Chapter 14 of the Memoir

This is a picture of Paul and his Dad in Indonesia in late 1979. He was 14.

A Memoir of a Modern Odyssey

Paul Truong
With Leslie Alan Horvitz (2002)

Chapter 14

Our second day out of port began much the same way as the first. I was a bit surprised that I’d actually managed to fall asleep under the circumstances. About two hundred and fifty of us were packed together below deck; you couldn’t move more than a foot or so in any direction. There was no toilet. Fishing boats like the one we were on didn’t have any amenities like that. So everyone had to make do with a bucket that was passed from hand to hand whenever it was urgently needed. It didn’t take long before all pretensions to modesty was abandoned. The demands of nature overcame any inhibitions. Some people had brought a change of clothes but my father and I decided to make do with what we were wearing: a T-shirt, shorts and sandals. Because we were traveling with false papers, we didn’t want to draw any more attention to ourselves than necessary by carrying on extra belongings.

It was so dark that you could barely make out people who were sitting in front or in back of you. The only light trickled in from the open hatchway, which was how we knew whether it was day or night. With temperatures hovering at about 110 degrees Fahrenheit it was stifling down below. (In this part of the world, in summer, that would be a fairly cool day; on really hot days temperatures could reach 130 degrees.) There was absolutely no ventilation – no fan, no portholes, nothing. The stench from all the sweat and all the waste piling up in the bucket was horrendous. I had no doubt it would only get worse. I just concentrated my thoughts on what it would be like once we got to America and tried as best I could to forget about the nauseating odor.

You rarely heard anyone talk. Even my father and I seldom exchanged more than a few words. People sat in silence, keeping their thoughts to themselves. But you could see the desperation in their eyes and you could almost feel the fear, too. Here they were crammed into a fishing boat that might comfortably fit twenty men – maximum – but that was now supposed to accommodate six or seven hundred men, women and children. And this was a boat that was built for short fishing trips along the rivers of the delta, not for an ocean-going journey of uncertain duration. No one had any idea how long the boat could remain in one piece. But they certainly took no reassurance from the creaking and groaning that went on day and night as the boat strained under the pressure of the sea. The sound was so alarming that people feared that it was only a matter of time before the boat was torn from stem to stern and we were all sent plunging into the deep.

These people had never been this far from home in their lives and so, of course, they knew nothing about the sea, much less about what it would be like once we reached land – if we reached land. Even the boat’s captain (if you can call him that) had little idea where he was going or how he was going to get there. And where was there anyway? He was just a part time fisherman who was used to navigating the rivers of Vietnam. The only instrument he had available to guide him was a battered military compass that wasn’t meant for use in open waters like these. He didn’t have any maps. He just knew that he had to steer the boat south – towards Malaysia and Indonesia. To head in the opposite direction would put us on a course for the Philippines or China and they were so far away that we would drown for sure before we got to either country. We were only one day at sea, so we still had a sufficient supply of water and food (mostly bread and dried fruit.) But we had no idea how long it would take to get to land, much less to a refuge where we could get hold of food and water, so we had to ration what we did have very carefully. Maybe, if we were lucky, we could make what we had last for a few weeks.

Being below deck wasn’t all bad, though. While it was true that on deck you had a better chance of seeing what was going on you were also being exposed to the sun. There was barely any shade to be had. That put you at risk of becoming dehydrated faster and once you were dehydrated you could end up raving and delirious. Even if you managed to keep your wits about you the sun made you weaker.

As terrible as conditions were, though, I never doubted that I was going to make it. If I had to, I thought, I’d swim all the way to America. Maybe it was just the bravado of a teenage boy, but somehow I seemed to be immune to the fear that infected the adults all around me. It just didn’t occur to me that there was any other alternative. No matter what happened, no matter what disaster befell us, I had to survive: that was my mission. It was something that my father had drummed into my head even before we’d left Saigon. I had an obligation to my mother and baby brother. If God forbid, something happened to my father then it would be up to me to get them out of Vietnam.

