The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

The Spy Who Loved Us 19
foreigners,” An says. “Our history is full of battles against invaders.
We borrowed our language for fighting this struggle
from the French, but it was motivated by our love for our own
people—the same force that motivates any country to fight for
its independence.”
The French divided Vietnam, like Gaul, into three parts.
Tonkin in the north included Hanoi and the port city of
Haiphong. The central region of Annam was simultaneously the
birthplace of revolutionaries, such as the Tay Son brothers and
Ho Chi Minh, and home to the quaint royal court in Hué.
Cochin China in the south was comprised of Saigon, the Michelin
and other rubber plantations at Dau Tieng, and the great
rice-growing domains of the Mekong delta. A unified Vietnam
stretching from the Chinese border to the Gulf of Siam had
never existed. Nor did the French want it to exist. They outlawed
the word Vietnam—because it referred to the idea of a
unified country—and arrested anyone who used it.
“The map of Vietnam was made by the French,” An says.
“Before they arrived we had no nation. The high plateaus belonged
to the Montagnards. Other parts belonged to the Cham
or Khmer.”
I am speaking with An one day when he walks to the buffet
next to the dining room table, opens the top drawer, and shuffles
through a collection of old photographs and letters. “Here
it is,” he says, holding out his police identity card from the
colonial era. Because his father’s family came from central Vietnam,
known to the French as Annam, the Sûreté (French criminal
investigation department) has identified An as an Annamite.
“All the Vietnamese opposed the French occupation,” An
tells me. “Insurgencies were always popping up in one area or
another.” He launches into a story about the depth of anti-
French sentiment in colonial Vietnam. Like many of his stories,
this one, stretching back over successive generations, involves
an interlocking mosaic of family and social relations so tightly
knit that I can barely tease out the strands. To help me, An gives