Love the shape of the mountain

My childhood is so far away…

The summer rains finally came, after days of fires burning in the forests.

The children, who have “more than half their lives wandering”, are looking back at the burning forests of their homeland, suddenly becoming like children. Yesterday, the day before, they felt their hearts aching so much they wanted to cry, today they suddenly feel as if their hearts were being watered by a rain shower thousands of kilometers away.

A friend from the South was a bit surprised and skeptical when he saw many people mourning a distant forest that was on fire. He asked me about Hong Mountain, the mountain range that the old farmer accidentally burned down in the past few days. He asked why so many Nghe people were heartbroken?

I read to you the folk song: “When Hong Linh has no more trees/ Lam River has no more water, then there and here will have no more love”. Hong Mountain has been associated with Nghe An children since their mother’s first lullaby. Hong Mountain stretches out before my eyes, on the other side of Lam River when I was young, I followed my mother to the river to wash mats. Hong Mountain appears and disappears in the clouds with many secrets of legends and myths through my mother’s words.

Hong Mountain is associated with the days when I followed my mother to work, when I was 6 or 7 years old. My mother worked as a statistician for company 479, and once had to go on a business trip nearly 10 km away from home, at a quarry right at the foot of Hong Mountain. Early in the morning, I sat on the back of my mother's bicycle and took her across Ben Thuy Bridge to work. Those summer days wandering at the foot of the mountain are still very clear in my pure memories. The quarry my mother worked at, I can't remember the name, but I still remember clearly the sound of the white waterfall pouring down from the mountain, and the patches of young green passionflower growing at the foot of the mountain where I often eagerly searched for ripe fruit to eat. And during the short afternoon at that quarry, I still heard the pine trees rustling, still felt the pine essential oil flowing with each hot, hot wind. That essential oil is drying up because of the fire. My mother's office faces the foot of the mountain where I used to play. Every step I took, every run I took was within my mother's sight.

Hong Mountain to me is just a childhood memory that lingers so much, that makes my heart quiet in the days waiting for a rain, that makes me feel joy burst when the rain comes. What’s more, my friends from Nghe An, who grew up next to that mountain, are not choked up.

Last night I dreamed of mountains…

Last night, the hills appeared in my dream. It was the hill behind my grandmother’s house, filled with the sounds of birds, I didn’t know what else but the sounds of birds tying her up, with the haunting old story my grandmother told me. Those unknown birds’ sounds, just by making them sound full of love, like a greeting to a fresh morning.

My grandmother’s house is in Ngoc Son, Do Luong, a mountainous area. There, every family has a round hill behind their house. The hill is covered with sugarcane, tea, custard apple, jackfruit that she planted… and countless bushes of wild sim, raspberry, and wild thu lu. It seems that the hill is a fairy tale world for children. I often have a strange feeling of pride when I bring my friends from the city back to the countryside, climbing the hill behind my grandmother’s house. Just a few steps up the hill, you will see the sim bushes blooming with gentle purple flowers, the ripe purple sim fruits, plump and smooth cheeks, and the ripe, sweet raspberry fruits. On her hill, there are also very tall chay trees. The children often eagerly wait for the sweet chay fruits that the birds eat to fall to the ground. All are like special gifts for children.

Reaching the top of the hill, we will feel closer to the clouds and the wind. Looking down, we will see the dam, calm and flat like a giant mirror reflecting the rows of green bamboo, and further away are the steep paths leading to the green rice fields with white storks flying. We often climb to the top of the hill, there must be luxuriant sim trees full of ripe fruit because few people are afraid to climb to pick them.

I like the feeling of playing peek-a-boo when I see the chestnut bushes on the hillside of my grandmother’s house. The chestnut flowers are thin with curved petals, long like fingers. When young, the flowers are green, and quietly turn bright yellow without knowing when. I only know that on a sunny summer morning, the scent of chestnut flowers awakens right at the corner of the road before turning into the slope of my grandmother’s house. The scent of chestnut flowers is fragrant, like a strange fruit, sweet, passionate. It is really difficult to use words to describe the scent of that flower, I only know that, after the summer days of searching every bush and bank to make friends with chestnut flowers, that scent has become a deep memory in me.

Her house, a single-story house, leaned against the mountain. There was a small slope leading up to the house, on the left was a betel nut tree that she used to pick every morning, on the right was a well with sweet water. The last time I visited her house with my father, I stared blankly at the small slope, suddenly remembering that when I was little, I used to remember that the slope was very high, climbing it made my legs tired, but now I could walk up the slope in just a few steps. When I was about 7 or 8 years old, she was already over 70. She was chewing betel, her hands clasped behind her, walking briskly ahead, her head slightly bowed but her steps were quick and agile. Her little grandchild ran after her. Her legs seemed to never get tired like her grandson's.

That half-familiar, half-strange slope has long since disappeared from her sight. Before her 100th birthday, she unfortunately slipped into the dam in front of the house. Sometimes, looking at the clear blue water of the dam, surrounded by green bamboo groves and embraced by the foothills, I still wonder why such a beautiful scene could have the water bear to drag her away. Then I tell myself, maybe my grandmother loved this place so much, she couldn’t bear to be angry, why should I be angry with that scene.

My grandmother loved the mountains so much that when she was remembered, she remembered a story that seemed as real as it was made up. Every time she went down to Vinh Street, she would choose the highest chair in the house, pull it out in front of the house, and sit there. The chair she sat on was level with the green canopy of the banyan tree. Strangers and acquaintances would curiously ask her questions when they saw her. She spoke very honestly, and everyone laughed: She was used to being up high, but not to being down low.

I had summers of seemingly endless joy, hanging around my grandmother’s feet, waiting for a jackfruit to ripen on the hillside, waiting for the chirping of birds on the canopy, releasing both the chirping of birds and the golden jackfruit to the ground. Fairy tales for children are just that simple, without the need for a “pay back the gold” ending.

* * * * *

I told my friend about the forests and mountains of my childhood, as well as many of my friends whom you suspected of “following the trend” of forest fires. I told him that most of the children growing up in Nghe An love the mountains. The mountains in Nghe An are not high, not as numerous as the Central Highlands, the Northwest… but enough to create a deep green memory. Do you remember the poem in the reading book we learned in the past? “Early in the morning I woke up/ Washed my face and went to school/ I walked quickly on the road/ Mountains lined up in front of me.

White mist surrounds the mountain/ Like a cotton towel/ - Oh, the mountain sleeps lazily!/ Just now washing my face…”

When I learned that poem, until much later, strangely enough, I still thought that the author of the poem probably studied at a school around my school. No, it might have been my elementary school. The place where every morning and afternoon on the way to school in the winter, passing Quyet mountain, I could still see the mist hanging faintly like a thin scarf around the mountain top, or even further away, the Truong Son range (if you climb to the rooftop of the apartment building, you can still see it faintly in the distance), the Hong mountain that you asked about.

Saigon has no mountains, the Saigon River flows through a series of skyscrapers, of course you don’t have the feeling of loving a mountain and missing a river. And then, you say, you feel a little jealous of people who grew up by the river, by the mountain like me…