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon of the second day I became aware of a commotion on deck. My father and I exchanged a look. Something was happening, but what? Then I heard shouting.

“Look, there’s a boat!” a man cried. “There’s a boat!”

Suddenly there were a lot of excited voices. I had to see what was going on for myself. I jumped up and, without so much as a word to my father, I stepped over the bodies in my way, ignoring the protests and grumbling, and scrambled up the ladder. When I looked behind me I saw that my father was following. He was worried that I’d get myself in some sort of trouble. I had a habit of doing that – it was just that he didn’t know how much.

Now that I was up on deck I understood what the excitement was all about. A tour boat – it looked like a tour boat anyway – was just off our bow, approaching at a fairly rapid clip. I could clearly see several women in nice dresses and a few men on the deck of their boat, waving gaily at us.

We waved back, calling out greetings to them. We figured we were incredibly lucky. At the very least, we thought, these tourists would be willing to give us food and water.

They threw out a line to us and in a few minutes the two boats were side by side. Then to our astonishment, the “women” flung off their dresses and pulled out old pistols and knives. In a flash they were joined by several more armed men who’d been lurking below deck. Before we could grasp what was happening they were climbing on board our boat.

We were under attack by Thai pirates. They had hit on the deception of a masquerade as a way of luring their victims. They knew what they were doing, too: we never suspected a thing until they’d revealed their weapons. But what would they do? We feared the worst, but we really didn’t know what to expect. The Communist regime put a tight clamp on the news. They didn’t want us knowing about the Boat People or what happened to those who had left. So we didn’t know how many people before us had been attacked by pirates or what their fate had been. But one thing we did know – there were always rumors – and that was that many of the refugees who’d gone before us had perished long before they found sanctuary.

These pirates were mainly illiterate fishermen who realized that there was far more profit to be made from preying on helpless Vietnamese refugees than from scouring the Thai coastline for crabs and shrimp. They had brutal faces and scruffy beards. I couldn’t tell one from the other. But then I didn’t want to draw their attention by staring.

They couldn’t speak Vietnamese and we couldn’t speak Thai, so they gestured to make their demands known. The gestures weren’t hard to interpret, though. We were expected us to surrender our money, our watches and any valuables we had. Many of the refugees on board were hoarding some cash, or jewelry or gold, knowing that if they ever did find sanctuary somewhere they would have to buy provisions or perhaps bribe a policeman or guard. The only thing of any valuable belonging to my father was his gold wedding band. I had a gold ring, too: a gift from my mother. I swore to myself that the pirates weren’t going to take it from me.

The pirates fanned out. Some stayed on the upper deck and others went below. At 14, I was shorter than the adults and little by little I was able to edge back in the crowd, making myself as inconspicuous as possible. At the same time I tried to keep an eye on my father. I was afraid for him.

The women were treated differently from the men. When the pirates accosted a woman they would demand that she strip, ostensibly to make sure she wasn’t hiding anything under her clothes. They started with the youngest and most attractive ones, but after a while they didn’t bother to discriminate. They would force women in their sixties and seventies to undress, too. The pirates would fondle the women and taunt them, but as far as I could tell, they didn’t do anything else. That would come later.

Practically no one protested. If anyone complained the pirates would put a gun to his head or threaten to slash his throat. Watches, rings and necklaces hurriedly came off. People emptied their pockets, lifted up their shirts and lowered their shorts so that the pirates could make sure they hadn’t missed anything. A pirate approached my father. My heart was in my throat. I could barely bring myself to look. The pirate’s noticed my father’s wedding ring and pointed to it. My father struggled to remove it. There was scarcely any change in my father’s expression. It was as if he had already resigned himself to its loss. I think I was angrier than he was. We had so few tangible ties to my mother and baby brother – to all we had left behind – and now we were losing those, too. That made me even more resolved not to let them take my own ring.

