The Eaves of Heaven

by Andrew X. Pham

  As we grasped each other’s forearms, Hoi smiled. I smiled. It was all here. Hundreds of cricket fights. Innumerable days roaming the muddy paddies, fishing, catching frogs, flying kites, roasting grasshoppers. I could not count the number of banh da I had eaten at his house. How many thousand sunny days were we allowed in one childhood? Were there ever enough?

  Fourteen years old, we were more boys than men.

  I did not know I would never see Hoi or Tong Xuyen again. As always, we parted in the shadow of the old banyan tree. It was amazing how a bend in the road could obscure a lifetime to come.

  THE SOUTH

  1975

  30. THE FALL OF SAIGON

  Sixteen years of fighting had reduced the war to a troublesome liability. We accepted it like an offshore storm that never left. The battles, the bombs, the highway ambushes, the countryside insurgency, the draft cycles, and the ever-mounting casualties had become the ebbs and flows of a long, long war. We never expected victory—our leaders were too corrupt for that—and yet defeat never entered our minds. We convinced ourselves that the ever-present, powerful Americans would never desert us. We had become too dependent, lazy, blind, and selfish to save ourselves.

  The end came swiftly. The cities didn’t fall; they tumbled, one after another in quick, horrific succession. On March 13, 1975, the first to go was Ban Me Thuot, a key hold in the Central Highlands. Five days later, Pleiku was lost. In three more days, the enemy overran Quang Tri. Hue, the capital of central Vietnam, was abandoned two days after that. President Thieu and his staff of incompetent generals accelerated the downfall with their order to abandon the 1st and 2nd Corps. The stalemate was over. The tide had turned permanently. Within three weeks, eight provinces were forfeited; 40,000 troops were massacred during the retreats. It was devastating, but no one could predict that the Viet Cong would sack Saigon’s presidential palace in another twenty-six days.

  My brother Hong was working at the Forestry Service of Phu Bon, a province in the Central Highlands. When the VC took the province seat, he escaped to Bao Loc on an L-19, a two-seater propeller plane; it was sheer luck that he had caught his army pilot friend in time. Had he tried to escape by road, he would have been among the tens of thousands of civilians who perished in the forest on their exodus to the coast. From Bao Loc, he caught a bus into Saigon. Hong walked through the door of my father’s house empty-handed. He had lost his home and everything he owned. Days later, my brother Hung, a high school principal, fled Ham Tan, a mere sixty-five miles from Saigon. The news Hong and Hung brought home was terrifying.

  Madness had descended on the city. People were in a selling and buying frenzy. Refugees sold whatever they had. Others liquidated assets at a fraction of their cost to raise money for passage out of the country. Former northerners like my family, who had lived under Communist rule, were the most anxious to leave. The majority of southerners, however, did not think that a Communist takeover would be disastrous. They snapped up cars, motorbikes, houses, and staples at bargain prices. I sold my car and was in negotiation to sell our four-story house. The prospective buyer backed out of the sale when the Viet Cong approached Phan Thiet.

  A day later, as the Viet Cong began encircling Phan Thiet, my wife’s mother, brother, and sister fled on their neighbor’s fishing boat and arrived in Saigon the next morning. When they came to stay at our house and gave us the news, I immediately rode out to Vung Tau on my Honda motorbike to see if I could find a fishing boat to take us out to sea. The highway was busy in both directions with refugees from the outer provinces heading to safety and Saigonians fleeing to the coast in search of passage out of the country. Army trucks rumbled into Vung Tau along with hordes of expensive civilian cars. The wealthy and the powerful were flocking to the coast. Vung Tau’s population had tripled in the past month. I scoured the docks, but it was hopeless. Every single vessel, including motorized dinghies, was already booked or bought outright. The hotels and vacation houses were filled with people waiting to board their boats; some were already living on them. Vung Tau officials declared the city closed to new refugees.

