Sydney Nguyen

If Saigon Never Fell: Would Our Paths Have Aligned?

Authors Preface:

Growing up as a first-generation Vietnamese-American, I have always been aware of how history shapes identity nationally and within families and individuals. My parents’ lives were deeply affected by the Vietnam War, even though they were too young to fight in it. The war determined where they would live, the struggles they would face, and, ultimately, how they would meet. If history had unfolded differently, their paths—and, by extension, mine—might never have crossed. That thought has always lingered in my mind: What if?

This story is a response to that question. In this alternate world, the Vietnam War ends with a U.S. victory, reshaping the country into something more akin to modern South Korea—capitalist, highly developed, deeply influenced by American culture, yet distinctly Vietnamese. My father, who once dreamed of being an Air Force pilot but was too old to enlist when he arrived in the U.S., finally fulfilled that ambition. My mother, whose education ended too soon due to financial struggles, gets to pursue her artistic passion. They meet in this different Vietnam under entirely different circumstances. But would they still fall in love? Would they still find each other in a world where migration, exile, and the refugee experience, the defining aspects of many Vietnamese-American lives, never happened.

This story is as much about time as it is about history. It’s about how war alters destinies, how alternate realities can make us reconsider the present, and how forces beyond our control shape personal narratives. More than anything, it is a way for me to explore the intersection of love, identity, and fate and to ask whether certain connections transcend time, no matter how history unfolds.

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I: A Different Beginning

Time is not a straight line. It bends, folds, and loops back on itself like silk in the wind. Some moments fray, and others linger.

I often wonder if things would have changed if the war had ended differently. Maybe my parents would have met under a gentler sky if it had. Would my mother still have reached for her brushes each morning, chasing silence in color? Would my father still wake before the sun, brew his French roast coffee or 103 King’s Oolong tea with the discipline of a soldier and the reverence of a priest? 

In another version of Vietnam that never fell, the streets of New Saigon shimmer beneath neon signs and typhoon rain. American slogans hang beside red silk lanterns. McDonald’s, Apple stores, and Buddhist temples share the same block. The air smells like roasted pork and cigarette smoke, and somewhere in between, two people who do not yet know each other walk the same city, separated only by chance.  

Sergeant Hữu Văn Nguyễn lights his first cigarette of the day, the match hissing like a whispered command. His uniform is pressed so sharply it could cut. On his wall hangs a red-and-yellow photograph of the old flag, faded from sun and memory.

Across the city, Ánh Lệ Thị Nguyễn adjusts the angle of her easel. The brush moves like breath in her hand. She paints in layers—one for what is seen, another for what must be hidden. Her father’s voice echoes from the kitchen, calling her to breakfast. She has not replied yet. Some mornings, it takes time to return from the places she paints.

They have not met—not in this world. But time has a way of circling back to the stories it forgot to finish.

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