October, 2008

A Liberation Doctor: Dang Thuy Tram

Mark Chmiel

Last evening I had a conversation with my friend Suzanne, who is a playwright.  I asked about her play, which deals with an Iraq war veteran and if she producing it a second time.  She wondered aloud if the arts could truly speak to such a calamity as war, or are they only able to provide entertainment.  I remembered a passage from one of Kafka’s letters and attempted to reassure her that plays—like books—could, indeed, be what we need precisely at this time:

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? So that it shall makes us happy? Good God, we would also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill-fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.[1]

Recently I have had just such an encounter with a book: Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram. Published in English in 2007, it’s the diary of a young doctor from Hanoi who goes south to support the struggle against the U.S. occupation of South Vietnam in 1967.  In the mountains of central Vietnam, she worked in hospitals and clinics, attending to wounded civilians and the revolutionary fighters.  It’s hard to imagine being faithful to a diary under such excruciating and continually dangerous circumstances.  Yet, throughout these pages, there are brilliant flashes of humanity, humility, compassion, indignation, and tenderness.

Thuy’s parents were doctors, too, and so, she faced the on-going tension of being of bourgeois origin while striving to be accepted by the Communist Party.  A self-aware and committed revolutionary, marked by impressive self-discipline and drive, she nevertheless remained harshly critical of some comrades in her midst:  “Ugly injustices happen all around me every day. There are worms and mites gnawing away within the Party; if those vermin are not eliminated, they will gradually erode the people’s faith and love for the Party.”  [ 21]  Later on, she makes clear her

devotion to the authentic Communist revolutionaries: “Now I understand why people can sacrifice their whole lives for our cause, and how they can remain absolutely faithful to the revolution. The revolution has forged a noble people and bound them into a unit firmer and more solid than anything in this life. Could anything make one prouder than to be part of this family of revolutionaries?” [61][2]

While reading this book,  I thought of so many of my students who are already practicing or going into medicine,  like Nima Sheth, Gina Meyer, Erin Nealon, Beth Schwab, Toria Rendell, Don Lassus, Theresa Drallmeier, Amy Nuismer, and Charity Kaiser. They aspire to be doctors with a strong commitment to justice.  They are not interested in the high status and material comforts often available to U.S. physicians.  Such young people could gain sobering insight on what it might mean to be a “liberation doctor” in the sense that Thuy is a part of a mobilized movement not for social improvements here and there, but for a whole new society.[3]

Thuy’s dedication to the revolution, freedom, and independence are daily tested amid the shock and death of war.  Imagine trying to be a physician in the vicinity of “search and destroy” missions and “mopping up” operations. Imagine the military preponderance of the United States compared to those who live in tunnels and eat manioc and, occasionally, some rice.  Thuy writes, “Death is so near and simple. What makes our lives surge forth so strongly? Is it the love between our people? Is it because the hope for tomorrow still burns in our hearts? Is that it, my beloved comrade?” [185]  Thuy’s heart is broken over and over by the agony see witnesses: “He died with a small notebook in his breast pocket. It held many pictures of a girl with a lovely smile and a letter assuring him of her steely resolution to wait for his return. On his chest, there was a little handkerchief with the embroidered words Waiting for You. Oh, that girl waiting for him!  Your lover will never come back; the mourning veil on your young head will be heavy with pain. It will mark the crimes committed by the imperialist killers and my regret, the regret of a physician who could not save him when there was a chance.” [100]

In Quang Ngai Province Thuy forms deep bonds of affection and solidarity with the people she serves.  She appears to be the kind of person with whom it is easy to fall in love, given the number of men who proclaimed their devotion to her.  However, she is scrupulous about not giving the wrong impression, as she must tell more than one young man that her love is fraternal, not romantic:  “I want you to lead and teach me like a caring brother. It’s just that I don’t want people to think I am an easy girl, one who gives her heart readily, or that I want to have a relationship with high-level officials.” [106] Several years earlier, Thuy had a relationship with an man who left Hanoi to join the resistance in the south.  Referred to as “M.” in the diary, we can see her grappling with longing, loss, anger, and pride.  She doesn’t think they will be reunited to have a normal life together even when the war ends, and so channels her energy toward her sisters and brothers in the struggle for independence, as here: “Late at night, I’m lying next to my comrades. They are sound asleep, their breaths are even. Outside, artillery shells explode all over the sky. Oh, my comrades, we breathe the same air on this fiery, smoky battlefield. Let’s love and care for one another. Death is so close now. Why be jealous and quarrel?” [203]

Thuy is not only moved by love and compassion.  There is something altogether fierce about her.  What will be hard for some Americans to come to terms with is Thuy’s characterization of the U.S. military.   Her diary is sprinkled with such expressions as “bandits” and “devils.” After one successful operation, she reflected: “The bleeding has stopped; the patient’s urine has become clear and normal. A life saved should be a great joy, but somehow I feel apathetic and inadequate before my smiling patient, unmoved by his respectful eyes. It is because I know I have stemmed by one bloodflow while countless others are still bleeding? I must mend all the wounds of our nation. The Americans are upon us like bloodthirsty devils, stealthily sinking their fangs into our bodies. Only when we have chased them all out of Vietnam will our blood stop pouring into the earth.” [47]   How could she not  experience the gamut of extreme emotions living in a cruel context?  She admits that the letters she sends home to her beloved family don’t begin to go into how it really is.  While totally committed to the struggle for victory, she also craves normalcy, which is manifested in a dream: “If only I had wings to fly back to our beautiful house on Lo Duc Street, to eat with Dad, Mom, and my siblings, one simple meal with watercress and one night’s sleep under the old cotton blanket. Last night I dreamed that Peace was established, I came back and saw everybody. Oh, the dream of Peace and Independence has burned in the hearts of thirty million people for so long. For Peace and Independence, we have sacrificed everything. So many people have volunteered to sacrifice their whole lives for two words: Independence and Liberty. I, too, have scarified my life for that grandiose fulfillment.” [27]

