Nguyen : Israeli Asians… -2-

(This is part -2- to an article posted here)

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Movie official description
“The Journey of Vaan Nguyen” describes a crucial period in the life of the Nguyen family. Hoimai Nguyen and his wife escaped Vietnam in a refugee boat and arrived at the Israeli shores, where he and other refugees were granted asylum. Hoimai’s seven children were born in Israel. Two died at birth. Five girls were raised in an Israeli surrounding and developed a complex and split identity.

The film starts at the time when Hoimai decides it’s time to go back home to Vietnam. The longing, the constant feeling of foreignness and the need to go back home, carries him to the muddy roads of his home village. He sets out to get back the family lands which were confiscated at the time of communist regime. At the same time, his daughters are starting to question their own identities. They each have to test their sense of belonging.”

“In her painful blog, Vaan Nguyen unfolds the absurdities of her life as an Israeli-born Vietnamese. Her father was one of the many”“boat-people”” who fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and one of the few who found asylum in the “Land of the Jews.” Now, when the time has come to go back home, they return to Vietnam, hoping they can reclaim their confiscated lands. Their journey becomes a parable on loss of identity and the fate of refugees.”

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Listening to her Vietnamese family singing the emotional Kareoke songs, watching her with her father in Vietnam’s simple countryside, I’m lost. My heart aches, my insides are torn, my emotions run wild, I’m completely utterly lost. I struggle, I can’t control what goes on inside. It’s so direct and so powerful that it’s hard to grasp.

It’s an amazing movie, one that touches you inside, makes you sympathetic, makes you sad, makes you angry, makes you feel hopeless. It shows the reality of those Vietnamese immigrants trying to survive through life in a country – Israel – they don’t feel at home in, while raising kids that are torn between the their Israeli identity and their parents’ Vietnamese background. Is Vaan an Israeli or a Vietnamese? is her father? her mother? what about her little sister?

“It’s incredible that you see this Vietnamese woman walking in the streets of Vietnam and she looks completely Vietnamese, but then she starts talking and it’s suddenly clear that she’s Israeli” – I’ve heard some say. To me, Vaan doesn’t look Vietnamese. She’s a stunning Israeli girl, but she’s not Vietnamese. The way that Vaan carries herself in Vietnam is that of a foreigner that is unable to connect to anything over there. She looks like she feels sad for her family’s tragedy and sympathetic towards the Vietnamese people, but it’s clear that she’s not part of them. She has a free spirit, wearing the Israeli somewhat provocative fashion that a Vietnamese girl wouldn’t ever think of wearing even if only for the fear of sunlight. She wonders around with designer sunglasses and a cool walk that you rarely see anywhere in Vietnam, and sits on the back of the motorbike like a true lady. Although I have the advantage of knowing she’s also Israeli, I think it was clear to any Vietnamese seeing her that she’s not local. She talks about wanting to “come back to Vietnam”, but when she does it’s about ideas like getting back the family’s land and opening a tourist place.

I can’t blame her, I know it’s confusing. I’m not Vietnamese looking, I have no Vietnamese parents, but I’ve been there, and I think I had a taste of what it’s like. Vietnam is -nothing- like Israel, and an Israeli person doesn’t know how to relate to a place like that. I started off as a tourist coming to Vietnam with no plans because some Irish guy brainwashed me that Vietnam is a great place to tour, but I ended up thinking that the Vietnam isn’t about “touring” at all. It’s the first place that really confronted me with who I am and with how I percieved the world to be. You could come to Vietnam and have an amazing tourist tour, but you could also come to Vietnam to have a long tour of the darkest corners of your soul. At first, you don’t get it, you don’t see it, everything is just “very cheap” and “very beautiful”, but after a while – like getting used to the dark – you start seeing things, you start feeling things, seeing people, feeling the people, and there’s no way back. There hasn’t been a week since I left Vietnam, even while in Taiwan, that I haven’t thought of Vietnam and the people I met there. Vietnam is an important part of me now.

It seems to me that Vaan and her little sister don’t need to make any decisions. They are Israeli. They might look a bit different, and they suffer the ironic non-racist-racism that Israel’s has perfected over the years, accepting the different in a way that would always let them feel that they’re different, but they are still – nonetheless – Israeli. Vaan and her little sister’s struggle seem to be more about facing the Israeli culture, that’s still trying to understand Asian-looking people, and more important – facing their parents’ wishs.

In a way, that’s the essence of being Israeli as so many people here are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. For example – my father grew up with my grandmother that escaped the horrors of Nazi Vienna, who – even while in Israel – spoke mostly German and English and liked to hang around places with a Viennian aroma and people. There’s no doubt that my dad is very Israeli, and that there was never any dilemma of going back to live in Vienna, but I imagine he did have to face some of the difficulties that Vaan faces.

Yet, there are apparent differences for Vaan’s case. Vaan isn’t Jewish in a country that makes it easier for Jewish people, she still looks very unique in the Israeli scenary, and her parents are part of the lower economic status – still very much in touch with their families in Vietnam and dreaming of going back (“It’s better in Vietnam now. In Israel everything is hard, in Vietnam everything is easier”).

The main story of the movie is, in my view, the father. I must say that he follows the good hearted pure soul characteristic that I’ve found in all of my Vietnamese friends. His spirit, as that of my friends, is so unique and so special to someone who’s Israeli that you feel confused as you don’t know how to ‘be’ with someone like that.
He’s humble, he’s an introvert, he’s a warm caring person with a grand soul. He knows what Vietnam is, he has no illusions. He also knows exactly what Israel is like. In his own way, he seeks to solve the conflict in his personality and the fate forced upon him and his family throughout the years. He misses Vietnam alot, but is well aware of what the real Vietnam is. His “All the people my age here died, but I’m still alive” in the heart of a big Vietnamese city, isn’t just an ironic remark on his good fortune but rather a strong statement about life. He’s seen the wealth of Israel, the hardships and suffering of Vietnam but he’s still over there – in Vietnam – looking for a way to settle back.

Throughout the whole movie, I felt as though I want to get to know the family closer. I want to know Vaan, I want to get to know her little sister, I want to meet her father, I want to sing Kareoke with her family. Not because she’s an interesting case of a Vietnamese Israeli, but rather because they seem to have incredible spirits that I look for in people that I want to get closer to, much like the friends I’ve made in Vietnam and Taiwan. Of all the hardships that I encounter in my return to Israel this has got to be the hardest of them all – I miss their spirits.

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Vaan’s small sister and a friend
A: “Do you know where Vietnam is?”
B: “No, is it a city or a country?”

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