The Other Shore by Hoa Pham

Author:Hoa Pham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2023-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

I was engulfed in flames. My flesh burned and I could not retain my pose. Again, I was shot and buried alive in a mass grave. I struggled to breathe but could not. I was drowning. But this time no one saved me, and I swallowed water when I tried to call out.

Kim!

It was Khôi, holding my hand, and I got the sense that he drank to cope with the visitations. Then I was flooded with his regard and concern for me. It was too much. I took my hand away.

When I came to, I found myself siting on the concrete floor of the shanty, Khôi by my side. I could see the other tourists gathered outside, along with the security agents.

“Are you okay?” Khôi asked me.

“It’s too much. It’s too much,” I babbled. When I closed my eyes, I saw the Americans in a fighter plane waiting to attack. The National Liberation Front being bombed with Agent Orange. Pain and suffering in the hospital in the Marble Mountains.

“Kim?”

I saw refugees huddled in fishing boats sneaking past Communist guards. I saw torture at the re-education camps. The pain and suffering seeping through the ground capsized my consciousness. The wars fought by the Hmong people for independence.

“Stop,” I whispered. “Stop it. Stop it!” I buried my head in my hands, pulling at my hair to stop the images in my head.

The tour guide came in, concerned.

“What is wrong with her?”

One of the security agents followed him in and walked up to me, pushing Khôi aside. I begged him not to touch me, but he held me by the upper arm for a moment and it was enough for me to see that he was one of the tails assigned to Bác Phuc. He was ex-military and viewed following us as an easy job compared to killing foreigners. I did not want to know how he killed them, but the details came regardless of my protests. He had raped and murdered Southern soldiers, and villagers who had hidden insurgents.

Terrified, I flinched away from him and held my hands out for Khôi – amazingly, he managed to get on the other side of me and clasp my fingers. I felt, once more, Khôi’s fondness and respect for me. I saw the large house where he lived with two brothers, a mother whose years of hardship showed in her eyes and a kindly father with bad memories.

“She needs to rest. We’ll go to the hotel,” Khôi told the guide.

“Those security agents are following us. They can escort us back,” I found myself saying, before my common sense could tell me otherwise.

“I know,” said the guide. “The local shaman is my mother. She may be able to help you.”

Were there psychics everywhere? Now I could sense them, they were so common that it was amazing the government had not recruited more of them.

“Thank you, but I think it’s better if she gets bed rest,” Khôi said. The guide looked at him for a long moment then said nothing.

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