Tìm Kiếm Bài Đã Đăng
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EARLY 1977, we were detained in the Communist prison camp of Trảng Táo in Long Khánh Province. It was a hot and muggy afternoon and the sun was setting behind the blue mountains. I was sitting and weaving a bamboo basket to carry vegetables. Around me, several other prisoners were also sitting and mending their clothes. It was a short period of time that we could afford after a day of hard work in the jungle or on milpas. We had to build our own prison camp while planting corn or cassava to feed ourselves, so we were forced to work hard from dawn to dusk, without a day of rest. Suddenly the voice of someone asking resonated from my barrack:
─ Who's that? Who's that? What kind of illness?
I turned toward the backyard. Two of my fellow prisoners were running with short steps, carrying a patient in the direction of the clinic.
─ Quỳnh, team 13, malaria, replied one of the two transporters, panting.
I startled when I recognized the words “Quỳnh” and “malaria.” I dropped my basket on the ground, ran to the yard in the back but the patient and his transporters had already disappeared behind the high grass at the edge of the forest. Stunned and at a loss, I returned to my barrack, leaving my weaving assignment unfinished.
Quỳnh was the real name of one of my fellow prisoners. I met Quỳnh a few days before when he came back from his work, clearing the jungle for new milpas, his body all covered with ash and dust. He used to limp because of the contracture of his left heel tendon, after a previous work injury sustained in Tay Ninh Camp. Quỳnh smiled to me:
─ It’s so hot, Brother Hiếu. No amount of water can stop this thirst. I wish there is a stream nearby…
He left his sentence unfinished, probably because he came to realize that such dreams never came true in this kind of desperate prison setting. I decided that I would go to the clinic the next day to see him, when I am done with my work. The clinic consisted of three rickety cottages and a few bamboo cot beds. Its chief was a communist nurse, deadly pale, belonging to the regular North Vietnamese army. Two prisoners, former South Vietnamese military doctors, were assigned to work there. The only medications available were a few quinine tablets and traditional oriental medicine pills. Dysentery alone was enough cause for a few of us to never leave this jungle alive. If during our labor, we had the misfortune of getting into an accident and getting wounded, we could only rely on each other to take care of ourselves.
That night, after dinner we received orders to pack for the next morning excursion. We would go early to a far away site in the jungle to cut fan-palm leaves for the roofs of our barracks. We hurried to pick up our rice and maize rations, to arrange our working tools. It was already late into the night when we finished. I lay down on my bed, exhausted, and fell asleep immediately, forgetting to go to barrack 13 to inquire about Quynh’s medical condition. The few days spent in the jungle cutting palm leaves were extremely hard work. On our way back, our shoulders bent under the weight of the freshly cut leaves. Everybody was sluggish. Our already shabby clothing now had become even more tattered. Our skin was all torn and scratched by thorns. I was counting my leaf bundles before giving them to my group chief when a fellow prisoner approached me and said in a low voice:
─ Listen, Brother Hiếu. Brother Quỳnh is very sick. Yesterday he had convulsions and now he is comatose at the clinic. Let me count these leaves for you. Go to the clinic to check about his condition right now.
The word “coma’ gave me pangs of worry. I handed him my backpack. He pointed his finger to the direction where the alang grass was sparser.
─ Follow that trail, you will get to the clinic much faster.
I hastily ran toward the clinic on the hill. The small trail was tortuous and bumpy. Reeds towered above a man’s head. Dense creepers and thorny vines cut into my feet and my face with excruciating pain. My mind was boggled in a multitude of questions: “Since he has seizures and coma, he must have cerebral malaria already? How are they treating him? Where in the world can they find medicine to treat him? How can we save him?” Old images of my fellow soldiers in a coma induced by malaria in my military hospital suddenly came back to my memory with every minute detail, which made me worry about Quỳnh even more. As I came near the clinic, I stopped for a moment to take a breath and to check if there was any guard keeping watch there. Fortunately, it was lunch time and there was no guard in sight. Regulations forbade us to come near the clinic unless there was a valid reason for doing so. I quickly walked into one of the three cottages.
