Stories
Extracting Memories by Đỗ Tường Linh and D J Clark Waiting for the train he fiddles with a lighter as he recalls his past, “When I was growing up my father was killed in the Vietnam war. After my father died the Vietnamese government sent me to a special school to be trained in a unit of the Vietnamese army. In 1987 I was sent to Cambodia as a soldier.” Hoang fought for three years in the struggle to over throw Pol Pot, witnessing the atrocities of a brutal dictatorship. However once the new Cambodian government was installed he found himself in no man’s land, not trusted by either the Cambodians or the Vietnamese. He escaped to Thailand where he ended up in a refugee camp and there he waited for five years with no work, no home, only memories. Finally he was allowed back to Vietnam. “This was an important turning point in my life. At that time I wandered around not knowing what to do, then I met the greatest teacher in my life, a poet named Bang Si Nguyen. So I told him everything about my life, my history and he replied in a few words I remember until now "you are not Cambodian and not Vietnamese, you are an artist this is your motherland.” So I went to the fine art school at 42 Yet Kieu street and after four years of failing the entrance exam I finally got in.” Hoang learnt to paint and later created his own works in which he traveled back in time to re-live his troubled past on the blank canvas he placed in front of him. He extracted his memories and as they came out so his life began to change. He fell in love, married and had a daughter. He also started to gain attention in Hanoi’s buzzing art world. Within his bright colored brush strokes contained meaningful memories and yet his journey has only just begun. Hoang is now returning to Cambodia as a very different man to when he left. |