There are times when I think God becomes very obvious in the way he tries to teach me a lesson.

In 1984-ten years after the mortar attack on my sister Gam's house that killed her, my niece Linh, and my nephew Ty-I was working at a volunteer agency helping newly arrived refugees and immigrants from South East Asia, Europe, and South America find work. It was at this job that I was, I believe, receiving a lesson from God.

One day, around noontime when I was finishing up some paperwork and about to go to lunch, a Cambodian coworker of mine asked me to help him with a client who didn't speak Cambodian very well, but was very fluent in Vietnamese. He then brought in a family consisting of a man and a woman who was carrying a baby.

My first impression of the man was that he looked Vietnamese. He was tall, skinny, dark-skinned, about 30 years old, and appeared a little anxious under his big coat. The woman, who he introduced as his wife, was 10 years younger than he was and also looked more Vietnamese than Cambodian. She had characteristics showing she came from the southern part of Vietnam, and her cheerful and open demeanor probably meant that she spent most of her life in a village. I asked him, "Are you Vietnamese?"

"Yes."

"Where in Vietnam?"

"Bien Hoa."

Bien Hoa was the town where my sister had lived.

"Really. I wasn't from Bien Hoa, but I've got a few friends from there."

He appeared more relaxed. He looked at me, gave a faint smile, and said, "My family was from Tan Mai, near the lumber processing plant."

"What brought you to Cambodia? Were you in the military? Why a Cambodian name? Why do you have a Cambodian citizenship?"

He appeared uncomfortable with my questions, and it was a few moments before he spoke again. It was evident that he now wanted to be very careful with his words. The woman then broke into the conversation, saying enthusiastically, "He volunteered for it, sir!"

There was a note of mockery in her voice, as if her husband's trip to Cambodia were something to ridicule.

The man reacted to her answer by waving his hand like he was brushing away his wife's statement from the air. He wanted to do the talking, so he sat up straight in his chair and began telling me his story.

His journey to Cambodia was part of a strategic plan instigated by the current Vietnamese Communist government to infiltrate Cambodia and take power. Though installing political stooges was easy, eventually such an insidious takeover would draw the attention of the international community. What they needed to do was seed the entire country with Vietnamese Communist agents who would then marry Cambodian women, try to become community leaders or village heads, and extend the control of Hanoi to hamlets and villages. This enabled the Vietnamese Communist to maintain power under the pretense of free elections(as may be required by the United Nations in the future) by ensuring that candidates for national office, picked or endorsed by these local leaders, would always be Hanoi lackeys.

The men chosen for this low level assimilation of Cambodia were picked from citizens of South Vietnam who allied with the North during the war, or from guerrillas like him, SauBe, who made up the "Southern Liberation Front." SauBe was among the first male volunteers to enter the country. To become Cambodian, he changed his name from Nguyen van Be AKA SauBe to Vue Seoun.

After the fall of Saigon, the "South Vietnam Liberation Front" disbanded. Some members of this group were given nominal positions of authority by Hanoi, but most had to find their own way among civilian society. To this latter group, the migration to Cambodia masterminded by Hanoi was a timely event and a great opportunity to live a profitable and luxurious life in a promising land. To a lowly former guerilla like SauBe, it made the future quite hopeful. Imagining a Cambodian woman waiting for him on the other side of the border, he volunteered immediately!

In the beginning, it went very well for SauBe. The plan fell right into place. After 2 months of working as an assistant to the head of the hamlet, SauBe advanced to hamlet chief. In three months, he was village chief. The political future of a village chief was wide open.

SauBe then met KimHuong, his future wife!

KimHuong was not a Cambodian native. She was the daughter of a Vietnamese merchant who lived in Cambodia. She survived the killing atrocities of the Khmer Rouge thanks to smart decisions on the part of her father. Shortly before the massacres took place in Cambodia, her father moved his wife, his two daughters, and his youngest son back to ChauDoc, Vietnam. During the massacre, KimHuong's father was beheaded, and his oldest son who stayed with him in Cambodia was taken away and never heard from again. After the Vietnamese Communist Army took over the Cambodian military and re-established peace, KimHuong and her mother and siblings returned to Cambodia. Their business was partially destroyed but still there. They slowly began rebuilding it.

Vue Seoun, now the village chief, fell in love and married Kim Huong. But in marrying a Vietnamese woman, Vue Seoun violated the policies of his big boss in Vietnam.

SauBe told me he thought it was really his wife's good looks that got him into trouble, and not the marriage itself.

KimHuong's was admired for her beauty by many soldiers, both Vietnamese and Cambodians. "They were envious," SauBe told me gleefully, and KimHuong gave an embarrassed smile when he said this.

Losing KimHuong to Vue Seoun made many soldiers upset, and they conspired to remove him from office. They began accusing him of not following policy, being corrupt, and demoralizing the people in general...

Vue Seoun saw that things were becoming dangerous. Life imprisonment or even getting beheaded became a possibility for him. He decided to flee from the country with his now five months pregnant wife by walking to Thailand. From the moment they arrived in the Thai refugee camp until their landing in America, they claimed to be Cambodian. It helped that the documentation they carried identified them as Cambodian.

