Story: Phan Thi Thanh Nhan 
Photos: Le Bich

During my childhood, my parents lived on Yen Phu Street, a narrow lane straddling Hanoi’s West Lake and the Red River. The street was perfumed all the time. I was just nine or ten at the time and enrolled in a primary school in the village temple. The street leading to the village was full of wonders. My younger sister and I came to the village for rice juice to feed our pigs. We carried a small barrel and wandered the village’s lanes flanked by ruối trees sprinkled with golden fruit. Behind the low fences were gardens of areca flowers, jasmine and grapefruit flowers…

I was fond of books since my dad collected heaps of them. Next to our house was a bookstore run by Mrs. Keo. I spent every single penny of my pocket money to rent books. I remember strolling with my sister through Yen Phu Street and playing with friends in the garden, I was obsessed with a verse by the poet Huy Can: “Lanes are perfumed by wild flowers and ridges/You and I wander about the lanes of scents”. The best scents came in February or March when grapefruit flowers were in full bloom. I often picked fallen flowers and put them in my pockets to retain their subtle, lingering fragrance.

My mother liked to recite poems. I was familiar with these verses:

Climbing the grapefruit trees to pick some flowers
And a dog rose in the eggplant garden.
Dog roses burst out in tender blue,
Reminding my tormented heart of my married maiden.

Jasmines or any other species,
Nowhere near grapefruit flowers, which by far excel.

A flower of exceptional fragrance,
Perfuming its branches, its leaves and even its growers.

My mother usually washed her hair with the extracted juice of grapefruit leaves and gleditsia. She also squeezed some lemon juice onto her hair. When she spun her cascade of hair to dry it, a gentle scent pervaded the air that still lingers in my mind, even aer my mother is gone.

During the brutal wartime, my younger brother moved to the front lines with other Hanoi lads. My house also had a grapefruit tree back then. I imagined my brother parting from his sweetheart with a bunch of grapefruit flowers wrapped in a handkerchief. Rustic and tender grapefruit flowers inspired me to pen the poem “Silent scents” to my younger brother and the other pure, loving and idealistic youngsters who served during that cruel war.