THE WAY YOU LOOK AT THINGS
Another chapter from Karen Kaiser's "Gardens in the Midst of War"
Karen Kaiser was the librarian at the school I attended in Saigon from 1974 to ‘75. This excerpt from Gardens in the Midst of War: Saigon 1973-1975, brings to life circumstances and memories that escaped my 8-year-old’s understanding but that surely impacted me nonetheless.
Chapter 19: THE WAY YOU LOOK AT THINGS | JULY & AUGUST 1974
Although South Vietnam had superior weapons and manpower, the fuel crisis, lack of spare parts, and motivation rendered these resources ineffective. The United States Congress voted to reduce aid to South Vietnam from $1.1 billion to $750 million. Worse, Vietnamese officials frequently redirected military aid to individuals and other agencies, hampering the ability of the army to resist future attacks. Some became wealthy while the country suffered.
***
On July 2, a Bekins van pulled away from the Nguyen Dinh Chieu Street villa, holding our household belongings. We bid farewell to the showy villa and moved to the modest two-bedroom, one-bath apartment off Ky Dong Street. I loved the cozy, Old-World ambiance, but it came with a few quirks.
Muoi sometimes had to coax the ancient gas stove to life. Running water could be erratic. If we lost power, days could go by before the city restored it. Screens covered unglazed kitchen and bathroom windows, but the afternoon rains soaked everything. Steve arranged for someone to install window panes. As if to make amends, the landlord graced the dining room with a cheerful potted red poinsettia the size of a dogwood tree. The apartment would turn out to be my favorite Saigon home.
With the new accommodations came an ancient, French-speaking Vietnamese groundskeeper, Mr. Ngo, who lived in a small house behind the parking area. Besides sweeping the parking lot and doing some gardening, he monitored comings and goings by acting as gatekeeper. The gate, set into a concrete wall surrounding the grounds, served as our security. He and a group of neighborhood children swarmed around me whenever I left or returned.
Mr. Ngo also controlled the apartment’s erratic water supply from a cistern mounted on the roof. One day, the water stopped when I was in the middle of a shower. Still wet and soapy, I threw on a beach dress and ran down three floors to confront him.
“Mr. Ngo, Pourquoi n’y a-til pas d’eau?” Why is there no water? I glared at him, hands on hips.
“La citerne est vide.” The cistern is empty, he said with a shrug. “Que pouvez-vous faire?” What can you do?
An uninterrupted water supply was a luxury. I went back upstairs, dried off, and got on with the day.
Mr. Ngo with neighborhood children, Ky Dong apartment, Saigon, 1974
The building that housed our new home sat across the lane from a Buddhist temple and school. When Muoi opened the windows and French doors in the morning, the lilting voices of children reciting their lessons in unison filled the air. In the afternoon, a slight breeze carried the rhythmic chanting of monks and the deep tone of brass temple bells, creating a feeling of order, normalcy, and peace.
Furnishing and decorating the apartment became my raison d’être of the moment. For this project, I planned to use all local products. I clipped pictures from magazines of the rattan pieces I wanted—three tall bookcases, a sofa, a matching side chair, two high-backed chairs for the dining room, two more as occasional chairs in the living room, and a chaise lounge. Armed with measurements and photographs, Steve and I took one of the ubiquitous blue and yellow taxis in search of someone to build them.
The tree-lined furniture street spread out wide and dusty. Narrow storefronts stood crammed side by side. Precarious-looking masses of electrical wiring hung from poles and sides of buildings overhead like spaghetti drying on a rack.
Proprietors sat on the sidewalk in front of their shops, shaded by canvas awnings. Surrounded by their wares, they cooled themselves with paper fans. Everything, from footstools to futons, could be found there.
The taxi let us out at the curb. Steve paid, and we made our way along the street, searching for a shop selling rattan furniture. We found what we were looking for, and I was relieved that this shopping trip would be short. The heat and humidity had already begun to take their toll.
We made a deal with hand signals, a little show-and-tell, and a combination of French, English, and even a little Vietnamese. Our custom furniture would be made by hand.
