Harsimran Kaur ON  June 05, 2023, IN BOOK REVIEW, DUST CHILD By Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai-FICTION

Rating: 5/5

hey say I belong everywhere; to the glaring Sun that creeps inside to make understand the magnanimity of tolerance, to the vanishing clouds playing the dilemma of hiding and retrieval; to the protuberant Moon lying on the field of astronomical barriers like a slippery slope fallacy, and to the plains, plateaus, mountains and every creation that boasts of consanguinity and depravity. 

“I now belong nowhere”, Phong teases himself. Carrying a colossal baggage of the past, his identity remains a pebble thrown in the long grass; a dust nobody would like to press on, unequivocally licked by the soul of the shoe. Foolhardy to grab any recluse from the inner turmoil and knackered by innuendos to mortify his very existence, Phong is adamant to mirror himself to his true identity. A mix of Vietnamese mother and a Black American father, he harrumphs at his distasteful upbringing like the ‘bending of a tree’ falling in a skirmish with the dried roots, the rotten foliage and the weak-bony branches. He tirelessly calls out, ‘What is abysmal to the world is the other’s soul trying to heal amidst a labyrinth of contumely.’

‘We belong somewhere else’, say the undiluted voices of Trang and Quynh. The rosary of life has abandoned them and they seek a refuge where their indigent perusals are no longer a visceral hatred. Thus, begins their journey from the village to the ebullient streets of ‘Sai Gon’—an unflavored irony that clutches them fervently for life. The sisters charm men, the American War Fighters, ingratiate them to sustain life who in turn are tempering with their own loss left by the war’s emotional ricocheting. They are bar girls who have left the rice fields and joined the prostitution bandwagon to call off the debts that has embroiled their families, but all this comes at a cost—so heavy that it questions the perspicaciousness of love and belonging.

‘Do I really belong to my present’, an underserving coiled truth emanates from Dan. The handsome American helicopter pilot, Dan is left with a memory from the Vietnam War so brutal that he and his wife decide to visit the war city again. It’s been forty odd years, a secret hidden obstreperously in his heart which he feels needs to be disinterred to give his soul a penultimate belonging.

‘Dust Child’ by Nguyễn Phan Quế Maibrings all these characters together through their own longing to find something; a moribund plea to regain conscious of misbegotten actions, and a prospering descent to understand what all is lost adds up to our present. It then defines who we are and what envelopes us, traversing us unconsciously to where we belong.

In the midst of these connections, one meets dystopic minds sneering at miscegenation prevalent during the Vietnam War. Babies born out of wedlock with mixed breeds brushed with calumny of impertinence and labeled as pariah. The author has conscientiously explored these fragments where the lethargy to breathe is met by the conviction to live and the consternation of the past shares an inexplicable contrite.

‘Dust’—whispering the subservience of its fault lines, a nowhere entity waits for the insouciant breeze to carry it.It falls on the blooming petals pilferaging the scent from the flower but forgets that it is itself a forsaken pile to be swept off by another blanket of unattested wind. Phong bedeviled by the current milieu in Vietnam and the concurrence of being labeled as a ‘Dust Child’ eagerly waits for the perfect rove to go back to its roots leaving behind the paraphernalia of disparagement and shame.   

It’s not just Phong but many who feel the need to come out of the black hole. Who is after all the culprit for the intransigence that flooded the city with unanswered questions and an ignominious plight?

• Is it the likes of Phong and many other kids left abandoned due to the irrefutability of their mothers’ being impregnated by American soldiers.
• Or, the desperate attempts of American Warriors like ‘Dan’ who style their sexual pleasure with women of bargain and don’t take the responsibility to put the horse back to the barn.
• And, finally do we blame the indelible poverty and the pleurisy of injustice?—so putrescent in the lives of Trang and Quynh that propels them to take prostitution as a means for a flourishing life. But aghast! The propinquity to fall in love summons as an ever-lasting betrayal, the ramification of which are seen decades later.

TAKE AWAY

A war not only takes lives but presses hard on the need to validate life. The Vietnam War unapologetically ricocheted the emotional patterns with bludgeoned porosity of self-exculpating behavior. ‘Dust Child’ is a consequence of a war that destroys the sanctimonious existence creating a pendulous stream of self-pity and self-denial.