A few of my cousins were living in Ho Chi Minh City, studying and working. One evening, when Vietnam won a soccer match in a notable Asian competition, my cousin asked whether I wanted to ride around the city with her. I had no idea of the scene I was about to witness. The streets of the city exploded with euphoric energy, its veins rupturing into a sea of red flags. The mayhem of thousands of roaring motorbikes, each with young teenagers, grandparents and couples with babies banging together saucepan lids and plastic bottles, transformed the city into a throbbing chamber of mass patriotism. Those who weren’t riding motorbikes stood on balconies above the streets waving flags, bashing wooden chopsticks against pots, chanting, ‘Vietnam undefeated! Vietnam undefeated!’ On the back of my cousin’s Honda Dream motorbike, stuck in traffic, gridlocked on Le Loi Boulevard, both my knees almost touching the knees of other Vietnamese people on either side of me sitting on the backs of motorbikes. Smiles beamed from every face, wrinkled and new. As the crescendos of chants swept through the crowds like a swift monsoon rain, I saw the people’s aspirations buoy them. Awaken them. Nourish them. I felt a sense of shared identity. At last I was one of Us. I looked at the people beside me and in front of me, at all the people on a tide of motorbikes that never ended. Everyone looked like me. I felt liberated by my insignificance. And I felt membership. A membership that would never be questioned. I promised myself that one day I would come back here to live, to belong and to be free.
At the end of the trip, I went back to my aunt’s house, where my father’s mother lived. My aunt asked me to go with her into one of the bedrooms. As I sat on the bed, she took out a few bits of paper from a drawer inside the wardrobe. She began to tell me about the time when my father decided to leave Vietnam. My uncle, his younger brother, had gone first, by boat. After some time, they had arrived in Australia.
‘When your father left, I asked him to take my son, your cousin. If he had stayed, he could have been forced to join the military or he would be sent far away. No one had any idea about the fate of young able men after the war ended. Your father definitely would have been punished further, if not killed. When he left, we heard nothing for a long time. If it was safe, we were all going to go. We had no idea whether they were dead or alive. We waited and waited, trying to soothe our anxieties with daily empty rituals. Then we received a letter, smuggled to us.’
My aunt showed me the note, now over twenty years old. Only a few lines were written on it. It was my father’s unmistakable handwriting, elegant and bold.
We are safe now. Extremely perilous. Do not leave.
I sank to the cold tiled floor, leaning against the wooden bed.
The urgency and fear in those words brought to me the image of a man who had barely survived. A man who had no idea about his own future and that of his nephew, wife and baby, one of their kin already lost deep in the jungles of Cambodia. I felt a sharp ache in my chest as I contemplated the fear my parents had faced, the brutality and muzzled pain they had endured. As I cried softly I thought, I am a witness.
The noise from my aunt’s rice mill churned incessantly like swirls of ocean foam. My aunt left to attend to some rice buyers. Alone in that room, with the old pre-war ceiling fan spinning, I stroked the paper. I was holding a physical connection to a young man who had bravely set off into an unimaginable future. A young man I longed to know. We are safe now.
After I arrived back in Australia, I found myself driving through Chester Hill past a large empty park. After the noise and colour of Vietnam, the silence of the wide streets and blankness of the sparse parks made me melancholy. I longed for the earthy gestures of farmers and the frenzied mania of a bustling nation. I missed my aunts’ excessive fretting and the daily intrusion into everyone else’s business like it was their right. Compared to the dense stew of Vietnam, the suburban and urban landscapes of Sydney seemed like a desolate graveyard.
With a few more months before the university year started again, I applied for some jobs. I eventually landed an entry-level claims-processing job at a large superannuation fund administrator. Excited to work in my first white-collar job in a tall city building, I purchased a cheap pale grey suit and cream shoes from Bankstown shopping centre. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was very much a New Girl Look. But soon after I started I grew insanely bored of entering data and reading through endless claim sheets. I gravitated towards the IT helpdesk guys and found myself thinking of ways to pass time. Once, I forgot to switch my mobile phone to silent and it rang loudly. The manager spoke to my supervisor, who in turn was asked to advise me on appropriate office etiquette. Such was the world of polite water-cooler conversation and stifled whispers between workstations.
When I received my first pay cheque, I decided to treat myself and David to a buffet lunch at the Sheraton on the Park, where I’d had my year twelve school formal. It was the only five-star hotel I had ever set foot in. As I moved cautiously around the food stations, a bowl with a ladle caught my eye. As I spooned the clear broth into a bowl, David came up and looked at it suspiciously. ‘I don’t know if that’s soup.’ I blushed, embarrassed, when we realised it was the container for the dirty ladle. In Vietnamese cuisine soup was normally a clear broth and so I thought the slightly murky water that the ladle was resting in was the soup. The actual soup was in a tureen next to it. We suppressed our laughter as we shuffled back to our table, surrounded by a battalion of unfamiliar cutlery.
