I don’t know if this word comes from the
Chinese or Cambodian language, but it means the wild
person..
In my country, some persons who go in the
forest to look for sandalwood, which is as precious as gold, have to put “ ngai”
- a kind of magic grass in their mouth.
Thanks to this medicine, they feel healthy,
not hungry nor thirsty. But they must go home on time. If they do not obey
this instruction, by losing their way, or by forgetting the due date, they will
become wild persons, unconscious
and dumb, with long hair covering the
body.
After 1975, the Communists occupied the
South of Viet Nam, a lot of Vietnamese
became wild persons wandering in the towns and countries, without clothes and
food, crying and shouting because they
lost their children, their husbands,
their wives and their property. Maybe they did not remember where their houses
or what their names
were.
And after 1975, a number of
Vietnamese escaped the Communists by passing through the forest
or by crossing the ocean. The boat people could be drowned in the sea or arrested by the
communist policemen on their way to freedom. The women were gathered concentration camps. They were inspected and touched everywhere on their bodies by the communists
who were looking for gold or diamonds. The policemen robbed all their golden rings, watches, money and
clothes .
They must work hard in the field or in the
forest without clothes as the primitive people in prehistory
!
One evening, in the sunset, I went home from
Phu Lam, a country side of Saigon, and I saw a naked woman with the sun burnt
body and the long black hair running on the rice field toward the town. Was she a ” xanien”? No!
Although I was a long distance from
her, I saw she was very young and healthy. She ran as quickly as an
athlete in a cross country race. I thought that she was a
woman just escaping from the prison and now she was on the way
home.
On my way home, I always asked
myself:
-“ Where is her
house?”
-” What about her
family?”
-” Do they still remain at the usual address
or did they move?”
-” Did she get home safely
?”
Son Trung
No comments:
Post a Comment