Bruce Weigl, an Vietnam veteran, like many Vietnam veterans, adopted a Vietnamese orphan girl and frequently returns to Viet Nam, to eat pho and drink beer on the side of the road while staying at Hoa Binh hotel. The difference, he promised to "return" his adopted daughter to Vietnam when she grows up, as a gift, for Vietnam. Oh, and he wrote a book about her too, titled "The Circle of Hanh," which ironically is not about Hanh at all - it should have been called "The Circle of Bruce Weigl."
The Cicle of Hanh would have to be different story, one which would have to be written before the day he found her in a surely dilapidated orphanage in which even the kids who do not yet know how to speak know that a foreign man means more food and clothing. It was written before the day he encloses to his wife the plan for this not-yet-met girl whose life he has designed after"regaining his trust in Vietnamese people." According to this script, she would be taken away as a little girl, then returned as a woman fully packaged with gift wrap and a bow, as if people can just be uprooted and replanted, then uprooted again without anything getting lost. As if her motherland will remain the same while she was away living a new life. As if she can just go back to the life she has left behind at age 8, after years and years of living a different life, with a Vietnamese tutor and countless DVDs.
The gift has been returned to Viet Nam, to continue the process of making sure that Bruce Weigl will continue to plague the country he has chosen to bomb and then to forgive. Her work in Viet Nam is to translate his life encoded in a name that would evoke her life, a life that remains obscure and absent, because when she starts to exist, he can no longer be there.
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