Song of Saigon: One Woman's Journey to Freedom

by Anh Vu Sawyer, Pam Proctor Narrated by Christina Moore

Overview

A stunning memoir that reads like the most thrilling fiction, Song of Saigon is the story of Anh Vu Sawyer's miraculous escape from a nation on the brink of collapse. In 1975 rumors of an imminent Viet Cong invasion spread fear throughout Saigon. Anh, a 20-year-old medical student, prayed for a means of escape. Her harrowing yet successful journey is an unforgettable triumph of will.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

A poignant...moving story...readers will stay with it to the end.

Christianity Today

In an account that reads like part historical fiction, part memoir...readers...should enjoy this personal narrative.

Kirkus Reviews

A Vietnamese refugee movingly recalls her life during wartime, her escape, and her sometimes bumpy adjustment to life in the US. Nineteen when she and her family managed to get on one of the last helicopters taking off from the US Embassy roof in Saigon in 1975, Sawyer first explains how the family came to be Christian in a narrative crafted by veteran coauthor Proctor (Sally, 1990, etc.). Anh's grandfather had been a bureaucrat employed by the French colonial government in Hanoi. Unhappy with his work and his wife, he became addicted to opium; saved by an American missionary, he converted to Christianity and dedicated his life to God. Her father, the son of a prominent landlord, became a communist and was imprisoned by the French; after the communists took over in North Vietnam, he got into trouble with the Party, and the family had to flee to Saigon. As communists advanced from the north, an elder brother who lived in America tried but failed to get them exit visas, and they joined the mob of panicked Vietnamese on the embassy grounds. In the US, religious organizations found the family homes, work, and a college for Anh in the Midwest. There she fell in love with fellow student Philip Sawyer, an aspiring fashion designer who seemed refreshingly different from everyone else. They married and moved to New York, but while Anh thrived working for an airline, Philip was unable to succeed in his chosen field and became depressed. Her religious faith wavered until they moved to Kansas, where Philip's depression was cured by a speaker at a prayer meeting. In the late 1990s, Anh began working with Vietnamese relief groups, and she recalls a visit to Vietnam in 1998 that allowed her to come tocomforting closure with her past. Vivid testimony to faith and the human spirit amidst chaos and daunting change.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170644353
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	03/11/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Song of Saigon

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By Anh Vu Sawyer and Pam Proctor

Time Warner

Copyright © 2003 Anh Vu Sawyer and Pam Proctor
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0446529087

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Chapter One

TU BIET-FAREWELL FOREVER

Do I dare tell you about the dream I had in anatomy class? If Mother knew, she would be scandalized. It just isn't the thing a well-bred Vietnamese girl fantasizes about. Anatomy lab was right after lunch, and with my stomach full and my brain still fuzzy after a midday siesta at home, I found it impossible to keep my mind on the tedious work ahead. It was hot, stiflingly hot, as dust blew in through the open windows and onto the corpses that were stretched naked on concrete slabs around the laboratory. My nostrils burned with the pungent odor of formaldehyde, which infused the air from across the room, where eight or ten corpses were afloat in an open vat.

I was standing at my workstation and had just picked up my scalpel to slice into the thigh of a cadaver when-in my mind's eye- a handsome young man appeared just outside the door. He seemed to come out of nowhere.

He was slim and tall, with a gentle face, curly brown hair, and soft, elegant hands. He wore jeans and a loose denim shirt that appeared to have been draped carelessly over his body, giving him an air of wanton abandon. Although he looked nothing at all like the GI Joes who were everywhere in Saigon, with their buzz cuts, bulging biceps, and fatigues, I knew instantly that he was American.

The very thought of him made me blush. I had never spoken directly to an American man before. I had only heard their voices, calling to their buddies outside the bars, haggling with the aunties selling ao dai in the marketplace, or laughing with young women in skintight miniskirts. These Americans were loud, grasping, and self-important.. They even brought themselves so low as to walk around the streets wearing women's underwear on their heads like a trophy. To compound the shame, these young American guys would sit brazenly with their women in the front seat of a pedal-driven cyclo, kissing and tickling each other, as the poor old cyclo driver pedaled behind, trying to avert his eyes in humiliation.

"Very bad women," my mother would say when I was young, ordering me to cover my eyes as if we were walking along some kind of nude beach. I pretended not to look, but through the cracks in my fingers, I took it all in, wondering what it meant. Later on, when as a teenager I saw such things, I felt less revulsion than pity. For some reason I can't explain, I found myself overcome by a great burden to pray for their children-the mixed-race offspring of these prostitutes and their boorish Americans.

But my American lover was different. He had a tenderness about him-an inner tranquility-that was so strong and sure I was over-powered by its magnetism. When he was with me, I felt such a sense of security that nothing could harm me: not the terrifying rockets that came in the night; nor the random bombs that exploded in the markets by day; nor the salacious whispers of my friends and family; nor even the disgust of my anatomy professor, who had to keep reminding me to keep focused on my dissection.