SauBe's life was very interesting, but what I really wanted to know was his guerilla activities near Bien Hoa. I asked him, "When you were in Bien Hoa, did you kill a lot of people?"

"Almost never. We were lowly grunts. Huh! Never in the battlefield. The Northern Communist supplied us with some rocket launchers, some small arms...our tactic was to give a quick rocket attack on the military bases secretly at night, then quickly get the hell out and back into the woods. We never fought hand to hand, face to face."

To show him our history of being on opposite sides didn't bother me, I asked jokingly, "Did you destroy a lot of Nguy soldiers'(Nguy is the slang word the Viet Cong used for the South Vietnamese soldiers)?"

"None, most of the rocket mortars we shot missed the bases and strayed into the city!"

"How did you know?"

"From radio reports."

SauBe then gave a lengthy explanation of why most of the intended military targets were missed. He said, "Each team consisted of two men. We would shoot 3 mortars at most, then quickly withdraw into our wilderness hideouts before enemy choppers came. You know, the choppers were really fast, and we also worried about counter attacks. We usually synchronized our attacks and retreats, but you know watches never tell the same time, and this prevented coordination between teams. Sometimes, my team barely had time to deploy the mortar base when the other groups had already fired their salvos, or vice versa! All we could do in those instances was to shoot erratically without concern for the target and then get our asses out of there..."

I finished the interview around 12:30 in the afternoon. I was about to let them go when Bob, the liaison between our office and the factories in the area, came into my office to announce some good news.

He said, "There are 9 full-time openings at the picture-frame factory F-W, on Miramar, and our allotment is 4 slots. They don't require English."

After hearing my translation, SauBe said, "I can do it. I know some carpentry."

His wife objected, "Take it easy, I want you to learn some English first."

"But it bores me to death doing nothing."

She turned toward me and said, "I am afraid the work in that plant is too heavy for him. He gets sick quite often. His left foot was half destroyed by a land mine, and the muscle is gone. There is a big scar."

SauBe waved his hand dismissing the injury. He said to his wife, "What do you know about American factories? They're not like in Vietnam. Making picture frames? I can easily manage that."

I asked SauBe, looking at his legs, "Where did you get hit? When did it happen?"

SauBe gingerly pulled up his pant leg and showed the scar. "He stepped on a land mine planted by his own troops," his wife interjected. Her voice again had a note of mockery similar to when she said "He volunteered for it...".

I invited them to lunch. They declined. The wife opened her handbag and took out a package of cooked sweet rice that filled the room with its tasty aroma. She explained, "His stomach is pretty messed up, and this kind of food is easy for him."

After lunch, we got into Bob's car to go to the factory for an interview. KimHuong asked to go along, but we had to refuse since Bob's car didn't have a baby seat. She kept saying to me, "Please, if you think the work is too hard, please don't let him do it. He is a pig-headed guy, always doing things his own way. I don't want him to work too hard and get sick."

When we got in Bob's car, the irony of the situation reached its peak. I couldn't help but suspect SauBe as being the bomber of my sister Gam's house. And here he was, relaxing in the back seat of the car, while I, the older brother of possibly one of his victims, a former South Vietnamese army officer, now an employment counselor, sat in the front. And Bob, a Vietnam Vet, was driving. The situation was incredible. An American Veteran and a Vietnamese Veteran taking a former Vietnamese Guerilla to a job interview in America. It was truly laughable.

Dear James Keeran,

I believe SauBe was the one who pulled the trigger that launched the rocket destroying my sister's house, simply because I believe God wanted to give a stubborn skeptic like me an eye-opening lesson.

Why me and for what reason? I kept thinking about the way events have played out. The chain of seemingly unconnected incidents that led SauBe from Vietnam to Cambodia to Thailand to America, and finally to my interviewing desk in an employment consulting office. What was God's intention? Did He want to test my tolerance, my compassion, my perseverance? Or did He want to see me seek revenge by jumping across the table and strangling SauBe with my own hands? I am sorry, God, but that won't happen. The worst I would've done during that interview with SauBe was not to help him find a decent job.

During the last ten years, I kept thinking about the destruction of my sister's house. I don't blame the one who actually put his finger on the trigger. I knew well the names of the real culprits of the Vietnam war. SauBe was actually only a wheel of the car involved in the accident, not the driver.

As I said in the beginning of this letter, I would never be able to figure out what God had wanted from me. But I should thank Him for the unique and ironic encounter on that day. I believe God gave me special treatment by giving me that unforgettable experience.

This feeling I carried with me for 11 years until July 2nd, 1995, at noon in Normal Illinois.

As you well know, it was the big get-together. The pot-luck took place in the backyard of Dr. Wainscott's house, where all the sponsor families and the families of the refugees who relocated in Normal-Bloomington gathered to celebrate and commemorate our 20th anniversary.

Mr. Keeran, you came to interview me on that afternoon for a story in the Pantagraph. After 2 decades, my wife and I have made some remarkable improvements haven't we? We no longer need a translator, and I was able to converse with you better in English with my mouth rather than my hands!

