WEBVTT

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[sil.]

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I’m now six years old. I would
lie on the living room couch,

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hang my head over the edge. But my hair
is swinging against the floor and watch

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the evening news upside down.

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[sil.]

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A frog that sits at the bottom of a well

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thinks that whole sky is only as big as

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the little of a pot.

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[sil.]

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[music]

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[sil.]

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It rains all night. After five years of
drought at home, I’m awake and listening.

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Staring out the window at a darkened
Saigon at Ho Chi Minh city,

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I hear a rooster crow from somewhere deep
in this cluster of apartment buildings.

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It’s 4:30. Sunlight slowly spreads

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across the cement wall in
my room turning it gold.

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I watch an elderly man in blue boxer shorts
fold up his bedding and began to do Tai Chi.

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A teenage girl turns on her radio.
In the mine,

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this gives the woman across the courtyard the cue to
begin sweeping. I wonder then about my sister Dana.

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After almost a year here does
she still notice all these?

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[sil.]

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[non-English narration]

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My friend Tu and I take my sister Lynne to visit a
pagoda in the Chinese neighborhood of Chilan(ph.).

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Tu takes Lynne’s hand and
leads her to the sanctuary,

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making sure she puts three sticks of burning
incense at every altar. Then to place oranges

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on the (inaudible) and tray in
front of one of the Buddhas.

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When the communist party took
power, they didn’t like Buddhists

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and they didn’t like (inaudible).
So my family stopped coming here.

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We forget about it for many years.

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Now the government say it’s okay. So
we are starting to remember them.

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[non-English narration]

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May 15th, my third day in Vietnam.
Driving through the Mekang delta,

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a name that carries so much weight. My mind is full of
words and my eyes are on a scavenger hunt for leftovers.

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Dana told me that there is ponds
full of bright green rice seedlings

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that are actually craters. The
inverted ghosts of bombed out fields.

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[sil.]

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At Kuchi(ph.)

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we pay three U.S. dollars so that the tour guide will lead us
through a section of this well known 200 kilometer tunnel complex.

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This is the engineering
masterpiece of the Viet Cong.

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A matrix of underground kitchens and
living rooms and army headquarters.

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As I slide through the
narrow dusty passageway,

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my head fills up with those old war
movies dad took us to in the 70s.

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My body is

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way too big for these tunnels. I can
hardly breathe. After five minutes,

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I come out gasping.

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We decide not to spend the extra
$10 it cost to shoot a rifle.

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[sil.]

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Sitting at the thatched roof hut, sipping
milk out of coconuts, I listen to Dana chat

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with the woman who runs the string
stand in the middle of the jungle.

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Ask her, I say.

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[sil.]

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[sil.]

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We got lost somehow and are beginning to realize
that we walked past the same bush three times.

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[sil.]

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In a nearby field, we
spot a one legged farmer

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with his two sons. They lead us
in silence through dense bush

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to the ruins of Misan(ph.) once the
intellectual center of Vietnam.

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Misan survived centuries of monsoons
and war before U.S. bombs scattered

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most of the ancient stone work
like gravel across the hillside.

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[sil.]

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We stand inside the tallest remaining
tower listening to the birds.

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It’s very cool, almost damp. One of
the boys offers us a hot soda pop.

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[music]

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I’ve been thinking about the way
people talk about time here.

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All you have to do is mention a
particular year and whoever is listening

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already knows the whole story.

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Behind that date lies the image of families
leaving the land date farm for generations

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and turning their backs on the
graves of their ancestors.

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Vietnam suit itself across the daily then.
Hundreds of thousands fled north of south

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depending on which ideology
they trusted most.

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[sil.]

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Hum(ph.) told me her father
headed north in 1954

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to fight with the revolutionary army. He
thought Ho Chi Minh could reunite the country

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within two or three years.

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[music]

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[sil.]

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In the old capital of (inaudible), I take
a meandering bicycle ride with Koy(ph)

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a university student friend of Dana’s.

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[music]

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During the 1968,

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tad offensive Way(ph.) became a
battlefield and the Viet Cong

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thinking Koy’s family was harboring South
Vietnamese soldiers burned down their house.

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Koy’s father had been collecting
books since he was a child

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and when the house burned, his booked
burnt with it. Koy says his father

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went crazy after that. Past the hospital,

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we take a turn off the main road
which winds along the perfume river.

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We travel down a dark lane where
there are no people, no cafes,

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no open doors on to living rooms and TVs.
This is the quietest,

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most peaceful street I’ve seen in Vietnam.
Koy tells me that this was a street

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where soldiers brought prisoners to shoot them.
No one wants to mingle with their ghosts.

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When you love someone,

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you love everything about them.
Even their footsteps.

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When you hate someone,

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you hate everything about them.
Even their ancestors.

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[music]

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At a pagoda in the countryside, I
meet a one legged man on crutches.

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He has on the most formal military
attire like a soldier on parade.

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He tells me, he lost his leg in the
American war and asks where I come from.

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I want to go to America, he says and
as if I would understand completely,

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he adds, everyone is rich
and business is good there.

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We stand for a moment face-to-face

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surveying each other. I finally
raise my hands together

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as if in prayer. Uncle, I’m sorry.

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He looks at me uncomfortably and shrugs.
Come Sao, come Sao,

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it doesn’t matter, he says. Waving his
hand like we are talking about a mistake

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I made years ago that he
has long since forgotten.

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A few days later, I tell Fam

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who comes from a long line of revolutionaries
about my encounter with the veteran.

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But Fam hardly listens. He once told me

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that war is like a volcano. You can’t control
it. So you do what you can to save yourself.

