Fate of a Lifetime - A Book by a Special Woman

I call Ms. Nguyen Hac Dam Thu, author of the book "Duyen Tinh Cuoc Doi" (Thuan Hoa Publishing House, 2025), a "special woman", first of all, because very few women who reach the age of 90 still regularly publish books.

The new memoir From the Roots will be released in 2024, and in 2023, the photo book Echoes from Truong Son will record memories of trips to A Luoi with international friends to help revive the land contaminated with Agent Orange...

It is also very special that a young lady from Hanoi has been to A Luoi 8 times in the past few decades. On her trip in 2023, Nguyen Hac Dam Thu revisited the hero Kan Lich and the Pa Co ethnic witnesses of the consequences of Agent Orange that she had met many years ago, including a "little girl" who became her close friend. As a journalist and social activist, she is also close to Lady Borton, an American writer who has been attached to Vietnam since the US embargo.

With the sponsorship of "female general" Ba Dinh (Nguyen Thi Dinh), former President of the Vietnam Women's Union, during the years from 1987 to 1994, together with Lady (whose Vietnamese name is Ut Ly), she had many "three-together" trips in the countryside of the North and the South, helping the American writer complete the book After Sorrow published in New York in 1995. The book, written about courageous Vietnamese women, was very touching, and was reprinted in the US twice, and the Vietnamese version with the name Behind the Sorrow, printed by The Gioi Publishing House, was also reprinted three times.

Cover of the book Fate of Life

PHOTO: NKP

The book "Love Story of Life " by Nguyen Hac Dam Thu is also special in that: in addition to some stories the author told in books published in previous years that have been re-edited, readers have access to the most specific and authentic records of her activities and her love story with Mr. Tran Dang Nghi - a Vietnamese-American engineer who is also very... "special".

The Hanoi lady had a "fate" with Hue because she met Tran Dang Nghi while studying in France. I had a "fate" to know Dam Thu, because this overseas Vietnamese couple was helped by Dr. Nguyen Khac Vien to complete the procedures to participate in the construction of the Fatherland in 1955. Tran Dang Nghi became a Hue citizen by a coincidence of fate. His father was originally from Hanoi, and when he came to Hue to take up a position in the Central region's public works sector, he "fell in love" with a girl in Bao Vinh old town. After the August Revolution, while he was a student at the Hue National School, Tran Dang Nghi volunteered to be a liaison for the Hue Liberation Army. Later, he was arrested and tortured; his father did not want him to follow the path of Tran Dang Dat - his brother who was murdered in Con Dao in 1943, so he sent him to Saigon to study; but that was also the time when the student movement was vibrant after Tran Van On was murdered, so his family sent him to France to study...

At the same time, in Hanoi, Ms. Dam Thu represented the entire Trung Vuong School to receive a distinguished award at the Opera House. She had the opportunity to study literature from a young age because her paternal and maternal families were all scholars. Her father was a first-class pharmacist who graduated in Paris in 1933; her mother was the granddaughter of the Imperial Doctor Nguyen Tu Gian - a high-ranking mandarin who had been close to King Tu Duc for many years and wholeheartedly supported the country's reform activities of Nguyen Truong To, Pham Phu Thu, Bui Vien...

In the heated atmosphere after the August Revolution, Nguyen Hac Dam Thu soon joined the student resistance movement at Trung Vuong School when the French returned to invade Hanoi. She was arrested by French secret police in 1952 while studying in the 2nd Baccalaureate class because they caught a letter she wrote on behalf of the Trung Vuong female students to female military medical students in Viet Bac. They beat and tortured her with electric shock many times, but she only said she was "writing a petition on behalf of others". After several months of detention, unable to subdue the 17-year-old girl, they finally agreed to let her mother bail her out and return home, waiting for the day to complete the court case. Her mother ran around everywhere and was able to send her to France to study. It was thought that the prosperous life in a developed capitalist country could discourage and "isolate" intellectual youth from the patriotic movement; but on the contrary, almost all of them returned home to devote their talents and efforts to the resistance and to building the Fatherland.

They met in France, returned to Vietnam in 1956, he went to the Polytechnic University, she had to continue studying Pedagogy, and they only got married in March 1958, after he followed the rules of a well-educated family, wrote a letter asking permission from his "teachers and aunts" who were then in Saigon; the letter from Hanoi had to go around... Paris before being able to "enter" Saigon! The book, titled "love fate", has passages describing "he and she" being very affectionate with each other in the peaceful nature in front of an ancient pagoda in Ha Dong:

"While serving the food and slicing cucumbers, I chatted away. After eating, I put my arms behind my neck, rested my head and leaned my back against the ancient pine tree, daydreaming, my legs stretched out, feeling very comfortable. It was a summer afternoon, the lotus scent from the clear lake was carried by the wind from the fields, fragrant and fragrant. A few children herding buffaloes were sitting at the foot of the hill. Nghi naturally rested his head on my thigh, leaned back on the plastic sheet, and then said: "Please allow me to put down my pillow and rest for a while...".

That's all. The author added: "...to get married, one must be cautious. During my years in France, I always kept my distance...".

Nguyen Hac Dam Thu only devoted a few dozen pages to her personal love story, and moreover, her "love affairs" with countless people she lived and worked with since her years teaching at the Forestry School, continuously evacuating under American bombs at the center of the "equilateral triangle" whose "vertices" were Hanoi, Lang Son and Hai Phong. By 1972, she became a journalist, rushing to "hot spots" such as Bach Mai Hospital, Kham Thien Street when it was bombed by B-52s. After 1975, especially since transferring to the International Department of the Vietnam Women's Union (in 1980), she was free to "do as much as she could" in her own field, having very special experiences through trips accompanying Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thap and Nguyen Thi Dinh - two respected Chairwomen of the Women's Union, to visit many countries around the world. Thanks to that, she was "selected" to be a collaborator with a number of international organizations to help A Luoi for many years...

When it came to the book "Love and Life", from Ho Chi Minh City, she called me and said: "This is the last book...". But who knows... The lives of people "containing a part of history" like Ms. Nguyen Hac Dam Thu and Mr. Tran Dang Nghi still have many stories that cannot be told.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/duyen-tinh-cuoc-doi-cuon-sach-cua-mot-phu-nu-dac-biet-185251205231904492.htm