Quỳnh was laid on a bamboo cot bed, in the middle of the room. Both doctors who were fellow prisoners were present. They recognized me but did not say a word. Profound sadness showed on their face. I hastily sat down next to Quỳnh, lifted his head and looked into his eyes, still open. Their white was dull and bloodless, their pupils wide dilated for a long time already. The skin of his face felt cold. I turned to my two physician-friends as to silently enquire about the reason of Quỳnh’s death. One of them, with his eyes all red, said in a choky voice:
─ Cerebral malaria. We did our best. The needle was too short, we could not inject into the heart.
I felt my whole body flagging. Quỳnh’s dark hair was all ruffed up. He had a very broad forehead. His lips were purplish, his eyes open, dry and withered. I hold his hand. It was ice cold, lifeless. I knew that it was too late to try anything. Quỳnh had gone away too fast. The three of us were still watching him in silence when the communist nurse walked in and asked with a northern accent:
─ What’s the disease?
One of my colleagues answered, hesitantly:
─ Malaria…
The nurse said, in a condescending tone and in a thick rural accent:
─ No way one can treat acute malaria. Go to comrade M. and let him know.
His voice irritated me, even when I was numb inside. I scolded him silently: “You are a frog living at the bottom of a well, don’t be so boastful!” However, I had to swallow my resentment. I closed Quynh’s eyes with my fingers then left the cottage, my heart heavy with regrets and anger. “Comrade M.” that the nurse mentioned was the instructor-warden superior.
I had known Quỳnh since the days we were incarcerated in the Trảng Lớn Camp, next to the Tây Ninh Airport. I remember vaguely that during the period of 1976-1977, he was about 30 years old, and his former rank was first lieutenant but I cannot remember which branch of the armed forces he belonged to. Right now I cannot recall even his family name or his middle name. Time and a busy life in America have already started to erase the details from my memory. In the prison, Quỳnh used to talk with me very often. He just got married one month before the event of April 30th, 1975 (when the communists took over South Vietnam), then he was put in prison.
Once, while massaging his injured heel, he asked me:
─ My heel tendon is contractured. When I get out of the prison, can we fix it by surgery, Brother Hiếu?
I tried to reassure him:
─ Why not? We can even reconnect severed nerves, let alone heel tendons.
He smiled with confidence:
─ I hope so. If I keep limping, my wife would leave me, wouldn’t she?
One night, when I was boiling water on an open fire on the edge of a forest, Quynh approached me. He looked really sad. Sitting down by me, he said in a low voice:
─ This finger has been torturing me for several days. This afternoon it hurt so much that it gave me fever.
He showed me his left middle finger. Its tip was all red and swollen with pus.
I scolded him:
─ Why did you wait so long before letting me know about this? Did you get it crushed?
─ No, brother. It was a thorn from a “cat hook” vine. I kept trying to take it out but I couldn’t. He said.
I tried to sound confident:
─ It’s a piece of cake. It’ll hurt only for a few seconds. I will take it out for you.
─ Please give me a shot of anesthetic, Doctor!
He was just joking, as he knew very well how we pulled bad teeth, incised abscesses, sutured wounds in this prison. Where could we find anesthetics in these conditions? I asked him to sit behind me, with his right arm holding tightly my waist. I squeezed his left arm under my left arm. I wait until my improvised tiny lancet, made of a piece of steel from a wrecked airplane, became all red on the flame. I told Quỳnh to clench his teeth and hold his breath, and immediately incised his swollen finger. Pus and blood dripped on the ground. I heard him moan softly. I poked out the deeply embedded thorn from his finger. Still hard, sharp, curved, black and glistening, it did look like a cat nail. He thanked me; his face was still sprinkled with sweat drops. I dressed his finger with a piece of rag, previously washed and sterilized in boiling water then dried. I joked to make him feel less pain:
─ It’s OK to limp, but if you don’t keep this middle finger supple enough, you won’t be able to caress your wife properly, then, she will leave you.
