When they arrived

excerpt from an upcoming memoir

By Duc Nguyen

It was the end of April 1975, when the air was filled with heavy moisture, I woke up covered in sweats. Things were quieter than usual. Out on the street, people weren't moving around like any other day. As a matter of fact, there was hardly anyone out on the street. And the ones who were out, walked in a hurry and kept their eyes scanning surroundings carefully. Inside, my parents glued to the television set. My father also had a radio on. But who could trust the information the government had been feeding us anymore? They were all lies. Every bit of news was misinformation. Their propaganda was only to serve those few powerful rich guys. But then when you lived in a fish bowl like we did, any information was a only piece of puzzle we used to patch together the fragmented imagination we had about our world. Things began to appear like they were changing. By that, I mean things that pertained to our lives. Things like our future. Tomorrow will be different, I thought. I fell asleep in exhaustion.

When I woke up, the condition was getting worse. There was no electricity and the news began to leak info that the ARVN (Army of Republican of Vietnam) was losing ground. We began to hunker down and wait for the blunt of the attack. Everyone headed for a bunker and stayed there. Days were longer. Time passed by in slow…