Because I was hidden behind so many taller people the pirates didn’t immediately spot me. So I was able to slide the ring off my finger and while no one was looking, slip it into my mouth. When a pirate finally got around to me he barely paid any attention. After all, I was a kid and he no doubt assumed that I wouldn’t be carrying much of interest to him. Besides, he already had his hands full. He was carrying a canvas bag that was bulging with the loot he’d just taken. He had so much stuff in his bag that he didn’t notice when something dropped out of it and fell at my feet.

It was a ring.

Seeing that the pirate’s attention was elsewhere, I scooped it up and put that in my mouth as well. I knew it wasn’t my father’s ring – that would have been too improbable – but all the same I considered it my father’s ring now. It was a ring that I would give him later on to make up for the one he had lost.

With several hundred people on board it must have taken the pirates at least three or four hours to rob everyone – there was no way to be sure since they had stolen all the watches. Before they left, though, they grabbed some of the prettiest girls – a dozen or so – and took them back with them. We would never see those girls again.

Once they were gone the whole boat erupted in hysterics. People were crying and screaming. They let out all the fear that they’d repressed so long as the pirates were on board. The families who had just had their wives, mothers and sisters torn away from them were in complete shock. Some people collapsed. Others just slumped down and buried their heads in their hands, mute with grief. Now that we had endured our first assault we had to face the very real possibility that we would be struck again.

The trouble was that the boat was powered by a small engine that was capable of four or six knots an hour – and that was only on inland waters with a small crew on board. With seven hundred passengers crammed into every nook and cranny we were lucky if we could make any progress at all. Even so, we hoped that if we proceeded farther south we might be able to put the threat of piracy behind us. But first we had to pass through the coastal waters of Thailand, where the pirates waited in ambush. There was no other route to follow if we had any chance of reaching Malaysia or Indonesia. So for the next two or three days we knew we would still be at risk.

I didn’t tell my father about the rings, not until much later. I don’t know why. Maybe I didn’t want him to worry about what would happen to me if the pirates came again and found the rings. We didn’t talk about much at all really after the pirates had left. No one did. After a while the boat settled into a sullen, fearful silence, broken only by the occasional sound of muffled weeping. We took some consolation from the fact that darkness had fallen. Night, we hoped, would make it more difficult for pirates to see us. We doused any lights on board to better camouflage ourselves. Of course, the same held true for the pirates; if they killed their lights, it would make it harder for us to see them as well.

When dawn broke on the third day many of the people around me lay down on the deck. Their idea was that if no one could see them from a distance it wouldn’t look as if there were many people on board. The pirates might even be deceived into thinking that they had sighted another pirate ship and not another load of boat people. I didn’t think that this ruse had much chance of working, especially because the markings on the hull of our boat were in Vietnamese, not Thai characters. The Thai pirates might be illiterate, but they weren’t that dumb.

The next time pirates appeared, off our bow, they made no attempt to deceive us about their identity or their purpose. We watched in horror and disbelief as the boat hurtled towards us. Even though we were half-expecting them we still couldn’t quite accept the fact that it was happening again. In a matter of minutes they were clambering on the deck and going to work. Like the pirates before them, they spoke no Vietnamese or English, which my father would have been able to understand. On the other hand, words weren’t necessary to figure out what they wanted. All we could do was to wait anxiously for the pirates to finish and pray that they didn’t harm us. Hours wore on while we stood on the deck with the morning sun beating down on us. Since so much had been taken earlier these pirates had to search harder. They forced the women to strip – scrawny girls of twelve or elderly women it didn’t matter. But where the first pirates at least were willing to wait until they returned to their boat to rape the women these pirates showed no such restraint.

I knew nothing about sex. I had no idea what men and women did with each other. I had only the vaguest idea how babies were made. And now, right in front of me, I was being introduced to sex in the most brutal and horrifying way possible. The pirates were seizing the women and raping them on the deck, hitting them if they screamed. And the women’s fathers, husbands and sons – some of them small children – had to watch helplessly while another pirate stood there with a gun pointed at their heads.