A week later, Muoi told me I had a visitor waiting on the landing. A workman from the rattan shop stood there with one of the chairs I’d ordered. It looked finished except for the seat. It’s a big chair. Did he bring it here on his motorbike?
He said something to Muoi, which she translated for me. He wanted to measure how high off the floor the seat of the chair should be for Steve’s and my long legs. To figure this out, he’d placed a stool where the seat would be and asked me to pretend to sit in the chair. Then he raised and lowered the stool so that when seated, my legs were bent 90 degrees. Custom-fitted chairs, a first!
Besides furniture, I bought fabric for curtains, slipcovers, a bedspread, and pillowcases.
We purchased another air conditioner to install between the living room and dining room. Steve hired a handyman to do the installation. Like the workers at the Smail’s villa months ago, the man began by creating an opening through the stucco and brick wall with a hammer and chisel. A thick cloud of white dust settled over everything that Muoi worked so hard to keep spotless. I told her not to worry. We’d clean it up together.
Steve and Karen, Ky Dong apartment, Saigon, 1974
***
Don Burgess, his wife, Nga, and their three-year-old daughter, Marian, stopped by to see our new digs. A precocious, pretty little girl, Marian was also a poignant reminder of Steve’s and my unsuccessful attempts to start a family.
Although Steve expressed doubts occasionally, we’d planned to have children. We’d failed. Neither of our families pressured us. I didn’t think about the consequences of a pregnancy in the middle of a war, isolated from it as we were, but I wanted answers.
On a friend’s recommendation, I sought advice from Dr. Pham, a French-trained Vietnamese OB/GYN. He ran some tests that were inconclusive and suspected a blockage somewhere. The next step, he told me, was insufflation, whereby carbon dioxide gas was introduced into the fallopian tubes to determine if they were open.
I arrived for the procedure and took a seat on a bench outside the doctor’s office. Seated beside me, a young, hugely pregnant American woman, whose baby was overdue, waited to be induced. A nurse called her in. We wished each other good luck.
Shortly, my turn came. A nurse showed me into an examination room and prepped me for the procedure. It took only a few minutes. Apparently, blocked fallopian tubes were not my problem. Dr. Pham could tell right away, for excruciating pain caused by the gas escaping into my abdominal cavity and diaphragm seized me whenever I moved.
The nurse rolled the litter on which I lay into a large operatory where several other patients waited and told me to lie still. Eventually, the gas would dissipate. Then, she handed me a tube connected to an oxygen tank, saying that breathing oxygen would help.
Meanwhile, Dr. Pham busied himself with my friend from the waiting room. She lay on a litter a few feet from mine. Labor had been induced, but the baby was taking its time.
“The baby is coming!” Dr. Pham exclaimed, at last, with a burst of excitement and genuine glee.
I turned my head just enough to witness the amazing miracle of childbirth. It took my breath away, for there he was with ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes, a perfect little boy right away.
But wait! Something was very wrong!
Dr. Pham called for the nurse, who rushed to his side. The umbilical cord had wrapped itself around the baby’s neck three times. He wasn’t breathing! A tense few minutes passed, and then I heard the doctor’s voice again,
“Have you seen that? Have you seen that?” he cried, “I have saved him!” His excitement spread and the rest of us cheered, as well.
The nurse whisked the infant away. After a few minutes, she returned with a cleaned-up and clothed baby. Instead of taking him to his mother, the nurse headed toward me.
Wait! What’s happening? Has the nurse confused me with the mother? Is she bringing the baby to me because she knows I hope for one?
I panicked for a second but snapped out of it when I realized the baby needed oxygen, too, and I held the only source. In a spirit of compassion for us, the nurse held the newborn while he and I shared oxygen from the only supply in the office. The baby looked as mystified as I had been.
This would never happen in the States!
***
Six hundred miles from Saigon, the battle of Duc Duc in Quang Nam Province began. It would last until October 4, and South Vietnamese troops would suffer 4,700 casualties. On the same day, the Battle of Thung Duc commenced when a regiment of the People’s Army of [North] Vietnam overran the An Hoa Industrial Complex and attacked the town of Thuong Duc, a key entrance to the Quang Nam Province lowlands and essential for extending the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Although South Vietnam stopped the advance of the North, it suffered extreme losses of personnel and ordnance that could not be replaced because of reduced funding.
