the first memories in which I have comprehension of the world around me and a self-awareness of my own existence within that world. Nascent though that comprehension might have been, I grasped the desperation of the moment and the precariousness of my own life. On that boat, I learned fear, hunger, and the desire to live.
The boat was such a primal and frightening experience that afterward it would cause most members of my family to try to rid the experience from their consciousness, never to speak of it again. It was so primal and frightening that the memories of it still make my mother shudder every time she sees an endless expanse of ocean, prompting her to declare even after so many years, “I would have never dared to get on that boat had I known…” But, of course, she didn’t know, and therefore she dared.
That we are even here to testify to our flight from Vietnam, that we survived, beggars belief. Before we had even embarked, the water, already a foot deep in the ship’s hold, poured in through its battered hull, and the boat settled more and more deeply into the water. People rushing to find a place to settle down on the open boat’s one and only deck could see the water when they scurried past the short flight of stairs that led below. Yet none of them seemed to care, for no one tried to get off and more continued to come on board. Apparently they believed, bravely or perhaps stupidly, as my parents and so many others before them believed: Better to die at sea than to live in Vietnam. Better to get on a sinking boat than to stay one more moment on Vietnamese soil.
But then a voice of sanity cut through the drone of the boat’s engine and the din of the crowd.
“Get rid of luggage! We have to lighten the boat!” Brother Can yelled to the hundred people or so who had already boarded. And then he yelled at the two hundred people still waiting to board the boat via the thick wooden plank that bridged boat and pier, “Only bring what you need on board. Nothing else!” And to the boat’s helmsman—the person charged with the responsibility of steering the boat—and his brother, standing helplessly nearby, Brother Can pointed and ordered, “Start pumping out the water now! Now, I said!”
Brother Can stood on the port side of the boat, glaring suspiciously at every person who came on board. He was determined to keep order and to stop the boat from sinking before it had even left. After all, the boat was his. Brother Can was technically a brother to only a handful of the passengers; everyone knew who he was, though, and everyone used the word “Brother” as a title of respect (as is common practice in the Vietnamese language). He was the lead organizer of this expedition, the man who had masterminded the acquisition of this boat, approached my grandfather to register the boat in Tam-Ky, and located the helmsman; he was primarily responsible for recruiting and assembling these 315 refugees. People referred to him as the “Boat’s Boss,” the captain of the boat, and the captain expected his orders to be obeyed.
Brother Can’s four younger brothers, tall, beefy, and intimidating like Brother Can himself, moved to do as Brother Can commanded, prepared to forcefully manhandle the luggage of so many complete strangers. The brothers targeted the largest bags squeezed in among the passengers. “Only essentials can come. Just one bag, and not too big!” Brother Can told people again and again as they tried to slip through with loaded backs and hands, as though they were deaf to his instructions. Most of the people Brother Can had to stop turned around and went back to shore to rearrange the belongings from their multiple pieces of luggage so that everything they really wanted and needed would fit in one bag. Those who tried to push past Brother Can came face-to-face with his many brothers-in-law.
Ignoring the cries of outrage at their callous disregard for people’s things and knowing that there was no alternative, Brother Can and his relatives tossed, and forced passengers to toss, dozens upon dozens of bulky canvas and nylon bags, straining at zippers and seams, back onto the pier. The wooden pier jutted out from a sandy white beach nestled in a natural harbor protected from the currents of the South China Sea. Sometimes the fishermen