  The cost of buying passports, tourist visas, and plane tickets out of the country had skyrocketed out of our reach by the time we saw that a collapse was inevitable. It had become the choice of the super-rich with weighty government connections. Many folks lost their savings in passport cons. Saigon was full of scam artists and opportunists offering the gamut of escape options, from airplanes to ferries to overland border crossings via trucks. Every day, my brothers Hung, Hong, Hoang, and I crisscrossed Saigon looking for contacts and deals. The pall of desperation had fallen over us.

  MY best friend Tat, the handsome buddy from my high school days, came to me with a proposal. His brother Han, who worked at the Ministry of Transportation, had a deal with the captain of a small coastal merchant ship belonging to a Chinese company. The captain, a Vietnamese of Chinese origin, agreed to take twenty passengers at the price of ten gold leaves each. Tat didn’t have the money for his family and suggested that if I loaned him the gold, I could take seven members of my own immediate family. We had been close friends for more than twenty years, so I agreed to his terms. I wanted to meet the captain. Han said the captain refused to meet anyone until it was time to go and that the full fee would be due upon embarkation.

  Bach Dang pier was near downtown Saigon, and there were many boats and ferries bringing refugees in from other parts of the country. Tat and I found our ship not on the pier but moored off-shore on the other side of the Saigon River. It was a pathetic sea-going junk. Packed to the gunwales, it might carry thirty passengers. Without any other viable alternatives, I swallowed my misgivings and hoped for the best.

  A week before the city’s collapse, I went over to Tat’s house. Neither of us had a telephone, but we lived only three blocks apart so it was easy stopping by to see each other several times a day to check on the status of the boat. I thought it was very safe and fortunate that Tat lived only two minutes by motorbike from me. It was going to be very close because southerners like our ship captain were complacent and had no idea of the dangers of waiting to the final hours.

  Tat said, “The captain announced that he’ll go as soon as the Americans start to leave.”

  “That’s very risky. We don’t even know for certain if he would take us. We haven’t even met him.”

  “I told Han the same thing. He said the government hasn’t allowed ships to take people to sea yet. The chaos must begin before the captain can leave without permission. By then, no one will care.”

  “Why can’t he bribe the officials? Your brother can help him find the right contact in the Ministry.”

  “I doubt the captain will want to part with any of his gold. Besides, he probably can get more money at the last moment when people will pay anything to leave.”

  “So we wait for the end.”

  “Yes, we wait for the Americans.”

  PRESIDENT Thieu and his cabinet fled well before the Americans. On April 21, 1975, Thieu abandoned his office and country. He flew to Taiwan with his family, taking along fifteen tons of personal luggage, rumored to be the wealth of the country. His disgraceful exit delivered a detrimental blow to the troops’ morale, and on the following day, Xuan Loc, a critical defensive point merely thirty-five miles from Saigon, crumbled into the enemy’s hand. It would be remembered as an epic battle, a display of heartbreaking courage against overwhelming odds. Our trusted American allies never came, but the embattled and impoverished ARVN had gallantly fought on alone, outnumbered and outgunned.

  Refugees poured into the capital, running from the shelling and fighting in the adjacent towns that formed a defense line around the city. The number of refugees swelled dramatically as the Viet Minh pushed the ARVN back toward Saigon. Reality was fast disintegrating into nightmare.

  State-controlled television and radio broadcasts lied to keep citizens calm. Even the Voice of America was no longer trustworthy. Only the BBC remained factual, and none o
f their reports bore good news. Like everyone else, I spent my days dashing back and forth all over the city, gathering information and rumors wherever I could. The latest and most credible news was the firsthand accounts from the tens of thousands of refugees seeking shelter at pagodas throughout the city.

  XA LOI Temple near my house had more refugees than it had celebrants during the New Year prayers. Hundreds of people huddled and slept wherever they found space. Plastic tarps were strung up in the courtyard and along the sides of the temple to shelter the newcomers. They were all in very bad shape. Some were injured. Many were missing family members. Women sobbed, their children crying inconsolably. Old men sat like statues, staring off into space. These people had run for their lives.

  At one corner of the yard, a middle-aged man sat alone, calmly smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, oblivious to the chaos around him. His shirt was torn; dried blood stained the sleeves; his pants were caked with mud. I asked him if I could sit next to him. He glanced sideways at me and kept smoking. I sat down and waited for him to talk. Usually, people were anxious to talk about their ordeals, but the man just rolled another smoke. I finally asked him where he came from.

