story and photos by Christine Buckley

My brother's coming home again. This time "home" is no longer New York, where my foster brothers and I grew up together in the 1980's. Home is now Thanh Pho Ho Chí Minh, more than 30 years after that last helicopter lifted off from the roof of the American Embassy in what was then Sai Gon, and 26 years since Phuoc, Hoa and their cousins clambered aboard leaky fishing boats to escape their broken country. Sixteen months and two respective refugee camps later, they arrived separately in America, as small and emotionally-scarred teenagers, one 13, the other 17 years old. When adopted together by my parents, they became siblings for each other and for me, then an eight-year-old Caucasian girl with a horizon that stretched about as far as the Long Island Railroad.

Time passed. July marked the 10th anniversary since our countries re-established diplomatic relations. Things are moving quickly. The U.S. has become Viet Nam's biggest trading partner. Vietnamese representatives have been shuttling to Geneva to schmooze with World Trade Organization officials and figure out how their brand of socialism can mesh with international trade regulations. With an economic growth rate set to reach eight percent this year, the country looks ready to join the WTO in June 2006. This is no small transformation. The once iron-fisted Vietnamese government is desperately wooing Viet Kieu investment and considering abolishing visa requirements for people they only recently stopped calling "traitors."

My brothers, not surprisingly, feel like perpetual outsiders. They're Asians in America and Americans in Viet Nam. And they are too consumed with supporting the family members they left behind to think about trade or investment in their homeland's booming economy. Phuc, a.k.a. "Joe," 38, a roving manicurist and former sushi chef, is obsessed with finding a Vietnamese country girl to marry and take back to Florida. There, she'd share the apartment he rents with another Vietnamese friend and four Mexican immigrants. The few thousand dollars Joe brings into the country on his annual visits are for gifts, medicine, food, and an occasional motorbike or computer for a niece or nephew struggling to keep up with the emerging consumer society. Chu Phuoc always returns to the U.S. broke, preparing to start the working and saving cycle anew. Few of his relatives realize that their "rich American uncle" is struggling in the land of the wealthy. Luckily, the Vietnamese government finally seems to be recognizing that this one-way flow is not sustainable.

Hoa, 42, works weekdays as a mechanic and manages a Long Island flower shop on weekends. Strangely, given that he was older when he arrived, he's more Americanized than Joe. Pizza and boxed red wine in front of televised football is his favorite pastime and his best buddies have Italian last names. But ever the dutiful Vietnamese son, he sees his birth mother and six brothers and sisters-who made it safely to America in the late 80's-every day, and sends money back to the aunts and uncles in Rach Gia. Hoa can be a bit of a curmudgeon, but in an affectionate way. "Call Mom and Dad more often," and "Come back and live at home!" he scolds me via Internet phone. He complains about New York's high taxes and bad weather, yet he can no longer imagine living in Viet Nam's suffocating heat and lack of activities.

I, their younger sister, have ended up a Vietnamese-speaking editor at the national English-language daily newspaper. At home I speak Vietnamese with Phuoc's 19-year-old nephew Bao, who's living with me while he finishes an electrician's diploma. Over five years ago, on my first visit, he and his sisters began teaching me their language. Now I'm trying to teach him mine. He's a reluctant pupil, unless the topic is Britney Spears or David Beckham. If I have changed, then Viet Nam has changed more.

This year Phuoc and I spent "Liberation Day" (the "Fall of Sai Gon" is phrasing not often heard on this side of the Pacific) together, watching the parades and contemplating the meaning of freedom. Our American passports guarantee us the right to move freely and express ourselves in ways that few Vietnamese citizens can. But we both find our American lifestyle lacks the spontaneity and simplicity of our Vietnamese existence. His eternal question, "Where do I belong?" has come to rest in my own consciousness.

Only five months after his last visit, restless Phuoc is again flying in to Tan Son Nhat. From the airport we'll probably go and meet some friends for street-side mi vit tiem, fresh egg noodles with braised duck leg and Chinese mushrooms. No one here seems too worried about the looming Bird Flu threat. We might stop for sugary sinh to and then just di choi. Cruise up a breezy Nguyen Hue Boulevard on a motorbike, enjoying the lights, until something grabs our attention. Two cultures-once conflicting, now strangely almost complementary-swirling around in our heads. Why? Could it be that most elusive of goals, contentment?

Our parents, with images of that helicopter still on their minds, may not be ready to understand.

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Christine Buckley has lived in Sai Gon since 2004. She is a regular contributor to the Saigon Times, Vietnam News, and Saigon City Life. Her stories have also appeared in Ducts, Lonely Planet, and the LA Weekly, among others.