Notes

Man Guan Homul. I hadn't understood he wa ying how linky we were to be able to leave by the pics and safest air route available. I would maged that, only a few months later, the way wd be the uncharted one by sea.

The plane mund slowly along the runway, then stopped Sugad been hit by rockets several days before, but 1 mor belie the war was in another country. Even iind air of the plane, I smelled the raw, saturated head of the afternoon, ripe like the overpowering ripeness of has a mango clogged and swollen in its own rorting suice Weathered buildings, even the tall air-traffic-control wowed under their own shadows. But it never oc me dar chings were irremediably wrong or unfix

Idee know the political sexity of the country the shinen when my mother told nu there would be no acadly as 1973, when head not know that a commun victory woo all inevitable and preordained Sood Vietnam had had to sign the Paris Peace Acords un de ciderable American pressure. Nor did I know that the fire had meant that, where the United States changed its prisoners of war with the North and withdrew armed forces from South Vietnam peace vid nor the Americans had called it-North Vietnamese and Vies gmo did not have to withdraw bat could remain p atly in the South, a prelude, it appeared, to the deale of April 30, 1975. My father called the remaining commu mongholds "leopard spots, pockets of enemy attend the heart of the South itself.

But in February 1975, mine was still an unimpaired world in witch my mother's words were the complete truth. Ther were no surprises in that world, at least surprises that rented from precautions not taken. My mother, after all, had dram me so her breast and whispered her assurances in my ear: 1 was coming back in a few weeks, a month or two at the most, and she would bake me éclairs studded with chocolate chunks, and cream puffs drenched in strawberry syrup, and when the durian season was in full-bloom, she would feed me in soft, supple flesh by the spoonful. During my absence, the would feed the birds for me, especially my black merlin, Kiki, that she had taught to talk. Saigon had always gone through sudden changes of mood, and this was simply one of those changes.

Everyone on that Pan Am flight-except me, of course must have understood the big meaning of things choking the Saigon air that afternoon. Thinking back on that Feb-