  “Nha Trang,” he replied without turning.

  “Is your family here with you?”

  “They didn’t make it.”

  “The VC captured them?”

  He closed his eyes and sighed. “They killed them.”

  Not knowing what to say, I blurted, “Do you think we’ll be safe here?”

  He ground the cigarette beneath his sandal, stood up, and walked away.

  BY April 27, 1975, it looked as if the end of the world had arrived. The Communists had surrounded the capital—the final foothold of the South’s forces. Artillery shells, rockets, and bombs tore up the outskirts of the city. ARVN jet fighters screamed across the overcast sky and swooped along the edges of the city, trying to turn back the advancing Communist forces. North, south, and west of Saigon, columns of black smoke curled upward, the blazes spreading. Torrents of refugees poured into the city on every road. Terrified, traumatized, and exhausted, they rolled toward the last sanctuary. They came like an undulating human carpet, filling, choking the new Bien Hoa superhighway as far as the eyes could see.

  On April 28, Duong Van Minh took over the role of Chief of State. Fully armed South Vietnam troops appeared on Tran Quoc Toan Boulevard, where the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam headquarters was located right around the corner from my father’s house. These were the “Red Beret Angels,” the South Vietnam elite airborne force. They were our very best men, known for their courage and seen in every parade. They were our heroes, symbolic of South Vietnam’s pride and power. Their dedication, ferocity, and sacrifices were legendary. They were the ones who had shown us that we could fight the VC and win. It shook me profoundly to see them sitting on the curb with their heads hung low, their rifles on the sidewalk. Without their confident swagger, they seemed so young, more boys than men. Had it been fifteen years since I was drafted? I walked up and down the street, trying to catch their eyes. I recognized that look of battle fatigue. Their morale was broken. Hopelessness pulled on their limbs. It was plain on their faces; the war was over.

  I got on my motorbike and rushed over to Tat’s house, determined to convince the captain that we must not wait any longer. I was prepared to pay a premium to make the captain see reason. The moment I saw Tat sitting outside his house, I knew our hopes were dashed.

  Tat wouldn’t look at me. He mumbled, “They confiscated the boat.”

  “Who?”

  “The police.”

  “Why?

  He shrugged. “They have family and need to escape too.”

  “When did you find out?”

  “Yesterday evening.”

  I was speechless. We were dead. It was as simple as that. I sat with him fifteen, twenty minutes, dumbstruck. I could feel the seconds ticking away. I was angry that he hadn’t told me earlier, even though I knew I couldn’t change a thing.

  I said, “We must not give up. We must keep looking. Let me know immediately if something comes up.”

  He promised he would, and I left on my motorbike.

  I didn’t know where I was going, but I needed to go somewhere, anywhere. My stomach was souring. Where to start looking all over again? I revved the engine, and sliced and weaved through the bustling streets. I joined the throngs of tens of thousands looking for an escape route. All of Saigon, including the hundreds of thousands of refugees, was on the road, coursing manically in a dozen different directions. Cars, trucks, motorbikes, bicycles, and cyclos jammed the avenues. Accidents clogged the intersections. No one cared, no one stopped. We were like animals trapped in a burning cage. But there was nowhere to go. Fighting blocked the highway to Tan Son Nhat Airport. Streets leading to government and military sites were barricaded. I found one dead end after another.

  On Mac Dinh Chi Boulevard, a sprawling mob of Vietnamese and foreigners swarmed the American embassy. They surged at the gate, begging to get into the sanctuary. White foreigners pushed through the crowd and were allowed in first. The Vietnamese clamored and shoved each other to get to the guards, waving documents and shouting their qualifications: employees of American companies, contractors, relatives of Americans, wives and children of American soldiers. I watched from a distance, knowing that a decommissioned officer had no priority, regardless of my service. My office had provided a cover for CIA operatives. If the Viet Cong caught me, I expected to be tortured and executed. My wife and children would be sent to live in the jungle.