He burst out laughing:
─ I miss my wife so much, Brother Hiếu, like crazy. Sometimes, I just want to get out of here to stay with her for a few days, and then come what may!
What he said reminded me of my wife and children. For a long time, we had not heard the voices of our wives, the laughter of our children. Sometimes, we woke up in the middle of the night, sobbing, after a dream in which we kissed our wives and our children. Once we thought of our families, the days in prison suddenly became interminable, never-ending. The incision on Quynh’s finger healed after a week, even without any medication.
We were forced to work relentlessly. Our cassava and corn rations were reduced further and further. Hunger made me feel weak and tremble. I salivated profusely just at the thought of a piece of boiled cassava. I drank plain water to calm down the gnawing pain of hunger in my stomach. Each evening, tired and dirty, exhausted from hunger, the prisoners walked back from the jungle to their barracks, their feet dragging.
One evening, as I was back from work, I plopped into the bamboo chair next to the little table I had made by myself. A small package, wrapped in green leaves, the size of a fist was on a corner of the table. I opened it with curiosity. A small, boiled sweet potato and a note with the words: “Brother Hiếu. I just found a few potatoes, this one for you to enjoy. Q.” I swallowed my piece of potato, felt its exquisite sweetness in my throat and my gratitude for Quynh in my heart. Even sweet potatoes were not easily found. We had to eat frogs, tree toads, snakes, and mice that we caught at our work sites.
Another evening, it was Quỳnh’s turn to cook in the community kitchen. He saw me all covered with ash and dust but without any water to wash myself with. He signaled me to come over near the kitchen:
─ I have something for you.
He showed me a small ammunition container full of clean water in the corner of the kitchen. As I was hesitant, he explained:
─ This morning I had to go up to the mountain to get cooking water, I am done with my washing. Don’t worry. If you don’t get rid of that layer of dust, it will itch and keep you awake all night.
As I thanked him, he said softly to my ear, with a smile:
─ Let’s try to keep ourselves clean so that we can still have our chance (our water and our country).
I understood immediately what he meant. A potato, a can of water, a word of encouragement, all such things made us feel closer to each other in this life of confinement.
The sudden news of Quỳnh’s death sent a shock wave among all of us. His fellow prisoners took his corpse and put it on a bamboo cot bed among the reeds. I came to see him. He was still wearing his oversized and faded camouflage uniform. A rolled-up old shirt served as a pillow under his neck. He lay straight, his arms stretched along his body, his eyes shut as if he was in a deep sleep. Only his face was a little pale. At the head of the cot bed, there was a small plate with two small portions of compacted rice. Some friend had brought white and purple flowers from the wood and hung them at one end of the bed, next to his head. I stood there, and looked at him for a very long time, trying to register in my memory the beloved image of a young man forced to die for no purpose.
Quỳnh was lying there, impassive. The cold wind of the jungle moved his black hair which was falling over his broad forehead. A few small birds casually landed on his cot bed. The afternoon sun light was weak and sallow. In the sky, grey clouds were slowly drifting aimlessly.
Together we took care of his burial. A casket was made of wood panels salvaged from old store signs. The pit was dug near an old tree, an easily recognized landmark should his relatives eventually come to look for his grave. Before the casket was lowered into the pit, the prisoner-leader of Quỳnh’s group directed us, about ten people, to stand around our unfortunate friend to pray for him. A few minutes of silence passed. In a choked voice, he started: “It’s life…everybody will come to this point…But Quỳnh has left us too early…in very difficult conditions that we have to go through…”
His voice weakened, and was interrupted by extreme emotions. I could not hear his last sentences. My ears were ringing, my eyes were blurred. Around me, tears were rolling on the faces of young men in their misfortune, trying to swallow their pain and their deep rancor.