"Ngoc Anh," he would intone, "if you intend to be a doctor, you must first get through this class."

I would apologize many times, bow very low, and pretend to be absorbed in my lab. And then, when Professor Hung wasn't looking, I would smile and cast a glance at my lover, who was still waiting for me patiently, as I knew he would be, just outside the door. When I finally finished my work and left the classroom, he would walk me out of the building as if I were a queen. My friends were green with envy. I could see their jealous looks and hear the hushed whispers, but I didn't care.

My lover was with me, and that was all that mattered. We didn't touch, or even say a word. We simply walked quietly down the steps of Minh Duc Medical School and onto the hot, dusty street, where we hopped on our motorcycles and rode off into the evening.

Perhaps the dreams made me oblivious to what was going on in Saigon right under my nose. It was the spring of 1975, and my country was on the cusp of an historic political cataclysm. Although I was twenty years old, I hadn't the foggiest sense that a maelstrom was swirling around me.

I did notice one thing strange: I would be sitting in class one day and a messenger would come to the door, call out the name of one of the students, and he would be gone. Not just gone for the moment- but gone for good. It happened a couple of times a day. One minute a classmate like Hiep, the son of a prominent Air Force general, would be sitting next to me, and the next minute he'd be rushing out the door like the March Hare, as if he had forgotten an important appointment.

We never saw him again.

These disappearances continued with increasing frequency. There was my friend Mili, the daughter of a wealthy banker, and then Bao, the son of an official attached to the American Embassy. After that came Tran, Von, and Nhan, until the class had more seats that were empty than full.

At first no one spoke of what was happening. We simply hung out with our friends as we always had, laughing at some silly joke over a bowl of noodle soup, or comparing notes on an upcoming exam. But before long, the whispers started.

"Did you notice there aren't as many Americans around?" someone said, sotto voce. "I hear they're all leaving." Another confided, "I saw my cousin Duc yesterday. He was a soldier up north in Hue, and now he's home for good. He says units are retreating all over the countryside." "How about our classmate Diep? I hear she left for Paris with her brothers and sister."

Toward the middle of April, the rumors of a North Vietnamese assault on the South were thick as a plague of grasshoppers, but we had nothing to confirm them. We tried looking through Time and Newsweek, which were readily available in Saigon, but the government regularly censored the Far East editions and decisions about the war never quite made it to their pages. My family did have one potential source of real information: my older brother, Phong, who had graduated from California State Polytechnic Institute and was now working in San Francisco. But we hadn't heard from him in months. So we were left, like most everyone else in Saigon, to try to discern the truth of what was going on and fend for ourselves.

We had no powerful connections or financial clout to buy our way out of the country as many of my classmates did. If we hoped to leave Vietnam, we would have to find our own way.

My mother, who was always enterprising about such things, started to dig up information by talking to everyone she knew. One friend told her it might be possible for me to arrange a fake marriage license, showing that I was married to an American. With such a document, the woman said, the American Embassy would give me an exit visa.

As tempting as the idea was, other friends counseled against it. "I've heard that people end up losing their money and never get the marriage certificate," they said. "It's just a scam." The rumors kept flying, and we kept running, first here and then there to find a shred of real information. When my mother heard that there might be some tidbit to be had at the local city hall, she sent me on my bike to hang out and listen. When I arrived there, the place was so crowded I couldn't even wedge myself inside the door. I had to wait in a field outside with hundreds of others who had obviously heard the same rumor.

All around me, people were tense and anxious. I could see them scanning the crowd for a friendly face who might give them a piece of news. But there was no news that day that could help any of us, and as the truth of our predicament began to sink in, I did what I had always done ever since I was a child: I began to pray. "If you want us to leave," I told God, "you'll have to show us how." All my life, I had felt free to put questions to God, and in various ways he had never failed to answer. Why should I expect any less of him now? I just knew that our position at that moment appeared to be hopeless, and if indeed a way out of Vietnam existed for my family, the specific details would have to be divinely orchestrated.

"Chi Huong, Chi Huong! Open the gate! It's me, open up!" Because of a twenty-four-hour curfew, which had just been imposed a few weeks earlier, we regularly kept the gate of our family compound closed and locked. Now someone was banging loudly, clamoring to get in. For some reason, he was calling out Chi Huong, or "elder sister Huong," the familiar name of our nanny. "Who could it be?" asked Mother. "Don't open the door!" Still the gate rattled, and the male voice shouted again. "Chi Huong-the gate-please open it!"

"It sounds like Master Phong," our nanny said. "That's impossible," retorted my mother. "Phong's in America." At the very mention of my brother's name, my sister, brothers, and I rushed out the door to our house and up to the gate, where my very bedraggled brother Phong was standing outside, grasping the iron bars. Nanny opened the gate, and he quickly slipped inside the compound, where we crowded around him in awe and excitement.

