indoor China

The Navy and the Marine Corps called it WESPAC (Western Pacific, which could include anywhere West of the International date line. For Marines it could only mean Vietnam). The Army and the Air force called it SEA (South East Asia). For anyone who had been there a decade or more it was Indo-China.

Helen told me that when she was a child, and it was still news in Europe, that she thought it was "indoor china". A vast megalopolis beneath pointy red slate roofs with upturned corners and dragon pillars. A cluttered smoky maze of sweet food stalls, shops and beautiful indecipherable signage on flowing long banners. Nobody spoke English which was nice, because then they sounded musical, as chimes and gongs tinkled and boomed softly, drawing you further in and through the corridors to courtyards with fountains trickling into tile ponds, homes to lucky cranes, happy frogs, ducks like toy boats and  fishes that made you want to swim.............. I'm less sure now of what was real and what was imagined....... 

I did for a while, a few years ago,  infrequently wake terrified and soaking in sweat, with no memory of the circumstances of my dreams. I would guess it was related to the war..... but maybe more to do with dormant malaria than suppressed memories....... I was afraid and I was murderous and I have felt so bad about what I did that sometimes I forget that I only have the luxury of these emotions because I am alive to endure them.

For all that, I did often since, put myself again in the position to do harm....... Well intentioned harm, which I now suspect, may be less justified, and uglier than pure selfishness. Nearly half a century on I still sometimes frighten myself.

We are the children and parents of our sad history.