Thirty-five Years Later

Three more days, it'll mark the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Thirty-five years ago, I tried to escape with the frantically departing Americans but failed. Thirty-five years later, I'm striving to make a name for myself as a well-established writer in America.

Looking back, my ten-year living under Communist rule has left a painful mark on me that still gives me flashbacks but at the same time has enriched my life because now I know first-hand what it was like living in a dictatorship, a dictatorship in general, a Communist dictatorship in particular. A political system that had affected people in half of the globe. And Vietnam shut its door for ten years. During those ten years, the government oppressed and persecuted us--people of the South. When most of us--the unwanted--left the country, it opened its door. Now the Communists welcome us back. I do want to return to see how much remnants of their former brutality could still be traced. Probably none. Shrewd and sophisticated, they know how to whitewash every bloodstain.

I do want to go back for another reason: to touch my mother's urn that my sister has put in a temple. My mother, the most important person in my life, died the second year I resettled in America. Without her, my life would have been a totally different story.