We Are Here (2 page)
Authors: Cat Thao Nguyen
Ngày nào con bé c
n con
Bây gi
con đã l
n khôn th
này.
Cơm cha, áo m
, công th
y,
Lo sao cho đáng nh
ng ngày ư
c mong.
Contents
CHAPTER 4 AN AUSTRALIAN DREAM, A VIETNAMESE GARDEN
CHAPTER 6 WHY DIDN'T YOU GET 100?
CHAPTER 10 A TANGIBLE HERITAGE
I was born, two months premature, in a former prison. Sikhiu refugee camp was on the Thai side of the Thai–Cambodian border. At the time, the world only knew of people fleeing Vietnam by boat. My family had travelled by foot.
In 1969 President Nixon began the first modest withdrawal of US forces which had been fighting to prevent South Vietnam from takeover by the Communist North. The South struggled on with depleted resources while the North Vietnamese advanced steadily over the next few years towards the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon. Through March and April 1975 remaining American military and civilian personnel were evacuated. On 30 April 1975, Saigon finally fell. The iconic images of a North Vietnamese tank storming the gates of the revered Presidential Palace demonstrated unequivocal defeat. A mass exodus of
South Vietnamese refugees through the late 1970s and early 1980s followed. The world watched the images of countless crammed boats perilously leaving the shores of Vietnam, drifting haphazardly throughout the South China Sea. For some of the escapees, destiny led them to islands like Pulau Bidong off the Malaysian peninsula and to refugee camps in Thailand. Some would make it as far as America, Canada and Europe; others, crammed like animals into boats that were barely seaworthy, falling victim to pirates, disease or starvation, wouldn’t make it at all. Within four years of the end of the war, my own family would embark upon an exodus from Vietnam—a similarly treacherous journey.
My family is from the rural district of Gò D
u in the southeast province of Tây Ninh, approximately sixty kilometres northwest of Saigon (now known as Ho Chi Minh City). The district is only ten kilometres from the M
c Bài border crossing between Vietnam and Cambodia. The province is bordered by Cambodia on three sides.
My father’s father was a successful businessman and his family was one of the first in Tây Ninh province to own an automobile—an imported European car. He was a solemn, hard-working man with a deep sense of pride. Many people in Gò D
u still recall his integrity and work ethic. He passed away when my father was just a young man. I have only ever seen one photo of him. It sits on the ancestral altar in my parents’
house. I can recognise my father’s enquiring eyes in the black and white image of my grandfather.