In the heart of Saigon, since born until today, I have travelled through my little town to the city with the eyes of a child, and later those of an adult. More than 40 years are the years in which I watched the world change: the roads becoming busier, the houses growing taller, the neighbourhoods changing their faces, and among all those changes, some lives quietly remained where they had always been.

They stories are not loud to public. Somehow, seeing how they carried their suffocating lives with such quiet and almost magical strength made my busy city feel more breathable. Whenever I came across something heavy, I felt as if some of that strength had quietly stayed with me, not by comparison, but by inspiration.

One

In the early 1990s, that little girl was only six or seven years old when she was left completely alone in this world. Her mother died from a serious illness, and her irresponsible father turned his back and walked away.

In a poor and broken neighbourhood, with no relatives to hold on to, the girl grew up on the occasional kindness of her neighbours. Then something terrible happened. Before her body had even had the chance to grow up, she was raped by cruel men in the neighbourhood.

She became pregnant and gave birth to three children, each fathered by a different man who had raped her.

She went through those pregnancies and gave birth with no parents, no relatives and no one beside her. She had no family to protect her, no one to speak for her, and no one to stand beside her during childbirth. She was still a child herself, trying to bring children into the world while having no one to care for her.

Yet she never stopped caring for them.

During the day, she sold lottery tickets and collected whatever leftover food she could find just to get through the day. At night, she protected her children. She did everything she could to keep them alive and give them a better life.

Her deepest instinct as a mother became the strongest thing she had. She had never been loved enough to know what jealousy was. There was no room in her life for wounded pride. She had only one thing left to do:

to live, and to protect her children.

And somehow, through all those years of hardship, all three of her children were able to attend primary school because of the young mother’s determination and hard work.

She was an orphan herself, and there was no family behind her. There was no lawsuit, no one to seek justice for what had been done to her. There was only a young mother, three children, and a life she had to carry almost entirely by herself.

Two

I once knew a woman with long, thick and beautiful hair. For a time, that hair was one of the things she could use to make a living as a sex worker during her younger years. When her beauty faded and there were no more customers, she began selling her hair one lock at a time. She even sold her own blood to get rice and money.

Her tiny home, only about one by two metres, was where she lived with her heavily addicted husband. He had become so weak. He could no longer afford even a proper dose of opium and survived on cheap opium residue instead, using whatever small amount he could get just to keep himself going.

Sometimes their meal was only two cans of white rice, a bowl of soy sauce, a very hot chilli, and a soup made from wilted vegetables that other people had thrown away.

They lived without schemes or resentment.

Not because life had treated them kindly.

But because their strength had long been used up by the pain of simply making a living.

Three

There was a woman who had been a domestic helper from the age of eleven. She was later sold overseas to become the wife of a man old enough to be her father or grandfather.

When her husband died, she returned with nothing but two empty hands and a mind that had been deeply damaged from childhood.

Her eyes were always wide open. Sometimes she stayed awake for three days and three nights in a dark room. It was not simply the strange behaviour that other people could see. To me, it was the silent cry of a nervous system that seemed to have been trapped forever in survival mode.

She loved gossip and could talk without stopping.

Only later did I understand that perhaps sound was the way she held on to the world, filling the frightening emptiness inside her.

She was not violent. She did not complain.

She simply moved through life with a tired kind of energy. And today, although her eyes still carry the weight of many sleepless nights, she has found a little warmth in her later years by caring for her two chubby grandchildren, making sure they eat well and sleep well, while she herself has never known good sleep.

Four

There was a woman with a mild mental health condition who wandered through the streets of Saigon in dirty and torn clothes.

One fateful night, she was gang-raped by a group of men and nearly left for dead in a pool of blood. She was taken to hospital just in time.

Miraculously, that broken body got back up.

She returned to selling lottery tickets, walking the streets again and surviving on meals given through the kindness of her neighbours.

Some people called her “crazy”. But she had a mild mental health condition, and her vulnerability was simply part of the way she lived with the world.

In a strange way, her innocence also became a shield that protected her heart from things that could destroy a person: hatred, bitterness and resentment.

She did not know how to hate anyone.

She carried no hatred toward those cruel men.

Like the little girl before her, she had no parents or family to stand behind her. There was no lawsuit, no one to seek justice for her, and no one to make those men answer for what they had done.

She simply reached out for a piece of bread from a passer-by, smiled, and kept walking.

Five

At the old Xa Tay Market, a family noodle cart had kept its fire burning for decades through all the changes of time.

There were two older workers there, their hair already turning grey. They quietly stayed almost their whole lives, carrying the work, protecting and standing beside the “simple-minded owner” after his family members passed away one by one.

There was no self-interest. No calculation about who owed whom what. They relied on each other through the storms of life with the most simple and genuine kind of human kindness, in a Saigon that was always moving so quickly.

Sometimes, people have commented on how indifferent I can seem about many things. I never responded, and I never tried to change myself because of it. Growing up and watching those small but resilient lives, I have never felt that I had anything to prove.

Looking back at the lives I encountered, I slowly came to understand something that perhaps I could not name when I was young.

The poorest and most desperate people in those stories I have seen, did not show signs of cruelty or harm to others.

Some people had almost everything taken from them by life: childhood, home, health, beauty, money, dignity, and even the ability to live normally in society. But when people are pushed to the very edge of survival, when pride, illusions and all the things they once wanted are stripped away, sometimes what remains is simply a heartbreaking strength to keep living.

They no longer have the strength to be jealous.

They have no room left in their hearts for fighting.

They have no time to wonder who is better than whom.

They only know that today they must find something to eat. A child must be fed. A sick person must be cared for. Another day must be lived through.

Perhaps that is why, as I have travelled through more and more years, I have come to see a painful contradiction:

Jealousy, resentment and toxicity do not always grow from hardship. Sometimes they grow in people who have enough safety that they no longer have to struggle simply to survive, yet still hunger for power.

Those who have been pushed all the way to the bottom of life sometimes have nothing left to fight anyone over.

They have only their humanity.

And that human quality is what has stayed with me.

It is what still troubles my heart for years.

And in those people who seemed to have had almost everything taken away from them by life, I saw again and again something that even the richest city could never build with concrete:

kindness toward others, the strength to survive, patience, and a kind of goodness that does not need anyone to see it.