies at school, all of whom warmly befriended me. In the same way that a Bostonian may find a Southern drawl from Charleston, Atlanta, or Baton Rouge attractive, Toan was charmed by my dialect, which is softer, gentler than his.

“It is as though you are singing each time you speak,” he often said to me.

Given the estrangement from my kin back home, I needed to build a new family. And despite any reservations I harbored regarding Toan’s lifestyle choices, I wanted that family to begin with him. Still, I hesitated.

One night in late August 1992, when Toan and I were relaxing with our circle of friends, the subject of marriage came up again, and the group gave me an ultimatum: I had three days to decide whether I would marry Toan. I agreed to make it a matter of prayer.

For the next three days, I did just that. My prayers were fervent, reminiscent of a month earlier, when I had implored God to open up a door for me to leave Cuba forever. In a bold move, I asked the Vietnamese ambassador if I could take a three-week holiday in Mexico, and I was granted permission. Freedom would never be closer, I thought, just over the border to the United States.

But my plans were not God’s plans. I was more controlled by my minders in Mexico than in Cuba. As much as I prayed for a way to escape, nothing materialized. Yes, I was disappointed, but I never questioned God’s wisdom, never asked why he did not make a way. While I walked in faith, he was putting the pieces together, and one big missing piece was waiting for me in Cuba—dear Toan.

Now, as I prayed about whether my future would include him, I asked God to direct my heart and give me peace about this important decision. After three days, I knew what my answer would be.

“I will,” I said to Toan upon his second marriage proposal. “My answer, Toan, is yes.”

With my decision made, our friends celebrated by immediately going into action, pulling together all the wedding details in ten days. One friend found a beautiful gown for me and another took care of Toan’s tuxedo. The flowers, decorations, and food were covered. Just before my second year of studies ended at the University of Havana, Bui Huy Toan and I exchanged vows with borrowed rings before a large crowd of college friends in the home of the Vietnamese ambassador to Cuba. Neither of us had family there, and so during the traditional ceremony, the ambassador represented Toan’s family, and the highest military official spoke on my behalf. Despite the fact that it rained cats and dogs all afternoon long, it was the most beautiful day of my life.

We were from different worlds—he from North Vietnam, I from South; he from the political religion of communism, I a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. But his tenderness toward the pain I had suffered, his selfless love that enveloped me daily—I knew he was the man for me.

“But, Toan!” his family had protested via their letter written in response to his news. “Why would you wish to marry a burned, disabled girl when there are so many strong and beautiful girls from which to choose?”

“Because Kim Phuc,” he had replied without a hint of defensiveness, “she is the one I adore.”

Indeed, “adored” is just how I felt. That wedding day was the first time my lips had met Toan’s. Throughout our days of courtship, I longed for purity—but not just for spiritual reasons, although that was certainly part of it. The emotional reasons were far weightier—I was terrified. Terrified of what Toan would think when he saw my uncovered skin, terrified of how my scars would feel to his touch, terrified of the eventual rejection that I knew in my heart would occur. And so, for months and months after we began dating, he would only hold my hand, kiss my cheek, and lose himself in my wide smile. As things progressed from the innocence of friendship to intimacy neither of us could deny, I showed him the entirety of my left arm. I did not allow him to touch the skin, only to see it. Still, in baring my scars for him, I was saying, “I trust you, Toan. I love you. This is me.”

Toan knew these things. He understood the gravity of what I was showing him. And he allowed that rare, close proximity to be enough.

I knew that Jesus suffered greatly during his earthly life and the fact that he could sympathize with our pain was one of the most profound truths I saw reflected in Toan’s total acceptance of me—weaknesses and all. “The more I touch your scars,” he said to me once, after we had been husband and wife for many months, “the more I love you. In your scars, I see your suffering. I see that both are deep.”

I knew that my winding and woeful journey to Cuba had been for the purpose of meeting and marrying Toan. According to Vietnamese custom, rain on one’s wedding day means good fortune, a superstition that in our case has proven to be true. Even today, I regard my decision to marry Toan as the second-best decision I have ever made, placed just below my choice to follow Christ.

The moment I married my husband, I said, “I love you so much, Toan!” and I have not stopped saying that since. He always laughs and sighs and says with his heart full, “Thank you, Kim!” Then, after a few beats, he adds, “I love you, too.”

Due to the embassy’s restrictions on both Toan and me, our honeymoon destination could only be in a communist country. We did not want to return to Vietnam, for fear that we would never again be able to leave. Staying in Cuba did not sound appealing. The Middle East held no allure for us. And so, by way of elimination, we chose Russia.

One of the most amusing recollections I hold from those days of deliberation is hearing the student supervisor in charge of our plans say to me, “Toan may travel to Moscow, but you, Kim Phuc, must stay here. You have already been out of the country this year when you went to Mexico. You cannot leave again.”

“You expect my husband to go on his honeymoon alone?” I nearly doubled over in laughter.

The student supervisor, reassessing his declaration in light of my incredulity, raked his fingers through his hair, and without even meeting my gaze said, “Fine. Then you both will go.”

What I hoped for, but did not know for sure, was that Toan’s and my departure for Russia would not be a round trip. If I got my way, Toan and I would never reside in Cuba again.