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and inform the authorities. No one could be trusted and everyone wanted to appear to be supporters of the new Communist officials so betrayal by neighbours was not uncommon. Her two sisters held her tightly, sobbing violently into their hands cupped against their mouths in the pitch-dark. There was no way of knowing whether the group would survive the journey ahead of them. My mother’s lips trembled.
    The next day, they left the only world they had ever known, uncertain of when and if they would ever return. The carnage, trauma and pain of the journey would be inconceivable.

    It was late in the afternoon during the wet season. The rice crop was almost ready to be harvested. It was unsafe to travel all together, especially with a woman and baby. At the time, most of the refugees, particularly those who travelled by foot, were men who left alone. My father took his nephew, Hi, and my mother’s brother, Hng Khanh – both fifteen – to the Mc Bài border crossing. Posing as merchants, they arranged for bicycle taxis to take them to the Cambodia border town of Bavet. Traders frequently crossed the border, and they were not questioned. They stayed overnight in Bavet with a smuggler, waiting for my mother.
    Late that night, my mother, holding her baby, moved through the rice fields which lined the road to and beyond the border. She was accompanied by one of the men Mr Thad contracted. It was rough terrain, often with no clear path. The border was heavily guarded with armed guerrillas on both sides. Close to the border, my mother tripped and fell into a small ditch. Immediately she clamped her hand across my brother Văn’s face as he struggled to cry out.
    Someone yelled into the darkness. ‘Who’s that?! Who’s there?!’ Bang, bang, bang . The frighteningly rapid thunder of gunshots punctured the air. Paralysed with fear, they huddled in silence, my mother trying to soothe her baby. Strangely and fortunately, as if aware of the danger they were in, Văn was quickly compliant and placid, like an old man with deep knowing trapped inside a baby’s body. They stayed crouched in the vast and empty rice fields for a long time until the night was silent once more. Eventually they continued walking, arriving scared but safe in Bavet, at a small hiding spot where they met up with my father. The next day, my mother’s father crossed the border on a motorbike and met them to say goodbye to his first daughter and youngest son one last time. My grandfather looked long and hard at his son. He observed with pride that Hng Khanh was tall, highly intelligent and mature for his age. He was sure to survive the journey, he thought. He did not know that this was to be the last time they would ever see each other.
    Led by the smuggler, the small group made their way to a large provincial town where they took a ferry across the Mekong River to the busy city of Neak Luong on the other side. They boarded the ferry together with motorbikes, trucks, bicycles, beggars and animals. Once on the other side, they went into hiding, waiting for the smugglers who would take them on the next stage of the journey to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. In the late afternoons, my father would walk by the river, watching as people washed and small children played in naked innocence, oblivious to the monstrous atrocities plaguing their country. One afternoon my father found a French dictionary, titled Larousse , discarded on the side of the road. He found it so strange that it lay there so passively, so unwontedly. Something that he would have nurtured like a sacred relic. He quickly picked it up and took it back to their hiding spot. Inside the book was a map of Cambodia. As he studied it, he realised how far away from the Thai border they were. The realisation devastated him. But, he reminded himself, when they’d made the decision to leave Cambodia, they had knowingly chosen to risk death rather than face what life held for them in Vietnam. Despite the