Boat 1513

After brushing my teeth, I returned to the kitchen and sat down at the table. Mom came up to me and handed me a plate on which there was a hardboiled egg wrapped in a spring roll and a small bowl of fish sauce. Unknowingly, this was my last breakfast in Vietnam.

While I was eating, Mom sat down at the table and said to me softly, “Son, I need you to stay put. Don’t leave the house today, no matter what!”

Usually, I would go out to play and not come back until lunchtime.

“Why?” I asked.

“Don’t ask questions,” Mom said emphatically. “Just do what I say.”

After talking to me, she went to the back of the house, next to the well, and vomited. When she finished, she washed away the mess with water from the well. . .

When the sun rose the next morning, casting its rays over the blue ocean, I felt wonderful to be awakened by such beauty. It was now the first day of August, and we hoped the new month would take us to a new beginning. Of all the supplies we had for the journey, hope was the most abundant one.

In addition to the magnificent sight of the vast ocean, dolphins were swimming beside us. The blue water was calm and welcoming. We laughed and cheered as we pointed joyfully at the dancing creatures of the sea. I had never been out on the ocean before, so I felt as if we were on some kind of dream vacation, although we were attempting a daring escape, and our lives were on the line.

But then, late in the afternoon of the third day, everything changed when the wind picked up speed and the sky turned gray as dark clouds covered us like a blanket.

We all put our hands together and prayed silently. . .

When the storm arrived, the sky turned completely black between bursts of lightning. . .

As I crouched down beside my mother, looking out at the angry waves rolling toward us, they appeared to grow higher and higher until they crashed onto the boat, soaking me and everyone around me. As the boat heaved and tossed, I sometimes accidentally swallowed salt water, which usually made me sneeze or choke. Some of the other children were weeping, but the sounds of their cries were muffled by the crashing of the waves and the roaring of the thunder. . .

Although it was only late afternoon, the sky was dark. Even the giant clouds hovering above us were dark gray. They appeared to be so close that I felt I could almost reach out and touch them. The ocean was calmer than usual, without waves rocking the boat. But all of a sudden, I saw five huge fish, or possibly whales, swimming near us, each of them as long as our boat. The sight of them and the black sky frightened me because the scene was so unreal, making me fear that something awful was about to happen. . .

As giant waves repeatedly crashed into the boat from all sides, Si shouted down to us to lean this way and that in order to keep the boat from turning over. While we were all doing that, we tried to avoid swallowing the saltwater that was continually leaking in from the hatch.

It was barely possible to breathe in there, so I soon became nauseous. Every time there was a brief break in the storm, my dad, who was aware that I was suffocating, would open the hatch and lift me up to gulp down some air.

Throughout this nightmare, I could hear Si’s wife praying above us. Everyone else on the boat had long since given up on prayer. From time to time, Si’s wife begged my mother to pray with her, but my mom by then had lost all hope—as I had, too. Sitting in silence, I waited for death to end my misery. But the torture went on for hours.