By the time the new university year started, I had had enough of being a cog in a giant mundane wheel of corporate routine. At orientation week, I weaved through the university club stands while the music from the band on the stage blared. Beer was drunk in great quantities from plastic cups while boys kicked footballs around on the lawn. I passed the Anime Club, Drinking Society and Evangelical Union among many others. When I found the Vietnamese Students Association I immediately became a member.
I enrolled in the same compulsory subjects. Accounting, economics, econometrics, Legal Institutions and Law, Lawyers and Justice. Somehow after returning from Vietnam, I possessed greater resolve. The paper that I turned in for Legal Institutions received the top mark and was copied and distributed as a model for all the other law students. All without going to the Intensive English Language Centre. I proffered comments in class on the moral philosophy implications of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon. I debated the administration of justice. I wrote great essays in macroeconomics. However, it wasn’t long before the old feelings of isolation returned. I decided once again on a policy of disengagement with the law faculty and the student body. I attended only the minimum requirement of classes. In all my years at law school, I never once attended the weekly level five cocktail gatherings at the St James Campus in the city.
I had a friend of Iranian background who was studying for the same double degree. He was funny, politically astute and had a sharp sense of self. I met a few others who were nice enough, but none who would become good friends.
I started to become heavily involved in the Vietnamese Students Association. There were barbecues and fundraisers out in Bankstown or Cabramatta. I was one of the masters of ceremonies for a large Christmas ball that raised funds for Vietnamese refugees in a camp in the Philippines. Very quickly, I was recruited by the executive board of the official Vietnamese Community Organisation. The main office in John Street, Cabramatta, administered a range of programs funded by various state government departments, including arts and health. Under the guidance of the elected executive, the office employees coordinated community activities such as the annual Tt Festival as well as the occasional protest against political delegations from Communist Vietnam. There was a variety of Vietnamese community organisations, such as the senior citizens group, the Vietnamese Buddhist Society, the Vietnamese Catholic Society, the Vietnamese Women’s Association, the Vietnamese Scouts Group and the Vietnamese Students Association.
All these groups were eligible to vote for the executive of the official umbrella Vietnamese Community Organ
isation in Australia, New South Wales chapter. Anyone in the community could also register to vote. There were election ads run on Vietnamese radio and in print during the election campaigns. Each chapter executive nominates representatives to form the federal executive. Whichever group won the chapter elections, there was always a guarantee that all the core activities of the organisations revolved around pro-democracy campaigns for Vietnam.
The anniversary of the fall of Saigon had arrived. Every 30 April, each chapter of the Vietnamese Community Organisation in Australia sent members on a pilgrimage to Canberra to commemorate the day. Countless free buses from Victoria, New South Wales and other states made their way to the front of the Vietnamese embassy in Canberra to mourn the loss of the war and protest against the current regime’s atrocities. People made protest signs and waved them along with the old South Vietnamese flag. A flag which within Vietnam is not only offensive but is buried along with the official version of history. Men who still had their medals and insignia would wear them with pride. The old fed the young with stories of horror and injustice. Musicians sang old pro-Saigon war songs while fists pumped in the air after the leaders yelled, ‘Down with Communism!’
In the first year that I participated in the fall of Saigon pilgrimage, I roamed the crowd taking photos. The image of one particular man struck me. He was small with a long thin face, high cheekbones and round eyes sunk into two oversized sockets. He looked like a man-mouse. But his face wasn’t what drew my attention. It was the way he stood. He was resolute and proud, unflinching in the audience as speeches and songs continued throughout the afternoon. He clasped the pole of a flag with his right hand, resting it almost vertically against him. His stance remained unchanged for a long time. Nobody came to talk to him or stand with him. His reverent silence exuded a noble sadness that moved me deeply. As I looked through the lens of my camera at him, I tried to imagine his story and the thoughts that were mulling inside him. Where had he come from in Vietnam? Did he have any family? How did he get to Australia? How many others like him were there?
This man stood quietly among other old soldiers, now with greying beards and calluses on their palms from driving forklifts, containing the memories and conviction reserved for this annual release. It was an emotional display of a community’s grief that was far from subsiding. Just like revolutionary causes all around the world throughout the ages, indifferent to the currency of the political ideology, the young were central to the potency and continuity of the cause. We were needed to ensure that even as time passed, the cause remained. The war was not over until it was won, however long it took. It was our duty not to forget, to honour our parents and those who had not survived. The Communist Party of Vietnam was composed of a bunch of corrupt selfish officials who exploited their own people. It was a despotic regime. The sea of yellow flags raised sombrely before me now was a direct antithesis to the celebratory exuberant streams of red-starred flags I had ridden among only a year earlier. I didn’t know how to reconcile my feelings of membership with knowing that the Vietnam I had visited and loved, where I had felt a powerful sense of belonging, was a country my family had fled. But that year I learned the power and meaning of a flag. That it can transform into a weapon, become a robe of glory, an epitaph or a constant reminder of defeat.