  I had never felt so much envy toward foreigners as I did at that moment. Since I was a teenager, I could never escape the feeling that they glided on some other plane above us; their dignity, living standards, and privileges thriving in another stratum beyond our reach. I had never bothered looking upward until now. Even other Asians—the Filipinos, the Taiwanese, the Koreans, the Japanese—were passing right over us. My people were at the bottom of the hierarchy, and we were about to sink even lower once the Communists took control.

  I WENT home, put my arms around Anh, and told her the bad news. Rather than breaking down as I’d feared, she insisted that we see our physician, who was a good friend. We had known Dr. Nguyen Duy Tam for the fourteen years since he opened his first modest clinic. He had become one of the most successful doctors in Saigon and had powerful connections. His clientele consisted of generals, politicians, and business moguls. He was also a prominent congressman.

  When we arrived at his modern clinic in an upscale neighborhood, it was nearly deserted. Three patients were attended by two distracted young nurses who seemed on the verge of bolting out of the office. Dr. Tam took us into his office and confided that he had plans to go to France. He offered to take my family if we had one hundred bars of gold for the fare. The agent would need twenty bars as a deposit. We rushed home and brought back the gold. The flight would leave the next morning. Dr. Tam said he would send a car for us.

  In the evening, I went over to my father’s house. My brothers were out roaming the city, looking for an escape. Father was sipping tea with his opium cohorts. Father’s cousin and confidant, Mr. Tri, droned on about his theory that the Americans would strike a deal with the Viet Cong once the fighting was over. According to Mr. Tri, there was no need to flee the country. Father’s two neighbors, both southerners, insisted that at least with the Communists there would be less corruption in the government. They couldn’t see why the Communists would want to take revenge on former northerners like us for migrating south twenty-one years ago.

  I sat with them as long as I could because I wanted to spend some time with my father. I considered telling him about Dr. Tam’s offer, but in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He had become extremely cynical, and he believed solely in Mr. Tri’s counsel. My stepmother and sisters could do nothing. Their fates lay squarely with him. Father wanted Hung, Hong, Hoang, and me to escape, because life for us would be very dangerous
under the Communist regime. As for himself, Father had decided that he was old enough to die. He had the resigned calm of someone stricken by a terminal illness. He had decided to face the Communists together with his neighbors and Mr. Tri, his most trusted friend.

  THAT night of April 28, Anh and I stayed up and watched over our three-year-old son, who was very ill with a high fever. We didn’t talk. There was too much to say and nowhere to begin. Our entire life was here in this house, all the years of hard work, the memories, our families to be left behind. What to bring, what to leave? Too many difficult choices, so we packed nothing, save some warm clothes for the children and one envelope filled with photos. Anh brewed a strong pot of tea and we sat together looking out our second-floor window at the dark street.

  It was 7:00 a.m., just after dawn, when the first convoy of military vehicles thundered down Ly Thai To Boulevard in front of our house. Private cars sped after them toward the center of the city. Something was afoot. I had a strong urge to jump on my motorbike and follow them, but I was afraid we might miss Dr. Tam’s car. It was nerve-racking to see hordes of people heading toward downtown while we sat still. By 8:00 a.m., I couldn’t wait any longer and I took Anh to see the doctor.

  A smell of rot permeated Saigon. Trash, clothes, baggage, house-wares, blankets, baskets of food, and just about everything else littered the streets. A horse-drawn cart full of luggage and trunks was ditched on the side of the road, the horse gone. A beautiful hardwood chair and sofa were left on the sidewalk. Cars parked crookedly, their doors hanging open. Overnight, the ARVN soldiers had vanished into the alleys and byways, their uniforms and weapons discarded in the gutters. Unlike other surrendering cities, there were no robberies or looting by renegade soldiers or gangsters.

  In Dr. Tam’s clinic, the head nurse sat alone at the front desk reading a novel. She greeted us with a sad smile and said that Dr. Tam had left with his family at around 3:00 a.m. They had gone to Tan Son Nhat Airport by helicopter and flew out of the country on a civilian plane. I felt the earth drop away from my feet. Anh clutched my arm.