The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir (4 page)

They each took turns on the oars. As the sun rose, the heat of the day seeped into their skin and soon their shirts were drenched in sweat. When the sun was high in the sky, Dad judged that it was almost midday. Suddenly, the roar of a communist guard boat approached them from behind.

Dad quickly bent down to grab some fishing nets so he could look like he was busy mending them and whispered, ‘Just remember what I told you. Keep your mouths shut and let me talk.’

The patrol boat cut its engine and idled next to the canoe. A soldier squinted down at them.

‘What are you doing out here?’

‘Fishing.’

A tense silence followed as the squinty-eyed face bent down to stare at Dad under his straw fishing hat. Dad held his gaze without flinching. Another voice murmured behind the soldier.

‘Maybe they’re going out to a boat?’

The soldier looked out at the open sea, considering.

‘Ha! They’d have an engine. Only an idiot would try to paddle that far.’

And with that the communist boat roared back to life and continued on its way.

When Dad’s canoe finally made it out to the Motherfish, several pairs of hands reached out and hoisted him and the two boys onto the boat. People silently cheered as their scared and nervous faces looked at their fatigued and exhausted leader. Dad reassured them with his trademarked wonky teeth smile.

The next morning was going to be the most nerve- wracking because we needed to cross the invisible border between Vietnam and international waters. Armed communist patrol boats made routine surveillance missions along this stretch. We had two engines on the Motherfish, the main one and a smaller back-up engine. Dad got both of them going to get us across this patch of sea as fast as possible.

Just when it seemed we were finally beyond the border patrol area, Uncle Eight screamed out: ‘Patrol Boat!’

Behind us a patrol boat was heading in our direction at full speed. Dad cranked up both the motors to maximum thrust and we bounced violently across the waves.

Bang! Bang!

The patrol boat began shooting at us, and the women on our boat screamed.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The patrol boat was gaining on us and Dad knew that being caught meant jail for nearly everyone on board, and possibly executions for my paratrooper uncles and himself. All of a sudden there was a loud ‘
Snap
!’ The back-up engine stopped.

‘Jesus!’

Dad steered the boat onwards with just one engine. The soldiers would surely catch us.

Suddenly Uncle Eight called out, ‘They’ve turned back!’

Everyone went to look and he was right. The patrol boat decided not to pursue us any further outside their zone of surveillance. They now headed away from us.

‘Thank you God.’

Some people started clapping and cheering. Dad shushed them all and began guiding the boat out of the bay and into the open sea. He knew there was a long, long way to go.

There was nothing but flat, blue water in every direction. The heat of the tropical afternoon sun clung to our skin and shoulders, and people tried to shield their eyes from the glare as the boat skidded along the frothy waves. The engine was spewing out thick petrol fumes and these, combined with the up-and-down motion, meant that our first few hours on board were punctuated by bodies retching over the side of the vessel.

The boat was so small that we were jammed into every crevice, corner and spare patch of deck. It was almost impossible to get downstairs into the hold, which was heaving with sweating bodies and the suffocating stench of old fish. Forty people had transformed this tiny fishing boat into a living, seething mass of human desperation floating in the Eastern Sea.

Forty people on a nine by two and a half metre fishing boat, weighing the boat down so much that there was only half a metre of mossy wood between the rails of the boat and the waterline. Every time a big wave hit, we’d all scramble to bail out the water.

My mother, with a hot, crying child under each arm, stepped over and around bodies and made slow progress down into the hold, trying her best to calm two scared and delirious children. The boat’s provisions consisted mainly of rice and vegetables.

Dad and my uncles had decided we should hold off eating until evening, not just to preserve food but to also instil a sense of authority and discipline. By nightfall everyone was starving and found reasons to ask for more than their tiny share, but Dad had to be firm to make the rations last. After eating, people slumped in whatever space they could find and tried to sleep. I cried for a while then fell asleep next to Mum. Despite all Mum’s attempts to soothe him, Khoa screamed throughout the night.

The second day was much the same, a hot burning sun and a horizon that stretched on forever. Later in the day, though, the hard blue sky clouded over and gave us welcome respite from the heat. Mum brought Khoa and me up onto the deck for some fresh air—by now the stench of petrol fumes and old fish had combined with vomit and human excrement to fill the hold with an unbearable smell.

As the afternoon wore on, the soft white cushions scudding across the sky turned into angry grey storm clouds and the wind whipped waves into heaving swells—our little fishing boat pitched from side to side. With every wave that hit, water washed over us and every able body scrambled to bail it out. Soon the sky darkened further, turning a sinister, tumultuous black as the wind shrieked and skidded across the deck like a panicking ghost.

Mum grabbed us and shoved Khoa and me through the hatch door into the darkness of the hold and my aunty’s waiting arms. Mum climbed in and looked back, taking one last anxious look at the men of her family, who were rushing and yelling, their screams torn from their throats by the howling wind. She heard Dad’s strained voice—‘Go Hien,
now
!’—which had an unexpected tone that she recognised as fear. She looked up to see an enormous wall of grey-green water that appeared to have swallowed the sky. It was as though the bottom of the ocean was about to crash down on top of us. She screamed and fell down the steps into the hold, the hatch door banging shut behind her.

A deafening darkness. Mum felt like a blind woman groping wildly amid flailing arms and knees and hair, all the sounds intensified by her loss of sight. She could hear her babies screeching with terror; others were moaning, praying, shouting; wood was cracking under the full force of the sea smashing against our little wooden boat. As the boat pitched, the bodies in the hold rolled and fell from side to side. My mother managed to get hold of Khoa and me and we clung to her neck as we were shoved and pushed by the mass of limbs.

The boat righted. Mum crouched down and wrapped her arms around a wooden pole with Khoa and me still hanging on for our lives. She heard my aunty’s voice faintly behind her:

Hail Mary, full of grace,

The Lord is with thee.

Blessed are thee amongst women …

We hung on and waited… and waited some more. Mum managed to keep hold of her post and her children. The boat kept pitching, the wind kept howling and people kept praying. Slowly the storm began to subside. I whimpered against my mother’s chest. My brother’s crying became more audible. Mum rocked us gently on her lap.

‘Shhh, shhh. It’s okay now. Everything is okay.’ And she sang a Vietnamese mother’s lullaby to us.

I have Dad, I have Mum

Mum loves me

like a stream on a mountain top.

From the moment I was born

Mum nursed me like an egg

Held me like a flower

Cradled me in her arms…

While she sang, she prayed that her children still have a mum and a dad.

Once the storm passed, it was strangely quiet. Waves lapped at the boat but it was as though there was no human cargo in the hold. We were scared to move, afraid of what we might find up on deck. Finally from above, the hatch door opened and light poured in to startle us from our stupor.

Mum tucked her children under her arms and shoved her way through the bodies up to the deck, her heart pounding loudly in her chest. She shielded her eyes from the glare and scanned the boat.

Uncle Thanh.

Uncle Huy.

Uncle Eight.

There they were, accounted for—two strapped to a bench, one strapped to the side of the pilothouse with rope. Not moving much, but alive.

But where is he?

Mum scanned the boat again. The glass windows of the tiny pilothouse were blown out. It was the only place left to look. Frantically, Mum made her way across the splintered wood, broken benches and debris. She found him, bleeding from cuts to his face and arms, but okay and still standing at the helm, steering the boat back on course.

‘Tam!’

‘Are you okay? The boys okay?’ he asked.

‘Yes, yes. We’re fine. Everyone’s okay,’ Mum sobbed. ‘Thank God we’re all still alive.’