The sun was going to set behind the blue mountain range. The air took the sad purple color. In this tragic scene of separation in the middle of the jungle, each of us threw a little cold soil into the pit and said farewell to him. We used large stones to built a mound hoping that, as time went by, inclement weather would not rapidly erase the resting place of our companion in prison. After his burial, without a word, we silently followed the tortuous trail that led us back to our barracks.
At dinner, eating my bowl of boiled corn, I felt a huge emptiness in my soul. I remembered once Quỳnh shared with me half of his ear of corn:
─ Enjoy this. It's fun only when we share among friends. If we eat alone, we only fill our stomach a little better, but that doesn't mean anything.
It was a sad meal. It seemed that nobody cared to say anything out loud. I was deep in my thoughts. A younger fellow-prisoner came and sat close by me with his bowl of corn, whispering to my ears:
─ There is hope that Quỳnh's relatives will be here in a few days.
Surprised, I asked him:
─ How did they learn about this to come here?
He explained:
─ Some among us worked in the lumberyard at the Trảng Táo train station. They wrote a letter and sent it to Quynh's family with the help of merchants on the train. His family lives in Saigon.
I was going to ask him why we had not notified earlier his family, when he was sick and needed medicines; but suddenly, I remembered that Quỳnh's condition had worsened when people close to him were cutting leaves at a distant place. Nobody had expected his illness to deteriorate so quickly.
A few days after Quynh’s burial, his wife arrived at our prison camp from Saigon. She went straight to the wardens' quarters and asked to see her husband. The wardens tried to avoid a direct answer and would not let her in. She became assertive:
─ My husband was gravely sick, you didn't treat him, and you didn’t notify his family. My husband died, and you would not let me visit his grave. The last few nights, my husband's soul kept coming back to tell me that he had died in an unfair way.
The communist wardens were perplexed about her ghost story and reluctantly decided to let her come to the grave site. She wore black pants and a traditional style white blouse, with a conic palm hat, and was carrying a cloth bag. She walked unsteadily. There were dark shiners under her eyes. She must have cried so much at the bad news. She prostrated herself and embraced her husband's tomb, screaming: “my love...why did you leave me... ” It broke our hearts. Some of us tried to sooth her, some burned incense sticks for her, and some help her place offerings of flowers and fruit in front of the grave. She paid respect to her husband, kowtowing forcefully and repeatedly in a delirious trance of extremely painful emotions.
The afternoon sky was lugubrious. Quỳnh's wife made an effort to stand up, planted a few flower stalks on her husband's tomb then gave the fruits to the group leader. She sobbed:
My family thanks you for your help in giving my husband a resting place.
...I had intended to write about my old friend twenty one years ago, as soon as I reached freedom, in the Island of Bidong, off the Malaysian coastline in October 1978. But I had procrastinated until today. It’s better late than never, that is how I console myself. Anyway, tonight, I feel that a small part of the baggage that I have always carried with me from my tragic past is gone. I have written down this story to commemorate and to pay tribute to thousands of other prisoners of conscience like Quynh who have fallen or who are still incarcerated in Vietnam, my still impoverished native country.
Nguyễn Trác Hiếu
Orlando 11-24-1999
Epilogue
Three years after I wrote this article, a woman called me from Washington State. She was sobbing, in tears. It was Quỳnh's wife. She had read my article in a Vietnamese newspaper:
─ I have cried for two days after I read your article about Quỳnh's last days, she said. Thank you very much.
Our conversation lasted about fifteen minutes. Soon after her husband's death, her in-laws had arranged for her escape by boat from Vietnam in 1978. Talking to her made me feel that I had done something very useful. The day I met her in front of her husband's grave, I did not have the opportunity to tell her about Quỳnh’s prison days. Now I really feel that things had come full circle on this earth that is becoming smaller and smaller.
