Lan Huế

Yeah, I know I'm a naughty girl, I played with the moon.

“How do you say ‘little sister’ in your dialect?” I asked Sương and Cu Bàng, my new little Pako friends from A Lưới.

“A em,” they answered in chorus.

“A em?” How come these two sounds feel so close to my heart? I was truck with emotion and memory. And at that time, the first person came to my mind was my mother. Yes, it was her who many times told me that the ethnic group people whom she lived with on Trường Sơn Range (or Annamite Range) called her “a em”.

When talking about the American War and the time she lived and worked as a nurse on Trường Sơn Range, my mother never forgot to add how warm-hearted and lovely the ethic group people (Pako, Vân Kiều, Tà Ôi) there were. And after so many years, her daughter, by accident, had a chance to visit the place where she had spent a part of her youth there.

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