A short story by Ngan Nguyen.

The rain patters steadily against the window. His mind travels back to the day when the storm poured water on the village for two consecutive days. He and his father squeezed themselves onto the bed. Later his father glared at the immense grey water, the boy sailed a bamboo boat with a purple paper sail.

‘Don’t lean forward. You can drown.’

His father held him back then stretched his long arm to retrieve the boat. The boy had a surge of strange warmth.

‘Do you still hear me?’ The Vietnamese interpreter interrupted his comforting memory. Her Vietnamese accent has not yet been influenced by Scots. ‘Bạn ơi, why did you leave school at fourteen?’ She continues with ‘Hey, friend.’ Her gentle voice brings him to tears; nobody has called him ‘bạn ơi’ since he left Vietnam.

He rummages through his memory. That afternoon his mother picked wild vegetables. Seeing a hole by the bank she thought of crab soup. She put her hand in the hole, a sharp pain made her withdraw it and fall back in the mud. Without knowing which snake she carried on picking vegetables. Later his father found her in the hammock with a purple, swollen arm. She died on the way to the hospital; just thirty when she left her six-year-old child. His father started drinking and gambling. The boy hated rainy days when the men came to his house. He had to go to the market to buy alcohol and cook pig’s guts. He was scared of his father’s beating if he refused and ashamed of buying things with debt. After preparing food, he went to the garden to play with crickets. The noise from the men laughing and screaming as someone lost made him wish he could grow up promptly and leave this house. Many times he walked to the highway. He glared at the traffic; swiftly passing cars, lorries, coaches and motorbikes. The noise made his heart beat faster. He quickly ran home.

One day, after school, he joined a group of boys playing football on the abandoned field. Not until sunset spread its pale orange silk on the sky did they hurry home. He noticed two red Hondas parked by the gate. He stopped dead after hearing a strange noise. He hid behind tall hibiscus and watched a man dragging his father from the house. While his father begged that stranger kept kicking him. A mix of hate and fear overwhelmed the boy.

‘Tôi cắn rơm cắn cỏ lạy anh.’

His father was begging, wishing that he could bite straw and grass, and pray to the man for time to pay his gambling debt. A tiger tattoo decorated the stranger’s right arm. The stub of cigarette clenched between his lips made a sound like a tough wind.

‘Who would believe a gambler and alcoholic like you?’ The man then kicked his father’s back making him fall flat on his face. 

Two men carried the bed frame on its side to get through the door. The boy withdrew further into the hibiscus like a snail into its shell, holding his breath and watching. He waited till his father went inside. Darkness slowly embraced his house like a tomb.

‘What the hell did you do today coming home at this time?’

His father jumps at him and slashes his son with his belt. The boy covers his head with his hands, crying in pain, ‘Dad, don’t hit me.’ His father lurked by the dimly lit door. The boy stopped crying and hid in a corner. His father walked around like a blind animal, slashing his belt in the air.

‘Damn! Where are you?’

The boy crawled on his hands and knees across the floor, then quick as lightning dashed through the door towards the path, kicking the neighbour’s dog as it kept barking.

That night he slept in the hole in the banyan tree at the edge of the village. This hidden den let him crawl into a ball and avoid the wind. He woke to the noise of chatting farmers, and buffaloes going to the fields. The sun half appeared above the hill, spreading its bright halo. When he entered the house, his father lay on the mattress like a beggar in rags. The boy shivered imagining his similar future.

Nothing was edible in the kitchen. The scratching noise from his stomach urged him to thrust clumsy hands into the soil searching for sweet potatoes. With trembling fingers he found one, wiping off the soil first with his hands then with his t-shirt. After a first bite, a mixture of gentle sweetness and bitterness lingered on his tongue. He was glad to find more, hurriedly washing then boiling them. After a quick shower he went to his friend’s house.

‘As I was running an errand for my Dad, I went to your house to return the bike. Your father told me that I must stop hanging out with you as you were leaving school to work. What will you do?’

He bit his tongue for a second. ‘Maybe he can get a job for me.’

Once home, he saw his father sitting on the step peeling sweet potatoes. ‘Where’s my bicycle, Dad?’

‘I sold it.’

‘Where’s it now?’ The boy was surprised at his own angry voice.

‘Don’t talk to me like that! I sold it to my friend.’

‘Whoever bought my bike isn’t your friend. Do you think all those drinkers and gamblers are your friends?’

‘Shut up and leave me alone.’

About to explode and with bitter tears rolling down his cheeks, the boy glared at his dad.

         Working as a brick carrier, forty five days straight, to build a four-storey house almost broke his back. On his second resting day, he is woken by the noise of heavy boots. Slowly opening his eyes, he wipes away the crust, taking a moment to realise that the men who took his bed are standing in the middle of his house.