Bác Sĩ Nguyễn Trác Hiếu
December 9, 2007
Hieu T. Nguyen, MD
Author of the original Vietnamese article “Quỳnh”
English version translated, annotated and abridged by
Hien V. Ho, MD
Completed December 10th, 2009, Great Falls -Falls Church, Virginia
─ Who's that? Who's that? What kind of illness?
I turned toward the backyard. Two of my fellow prisoners were running with short steps, carrying a patient in the direction of the clinic.
─ Quỳnh, team 13, malaria, replied one of the two transporters, panting.
I startled when I recognized the words “Quỳnh” and “malaria.” I dropped my basket on the ground, ran to the yard in the back but the patient and his transporters had already disappeared behind the high grass at the edge of the forest. Stunned and at a loss, I returned to my barrack, leaving my weaving assignment unfinished.
Quỳnh was the real name of one of my fellow prisoners. I met Quỳnh a few days before when he came back from his work, clearing the jungle for new milpas, his body all covered with ash and dust. He used to limp because of the contracture of his left heel tendon, after a previous work injury sustained in Tay Ninh Camp. Quỳnh smiled to me:
─ It’s so hot, Brother Hiếu. No amount of water can stop this thirst. I wish there is a stream nearby…
He left his sentence unfinished, probably because he came to realize that such dreams never came true in this kind of desperate prison setting. I decided that I would go to the clinic the next day to see him, when I am done with my work. The clinic consisted of three rickety cottages and a few bamboo cot beds. Its chief was a communist nurse, deadly pale, belonging to the regular North Vietnamese army. Two prisoners, former South Vietnamese military doctors, were assigned to work there. The only medications available were a few quinine tablets and traditional oriental medicine pills. Dysentery alone was enough cause for a few of us to never leave this jungle alive. If during our labor, we had the misfortune of getting into an accident and getting wounded, we could only rely on each other to take care of ourselves.
That night, after dinner we received orders to pack for the next morning excursion. We would go early to a far away site in the jungle to cut fan-palm leaves for the roofs of our barracks. We hurried to pick up our rice and maize rations, to arrange our working tools. It was already late into the night when we finished. I lay down on my bed, exhausted, and fell asleep immediately, forgetting to go to barrack 13 to inquire about Quynh’s medical condition. The few days spent in the jungle cutting palm leaves were extremely hard work. On our way back, our shoulders bent under the weight of the freshly cut leaves. Everybody was sluggish. Our already shabby clothing now had become even more tattered. Our skin was all torn and scratched by thorns. I was counting my leaf bundles before giving them to my group chief when a fellow prisoner approached me and said in a low voice:
─ Listen, Brother Hiếu. Brother Quỳnh is very sick. Yesterday he had convulsions and now he is comatose at the clinic. Let me count these leaves for you. Go to the clinic to check about his condition right now.
The word “coma’ gave me pangs of worry. I handed him my backpack. He pointed his finger to the direction where the alang grass was sparser.
─ Follow that trail, you will get to the clinic much faster.
I hastily ran toward the clinic on the hill. The small trail was tortuous and bumpy. Reeds towered above a man’s head. Dense creepers and thorny vines cut into my feet and my face with excruciating pain. My mind was boggled in a multitude of questions: “Since he has seizures and coma, he must have cerebral malaria already? How are they treating him? Where in the world can they find medicine to treat him? How can we save him?” Old images of my fellow soldiers in a coma induced by malaria in my military hospital suddenly came back to my memory with every minute detail, which made me worry about Quỳnh even more. As I came near the clinic, I stopped for a moment to take a breath and to check if there was any guard keeping watch there. Fortunately, it was lunch time and there was no guard in sight. Regulations forbade us to come near the clinic unless there was a valid reason for doing so. I quickly walked into one of the three cottages.