When Sydney hosted the Olympics, David and I watched Vietnam win its first-ever Olympic medal. A woman from Nha Trang, on the South Central Coast of Vietnam, won silver in tae kwon do. There was no one from the Vietnamese Australian community visible in the audience. International students from Vietnam had come to support the fighter, bringing with them the national flag. Their faces were painted red with a yellow star. They cheered loudly from the stands as they witnessed a unique moment in Vietnamese history. The international students erupted into proud but disbelieving screams, even though the fighter missed out on the gold medal. At the end we had our photos taken with the silver medallist.
A couple of weeks later, when my uncle was at our house, I described the wonderful event. My uncle had been a naval officer of the South Vietnamese government. Usually jovial, his manner was curt as he said, ‘It’s been reported in our community newspapers that the girl was bought off and deliberately lost the match.’
‘How can you trust the intelligence behind this news?’ I retorted. ‘Propaganda can be propagated by both sides.’
I took out the photos to show him, hoping that he would be proud of Vietnam’s achievement. The pictures showed David and I posing with the medallist, who was holding up the Communist flag.
‘You should be ashamed!’ my uncle thundered. ‘How could you have stood there with her? It isn’t just a flag. Flags are not just symbols. We bled for our flag! We died for our flag! That red flag represents a victory stolen from us, mocking our humiliation, spitting on our fallen brothers in unmarked graves. Shame! Shame! What would the leaders of the community say if they saw these photos! You will destroy us!’
My face burned with confusion and naivety. I buried the photos at the bottom of my desk drawer and never looked at them again.
Throughout the years I was involved with the Vietnamese community, I learned freedom songs and the old South Vietnam Republican anthem—all banned in Vietnam now. I learned the supposed duty of young Vietnamese in our diaspora communities to rescue our brethren back in Vietnam from human rights abuses and Communism. I went to camps and surrounded myself with people who looked like me, spoke like me and told me of a greater purpose. They told me of honour, of cultural pride, of legacy, of reason. I drank in this newfound sense of belonging like a thirsty traveller in the desert. I went with the chapter president to political party dinners and press conferences and to meetings with all those who needed to woo the Vietnamese community, whether they were chasing votes or a tabloid story. I chatted with Gough Whitlam, former Australian prime minister, spoke at Parliament House on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, shook hands with future Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, and went to Canberra with a delegation to present to the bipartisan Amnesty International Parliamentary Committee. I facilitated community workshops on the challenges facing Vietnamese children and parents, from drugs and the language barrier to generational and cultural conflict. I sat on the National Community Advisory Committee to the SBS. I was on the management board of the New South Wales Ethnic Communities’ Council—the peak non-government organisation for ethnic communities in the state. I attended countless consultations, listened to the woes of detainees in immigration detention and presented proposals for drug education reform in Canberra.
I kept overly busy with community development work, distracting myself from the loneliness I felt at university. But no matter what, at least I had David. We were still dating. While I was immersed in my community development work, David and his buddies had all bought motorbikes. The crew adored their bikes. They rode up and down the coast, and spent hours cleaning them and posing with them for photos. David would pick me up on his bike and take me to university.
We were in love. It wasn’t the expressive type of love I saw in the movies, with excessive handholding and physical affection—we were Asian, after all—but we had a deep sense of shared history and silent understanding. It was love first-generation-migrant style.
As I progressed into second year at university, I became president of the Sydney University Vietnamese Students Association. It was the year of the biannual international Vietnamese youth conference, and it was being held in Paris. All the other university Vietnamese student associations in Australia raised funds to subsidise the trip. There were concerts at Bankstown Town Hall, fashion parades in Cabramatta and raffle tickets sold to almost every Vietnamese parent and relative in Australia. Despite the fundraising efforts, I knew it was impossible for me to go. My Centrelink allowance was just enough to cover my books, train tickets and food; I had nothing to spare.
One afternoon, as David and I sat on the steps in my backyard watching the landlords’ kid play, he asked, ‘Do you
really want to go?’
‘I feel like I should because I’m the president. I really want to go.’
‘Okay.’
The next day David put an ad in the paper to sell his beloved Honda Fireblade. Then he gave me the money to go to Paris.
The cheapest ticket involved flying from Sydney to Melbourne to Hong Kong to Japan to Russia to Paris. I travelled as part of a group of about thirty people who constituted the Australian Vietnamese delegation. The leg to Russia was on an Aeroflot flight. An Aeroflot plane had crashed only a week earlier. I didn’t need to know this but one of the other students kept mentioning it. The tray table was broken and kept smacking my knees throughout the flight. None of the flight attendants smiled. To help with my anxiety, another delegate in the group gave me a sleeping pill. It completely knocked me out. When I awoke, I had a thick pool of drool on my shirt and the plane had landed. The Russian passengers clapped and cheered loudly as we shuffled off the plane—to discover that our connecting flight had been cancelled. So the Australian delegation sprawled across the floor of the Moscow airport for a few hours while we waited for someone to give us directions. We avoided eye contact with the rather gruff airport staff who strode briskly around the airport. Eventually they put us up in a nearby hotel to wait for a flight the next day. It was summer in Russia, and I was enthralled by the idea that the sun never went completely down. I stood at the window for hours, marvelling at the white and still night.
We Are Here Page 17