Đường về quê hương
http://yume.vn/mccafe/article/duong-ve-que-huong.35D696FC.html
The flight from Los Angeles was preparing to land at Tan Son Nhat Airport. The outside temperature was 37°C.
Saigon.
From above, it appeared as a wild, untouched land yet to be discovered. Patches of green from the trees, brown from the soil, then grey blocks of towering buildings intertwined with winding roads slowly came into view. Clearer and clearer.
The flow of people moving back and forth, like waves chasing each other without any order, evoked the image of a cubist painting created by a genius artist who had captured the pulse of emotion.
It walked, as if counting its steps.
Dragging its feet while around it hurried steps rushed past. Crossing over. The jet bridge suddenly turned into a tunnel for a lost soul like itself, finding light at the end.
Homecoming. Vietnam.
Thirty-seven years of hurried departure and now a hurried return — just like the lyrics of an old song, heard somewhere on a dusty corner of the internet.
The C-5 aircraft, tail number 68-0218, had taken off from Tan Son Nhat Airbase towards Clark Air Base in the Philippines on the afternoon of Friday, April 4th.
That was the last memory it had of Saigon — besides scrambled numbers and letters, the smoke, the flames inside the cabin, the screams of people...
A flight that it once thought had taken it away. Forever.
Away from a life already too filled with pain.
But no...
The baggage carousel spun, matching the rapid beating of its heart.
An indescribable feeling — the first return after that flight named "Babylift" so long ago.
Now, its hair had grayed somewhat.
Time often stuns people into bittersweet nostalgia.
The past. Calling back. To the roots.
A faded photograph.
The only remaining family, locked tightly within memories thought never to be unlocked after a long coma.
Family — lost amidst the smoke and fire of war.
A faded photograph: a little girl ruffling the hair of a little boy, flashing a charming toothy grin, catching sunlight.
Shells whistling overhead.
Chaos.
Amidst the shoving crowd, the girl with the toothy grin held the boy tightly.
The boy saw the sunlit grin. He smiled.
A bomb fell before they could reach the shelter.
Everything lifted into the air. Suspended between heaven and earth, swallowed by a cruel dream.
The boy no longer saw the smiling tooth.
His body was wrapped tightly in white cloths, suffocating in the stench of antiseptic, and in front of him was the Virgin Mary, gazing down with a look of protection.
All around, endless moaning.
Then, another pair of mismatched eyes — human, not divine — looked at him with deep affection.
As if the Virgin had taken human form to share love.
Gentle arms.
Carrying him into a peaceful sleep.
He forgot the smiling tooth catching sunlight.
He forgot Saigon.
He forgot Vietnam.
All sank like a nightmare buried in oblivion over the passing years.
The boy grew up under a sky with fifty-two stars fluttering above him.
Taking baby steps again under the loving gaze of adoptive parents — two people who etched an indescribable love deep into his heart.
The boy grew up amidst midnight screams, the searing smells of burning straw and flesh, the fragments flying in summer nights where even the cicadas fell silent under the roar of bombs.
All clung to him. Never letting go.
The past seemed locked away.
Dreams — seldom.
The soothing words of his adoptive parents almost sealed it all away, until...
The Virgin Mary — in the form of the woman with the mismatched eyes — before leaving to join the man waiting for her at heaven’s gate, placed into his arms:
A faded photograph.
A little girl ruffling the hair of a little boy, flashing a sunlit grin.
The past flooded back.
For the first time after all those years, he looked again.
The blurred lines of the black-and-white photo cut through the retina, rushed into the brain, then spread through every vein.
Frozen.
A wandering step, lost among the ruins.
Searching. Fifteen years.
With only a warm glance etched in memory.
Wondering — after thirty years — where that glance was now.
Fifteen years.
Silent searching.
Through every means, with volunteers, rebuilding a circle of kinship — regardless of who left, who remained, who lived, who died.
Clinging to faith.
Wandering steps, adrift.
Running into voices that burned his soul.
From a wife who had left on a different flight — the woman he had loved at first sight, her Vietnamese figure delicate as in a memory, but whose heart no longer wished to beat with the chaotic rhythm of the past.
Fearful.
Telling him to give up.
He lost her.
From a daughter, raised in America, filled with contrasting images of a Vietnam she barely knew.
A homeland of pride — and alienation.
"Why find someone who’s probably dead, Daddy?" she teased, laughing.
He wandered.
Adrift.
These burning voices might have destroyed his faith — if not for the emails, the messages that crossed oceans.
Stories of shared dreams.
Fairy tales of a journey back to the past.
Companions from the other side of the world.
Separated by thousands of miles.
Decades apart in age.
Yet...
It felt as if they had known each other in that long-ago war.
Shared wounds, still raw even now.
Over the network, they connected.
Sometimes, closing his eyes, he saw her — that young woman decades younger — smiling innocently.
In a world where few still mourned the past.
Like her.
A girl the same age as his own daughter.
A promise to return to Vietnam.
One day, she shared a famous photograph — a raw depiction of Vietnam’s war-torn past:
A little girl running naked down a road, screaming in agony from napalm burns.
The sight crushed him.
Choked his breath.
Flooded him with an image — the same warmth once found in that sunlit glance.
Pain.
The same familiar village road.
One day, memory shattered the dam.
He saw himself — no longer floating in the air, but falling back to earth, into open arms and that sunlit, toothy grin.
Memory rushed back when the voice from across the ocean broke into sobs.
Everything melted.
Everything exploded.
Old documents were dug up.
Newspapers called for information.
A search — for the little girl from that famous photograph.
Emails were exchanged.
A voice rose from across continents.
Crying, breaking, but alive.
A promise to return to Vietnam.
A promise to meet again.
The flight from Los Angeles landed at Tan Son Nhat...
The flight from Frankfurt landed at Tan Son Nhat...
A girl stood in the waiting crowd, her distant gaze reaching through the sea of faces.