Quỳnh was laid on a bamboo cot bed, in the middle of the room. Both doctors who were fellow prisoners were present. They recognized me but did not say a word. Profound sadness showed on their face. I hastily sat down next to Quỳnh, lifted his head and looked into his eyes, still open. Their white was dull and bloodless, their pupils wide dilated for a long time already. The skin of his face felt cold. I turned to my two physician-friends as to silently enquire about the reason of Quỳnh’s death. One of them, with his eyes all red, said in a choky voice:
─ Cerebral malaria. We did our best. The needle was too short, we could not inject into the heart.
I felt my whole body flagging. Quỳnh’s dark hair was all ruffed up. He had a very broad forehead. His lips were purplish, his eyes open, dry and withered. I hold his hand. It was ice cold, lifeless. I knew that it was too late to try anything. Quỳnh had gone away too fast. The three of us were still watching him in silence when the communist nurse walked in and asked with a northern accent:
─ What’s the disease?
One of my colleagues answered, hesitantly:
─ Malaria…
The nurse said, in a condescending tone and in a thick rural accent:
─ No way one can treat acute malaria. Go to comrade M. and let him know.
His voice irritated me, even when I was numb inside. I scolded him silently: “You are a frog living at the bottom of a well, don’t be so boastful!” However, I had to swallow my resentment. I closed Quynh’s eyes with my fingers then left the cottage, my heart heavy with regrets and anger. “Comrade M.” that the nurse mentioned was the instructor-warden superior.
I had known Quỳnh since the days we were incarcerated in the Trảng Lớn Camp, next to the Tây Ninh Airport. I remember vaguely that during the period of 1976-1977, he was about 30 years old, and his former rank was first lieutenant but I cannot remember which branch of the armed forces he belonged to. Right now I cannot recall even his family name or his middle name. Time and a busy life in America have already started to erase the details from my memory. In the prison, Quỳnh used to talk with me very often. He just got married one month before the event of April 30th, 1975 (when the communists took over South Vietnam), then he was put in prison.
Once, while massaging his injured heel, he asked me:
─ My heel tendon is contractured. When I get out of the prison, can we fix it by surgery, Brother Hiếu?
I tried to reassure him:
─ Why not? We can even reconnect severed nerves, let alone heel tendons.
He smiled with confidence:
─ I hope so. If I keep limping, my wife would leave me, wouldn’t she?
One night, when I was boiling water on an open fire on the edge of a forest, Quynh approached me. He looked really sad. Sitting down by me, he said in a low voice:
─ This finger has been torturing me for several days. This afternoon it hurt so much that it gave me fever.
He showed me his left middle finger. Its tip was all red and swollen with pus.
I scolded him:
─ Why did you wait so long before letting me know about this? Did you get it crushed?
─ No, brother. It was a thorn from a “cat hook” vine. I kept trying to take it out but I couldn’t. He said.
I tried to sound confident:
─ It’s a piece of cake. It’ll hurt only for a few seconds. I will take it out for you.
─ Please give me a shot of anesthetic, Doctor!
He was just joking, as he knew very well how we pulled bad teeth, incised abscesses, sutured wounds in this prison. Where could we find anesthetics in these conditions? I asked him to sit behind me, with his right arm holding tightly my waist. I squeezed his left arm under my left arm. I wait until my improvised tiny lancet, made of a piece of steel from a wrecked airplane, became all red on the flame. I told Quỳnh to clench his teeth and hold his breath, and immediately incised his swollen finger. Pus and blood dripped on the ground. I heard him moan softly. I poked out the deeply embedded thorn from his finger. Still hard, sharp, curved, black and glistening, it did look like a cat nail. He thanked me; his face was still sprinkled with sweat drops. I dressed his finger with a piece of rag, previously washed and sterilized in boiling water then dried. I joked to make him feel less pain:
─ It’s OK to limp, but if you don’t keep this middle finger supple enough, you won’t be able to caress your wife properly, then, she will leave you.
He burst out laughing:
─ I miss my wife so much, Brother Hiếu, like crazy. Sometimes, I just want to get out of here to stay with her for a few days, and then come what may!