I looked around. The men nearest me weren’t doing anything. They were looking everywhere but at the poor women. They pretended that nothing was happening. I was furious. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was grinding my teeth and tightening my fists in frustration. Why wouldn’t the men band together and jump the assailants? I wondered. There were more of us than there were of them. “Why aren’t you doing anything?” I demanded, loud enough for them to hear but not for the pirates. The men wouldn’t answer. It was like I didn’t exist. They were too ashamed. I might have been short and weighed only 86 pounds but I was ready to attack the pirates myself. I had faced down a Communist officer holding a gun at my head at school. I wasn’t afraid. Maybe that was my problem. I looked at my father. He could sense what was going through my mind. He just shook his head ever so slightly in warning.

If I tried to intervene I’d likely be badly hurt or killed. And my objective was to survive. I owed that much to my father and my mother and brother. I had to keep my temper in check. But that didn’t make it any easier for me to bear the horrible scene unfolding in front of my eyes.

These pirates, like those before them, took about four hours to search everyone on the boat. Their haul was not anywhere as rich, though, and they didn’t look especially satisfied when they finally left. They seized several women as well, some of whom they had already raped. I tried to shut out the sound of their screams as the pirates shoved them onto their boat. As soon as they were gone a cry went up. People who had managed to keep their terror under control after the first attack broke down – it was too much for them to bear. Men who had seen their wives raped and kidnapped were overcome with despair. They must have regretted their decision to make the journey. Or maybe they felt that no matter what they’d done it was always going to be the wrong choice. As if some curse had fallen on them.

After the first attack most of us had consoled each other with the hope that we’d gone through the worst. But now we had to acknowledge the fact that so long as we remained in these treacherous waters it could happen again – and again.

And it did.

Five or six hours later a third motor launch filled with armed men bore down on us. They proceeded to rob and molest the passengers like the men who’d gone before them. By now we had gotten used to their routine. Of course, there was much less for them to take. But they persisted in searching all the passengers in any case, remaining on board for several hours. This time the women knew what was coming. Rather than wait for the pirates to order them to strip they disrobed themselves. Then they stood there, naked in the sun, their skin raw and red from having already been pawed and scratched, waiting in resignation for their turn. Their husbands and brothers didn’t do anything. The thing that struck me was the look on the women’s faces. Their expressions were blank, their eyes were vacant – they were like zombies. They seemed to have gone numb inside. The first time they had been raped they’d screamed or cried. The second time less so. Now most of them didn’t make much of a sound at all. The women counted themselves lucky if the pirates raped them and then left them. That was a better fate by far than being dragged back to the pirates’ boat. That was death.

By the fourth day we had suffered through three attacks in quick succession. Then, like clockwork, a fourth launch appeared on the eastern horizon around four in the afternoon. They shouted out to us. We didn’t need to understand Thai to know that they expected us to stop so they could tie a line to us and come aboard. This time, though, we made the decision to try to escape our pursuers. We couldn’t outrun the launch – that was impossible – but we were hoping that we could keep them at a safe distance at least until nightfall. Then it might be possible to lose them in the dark.

After a few hours’ chase, though, the launch caught up with us. It was about seven in the evening – still daylight. The pirates were livid – first of all because we’d put them to so much trouble to capture us and second, because we had nothing left to give them. We’d been bled dry – or nearly so: I still had managed to hold onto my two rings. But that didn’t stop the pirates from looking. The more they searched the more they realized how little there was to take. That only inflamed them further. If someone even looked at them the wrong way they would smash them with the butt end of their guns. After experiencing three raids we thought we knew what to expect. But these pirates were different. There was no telling what they intended to do. But we would have to wait to find out because after several hours they decided to return to their boat.

They took several of our women with them just as before. But they kept our boat tied to theirs – they were maybe thirty feet apart. We were their hostages. At the same time they made sure that the boats weren’t too close together so that we wouldn’t take it into our heads to surprise them at night while they slept.

