Dang Thuy Tram’s Dairies

These days I am homesick, terribly so. The wind in the forest seems like the wind moving the sugar cane leaves from side to side behind my home. The summer sun makes me feel like I am still studying and playing in the hall with my friend at Bach Mai Hospital on a sunny day. Any image, any sound reminds me of the life I lived in the Socialist North. What goes on there? Are my parents satisfied with their work? Do they have any trouble with those jobs? My dear Parents, the daughter that you have loved since she was small has not stopped living, but has a very practical life with many aspects: love, hatred, faith, and sadness. It’s a life filled with blood, tears, sweat, and also victory despite the thousands and thousands of hardships. Do you believe that I can get through this? Filled with sadness and love, but also happiness and strength, your daughter will win. That is my precious promise dear Parents.

July 8. 1968. A few pictures and some simple words which Mui* sent have made me feel gloomy. “During the time when I haven’t written you, it was not because I don’t love you.” Then what (was it) Mui? The heart of this little bourgeois character is always very complicated. A strange thing is that I prefer having it this way to having the simple mind of a farmer.

My own petty bourgeois character is still there, but not in the way it is said that my behavior is slightly bourgeois. What is bourgeois in behavior when I can mix with every class of people?

July 11, 1968. Long night, had a conversation with Luan, a student studying supplementary Public Health. These conversations increase my spirit a lot, and build an understanding of the Revolution and the life of a Communist.

More worthwhile than theory, Luan’s life is a lesson in these problems. From age 10 Luan knew how to do a revolutionary’s work. He knew the hate of a family isolated under American control. He knew how to love his grandmother, his young mother, and his young brothers and sisters who are still suffering thousands and thousands of sorrows under their system. So he left. Every night he passed out through the hamlet fence to contact the cadre for news. Then, when only 15, he joined the guerillas and started to carry a gun. From that time the hands of this 21 year old boy killed many Americans, and many times carried fallen cadre in his arms. Luan followed the Pho Minh* guerilla group all through the dry season. During the day he hid in a foxhole, and by night he did public affairs work. Wind and rain are in his 20 year old face. Luan looks older than his age, and seems even older when you compare his years to the age of the Revolution. I love Luan, and admire him even with his weak points, but that is the nature of the heroic Vietnamese and a thousand heroic times. Late at night the radio went off the air for a long while, but still no one slept. Everyone had their own thoughts. I thought about Peace. I hope Luan, like thousands and thousands of other Southern boys after 20 years of hardship, is still alive to enjoy those happy days. And Luan, what are you thinking about? Keep your beliefs, the hope of youth: I don’t want to see sorrow in your young eyes.

July 14, 1968. After getting the news that his father had died, Thuan fell on the bed and wept. He tried to control himself but continued to cry: the crying of a vigorous man like Thuan makes me hurt like someone put salt in my intestines. I feel sorry for him but don’t know what to say.

Thuan hasn’t had a mother since he was very young: his father worked hard to take care of three children. Then his older sister was killed in a fire about two weeks ago, leaving four young children. That causes the sadness which sometimes appears in this young man’s beautiful eyes. Thuan has a young sister who left home and followed her brother, joining the guerillas to be a revolutionary while she was still a teenager.

The first day that I saw Thuan, I felt that I liked him, not because when a student he had the good looks of an actor but because he studies hard, works hard, and knows how to act with and be reasonable with the people all around him.

Now what can I say to console him? With his father dead, who will take care of the three brothers who left to go to the army? Who will take care of the house and the fields? Even me, I still don’t know how to make that sort of decision. Thuan sits in front of me, his long eyebrows moving to hide his crying, hardly able to continue talking. “Will you let me go take care of everything at home for a few days and then return? At home the cow, the buffalo, and the rice fields all wait for my care, so please, sister, understand.” I don’t know what more he wanted to say, but he stopped at that point.

I lightly stroked his malaria diseased hand and said “Young brother, go home and make your decisions. About your studies the class and I will take care of those for you (for now). I hope that you will continue your studies and your work”.