The image of peace

(QBĐT) - When I was little, on quiet country nights, after dinner, my sisters and I would often gather around our mother to listen to her stories. As the youngest, I was rocked in a hammock in the middle of the house, while my older siblings lay or sat on the bed next to me. My mother's voice, sometimes high, sometimes low, her vivid storytelling transporting us back to the arduous years before liberation. She recounted countless memories, pieced together, of the experiences she and my maternal family had gone through when bombs and bullets still ravaged our homeland.

My mother often reminisces using the phrases "before liberation" and "after liberation" for stories that happened after the war had ended. Liberation Day, the day of reunification, stands as a towering milestone, defining the lives of my grandmother, my mother, and countless other lives and destinies. Millions of new lives unfolded within the unified embrace of North and South Vietnam.

I lay in my hammock, gazing up at the tiled roof, my thoughts drifting along the river of memories, steered by my mother, the boat of time, slowly flowing between the banks of forgetfulness and remembrance. She recounted the war against the Americans, when the enemy dropped bombs indiscriminately on our homeland, and my maternal family evacuated, carrying their belongings. Behind my village lay vast stretches of deep green forest, a place of fierce fighting between our forces and the enemy.

Illustration photo: Minh Quy.

American planes dropped bombs on villages reflected in the river, on patches of forest where the wind whistled through the air all year round. The brutal enemy launched numerous sweeps into the villages. Planes stirred up chaos on all sides, bombs raining down, swirling sand and earth into deep, cratered basins. The forest behind the village was devastated, its branches uprooted and scattered, the vegetation bare and reeking of bombs and bullets.

My maternal grandparents and other families in the village hastily gathered rice, bread, and food, placing them on either side of their carrying poles, and evacuated to a safe area. My grandmother, who was still recovering from childbirth (having given birth to my mother a month earlier), had weak limbs but still had to struggle with her husband and children to cross several dense forests, along a long, wind-swept, sandy road amidst the constant threat of bombs and bullets.

My maternal grandfather carried provisions, while my maternal grandmother breastfed her child as she fled the war. Fearing they would be separated amidst the turmoil, the entire maternal family held hands and clung to each other. My uncles, breathless, ran after my grandparents. My mother, the ninth child, lay quietly in my grandmother's arms. This was the first time in her life she had fled from war, when she was only one month old.

Occasionally, hearing the distant sound of bombs exploding in the distance, my mother would startle and cry out. Our legs were weary, but our hearts burned with anxiety; without a word, the whole family understood that we had to run even faster. My uncle stepped on countless cactus thorns, his soles aching, but he had to hide his tears as he carried my younger sibling and continued running.

We arrived at the evacuation zone with our limbs and bodies so numb we felt like they no longer belonged to us, sweat pouring down like a waterfall, but nothing was more important than the happiness of having our whole family together. The people in the evacuation zone used tarpaulins to build temporary small huts for my villagers to live in, sheltering each other through the turbulent times...

After liberation, my villagers rebuilt their houses, reinforced embankments, and restored the fields, ponds, and lakes, clearing away the devastation and weaving new, windswept patches of forest. Whenever she finished a story, my mother would conclude with, "Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom, my children!" Her words gradually seeped into my sisters and me, like winds from the distant past, carrying me back to a time of war and conflict.

I carried with me countless stories from my mother, images of the blood-red river, the desolate forest, the secret bunker, the tears of separation, the smiles of reunion… like a free migratory bird spreading its wings in the vast, peaceful sky. On my return, standing before the boundless forest, with glimpses of bunkers, I heard in the wind the echoes of my ancestors, of heroic martyrs, echoes from the depths of my roots.

Returning home, I realized that the image of peace within me was those nights in the countryside listening to my mother tell old stories, the image of my mother's back gently combing her hair amidst the birdsong on the rooftop, the wildflowers blooming innocently, the wisps of smoke swirling around the green bamboo groves… So many small, familiar things that I thought would never disappear, yet are truly priceless.

Source: https://baoquangbinh.vn/van-hoa/202504/dang-hinh-cua-hoa-binh-2225885/