The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir Read Free Page A

board—immediate family, uncles (including the two who had been in the camps for three years), aunts and friends, including toddlers, babies and teenagers whose parents were too old or sick to make the journey. No belongings would be taken except the clothes on their backs, though everyone had been stockpiling food and water for months. There wasn’t a lot but enough to last the week they expected to be at sea. Any leftover funds were swapped for small amounts of gold, the ‘international currency’, in the hope that wherever we ended up it could be traded for local money.
    My dad and uncles had spent hours huddled together at night planning the escape. The goal was to reach Malaysia and the journey was going to be complicated and potentially life threatening.
    There was a canal system around the village where our family lived and a smaller boat would have to be inconspicuously navigated through the waterways to reach the main boat. My father, then twenty-five years old, was designated captain of the boat because he was the only one who knew how to navigate the small waterways to get out to sea.
    Dad’s skills had been finely honed. He had previously sold coal at the markets at 4 a.m. every morning and had to navigate his way through the canals to get there. Each day as he went off to work the sky was pitch-black and there was always a prevailing crosswind, which made it easy to crash the boat along the way. He would watch small patches of reflections from moonlight on the leaves of trees lining the bank. He could tell by the play of light whether to guide the canoe forward or turn it sideways.
    The day of our departure arrived and Dad woke in the early hours. Many of our family members who were going on the boat had stayed at Grandma’s house the night before departure, because it was near the canals. The house was still dark but Dad could hear murmuring in the women’s room. He tiptoed to the door and could just make out the dim outline of his mother kneeling, hands clasping her rosary beads. Several months before, she had lost two of her sons in their quest to leave Vietnam. She was now praying for her children who were departing that day. Dad felt grief and guilt at having to leave her behind. He also felt a surge of fear as he remembered the fate of the journey that had taken the lives of brothers Five and Seven.
    Dad came into our room and in the darkness kissed his wife and two sleeping sons.
    ‘ Bo Thoung Con Qua. ’ I love you, my sons.
    He then tiptoed through the house and stepped out into the cold night air, bracing himself for his last day in Vietnam.

    Our group of forty did not head out together that day. Starting early, under cover of darkness, we set off in groups of three or four in small motorised canoes that were usually used for carrying food to the morning markets. This process took many hours because the main boat, ‘the Motherfish’, was so far away, the canoes had to follow different convoluted routes through the canals so that they didn’t attract attention. The communists were on the alert for potential boat people and everyone knew there was a chance you could get stopped and caught by the army. If anyone stopped them, they would say they were going out to their fishing boat in the bay.
    Mum and my baby brother, Khoa, left on one of the first canoes. Dad’s brother, Uncle Eight, piloted the boat while Mum and Khoa hid inside the tiny little steerage hatch. Uncle Eight hoisted several big heavy bags of corn into the boat and used them to cover the opening of the hatch so Mum and Khoa couldn’t be seen. Mum stuffed chunks of sticky rice into Khoa’s mouth so that he wouldn’t wail at the wrong moment. This was a foolproof plan because at fifteen months of age my brother had already earned the nickname ‘Fatty’. He was a very good eater.
    I was two and a half years old and sent on a separate boat with Mum’s brother Uncle Thanh and his wife, Aunty Huong. Dad had decided that it was