There are some things that haven't turned green yet.

(Baonghean) - On August 10, 1961, barrels of herbicide, marked with orange paint, were sprayed on this land by the American army. It has been 52 years since then! 52 years, enough time for the forests to turn green, enough time for the honest men and women to return from the war with the dream of raising children – children of a FREE and INDEPENDENT nation – and enough time for them to grow up… But, there are things that can never turn green like the forest, or perhaps they are predetermined by that orange paint, that beautiful color that has become the color of pain for nearly 5 million Vietnamese people?

Photo by PV

I met that mother, her head bowed over the contorted body of her fourth child, and sang a lullaby. Her hands had once buried three children she had carried and given birth to, children who had come to this world for such a short time. She had no more tears; those tears had all been shed during childbirth and seeing the bodies of her children. I also met fathers who had used iron chains to try and restrain their unruly, screaming, and deranged children. I met bewildered children who didn't understand why they had such deformed bodies, even though the war had only left a gray mark on their grandfather's hair. Someone once said that those forms were created by the accumulated pain.

I've always wondered, under the wings of American C123 planes more than 50 years ago, when they dropped that toxic, fog-like substance, how many people perished, how many remained, battling illness and shame, and how many more were conceived with incomplete bodies? No one can answer when this persistent pain will end. But, like that mother, when asked: Why did she have the courage to give birth so many times, to raise so many children only for them to leave her one day, she only sang a heartfelt lullaby. Her lullaby made me understand that the "last ghost of that war" may have caused her excruciating pain, making her suffer five, seven, or even more times, but nothing, no one, could extinguish her hope for the well-being of her children, or her hope for the well-being of this life...

I listened to the song "Why Did You Die?", the official anthem of the "Chorus for Justice" program for victims of Agent Orange, and saw that the song was written with the tears of composer Thanh Truc on the long journey from North to South, encountering and witnessing countless lives torn apart by pain – a cry to awaken human conscience. As a composer, as I am, as we are, with the yearning to "win a ray of sunshine from the darkness," like the hope and faith of Mother.

Young people today are frequently asked: "Why did you come to this Earth?" I believe that if that question were to be asked of any of the millions of Agent Orange victims in our country, they would be burning with the answer: To end war on this Earth!

Nghe An Weekend