My Grandfather, the Refugee
Tết, or the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, is my favorite holiday. Usually decked head to toe in red for good luck and stuffing my face with traditional dishes like bánh chưng and thịt kho, it’s a time for families and loved ones to come together and celebrate the incoming new year.
This year, however, I don’t find myself in a celebratory mood. Instead, I find myself thinking of my Ông, or grandfather, the Vietnam War and the journey my family took that brought them to the United States in 1975. Most of all, I think of the parallels between the falls of Saigon and Aleppo, and the differences there are between the experiences of the refugees from 40 years ago and the refugees of today.
In 1975, my Ông was Hameed Khalid Darweesh.
Like Darweesh, he placed morality and honor over country and collaborated with the American government during the Vietnam War to fight a communist regime.
Like Darweesh, he risked everything, including his own life, to help American troops.
And when the fall of Saigon came, like Darweesh, he looked to America like a shining beacon of protection against what was most likely going to be imprisonment and death for himself and his family.
Despite the similarities between their lives, this is where they end.
Unlike Darweesh, Ông was welcomed onto U.S. soil by the American government as part of a refugee aid program.
Unlike Darweesh, he, my grandmother, my aunts, my uncles, my mother were not locked away in the back rooms of airport for hours on end wondering when, or if, they would ever be released.
And, unlike Darweesh, he was able to re-settle his family’s roots and home in Northern California, where he lived until his death in 2010.
More than four decades later, the experiences of Ông, my family and of so many other members of the Vietnamese diaspora have all but been forgotten — but that isn’t for lack of trying. Oftentimes, the subject of the Vietnam War and their past as refugees is met with tense silence, like not talking about it will ultimately erase the pain. A cathartic tabula rasa that builds off of the phrase “out of sight, out of mind.”
Today, this silence is deafening.
Frankly, I am heartbroken and angered by the lack of solidarity from the Vietnamese community during what is undoubtedly a time that will define what happens to this country that so many of us call home. There is no difference between us 40 years ago and them today other than the color of the skin and their religion. And to say that those affected by the Muslim Ban should simply wait their turn like you did after the fall of Saigon, is a failure to recognize your privilege.
So, to my fellow Vietnamese Americans, check your privilege. Realize that the experiences of our parents and of ourselves are not different from those of the Syrian, the Somalian, the Afghani, the Libyan, the Yemeni, the Iraqi, the Iranian and the Sudanese.
Use the voice your privilege grants you to speak out, protest and fight this executive order, which has deprived the sick, the elderly, children, families, and those seeking refuge basic human rights. Now is not the time to be silent or to keep your nose down as you go about your business. In this day and age, your silence is your compliance to what can only be described as a neo-fascist regime, and if that is what you want to do, why did you fight so hard to leave Vietnam in 1975, anyways?