In June 1970 while moving her clinic yet again due to increased hostility in the area, Thuy and her companions were shot and killed by American soldiers.  U.S. intelligence Fred Whitehurst was going through the remains to keep what was of military value, the rest to be burned.  A Vietnamese translator urged him not to throw Thuy’s diary into a fire.  Violating military protocol, Whitehurst kept the diary and took it home to the U.S.  Decades later, he figured out a way to return it to Thuy’s family.  It was eventually published in Vietnam and sold phenomenally well.

Many of us have probably never encountered such a stirring piece of writing before of a Vietnamese person whole-heartedly committed to the independence of her people from foreign occupiers. (How many of us—in the present—have read or heard the voices of Iraqis now resisting yet another U.S.—made catastrophe, another U.S. occupation?  We as a people have not truly reckoned with the American War in Vietnam.  How many of us can articulate what the war was about? How many of us know—even roughly—the death toll of the Vietnamese, not simply the 58,000 plus Americans who died there?  How many of us could state with any accuracy parallels between U.S. involvement then in Vietnam and now in Iraq?  Were the Vietnam period brought up in conversation, how many of us might say instinctively,  “Oh, that’s ancient history!”?  How many of us have either forgotten that chapter of our recent past or are totally ignorant of it (as U.S. history  high school classes don’t seem to make it to the Vietnam period before school’s out for summer)? How many of us know or remember what the war must have been like for the Vietnamese? After all, the devastation took place on their land.[4]

While there is a Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington along with the Vietnam Veterans Wall, there is no memorial project addressing our war crimes in and destruction of Vietnam. Irving Greenberg, a Jewish theologian whom I first read in the 1980s, once wrote about those who testified about the Holocaust:   “The Scriptures of the new era are hidden.  They do not present themselves as Scripture but as history, fact, and sometimes, as anti-Scripture.  …They are the accounts that tell and retell the event, draw its conclusions and orient the living.  In the Warsaw Ghetto, Chaim Kaplan wrote in his journal:  ‘I will write a scroll of agony in order to remember the past in the future.’”[5]

Dang Thuy Tram’s diary is such a scripture, a scroll of agony and passion that has the power four decades later to orient us in the present, which means making ourselves accountable to our past and our present.

16 September 2008

Dr. C,

Hello! Hope this email finds you well. Classes must be well on its way and I am sure you are enlightening many other students like myself as we speak. I’ve wanted to write you this email ever since I read the first chapters of your book about Mev. But I opted to wait until the end to write it. I picked an interesting time to read the book – a time of many changes. I first begin reading it while still in training, where I was constantly surrounded by 35 other Americans, either complaining or lamenting aspects of our lives. Just as I started to lose sight of the real reasons that I am here in Africa, your words reminded me. The “bubble” that you often mentioned in our classes still exists even here in the Peace Corps. It’s easy to surround myself with other Americans (or Chinese) and not step out of my comfort zone to “be with the people”. I thought I had burst the comfort bubble when I boarded that plane for Africa in June. Even just over these few months, I have learned that bubbles and comfort zone will always exist and one has to constantly fight hard to not be in it.

Thank you for sharing your stories with me. Not simply stories of Mev’s great work in the world, but stories of your love. Weeks ago, I was feeling lonely and thought to myself if I will ever have the “normal” relationship that others have due to the nature of my work and my goal to live in all continents minus Antarctica. Then I read your stories and know it can still happen. It took me a while to get through the book since lots were happening in my life. But last night, I picked it up again and began reading Part II and finished the book in a night.

It made me thinking about life and I can further understand the importance to live in the “present”. You just never know. I needed this inspiration as I am experiencing an interesting time as a Peace Corps volunteer – the first three months at post. Granted I still have yet spent a night alone since my friend Kate is having difficulty getting her house ready. But even so, I am experiencing a sudden loss of direction. I went from sleeping 4 hours a night to waking up without an alarm everyday. My French is better, but not great, so I struggle to really do much in my community.

However, round II is proving to be an excellent decision despite previous doubts. I haven’t felt so “Chinese” in a decade, thanks to the great Chinese community I stumbled upon here. Not sure how much of my blog you have been following, so I won’t repeat the stories here. I realized I have been making a clock-wise around the tour of the world, and the natural next step is going back to Asia, experiencing China. Things thus far haven’t been what I was expecting, but then I didn’t come into this with much expectation. Yesterday, I received news of Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy and I thought of our chats at Starbucks. I have friends whose life has been turned upside down this weekend because they lost their fancy jobs on Wall Street. I am glad I wasn’t among them and I am happy doing what I love in Africa. Again, you just never know. Even the “safe” option isn’t so safe. My friend said in an email, “I should have joined the Peace Corps, at least they don’t fire volunteers.”

I feel I could ramble on forever. I miss our chats. Hope you are well and thank you for continue teaching the others like me not only about social justice, about liberation theology, but simply about life, about following one’s heart and stepping out of comfort zone.

Future correspondences to come.

Peace and love,

Wendy

Wendy Lee is a Peace Corps Volunteer in Small Enterprise Development in Cameroon. She took Social Justice at SLU in spring 2008.