What he said reminded me of my wife and children. For a long time, we had not heard the voices of our wives, the laughter of our children. Sometimes, we woke up in the middle of the night, sobbing, after a dream in which we kissed our wives and our children. Once we thought of our families, the days in prison suddenly became interminable, never-ending. The incision on Quynh’s finger healed after a week, even without any medication.
We were forced to work relentlessly. Our cassava and corn rations were reduced further and further. Hunger made me feel weak and tremble. I salivated profusely just at the thought of a piece of boiled cassava. I drank plain water to calm down the gnawing pain of hunger in my stomach. Each evening, tired and dirty, exhausted from hunger, the prisoners walked back from the jungle to their barracks, their feet dragging.
One evening, as I was back from work, I plopped into the bamboo chair next to the little table I had made by myself. A small package, wrapped in green leaves, the size of a fist was on a corner of the table. I opened it with curiosity. A small, boiled sweet potato and a note with the words: “Brother Hiếu. I just found a few potatoes, this one for you to enjoy. Q.” I swallowed my piece of potato, felt its exquisite sweetness in my throat and my gratitude for Quynh in my heart. Even sweet potatoes were not easily found. We had to eat frogs, tree toads, snakes, and mice that we caught at our work sites.
Another evening, it was Quỳnh’s turn to cook in the community kitchen. He saw me all covered with ash and dust but without any water to wash myself with. He signaled me to come over near the kitchen:
─ I have something for you.
He showed me a small ammunition container full of clean water in the corner of the kitchen. As I was hesitant, he explained:
─ This morning I had to go up to the mountain to get cooking water, I am done with my washing. Don’t worry. If you don’t get rid of that layer of dust, it will itch and keep you awake all night.
As I thanked him, he said softly to my ear, with a smile:
─ Let’s try to keep ourselves clean so that we can still have our chance (our water and our country).
I understood immediately what he meant. A potato, a can of water, a word of encouragement, all such things made us feel closer to each other in this life of confinement.
The sudden news of Quỳnh’s death sent a shock wave among all of us. His fellow prisoners took his corpse and put it on a bamboo cot bed among the reeds. I came to see him. He was still wearing his oversized and faded camouflage uniform. A rolled-up old shirt served as a pillow under his neck. He lay straight, his arms stretched along his body, his eyes shut as if he was in a deep sleep. Only his face was a little pale. At the head of the cot bed, there was a small plate with two small portions of compacted rice. Some friend had brought white and purple flowers from the wood and hung them at one end of the bed, next to his head. I stood there, and looked at him for a very long time, trying to register in my memory the beloved image of a young man forced to die for no purpose.
Quỳnh was lying there, impassive. The cold wind of the jungle moved his black hair which was falling over his broad forehead. A few small birds casually landed on his cot bed. The afternoon sun light was weak and sallow. In the sky, grey clouds were slowly drifting aimlessly.
Together we took care of his burial. A casket was made of wood panels salvaged from old store signs. The pit was dug near an old tree, an easily recognized landmark should his relatives eventually come to look for his grave. Before the casket was lowered into the pit, the prisoner-leader of Quỳnh’s group directed us, about ten people, to stand around our unfortunate friend to pray for him. A few minutes of silence passed. In a choked voice, he started: “It’s life…everybody will come to this point…But Quỳnh has left us too early…in very difficult conditions that we have to go through…”
His voice weakened, and was interrupted by extreme emotions. I could not hear his last sentences. My ears were ringing, my eyes were blurred. Around me, tears were rolling on the faces of young men in their misfortune, trying to swallow their pain and their deep rancor.
The sun was going to set behind the blue mountain range. The air took the sad purple color. In this tragic scene of separation in the middle of the jungle, each of us threw a little cold soil into the pit and said farewell to him. We used large stones to built a mound hoping that, as time went by, inclement weather would not rapidly erase the resting place of our companion in prison. After his burial, without a word, we silently followed the tortuous trail that led us back to our barracks.