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Don’t feel too bad, he tells me now.

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That man probably killed
some American soldiers too.

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[sil.]

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Sick and dizzy for days,

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I see almost nothing more of Whay(ph.)
than what’s outside my window.

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Dana brings me a daily bowl of noodle soup given to
her by the large curious group of cooks downstairs.

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Without (inaudible)

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I may speak English. She’s come
to know them all quite well.

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I feel trapped. Right now, I
wish this sweltering hotel room

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were somewhere else. Home.
Unable to film a (inaudible).

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Lynne can stand for an hour
finding the perfect frame

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for her shot. It’s as if she
can understand Vietnam better

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when she looks at it through the lens
of her camera. I hate the camera.

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The world feels too wide for the lens and
if I try to frame it, I only cut it out.

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[sil.]

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Lu strikes up a conversation with us

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as we walk one evening along a quiet tree lined street
in Dena(ph.). He wants to practice his English.

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We invite Lu to dinner.

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It’s his first time in a restaurant. So he’s
bewildered by the menu and offended by the prices.

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He tells us about an American doctor who came
to demand the final remains of a friend,

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a soldier lost in the war.
Lu’s older brother

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sold the doctor some human bones for $6.

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[sil.]

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I’m here for such a short time. A bone
collector who knows nothing about anatomy.

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[non-English narration]

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[sil.]

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Back in Hanoi, we show my friend Wha,

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the photographs we just picked up from the
one hour developer. She shifts through

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all the famous sites of Vietnam and then
stops suddenly at a picture Lynne took.

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Where did your sister, take this picture?

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That’s my grandmother. I’ve never introduced
you to her. She’s not a very nice person.

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Always complaining.

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Once the photo lost its
anonymity, it lost its meaning.

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It wasn’t the long suffering face of Vietnam anymore.
The trophy face that tourists love to capture.

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It was just Wha’s crappy grandmother.

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[non-English narration]

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When I first got here in winter,

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every proper coffee table had a bowl of
Mandarin oranges on it. I thought people

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must really like mandarin oranges in Vietnam.
But no, that was mandarin orange season.

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So that’s what you do. Eat
mandarin oranges. Since then,

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we’ve been through sugarcane,
apricots, mangos and watermelon.

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During each period, I reach a point where I
never want to see that fruit again and then

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miraculously, it disappears. The same woman

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who roamed my neighborhood with her two baskets of
mangos balanced on a bamboo pole across her shoulders,

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reappears, hawking pineapples.

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[music]

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It’s June now, the beginning
of the rainy season

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in the end thank God of lychee season.

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Lychee season is very short as everyone I know has
explained to me and so lychees are a delicacy.

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Someone gives you a kilo of lychees and
then you give them a kilo of lychees

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and together, you must eat eight million of
them. I’ve never particularly liked this fruit.

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But it’s impossible for me to tell someone,
I’ve had enough. You’ve got to deal

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with the spirit of the thing. Relish
every juicy bite. I tried to eat

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as slowly as possible and make good use
of one popular Vietnamese eating habit.

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Preparing a morsel of food and
then giving it to someone else.

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I peel the lychee, then hand it to a neighbor
to eat, praying she won’t do the same for me.

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[sil.]

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Fam drove me home on his
motorbike after the symphony.

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A storm had rolled into Hanoi while we were sitting
in the opera house. I leaned into his back

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bracing myself from the wind. The rain,
illuminated by the light of our Honda

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looked like a million shards of glass.
Above us, there was a loud blast

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in the sky.

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[sil.]

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I wonder if he told me, because he
knows I want to know these things

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or because every time he hears
thunder, he remembers the bombs.

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[sil.]

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Lynne and I are sitting in Wha’s living room.
We have the TV off so none of her neighbors

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are standing out on the sidewalk peeking in. In
this unfamiliar quiet, we begin to talk about

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the United States.

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I think, I don’t understand homelessness
Dana. But I don’t understand

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why

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your government spends so much money
trying to find bodies of soldiers

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that they know are dead. While so many other soldiers are still
alive, are sleeping on the streets right there in America.

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[sil.]

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I feel weary. Maybe it’s
almost time to go home.

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I can’t.

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I’m not ready to leave the children, I teach. The way they look
at the ceiling when they are trying to remember an English word

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or the way their eyes get there
when they finally do remember.

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I can’t leave Wha’s in
Viet, the wild child,

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the five year old with the
gravely voice of an older man.

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I haven’t learnt all the words
for rain or the words for art

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and I don’t know all the words to talk about love.
I still want to hear the firecrackers at Ted

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and taste the new rice during those brief
few weeks when it’s green and chewy.

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[sil.]

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OJ is a family friend

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and the only veteran, I knew as a child.
It seems strange to him

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that Dana has been living in Vietnam. Before I left, he told
me he liked to sit on the white sands of the China sea again,

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to hear the strange chirping
sounds of the birds in the jungle

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near placu(ph.). To look for
South Vietnamese nurse,

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he worked with Pointi(ph.). He doesn’t
even know if his friend is alive.

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He imagines she’s a (inaudible) by now. But there
is something that keeps OJ from coming back here.

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The same thing that keeps him from telling me
honors of his favorite San Francisco noodle shop

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that he was stationed just miles
away from the family farm.

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For him that old adage still holds.
He can’t get there from here.

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[music]

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Lynne left for San Francisco this
morning and Wha can see it in my face.

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She hands me an ear of boiled corn
she brought from a passing vendor

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and we quietly staring out at
the traffic on the street.

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She says. When you share someone’s sadness,

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you lessen it.

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[sil.]