Twilight Territory

by Andrew X. Pham

“Indochina,” “Annam,” “Tonkin,” and “Cochinchina” are names coined by the French to delineate their colony without deference to the colonized.

Modern Vietnam comprises 54 ethnic groups, with the Viet (Khinh people) accounting for 87 percent of the population.

Among gods and servants, no secret is safe.

The motorcade passed the town market, unnoticed by vendors setting up their stalls, to continue north onto the metal bridge across the greenish-brown river bisecting the town. It formed a natural boundary between poor and rich, commercial and governmental, indigenous and colonialists. Poverty and labor to the south, wealth and power to the north, the way the wind blew, so to speak.

He knelt and looked down on the fortune in the ground. It meant a sum that could buy a modest man like himself a lifetime of luxury. He would never need to work again. Since the first day he had been drafted, six years earlier, he had hoped for little more than survival. After nearly dying in battle, he now saw life passing by without giving him what made it all worthwhile: love, family, fatherhood.

“Fear is not necessary,” he said. “It’s natural; the weak fear the strong.”

Hardships had taught her empathy for the weak and the poor. It was not long before she blossomed into a champion of the common people.

Wherever we go, we take with us the scars and the karma we’ve earned.