It was one of the most horrible nights of my life. All night long we sat on deck, scarcely getting any sleep. How could anyone sleep? We could hear the pirates talking and laughing. Then we began hearing screams. I didn’t need to imagine what the men were doing with the women. But somehow it was worse not seeing. I put my hands over my ears but there was no way to block the sound of their screams. After a while their boat fell silent. We didn’t know whether that was good or bad. Were the women still alive? My father and I didn’t say very much. When he did speak it was to remind me again that no matter what happened the next morning somehow I had to survive for the sake of my brother and mother. I appreciated my father’s words but I didn’t need to be reminded of what I had to do. My father was outwardly calm but I’m sure he was trying to steel himself for what was to come. Later I heard him hum softly. Just as I would run chess games in my mind to stay focused my father would summon up songs that he had composed over the years. That was his real passion. He didn’t have a single page of his music with him, but his songs weren’t lost or forgotten – not at all. He carried around hundreds of his compositions in his head, which he could reproduce at will.

Every prayer that I had ever learned attending Sunday Mass came back to me that night. I don’t know where God was, but I know that every one of my fellow passengers must have been praying to him like I was, praying for a miracle.

At some point, in spite of the tension, I must have dozed off because when I next opened my eyes the sun was shining in my face. There was shouting. The pirates had come back. I couldn’t see them at first because my line of sight was blocked by a partition that obscured the bow end of the deck from view. They resumed their search but by now they must have understood that they were never going to find very much. There was constant traffic between their boat and ours. I didn’t know why the pirates kept moving back and forth like this but I had a feeling that they were planning something. They weren’t just going to go off and leave us this time.

After maybe an hour and a half six pirates came back to our boat with axes and heavy metal instruments. They went below. Everyone around me gasped. They understood what was about to happen but they still didn’t quite believe it. There were more cries and shrieks coming from below.

Then the pirates set to work. Up on deck we couldn’t hear them but it didn’t take us long to find out what they were doing. The pirates were dismantling the wooden beams that held the hull of our boat together. Once that was done we’d only have a few minutes before the bottom of the boat collapsed and the sea rushed in. Suddenly I realized that my father was no longer beside me. In the crush he’d gotten separated. I was on my own.

This boat is going to sink, I thought. What do I do? What can I grab hold of to keep afloat? I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t see anything. The water was deceptively tranquil with hardly any waves at all. But I knew it was very deep and there was no land in sight. I was an excellent swimmer but even so how long could I stay afloat without anything to hold on to? That wasn’t all that was troubling me. When I scanned the waters I would catch a glimpse of black fins skirting the surface – sharks. And I’d heard that electric eels infested these waters, too. There was bound to be injuries when the boat sank. That meant blood. It would be a feast for the sharks.

The pirates, now that they had completed their demolition work, returned to their boat and cut the lines, leaving us to die. They sped away, receding to a speck on the horizon.

With the beams pried off and the hull beginning to collapse, the passengers below deck were thrown into a panic. Two hundred and fifty people were fighting to get on deck. They knew they would drown if they didn’t escape. But there was only one small ladder for them to use. All sense of order disintegrated. Everyone was pushing, shoving, cursing, trampling anyone who got in their way. It was bedlam. I kept trying to find my father. I’d glimpse him from time to time, then he’d disappear again. I was being propelled back and forth by the surging crowd. People were struggling to get close to the edge of the deck so that they could jump. Better to jump into the sea than get sucked down into the sea when the boat sank.

In spite of everything I felt oddly calm. I never lost confidence that I would survive and that eventually I would reach America. If I’d survived four attacks by Thai pirates I wasn’t about to let my life be swallowed up in the Sea of China. And there was one other thing: no matter what I was going to hang on to my two rings.

The boat lurched and teetered as the hull caved in. The screams coming from below grew louder. Then a sudden silence. A moment later the boat slipped below the surface and I was up to my neck in the water.