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Remembering Saigon

5.25 am

The sun rises on the coast of Vietnam, while my taxi run to the airport of Danang.

 

What am I looking for in Ho Chi Minh City? Maybe just memories.

Colonial memories hidden in few ancient buildings, in the Christian churches, along the wide tree- lined avenues. Remembrance of a past that burns in shreds, concealed in awkward memories of a war, covered up by the traffic and the rows of motorbikes.

And then the silence: a guilty, empathetic, resigned, still silence in the eyes of visitors of the War

Museum. Torture, dioxin, napalm, malformations. Forgotten words of declaration of principles.

They are disappearing, running far away, falling empty in the centuries, reflected in the horrors of today’s wars, so similar to pictures of forty years ago.

The wounds remain, without words. We will learn one day.

 

Meanwhile, we try to be reassured by the other face of this land, by the green fields of the Mekong Delta, by its light blue sky. Floating markets, tropical gardens and water hyacinths, rice fields, boats, bananas and children, suspended wooden bridges: a motorbike darting through lotus fields, fighting cocks and ducks shepherds.

I close my eyes on top of a mountain, curled up in a hammock, facing the sunset. And a bell rings far away…

 

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