The Happiest Refugee

The Happiest Refugee begins with a brief prologue, as narrator Anh Do speeds down the Hume Highway in Australia, crying. He is going to see his father for the first time in nine years, and wonders if the man will even recognize him. He has many bad memories of his father, a drunk whose memory fills him with fear. His thoughts are angry, even violent as he reviews his long resentment of his father for abandoning the family, for failing to provide for his wife and children. Despite this, he admits he misses him. He was funny and charming, and tried to give his son good advice despite his own failings. Anh arrives in a run-down area and knocks on the door of the address he’s been given. A young woman, not much older than the 22-year-old narrator and carrying a baby, answers, and calls to his father. Anh’s father greets him enthusiastically. Anh is shocked to see that his father looks almost the same. As his father greets him in his standard gregarious style, slapping him playfully and commenting on his looks, Anh notices that his father is slurring his words. As he tries to come to terms with the fact that he has a young stepmother and a baby half-brother, he soon discovers that his father has a brain tumor. He’s getting ready to leave, but he asks his father for the baby’s name, and his father reveals that the baby’s name is Anh, after the narrator.

Chapter 1 begins in downtown Saigon in 1976. The narrator shares the story of a twenty-one-year-old woman who is running to catch a crowded train. She throws her bag carrying the snacks and fruit she plans to sell to support her family onto the train. Her father and brothers are locked up in communist prison camps, and she is the family’s sole support. However, she can’t catch up to the train and is about to miss it and lose her goods, when suddenly, a man grabs her and pulls her onto the train. With the help of this middle-aged man, she gets on the train and begins to sell her wares. This is illegal under the communists, so she quickly hides her wares when the guards approach. There are new, strict guards on the train, and they’re about to discover her goods when a young man her age scolds them for harassing her. The guards are shamed before they can make her undress, and leave her alone. The young woman and the young man meet again on the same train car the next day, and soon afterwards, they are dating. Six months later, they’re married.

These are the narrator’s mother and father. His mother comes from a large family with seven siblings. Her uncles all did time in communist re-education camps, and her eldest brother, Thanh, nearly died, experiencing horrors, including surgery with no anesthetic. Although he survived despite being left for dead by his captors, he was left infertile by the violent makeshift surgery. Her brother Huy served in the military during the war, narrowly escaping death when he and his men went AWOL to go drinking right before the boat was blown up. This experience led him to become a Jesuit priest upon immigrating to Australia. By contrast, the narrator’s father lived in extreme poverty, and several of his siblings died in infancy. He grew up with his surviving seven siblings and two adopted siblings. The family was so big that he grew up with the nickname Tam, which stood for four. Food was meager, usually rice and a little vegetable. Any fish they ate, they caught themselves. He learned guile and cleverness as a youth, and later in life used this to obtain the release of Thanh and Huy from the communist camps by impersonating a superior officer. By reuniting his wife’s family, the narrator’s father gained their love and loyalty.

In Chapter 2, members of Anh’s family pool everything they have and call in favors to buy a ramshackle old boat. Although it barely contains the extended family and the clothes on their backs, it should be enough to carry them for a week at sea. Their goal is to reach Malaysia, where they can continue their journey safely. Anh’s twenty-five-year-old father is the captain of the boat, having experience with navigating the small waterways learned in his job as a traveling salesman. The day of their departure, Anh’s father wakes in the early hours and visits his praying mother, who has already lost two of her children trying to flee Vietnam. Although he is filled with guilt, he steels himself for the journey. The communists are on the alert, so family members leave in shifts using small, motorized canoes and meeting up at the larger boat. Anh, who is two-and-a-half years old at the time, goes with his aunt and uncle. He cries during the journey, and his aunt and uncle nearly panicking in their attempt to quiet him. Despite a close call with a group of fishermen who could turn them in, they make it to the boat known as the Motherfish. They make a perilous journey through the canals, with several close calls, and are approaching the invisible border between Vietnam and international waters, about to escape, when a patrol boat sights them and begins shooting. Their boat nearly stops when the primary engine bursts, but their backup engine is just enough to get them out of range and into international waters.

