GOLDEN TORTOISE, THE

DMZ

101 Song of A Grieving Mother I love our water buffalo as much as our hut and our vegetable patch as much as your school. I love our rice paddy as much as my husband and my father’s tomb as much as my sleeping mat. I love your father as much as our son. I love our pig though we must eat him. I love our star fruit, jackfruit and mangoes. I love rice whether grass, seed or grain. I love you, my daughter, as my mother loved me. No difference between these; this is que huong. And so, my daughter, you and our country are one and the same, no life without each. And that is why, with a love more than love, I dress you in bombs and kiss you as you leave. DMZ We travel to the old Demilitarized Zone that once separated North and South. We stand on the 17th parallel, once a place of forbidding violence and terror. I climb on the shell of an American M-44 tank standing as a memorial to the feuding past. The open belly of the rusting fire dragon sprouting pink blossoms We travel down the Street Without Joy where in both the French and American Wars thousands of soldiers from every faction slaughtered each other and the civilians without mercy. Rubble of a school— gray-haired classmates toast and vow “friendship forever” 102 The Golden Tortoise We arrive at the Ben Ha River, the old dividing line between the warring halves of the country. Now the green river flows quietly while a gate marks the bridge crossing old borders. Tall guard towers staring across the river manned by spiders We cross the river and my vets enter the old North for the first time. As we drive through fields of rice paddies, a combat veteran keeps seeing the peasants he killed. We stop but he cannot get off our bus. I climb back in to help him descend. Begging forgiveness as his feet first touch the North his tears water earth We travel to Vinh Moc, a fishing village located just north of the DMZ that was flattened by American bombers during the war. Heavily bombed from 1966 on, the people of Vinh Moc built extensive tunnels and lived underground. Vietnamese say US warplanes simply dumped their payloads of unused bombs before landing. US sources claim the tunnels were a VC supply route. A Vietnamese survivor wrote: My childhood—what did I have? Only the cave that I lie in and the ground that I walk on. I meet a deaf mute old man who limps as he carries my water bottle for me. Our bombs stole his ears — speaking what he cannot hear his hands beat like wings We drive to Khe Sanh, deep in the mountains, near the Laotian border and surrounded by the stilt houses of local minority tribes. Khe Sanh was the scene of the brutal siege in 1968 that took thousands of lives on both sides and fooled the American army into distraction while the North secretly prepared the Tet Offensive. We walk the old battlefield in remote mountains that seem indefensible. It is not only aging veterans who visit these sites and contemplate war’s impact on our unfolding lives and destinies. 103 Edward Tick The bunker’s sandbags where her father ducked mortars muffles her sobs We Americans are held prisoner by war memories drenching our minds. We clutch their pain as our meaning. But with every step we take Viet Nam invites us to transform what we see and how we carry it. Rusting plane wreckage— standing sentinel two dark mountain children Some vets examine aging weaponry, debate over the presentation of battle history, or flinch before GI dog tags and ID cards in Khe Sanh’s small museum . But one leaves the site to play with the local children and gift them with toys and stickers he has carried from America. Smiling black eyes dawning above his purple balloon We return to Hue.The sun sets behind the Perfume River, staining it with an effervescent rainbow.I stand before a Buddhist altar overlooking the river and contemplate all the changes to the land and the water, their people and ours. By falling waters a single lotus flower, a hand in prayer R We end our journey in the City Amid the Waters. We must come home...