Then we all went to Dr. Wainscott's backyard to be photographed by Steve Smedley.

At that moment, while we were waiting for photographer Smedley to prepare the equipment, I spotted Ms. Thuy sipping beer and talking to an American about 40 years old whose name I don't remember. Under the shade of a big maple tree, they chatted as if they were long lost friends!

Observing that friendly scene, I was amazed and stunned. It reminded me of the strange meeting between me and SauBe a decade ago.

Let me brief you about Ms. Thuy. She was not one of the original refugees who resettled here in 1975. She wasn't even among the mass who fled Saigon in 1975. She came to the free world nearly a quarter century after my family.

After the Geneva convention, she somehow remained stuck in North Vietnam with the communist government. The rest of her family went to the South in 1954 during the first exodus. Being a young and enthusiastic high minded girl, she was considered by Hanoi to be a member of an elite group. She was specially selected to be an integral member of the expansion machinery assembled by the Hanoi Politburo. By the end of the 70s, she became aware of the hideous truth about communism. Politically disillusioned and with her conscience awakened, she decided to flee with her two children to the free world.

Destiny brought her here to be among us. The five of us, you, photographer Smedley, the American friend, Ms. Thuy and I, all convened in a group, socializing with each other in a circle of friendship less than 20 feet in diameter.

Imagine how this social coterie would change in a different place and time. Let's go back 20 years and make the date July 1st, 1974 instead of July 2nd, 1995, and the place a spot somewhere in the middle of a jungle in Vietnam instead of Dr. Wainscott's backyard. What would happen to the five of us? I strongly suspect that we would be fighting! And I guess the survivors would be the ones who had the quickest draw. Ms. Thuy would fire a machine gun at me and the American. Photographer Smedley and you, reporter Keeran, would turn into wartime correspondents snapping pictures to bring back to the U.S. for public display so that Americans could see the brutality and horror of the war in Vietnam.

There would never be any friendly conversation or smiling faces if we were placed in such circumstances!

The same thing would have happened between SauBe and me and Bob, the liaison. If instead of meeting each other inside an employment consulting office in San Diego in 1984, we were somehow transferred back in space and time to a jungle in Vietnam near Bien Hoa, in 1974, when the war was still raging, there would be no job hunting, no friendly interviewing. It would be replaced with shooting, killing, and running for one's life.

The Americans call these fateful events "being in the wrong place at the wrong time". Dear James Keeran,

After the party, the strange feeling from the encounter between me and SauBe has gradually begun to disappear. The meaning and impact are gone, becoming just another coincidence between two people. The peculiar feeling I was someone special who was singled out by God has also left.

The only thing that bothers me now is that I am still have doubts about God's plan. If things happen due to chance, then there is no need to be concerned. If things happen for a reason, then it is a shame not trying to find out the purpose behind it all. I can only guess that God perhaps wants to teach me 2 moral lessons:

First, He hints that this land is the land of opportunity, "the right place at the right time". Secondly, God warns me not to meddle with things, to be careful in my daily life since my careless interference with the natural course of life can make things the "wrong place at the wrong time".

That is just my guess. Who am I but a talentless guy, what can I do to really change society and save the world? Another thing I know is that this land is the land of milk and honey, so why does God bother teaching me all these things?

Having been born in a war torn country, I certainly do not need a lesson in peace loving.

I always dreamed that every parcel of land in my country is as peaceful as Dr. Wainscott's backyard. All I wish to hear is the sound of laughter and the noise of picnic goers talking to each other, the noise of social gatherings between friends or relatives.

At a different time, before 1975, I would have no choice but to fight, in order to maintain freedom in my country. I would have had to make it "the wrong place at the wrong time" for Ms. Thuy and her northern comrades with my M-16. I would have no other choice but to destroy my enemies in order to save my remaining piece of precious free land...

Ms. Thuy, on the other hand, is not to be blamed for what she did before 1975. She was brainwashed into believing that her war against the South Vietnamese was for the ultimate freedom and unification of her country against American imperialism, as told to her by a bearded old man in Hanoi. This old man, in turn, was himself brainwashed by another fanatic old man in Russia.

I think God should have taught those old men some lessons, especially the old codger who promised the world heaven on earth where everybody shares everything equally.

At least, God should have equipped the free world with an ability to detect and fend off any propaganda by those instigators who have the ability to stir up the emotions of millions of people with their speeches, but in the end, only cause destruction and plenty of incidents where people are in "the wrong place at the wrong time."

Like what happened in Vietnam more than 20 years ago.

Now I am afraid I have gone too far in guessing God's overall scheme, blaming His method using my own human subjective point of view.

How do I know that what I want parallels what God wants? Does God want to see every place on earth be just as happy as the backyard of Dr. Wainscott like I do? I am afraid I was wrong in my assumption since the beginning of this story. I simply cannot measure the mind of God using a human yardstick.

And maybe the messages and lessons from these strange incidents were, after all, the products of my imagination, created in the mind of a guy who thought he was important enough to get the attention of God. It could just be pure chance that things happen. Like some natural phenomenon.

• Chapter 10

• Back to Main.