‘Get up, you bastards! You owe my boss too much money. You guys must work for us to pay your debt.’

He could grab only clothes and toiletries to put in a small rucksack.

‘Where are you taking us?’ He tried to hide his fear.

‘Shut up!’ The man removed a knife from the leather sheath on his calf and placed it on the boy’s cheek. The strange coldness made the boy shiver and the man burst out laughing, ‘He’s going to pee himself.’

His father sat quietly beside him in the van. With the door closed, darkness like a shroud made him think of a coffin and chilled him to the bone.

‘Where are they taking us Dad?’

‘No idea.’

‘ What will happen if they plan to sell our organs?’

He shivered and tried to close his eyes but could not sleep. His father was quiet as a mouse. It was a long journey. They were in the middle of nowhere surrounded by forests. They used a tarpaulin to build a shelter, mosquitoes attacked him and the forest was cold. He curled into a ball close to his father to get warm. The men prepared tinned food which barely eased their hunger. After two days, strangers put him in a navy blue car, his father in a green one. His father avoided his son’s look.

‘You had to work in a Chinese factory without protective equipment cataloguing toxic items to pay your dad’s debt. You were beaten twice when you tried to escape. Is this correct?’ The interpreter asks.

‘Yes.’ He answers softly.

He feels as though his skin is being peeled off layer after layer till only his shame is left. He wants to forget Russia and the room with the unreachable small window where he was forced to have sex with a stranger. He washed himself repeatedly till his skin threatened to peel. The thought of AIDS made him vomit. Sitting, back against the wall, he tightened a trouser leg around his neck making himself choke.

That interpreter mentions the boat so often that he has to cover his mouth as the seasickness returns. He can smell the sea. After hours at sea, the boat reached land. Black guys covered his head, pushed him into a car drove for hours then shoved him into a warehouse. He hated the unbearable odour of cannabis plants. Day did not exist. The artificial light made everything surreal, as though in a dream. One day, he used the secateurs to cut a hole in the tarpaulin. He panicked when light hit his eyes. He glimpsed his surroundings which looked like an abandoned factory.

‘How dare you?’ The men rushed to kick him.

He felt out of breath and each inch of his body hurt. They chained his leg to the radiator and left him without food and water. He woke terribly thirsty but thrilled to see a hammer they had forgotten to put away. Hammering broke the chain, he let out a yell. With a knife from the kitchen, he cut the tarpaulin, shielded his eyes, then threw down the mattress and blanket and climbed out. Finally he took a deep breath and dropped. The jump was painful but no broken bones or sprained ankle. He dragged his leg with the chain until he reached the road. The wind made him tremble. Hunger slowed him, every part of his body ached. It could be hours till he reached a village. His heart leapt when he saw a policeman leaving a post office. Rushing to the shop, he cried uncontrollably before answering the policeman.

         He lost count of time in the detention centre. Outside there is only the ink veil of the sky. He barely notices his food. His brain is a dense fog and he cannot remember the last time he had a Vietnamese meal. His asylum application was rejected. His victim of human trafficking application has been granted. Many Vietnamese people reach other countries through real or fake marriage. People born with intelligence and luck find ways to study abroad with scholarships or their parents’ money. People like him are begging for a better life; a new kind of boat people with roots in the thousands of years of bloody battles fought by foreigners in Vietnam. He does not have the heart to make things up regarding gender or religion to improve the status of his asylum application. Life has been bitter for him. Does he need to add more trouble?

Time freezes in the detention centre. His nightmares return. Sometimes he wakes around two in the dark room, gasping for air. He sees vividly in his dream that he is marching in the forest with some guys. They walked from Russia to France in just over a month. He prayed silently every hour ‘Please Sky, do not let me die’ till he believed that he was a devoted religious follower. He bit his nails till they bled, trying to calm himself and bring back reality. ‘Please Sky, let me die of a heart attack now.’

A member of staff takes him to the Glasgow Sheriff court. As he leans out of the car, rain slaps his face and crystal air rushes into his nostrils. He greets his solicitor and interpreter. The screeching door captures attention. The judge walks towards his chair. Outside the window two rainbows glisten in the sunlight. At that very moment something enters his mind.

Double rainbows are shining brightly

What marvelous light bridges I can see

Above the court, outside the trees

Why are birds free but not me?

‘You arrived illegally in the UK on the twelfth of September 2023, and worked at a cannabis farm in Glasgow from the fourteenth September 2023 till the ninth of June 2024…..

Ngan Nguyen is a Vietnamese-born author who writes both stories and poetry, currently living in the UK. Her short stories have been published in Vietnam, Scotland and Singapore. She received her Mlitt in Creative Writing from the University of Aberdeen and the 2021 Mentoring award from the Wigtown book festival.