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" Why do you think Vietnamese soldiers can forget more easily than American soldiers?' He pulls a half-grin. It is a question he must have contemplated many times. 'We live here. They don't. It's like, say, you and me falling in love with the same girl. We both had good and bad times courting her, maybe she hurt us both. I win and marry her. You go home to your country far away. After twenty years, all you have of her are memories, both the good and the bad. Me, I live with her for twenty years. I see her at her best and at her worse. We make peace with each other. We build our lives, have children, and make new history together. Twenty years and you have only memories. It is not the forgetting but the new history with the girl that is the difference between you and me. "

Andrew X. Pham , Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam


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Andrew X. Pham quote : Why do you think Vietnamese soldiers can forget more easily than American soldiers?' He pulls a half-grin. It is a question he must have contemplated many times. 'We live here. They don't. It's like, say, you and me falling in love with the same girl. We both had good and bad times courting her, maybe she hurt us both. I win and marry her. You go home to your country far away. After twenty years, all you have of her are memories, both the good and the bad. Me, I live with her for twenty years. I see her at her best and at her worse. We make peace with each other. We build our lives, have children, and make new history together. Twenty years and you have only memories. It is not the forgetting but the new history with the girl that is the difference between you and me.