CHAPTER 23

CHINATOWN, TORONTO

FORSAKING ALL FEAR

JANUARY 1993

In the early nineties, refugees in Canada who were waiting to become citizens—a two-year process—were not permitted to work. Toan and I begged the government for jobs. We would head to the immigration office each week to inquire through their onsite translators about working—even for a small sum—but time and again we received the same response: “No. You may not work. If you work, you are in violation of the law, and you will have to return to Cuba.” We certainly did not want to return to Cuba, and we also did not want to be on the national dole, especially given all that we had seen in Vietnam and in Cuba where societies expected government handouts. But finally we had no choice and applied for welfare.

During that first year, even as we were trying to adjust to the newness of marriage, we changed residences five times, scrounging together bits of welfare income in order to rent one place after another, going wherever we could think to go in search of safety, security, and, later on, proximity to work. At each transition, I mailed a letter to Ma and Dad back home, desperate for some sense of connection and for them to simply know where I was. But I never received a reply. How my heart ached over that deafening silence.

One rental was located on the second floor, but going up two flights of stairs multiple times proved too challenging for my aching back. Then we rented space in a family’s basement, but a few months of listening to the boom-boom-booms of rambunctious kids jumping on the floor above our heads was too much for me. I begged Toan to find us another home.

I had been having nightmares off and on, and in some places we lived, the nightmares escalated. “The soldiers!” I would shout out from the dead of sleep, startling Toan. “They are coming to kill me! They want me dead!”

In my dreams, I was always running, always rushing away from fire. I would wake to the sense of bone-chilled cold, trembling from my head down to my toes. “Kim!” Toan would say, shaking me awake. “Kim, you are in Canada now. You are safe. You will not die.”

“Oh, Toan, please hold me,” I would cry. “Hold me close and keep me safe.”

“It is okay, Kim. What you have been through, you will not suffer again. I will pray over you as you fall back to sleep.”

Finding a place to call home that did not trigger my nightmares became a critical priority for me, even though that goal would not be met for years to come.

In an attempt to feel even more at home in Toronto, we sought out members of the Vietnamese community in our Chinatown neighborhood and cultivated relationships with many of the people we met. It was a far different reception than we had received from Toronto’s official Vietnamese association, and we were grateful for that fact. We forged deep relationships with fellow church members, most notable among them our dear friends Kathy and Gary Parkinson, who became family to Toan and me. In fact, some time later, when the Parkinsons decided to transfer their membership to one of the most diverse faith communities in the region, Faithway Baptist Church, Toan and I knew instinctively that we would go too. Nearly every Sunday, we would have lunch at the Parkinsons’ home, relishing their companionship, enjoying Kathy’s wonderful food, and building memories that stick with us still today.

Although Toan and I could not work, we did volunteer, eventually serving as government-sanctioned translators in Chinatown. We taught English to both Vietnamese and Spanish speakers, while we attended ESL classes ourselves.

I think back on those days of being alone in a foreign land where people spoke a foreign language, attending evening classes at a local high school, and Toan and I trying desperately to survive. I can see how anyone looking at our situation from the outside would see nothing but a giant void: few friends, no stable residence, no educational accomplishments, no employment opportunities, no reliable food sources—in Vietnamese, so khong, so khong, so khong.

But despite how it all looked, it was a marvelously joyful season of life. We were free, after all. And as far as I was concerned, anyway, Jesus was leading the way. What more did a person truly need in order to overcome, in order to thrive? I decided that regardless of what was happening around me, I would choose to be content.

There is a wonderful phrase in the West that perfectly captures how I felt about being “found” in Toronto—“the straw that broke the camel’s back.” I remember this occasion as though it were yesterday. Toan and I were peeking through the thin curtains of our humble second-floor apartment in Chinatown, watching the two men loitering near the entrance to the building. They were acting suspiciously, looking up every so often at the windows of our unit. How they learned our address I do not know, but there they were, day after day, longing for an interview with, a photograph of, the “girl in the picture,” Kim Phuc.

It wasn’t the first time we had seen them. In fact, we had felt their presence for a while now—behind us, beside us, across the street—whenever we left our residence for groceries from the street-side stands or went to the government building as translation volunteers.

For so many years I had lived in outright fear, knowing that I was always within two or three days’ time of being detained by communist minders. This had been the pattern for so many years of my life that I found myself incapable of shaking the rhythm from my bones. The incessant guardedness left me cynical and exhausted, and to be quite candid, I had simply had enough. Here in Toronto, I determined in my heart that I would no longer live like that, always looking furtively around me, always fretful over what the days might hold, always fearing the worst.

I was Canadian now, and Canadians lived free. Yes, there was still paperwork to be finalized before I was legally a citizen, but I resolved to no longer feel afraid. The full support of the Canadian government was coming. Jesus’ flawless protection was already here. I had no reason to fear what man might do to me. At last, I could lay my flight tendencies down.

“Just focus on living your life,” I told myself. The debilitating nightmares that had been interrupting my sleep would not have power over me any longer.

I went to Toan and explained my decision: that I would no longer live in fear, that I would practice the courage that Jesus promises his followers all throughout Scripture. I recounted several Bible verses, more for my own sake than for Toan’s, especially the idea that we are no longer slaves to fear because we have been adopted into the very family of God.[24]

The more I talked, the more excited I became, even as my husband’s sense of incredulity grew. He was new to our faith. He did not yet understand how to rid himself of his fears. And oh, how very many fears he faced! He worried about where we would find our next meal. He worried about where we would find our next home. He worried about employment, and about education, and about the family we hoped to start. He was a full-time worry machine, filled to overflowing with that enemy Fear. And yet here I was—his wife—boldly declaring, “I will stop running from my fears, from my picture, from my past. Starting now, I refuse to hide.”

I stayed planted inside my home that day until the photographers down below gave up and went home themselves. The following morning, I woke with fresh resolve, determined to simply live my life.