In history class it was referred to as the Vietnam War, but in Vietnam it will always be the American War. 
“Shake!” demanded Tony in his lilting, heavily accented English. He had first picked up the language as a young man working with the Americans during his stint in the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). He later honed his speaking skills as an ever-jovial tour guide into the infamous Chu Chi tunnels. Tony’s hand hung suspended in mid-air, taunting me with the strangeness of being offered a handshake as a greeting in places where this isn’t the norm.
I absentmindedly took his hand and suddenly I was gripping his wrist. There was no thumb to stop the slow slide of my hand across his. He grinned at me. I think he took perverse delight in surprising people with that thumbless handshake of his. The missing thumb and the web of puckered flesh that scored his right hand were one of many battle wounds that he carried on his body, trophies from what the Vietnamese call the American War.
Tony had lived without that thumb for almost forty years, yet when he flexed his hand he could still feel the phantom thumb bend, and it itched. Most people would have been driven to distraction by that insatiable itch, but not Tony. He was a man that knew how to endure difficult things with the emotional equilibrium that the Vietnamese so value but rarely achieve, from the loss of his young wife to the many small betrayals of the country that he loved.
In history class it was referred to as the Vietnam War, but in Vietnam it will be forever remembered as the American War. Whatever the name, our lives, both Tony’s and mine, were intricately linked to it and therefore to each other. I was a Viet Kieu backpacker exploring the homeland of my ancestors. Viet Kieu is the term for Vietnamese living outside of Vietnam. Literally translated it means, “Vietnamese sojourner”. Those of us living abroad rarely use the term Viet Kieu as we prefer Ngu’oi Viet Hai Ngoai, “Overseas Vietnamese” or Ngu’oi Viet Tu Do, “Free Vietnamese”(but I figure that’s just asking for a fight). I was okay with Viet Kieu, even though when uttered by a local it is always done so with a mixture of derision and envy. After all it was better than the term used to describe backpackers, which literally translates to, “Cheap tourist with a backpack”.
I had slung an over-stuffed pack on my back and headed to Vietnam for an assortment of reasons – all conflicting – from duty to rebellion, from guilt to a sense of entitlement, from pride to shame. My journey began in Hanoi, the northern capital of Vietnam. For over a month I had slowly wound my way south by any means possible including bus, boat, train, bicycle, motorbike and by foot.
It turns out that a Viet Kieu backpacker is a rare occurrence in this country, and most of the locals didn’t know what to make of me. When the regular Viet Kieu visited they did so in style with a fat wallet they emptied in markets and shops; not a big dirty pack on their back, asking awkward questions and looking for authentic Vietnamese experiences. To confuse matters even more, I had a Vietnamese face and name, but a Canadian tongue and passport.
Although our lives had diverged at a point even before my birth, I felt a connection to this man Tony because when I looked at him I saw my father. Or more accurately a path my father could have taken. My father left and Tony stayed. I came to Vietnam to find the man my father was, and instead I found Tony, an apologetic ARVN war veteran whose country had condemned him for fighting on the wrong side.
My dad is an unapologetic ARVN war veteran whose contribution to the American War effort earned him a plane ticket to the United States, a university education that led to a PhD and a professorship at a Canadian university. All of his children have had the opportunities offered by the best of Western education, yet we are still wholly ignorant of our history because he has chosen to remain silent about his own past. My father refuses to talk about the war, to watch American films about the war, even to listen to popular rock songs of that era.
Tony, on the other hand, must relive the war everyday, even if in an artificial way, for the benefit of curious outsiders. He plays his role of jovial tour guide well, even making time for the occasional American vet that inevitably makes a pilgrimage to the Chu Chi tunnels to reconcile his part in the Vietnam War. Tony has to spin the history of the Chu Chi tunnel and the war in a way that both honours the victory of Northern Vietnam and the experience of the South Vietnamese, including his own. At the same time he has to package it in a way that Western tourists, including Americans, can swallow. It is a delicate balance that he must maintain, but he is a man capable of great equilibrium.
Although they may seem to have very little in common, both my father and Tony share a similar experience of the war that has been silenced because theirs was the story of defeat, even if it was a victory for their country. Tony’s story remains untold because it is not the story that his country wants to validate. I can only guess why my father’s story remains untold, perhaps because he has not yet reconciled himself with his choices. He has yet to achieve his own equilibrium. Unlike Tony, my father doesn’t have any visible scars from the war but his silence makes it clear that somewhere inside he carries them with him.