I barely recognized him. When he had left Vietnam nearly eight years before, he had been a skinny teenager with a sophisticated veneer of slicked back hair, tailored designer jackets, and luxurious Pierre Cardin ties. Now he was a grown man, strikingly handsome, well fed and brimming with confidence. His hair was so long it nearly brushed his shoulders. And in his tight Levis and denim jacket, he looked every inch an American.

My mother took one look at him and almost fainted. "Why did you come home?" she asked with a look of fear in her eyes. "You were safe. You had life. Why are you here?"

"I had to come," he said. "I tried to write. I even tried to send a telegram. When I couldn't reach you, I hopped a plane to Guam and then got a lift here as a volunteer on a Red Cross helicopter." The urgency in his eyes riveted our attention and rendered us speechless as he continued: "You must leave the country immediately," he said. "There is no hope left. The only chance you have is to get out with me, because now I'm an American citizen." For a long while, nobody said a word. We just looked at him, unable to speak, as the enormity of what was happening to us began to sink in. Then all of a sudden, we broke into smiles and started tittering with giddy laughter.

"Yes, yes," we all agreed. We would go tomorrow to the American Embassy, as Phong had said. He was an American now, a citizen, and that meant everything would be all right. He was sure of it. The next morning the house took on an air of celebration. It was as if someone had flicked a switch, turning the stark and scary darkness of our lives into an incredible burst of light. With Phong in our midst, we felt hopeful and safe, filled with expectation about our future life in America. Here was our hero, the bold rescuer-who had been born, appropriately, in the Year of the Tiger-who was going to bring us to the promised land.

For breakfast, our nanny spread out a feast: delicate crepes known as banh cuon, filled with savory meat; sticky rice with coconut milk; lemon sauces; tea; and the ubiquitous pho, the noodle soup that is a Vietnamese staple. How Nanny had managed this repast, I'll never know.

No shops or stores were open where she could buy such goods. Our only sources for food were the black market and whatever we could scrounge from our neighbors by bartering from house to house. But Phong was Nanny's oldest charge-she had practically raised him herself-and for her young prince, nothing but the best would do. I gorged myself on the banquet, paying more attention to my stomach than to the serious conversation between my parents and Phong at the other end of the table. But soon breakfast was over and before I knew what was happening, Phong hustled us out the door and managed to flag down an open-air minibus to take us to the embassy. Although it was dangerous for us or anyone else to be out in the daylight, as we traveled along I saw our friend Quang riding on a motorcycle.

I waved at him happily. We are going to life-we are going to our future, I thought, smiling to myself. Even after we arrived at the embassy and saw thousands of others who had gotten there ahead of us, my sense of euphoria was undiminished.

We waited outside expectantly as Phong maneuvered his way inside the building to talk to an official. But when he emerged an hour later, he looked strained and defeated. "There's no way we can do it," he said, shaking his head. "They say they are only taking American citizens."

We looked at each other in astonishment, not knowing what to do next. Mother was the first to speak. Mustering every ounce of courage she had left, she gave her oldest son a direct order: "I want you to leave us," she told Phong. "Go back to your American wife. Don't waste your life for us. You've done all you can do. You have a chance to live-take it. Take it now!"

There was a finality in her voice that brooked no opposition. We all knew that voice, and whenever she was in the command mode, we knew better than to contradict her. Phong looked at her, then at Father, and at each of my siblings, one by one. Then he looked at me. His eyes were filled with pain and yearning.

"Go, please go," I begged him, touching his shoulder lightly. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and my body heaved with sobs. Next to me, my sister Diep, eighteen, and my brothers Hai, nineteen, and Khanh, thirteen, were drowning in despair. My older sister, Tram, twenty-six, escaped this awful moment only because she was studying in Germany. Just my parents and Phong remained stoic. When Phong could bear no more, he turned on his heels and ran into the embassy, afraid even to look back.

The minute we stepped through the gate of our family compound, my mother's steely conviction drained out of her, and she became almost catatonic. With her arms crossed and gripping her body, she sat on the divan, rocking back and forth and moaning in a low, steady drone, "My son, my son."

In another room, my father, his face white as a sheet, sat slumped in a chair, chain-smoking. My sister and brothers fled to our room, where they huddled together, talking in whispers, as if something would break if they dared speak out loud.

I was beyond tears. Beyond fear. Yet I wasn't ready to surrender to some futile fate. I was consumed by a sense of urgency, an overwhelming conviction that we had to leave the country immediately. But I was also burning with an equally strong desire to wait for a little while and pray. It was almost as if a sturdy hand had been placed on my shoulder to steady me, to calm me, and to keep my mind focused. Instinctively, I began to speak to God. I wandered from room to room with no particular destination or purpose. There really wasn't much else for me to do. In those anxious years of war, with few activities to occupy us, we either read or just sat doing nothing.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Song of Saigon by Anh Vu Sawyer and Pam Proctor Copyright © 2003 by Anh Vu Sawyer and Pam Proctor. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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