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| 'Fires, blood, tears and suffering, over and over again . . .' |
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| Drawing by Le Van Tai 1999. ....... |
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| 'At last the day came ... but my father didn't live to see it.' |
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| Drawing by Le Van Tai 1999. |
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Vietnamese translation
Listen to Le Van Tai, interviewed by Claudia Taranto,
on Verbatim, ABC Radio National's social history program,
Saturday 8 March, 2003.
"Fire! Fire!" A voice called, but no one came to help. Only the dark night of war connived with the destruction. An ocean of fire swallowed all of the mud-and-straw houses into its belly. Fire, laughing . . .
I couldn't remember how many times my house had been burnt by French troops, or how many times the villagers of Nhan Bieu had been removed from Viet Minh control and brought into areas run by the Vietnamese national government or the French colonial authorities.
At the age of three, I had followed my parents as they left our village. I remember a stream of men with baskets slung from poles across their shoulders, carrying their belongings - mats, mosquito nets, joss-sticks and lamps, ancestral altars. We walked away hand-in-hand, hugging and carrying each other. We left our fatherland, our farms, our gardens, our stand of bamboo,our banana trees, and all our beautiful memories. We had been like the buffalo that spends its whole life in its grassy fields and river banks; like the kite that freely flies around the sky of its own country. Then suddenly we were in a box-like prison.
We came to a strange land where we were friendless, homeless, full of sadness and suffering. Day after day we held out our hands, waiting like beggars for some alms: one kilogram of rice and two dollars per man. My father and mother, like all the people of my village, never felt at home in those prisons. They escaped from the camps and found their way home. Our homes were built again, farms and gardens resettled. Then French troops came back to burn the houses and gather the people. Fires, blood, tears and suffering, over and over again . . .
When our houses were burnt a third time, we had nothing left to live on. That was when my parents had to accept the homeless life, living on others land, waiting for peace to come so they could return home.
At last the day came, the peace we had dreamed of, but my father didn't live to see it. He died in the camp at the age of seventy-two. Two years later, my mother followed him. Left parentless, still only a boy, I didn't know where to go or what to do. So day after day I hung around with a gang of beggars, people who had lost hands and legs, refugees of war, wandering around the town and streets in Quang Tri. Some days I had food, other days I had nothing. At nightfall I lay down in the cold with my stomach rumbling, on a threadbare sleeping mat, with a small grass mat over me.
My youth was the same as that of many young Vietnamese children. They were growing up naturally, like the grasses and plants, in suffering and happiness - not bearing a grudge against the men who dropped the fire and made the war, wherever they came from, outside or inside.
(Please note: this is one of a series of nineteen stories by poet and painter, Le Van Tai, about his journey from his past in Vietnam to his present and future in Footscray. Please click on 'Related stories' at the top left hand side of this page to go to Tai's other stories.)
Copyright Imagine The Future Inc. and Australian Film Commission, 2002.
Text by Le Van Tai for ITF.
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