It is a long, crowded journey in the water, with heat and starvation by day, and rough waters at night. The boat nearly capsizes at one point in a massive storm, and the family huddles below the deck under Anh’s praying mother. Although Anh’s father is banged up by the storm, he survives and the family is still intact. However, the storm ruins most of their remaining rice. On the second day since the boat crossed into international waters, they lose seventeen-year-old Loc, a friend of the family, who, delirious from the heat, jumps in the water. He cannot be found and saved. On day three, they encounter a boat of ruthless pirates, who rob them of everything they have. They’re even willing to cut an old woman’s arm off for a small jade bracelet, but Aunty Huong’s quick thinking manages to release the bracelet. The pirates are soon gone, taking even the engine. However, they do not take the second, broken-down engine, and Anh’s father is able to repair it. Soon they encounter another group of pirates, who are enraged to find nothing to steal. When they threaten Anh’s infant brother, Khoa, the refugees fight back, overwhelming and scaring off the pirates by sheer force of numbers. A young pirate throws the parched refugees a jug of water, which saves their lives. On the fifth day, the refugees are rescued by a German ship. By law, the Germans can only save the refugees if their boat is sinking, so they throw Anh’s father an axe, and he sinks the boat, delivering the refugees to safety.

As Chapter 3 opens, the family is taken to a refugee camp in Pulau Bidong, in the Malaysian archipelago. They are surrounded by other refugees and hear their stories. Helicopters drop food, and the refugees sell the gold they were able to keep hidden from the pirates. They spend three months there before being taken to Australia. They struggle to adjust to the new culture as they’re introduced to western clothing, and experience the process of clothes shopping for the first time. The family is shocked by how lucky they are in this new society. Anh’s parents tell him to be grateful and to give back to the country that gave them so much. His father gets a job at a factory, and they are able to move out of the migrant hostel into a two-bedroom apartment. They live above an old woman they call Miss Buk, likely Burke, and befriend her. Soon afterwards, Anh’s parents have a third child, a daughter. In 1982, Anh begins school at St. Bridget’s Primary, a local Catholic school with a diverse population. He is assigned to write about what he wants to be when he grows up, and he says he wants to be the Prime Minister, or “Primeminister” Although his uncle gently makes fun of him for this, his father is angry and tells his son he can be anything he wants to be. Anh makes friends with a boy named Sam, or Big Sammy, a large boy with a temper who first beats him up and then becomes his best friend. Anh soon finds out that Sammy’s father beats him.

As the family moves away from Miss Buk’s house to rent a house in nearby Earlwood, they become more accustomed to life in Australia. Anh’s mother buys a large sewing machine and starts her own business making clothes in her home. His father joins the business, leaving his job at the factory. Soon, the entire family is working long hours in the business. One day Anh decides to help with the sewing and nearly loses his hand in the process. After he’s rescued and bandaged up, his mother decides to teach the children how to use the machine so they can help.

The family moves again, this time to a factory in Newtown, the hippy capital of Sydney. Although at first Anh is afraid of the tattooed, pierced people, they soon prove to be harmless. Anh and his brother are followed by an odd woman; their father tells them not be afraid, she’s probably a harmless, homeless woman. Anh reminisces that his father always hated fear. The family creates a makeshift home in the factory, where Uncle Two and his family join them. Uncle Two worked as a minesweeper during the war, and Anh’s father views him as a hero. Family members settle into their new life, although there are small crises along the way. When one member of the family gets nits, all the boys are temporarily taken out of school. Anh accidentally hurts his brother while practicing wrestling moves he sees on TV. However, things fall apart when Uncle Two’s wife accuses Anh and his brother of stealing money from them. The two families go their own ways, although they remain on speaking terms. Other family members, as well as other Vietnamese refugees, join Anh’s family, the family home being a revolving door for most of Anh’s childhood. Through this all, Anh is very successful in school. He runs for school captain, although he does not win due to his struggles in giving a speech, and he wins a sixth grade award in math. Anh’s father is there to cheer him on in everything he does, and Anh looks up to his dad, seeing him as a legend.