I'm not telling you a story about the Boat People. So much ink and blood have been spilled over this tragedy affecting millions of Vietnamese since my hometown Saigon fell to the Communists on April 30, 1975. Mine will carry this mourning forever etched in their souls, no matter where they are exiled from.

This time, I am talking about a little boy who, in 1978, was five or six years old. Today, perhaps he has become a father. I don't know his first and last name. He and I are not related. He was fleeing with his family on the same boat as my brother, Van Quoc PHO, in search of freedom.

In my brother's autobiography, A Bridge Too Far, he recounts with anger, pain, modesty and a lot of resilience how his adolescence and student life turned upside down with the arrival of the communists from the north. His book is also about the journey without a return on a leaky small fishing boat facing the immensity of the Pacific Ocean. At 20, escaping the country at the cost of his life was his only option.

After seven days of wandering at sea, the "boat people" were hungry and thirsty. Their boat had taken on water, but the passengers had no strength to empty it. The ghost of Uncle Ho hovered over the boat like a raven around a corpse. Suddenly, in this dark night, a light burst forth. From a distance, the castaways see a flame. In unison, they scream with joy. Arms raised to heaven, eyes filled with tears, each thanked his God.

Mary is full of grace! Thank you for saving my child, sobbed a mother hugging the infant tightly.

Almighty and infinitely good Buddha, you have heard our prayer. Two strangers, arm in arm, smiled from ear to ear.

Drunk with happiness, the passengers stood up and turned towards the oil platform, where a gigantic flame burned with a thousand lights. The rickety boat was beginning to falter.

The captain shouted with all his might:

Calm down and stay seated. Sit down! Please. The boat will capsize.

But how do you hold back your excitement when the door to a new life where freedom of thought is a right opens before you? The boat lost its balance and overturned. The unfettered sea hurried to carry them to the depths of the icy waters.

Carried away by a wave, my brother drank the cup. He could not breathe and gradually lost consciousness. Navigating the border between life and death, he saw young people, old people, men, women, children, and infants around him. The waves lifted them and then caught them like the tentacles of an evil octopus. At that moment, my brother felt a hand grab his neck. He turned around and saw the figure of a little boy. An inexplicable force pulled him out of his semi-comatose state; he grabbed the child and tried to bring him to the surface. But Karma exists, and life gives back what we gave; a wreck floated very close to them, and my brother grabbed it and deposited the kid there. Van was Jake, and the boy was Rose, a remake of the Titanic, but with real people.

Meanwhile, the Exxon oil rig sent a few lifeboats making rounds to pull the survivors out of the water. The crew took care of the child before saving my brother.

Van lost contact with his little protégé after spending seven months together in a refugee camp called Galang in Indonesia. Van resettled in Australia, whereas his family went to the USA.

It took him forty years to witness this part of his life. I hope my bottle thrown into the sea will find its way to this little boy. I wish he could read this book and tell this story to his children. While waiting for the next article, I wish you all the happiness in the world.