Who Writes the History?
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re in Naples, hanging with the kid and seeing ALL the Roman ruins. In lieu of writing a new essay this week, I’m brushing off one I posted on Facebook back in 2016. It seemed appropriate for the moment.
Who Writes the History?
I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts about Vietnam for a couple of weeks now, but that’s proving to be difficult. Part of the problem is that I keep trying to capture it all in just a few paragraphs, and that’s absurd. It’s not possible to sum up a big, diverse country, a long and storied past, an entire population. Words—and time—are never enough.
Having said that, I have to try. Coming here was something of a pilgrimage for me. That disaster that we Americans call the Vietnam War looms large in the collective memory of my generation. We grew up on the movies, the music, the memorials. Many of us (myself included) are the children, nieces, nephews of veterans of that ugly conflict.
Lee and I met a veteran and his son in Cambodia. The son had dragged his dad to Vietnam a few years earlier, and they’d come back several times since. When the son first suggested it, the dad had said no: “Absolutely not. I’m never going back to that hellhole.”
But somehow his son talked him into it.
This man stood on a street in Siem Reap with tears in his eyes, having known us for all of 3 minutes, and said “I never knew there was a hole in my heart till it was gone. Going back healed me.”
Vietnam is that kind of place.
There’s a museum in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon, to those of us who remember—and to many of the people who live there) called the War Remnants Museum. It’s—frankly—primarily about us. The American invasion, American failures, American atrocities. There’s a huge section devoted to the long term (and very real) damage done by Agent Orange (there’s a lot of agricultural land that is still unusable due to the poison in the soil). I’ve never been to a museum where I was the bad guy. It was uncomfortable, to say the least.
Lee and I spent a lot of time that day—and since—talking about how history is written by the winner, every time. There are two sides to every story. What poses as history could just as easily be defined as propaganda. Who is right? Who gets to decide? What would have happened if we had stayed out of it? Less bloodshed? More? An entirely different path for American domestic politics? Would Vietnam have gotten where we wanted it to anyway? International conflict is always complicated, and it’s always innocent people who pay the price. Always.
Did I ‘believe’ what I saw in the museum? I don’t know. If I question that version of history, I think I have to question all the rest of it as well. Have I ever been in a museum that wasn’t propaganda? I’m beginning to doubt it.
I watched a really good documentary while we were in Saigon, called Last Days in Vietnam. It’s on Netflix, if you’re interested. The next morning I got up and went to the bakery I’d been going to for breakfast every morning, and took a picture of my morning pain au chocolat and tea. In the photo, you can see a wall, across the street. It’s the wall of the American consulate, which used to be the embassy. If you watch the documentary—or if, like many of us of a certain age, you remember—you’ll recognize that wall. It’s the wall so many South Vietnamese climbed over, trying to escape when the Americans finally evacuated in 1975. Same wall. Still there. Now there’s a beautiful French bakery across the street.
But when I sat in that bakery, eating my pastry, I was a welcome customer. I was a regular. I went most days, for 3 weeks, and the staff very quickly came to recognize me, anticipate my order. My tea was perfect after the first day, served with a tiny pot of hot milk (that kind of service rarely happens in the US).
In the nearly two months that we’ve been in Vietnam, we’ve had one interaction that was less than perfect (someone tried to scam me out of about $5, and even he was perfectly pleasant and smiley about it), and I think that was the exception that proves the rule: the people here are incredibly kind. In one hotel, I asked the owner where I should go for a pedicure, and she called to make an appointment for me, then put me on the back of her motorbike and drove me. Here in Hoi An, some of the market ladies have begun to recognize me—I get a big smile, an arm around my shoulders, a pat on the butt when I walk by. Children shout hello and wave from everywhere, every. single. day. Every one wants to chat—“Where are you from? Do you have children? How long are you in Vietnam?”
I worried about how we’d be received here—I sort of expected resentment or even anger. Turns out I needn’t have worried. They’ve gotten over it. It’s okay for us to get over it too.
What does it mean to ‘win’ a war?
I think it means you get to build the museum. Then you get to put a McDonald’s next door.
Take care,
Lisa
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