At dinner, eating my bowl of boiled corn, I felt a huge emptiness in my soul. I remembered once Quỳnh shared with me half of his ear of corn:
─ Enjoy this. It's fun only when we share among friends. If we eat alone, we only fill our stomach a little better, but that doesn't mean anything.
It was a sad meal. It seemed that nobody cared to say anything out loud. I was deep in my thoughts. A younger fellow-prisoner came and sat close by me with his bowl of corn, whispering to my ears:
─ There is hope that Quỳnh's relatives will be here in a few days.
Surprised, I asked him:
─ How did they learn about this to come here?
He explained:
─ Some among us worked in the lumberyard at the Trảng Táo train station. They wrote a letter and sent it to Quynh's family with the help of merchants on the train. His family lives in Saigon.
I was going to ask him why we had not notified earlier his family, when he was sick and needed medicines; but suddenly, I remembered that Quỳnh's condition had worsened when people close to him were cutting leaves at a distant place. Nobody had expected his illness to deteriorate so quickly.
A few days after Quynh’s burial, his wife arrived at our prison camp from Saigon. She went straight to the wardens' quarters and asked to see her husband. The wardens tried to avoid a direct answer and would not let her in. She became assertive:
─ My husband was gravely sick, you didn't treat him, and you didn’t notify his family. My husband died, and you would not let me visit his grave. The last few nights, my husband's soul kept coming back to tell me that he had died in an unfair way.
The communist wardens were perplexed about her ghost story and reluctantly decided to let her come to the grave site. She wore black pants and a traditional style white blouse, with a conic palm hat, and was carrying a cloth bag. She walked unsteadily. There were dark shiners under her eyes. She must have cried so much at the bad news. She prostrated herself and embraced her husband's tomb, screaming: “my love...why did you leave me... ” It broke our hearts. Some of us tried to sooth her, some burned incense sticks for her, and some help her place offerings of flowers and fruit in front of the grave. She paid respect to her husband, kowtowing forcefully and repeatedly in a delirious trance of extremely painful emotions.
The afternoon sky was lugubrious. Quỳnh's wife made an effort to stand up, planted a few flower stalks on her husband's tomb then gave the fruits to the group leader. She sobbed:
My family thanks you for your help in giving my husband a resting place.
...I had intended to write about my old friend twenty one years ago, as soon as I reached freedom, in the Island of Bidong, off the Malaysian coastline in October 1978. But I had procrastinated until today. It’s better late than never, that is how I console myself. Anyway, tonight, I feel that a small part of the baggage that I have always carried with me from my tragic past is gone. I have written down this story to commemorate and to pay tribute to thousands of other prisoners of conscience like Quynh who have fallen or who are still incarcerated in Vietnam, my still impoverished native country.
Nguyễn Trác Hiếu
Orlando 11-24-1999
Epilogue
Three years after I wrote this article, a woman called me from Washington State. She was sobbing, in tears. It was Quỳnh's wife. She had read my article in a Vietnamese newspaper:
─ I have cried for two days after I read your article about Quỳnh's last days, she said. Thank you very much.
Our conversation lasted about fifteen minutes. Soon after her husband's death, her in-laws had arranged for her escape by boat from Vietnam in 1978. Talking to her made me feel that I had done something very useful. The day I met her in front of her husband's grave, I did not have the opportunity to tell her about Quỳnh’s prison days. Now I really feel that things had come full circle on this earth that is becoming smaller and smaller.
Bác Sĩ Nguyễn Trác Hiếu
December 9, 2007
Hieu T. Nguyen, MD
Author of the original Vietnamese article “Quỳnh”
English version translated, annotated and abridged by
Hien V. Ho, MD
Completed December 10th, 2009, Great Falls -Falls Church, Virginia
Diễn Đàn Cựu Sinh Viên Quân Y
© 2012
© 2012