***
President Richard M. Nixon’s national security advisor, Henry A. Kissinger, had brokered a deal that would play Russia and China against each other and both of them against North Vietnam.
The upshot—an agreement to withdraw all American ground forces in exchange for Hanoi’s releasing all American POWs and agreeing to wait a decent interval, eighteen months to two years, before overtaking South Vietnam, which no one in the higher echelons of the U.S. government or military doubted would happen eventually.
In return, Nixon assured Hanoi the U.S. would not interfere in its conquest of the South after the decent interval had passed. At the same time, he promised South Vietnam’s president just the opposite.
On August 9, the one deterrent to robust aggression by the North Vietnamese into South Vietnam, President Richard M. Nixon, resigned. No one elected President of the United States had ever resigned from that office. Hanoi was then free to pursue its goal without waiting.
***
Aid workers, district advisors, and others who came in from the northern provinces brought stories of fierce battles there. The belief, held by some, that the fighting would end within a few months of the Paris Accords collapsed like an airless balloon. More than a year had passed. Nothing had changed.
Our apartment's walls vibrated with sound waves from shelling somewhere outside Saigon, yet the American Radio Service did not mention it. Reality closed in all around us. Neither side was giving up. Still, the city remained unchanged, and no one in authority to do so ordered an evacuation.
My anxious parents sent letters filled with concern. I wrote back to reassure them that none of what they read or saw on TV happened in Saigon, regardless of the news. “We’ll be home for Christmas,” I wrote to cheer them, referring to the month-long respite known as home leave. I wished I believed it myself.
***
Home! Where is home, anyway? Can I click my heels and go there? Is the apartment on Ky Dong Street home? When I had a rough day, I thought there was no place I’d rather be.
We were going on home leave at the end of November, three months away, and needed to prepare, both mentally and physically.
“One problem with home leave,” Steve said. “It’s winter. It’s cold. We need proper clothes. Let’s go to Hong Kong and have some made.
“Sure, I’m all for going to Hong Kong, but we can have clothes made here,” I argued.
“Yes, but here they don’t have that nice vicuña wool.”
“Ahhh … I see where this is going. You and your luxury fabrics. Okay, book it.”
The Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong recommended a tailor, and we placed our orders. The next day, we took a hydrofoil to Macau, the Portuguese colony on the Pearl River Delta. Riding along the Malecon bordered by faded mansions, it was easy to imagine this place had once been a prosperous trading port. Macau had changed. It wanted to become the Las Vegas of the East, and its gambling casinos dominated the downtown.
Steve rented a car the following day for a drive outside Hong Kong proper to the New Territories, one of the three main areas of Hong Kong. After driving for a while, we came to the border with mainland China.
“Stop the car,” I said. When he did, I got out and walked toward the border crossing.
“What are you doing?” Steve asked.
“I want to step one foot in China.”
“No!” Steve called out. “Stop! Karen, come back!”
The young Chinese guard with a menacing firearm glared at me. Then, that small, still voice that some call intuition stopped me in my tracks.
A chilling thought occurred to me as I joined Steve in the car. I could have found myself in a headline: China Detains American Tourist for Illegal Border Crossing.
We drove back to the city in silence, Steve exasperated by my carelessness. He had definite opinions about how people should behave and present themselves to the world. Although he could be overbearing sometimes, I appreciated that about him most days.
He also displayed a sophisticated worldview. Something I lacked. His taste in everything, from apparel to cocktails, influenced many of my own decisions. Where I could be foolish and headstrong, he was cautious. He would never have approached the Chinese guard the way I did.
I had to admit he was right. The gravity of that situation and its potential consequences were no laughing matter. I’d have another story to tell when we got home in November.
Excerpt taken from the 2023 publication of Gardens in the Midst of War, by Karen Kaiser.
About Stories of Vietnam:
Hello, my name is Kat Fitzpatrick and I am here to share a unique panorama of stories about Vietnam. Stories from the country,
stories from the time of war,
and stories that might expand our horizons.
I hope you’ll join me as we approach the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.
Kat, I really appreciate these excerpts. Thank you.
Thank you, Kat.