'Le pain est là sur mes genoux,
Et les étoiles très loin de moi
J'y mords en contemplant les astres
Et gorgée de rêve
Incroyablement,
Je mange les étoiles.*'
From dawn till dusk, day after day, she worked in the endless rice fields, and though she knew she was contributing to her people, she couldn't help but wish to be elsewhere. Who didn't? She knew of no one who actually liked hard labour and though it may not seem like it, she wasn't an exception.
Sometimes, she would be alone in her room, but in her dreams, she would be eating the stars. She looked for the most beautiful star.
She named it freedom.
That was what she had sought for, all those years. She went through it all, war after war, death after death... all this just to be an independent nation. She broke her ties with the Western ways and welcomed the new regime: Communism. It was her exchange- she'd be given the fire power and the recognition of a nation, though she'd have to live under that reign.
Even today, decades later, the signs of the war were still present. Her name wasn't the 'Republic of Vietnam'. No, it was the 'Socialist Republic of Vietnam'. There wasn't a day that had gone by that didn't remind her of it.
Lien dreamed of a place where she wouldn't have to hold back her words. She loved English, she learned English like one breaths in the air after a stormy night. The Vietnamese woman dreamed of a place where the night would be hers.
And there she was, lying on the grass, listening to the quiet flow of the river beside her that shimmered in the starlight, just outside of the small village that she would return to in the morning to help the less fortunate farmers sell their goods. The dark sky full of glittering stars, she could smell the scent of the pink lotuses that she so cherished. And however wild this landscape was, however familiar it had gotten...
La nuit ne l'appartient pas encore.
The night didn't belong to her yet.
*Words from Turkish poet Oktay Rifat, born in Istanbul 1914
French translation from 'L'été des mangeurs d'étoiles'
English Translation:
The bread is there, on my lap,
And the stars far from me
I bite into them, contemplating the asters
And gulp dreams
Incredibly
I eat the stars.
