Duong Tam Kha

A man stands alone in an empty hall, looking down at a boy who has just lost his father. Outside, mourning banners still hang over the citadel of Cổ Loa. The boy is Ngô Xương Văn, a son of King Ngô Quyền, who has just passed away. The man bending over him is his own uncle on his mother's side, Dương Tam Kha.

This is the story of that uncle. It is a story about forgiveness, and about a family that held together.

The old records say that Ngô Quyền died in 944. Before he went, he entrusted his eldest son, Ngô Xương Ngập, to Dương Tam Kha. The queen came from the Dương family, and Dương Tam Kha was her younger brother, so he was an uncle to the king's sons. Ngô Quyền trusted him with the heavy task of watching over a young royal house.

Then, in the uncertain time that followed, Dương Tam Kha stepped forward to take charge of the country. He called himself Dương Bình Vương. The throne, which belonged to the Ngô family, passed for a while into the hands of the uncle. Old family stories sometimes take turns like this. But what is worth remembering lies elsewhere.

In those days there was also a boy without a father, who needed someone to lean on. This was Ngô Xương Văn, the second son of King Ngô Quyền. Dương Tam Kha did not turn him away. As the old tale tells it, he took the boy in as his adopted son and raised him as his own child.

One can picture that house, where the uncle taught his orphaned nephew every stroke of his letters and every word of polite speech. The boy who had lost his father still had a hand to shelter him and a warm roof overhead. He grew up day by day in his uncle's care, not in loneliness and bitterness.

For the six years Dương Tam Kha held power, he kept the affairs of the country fairly calm, the old records say. He urged the people to clear farmland and open up new fields. Out in the fields the rice grew green, and in the house the boy kept growing. Those six years passed quietly, without war or unrest.

Then the boy became a young man. In the year 950, Dương Tam Kha sent Ngô Xương Văn himself, together with two generals, to lead an army against a far-off place. The troops set out. But halfway there, Ngô Xương Văn stopped, spoke with the two generals, and gently turned the army back.

He took back the throne for his own Ngô family. Here came the turn that everyone waits for. The nephew now sat on the high throne, and everyone held their breath over what would become of the uncle who had once held it himself.

This is the finest part of the story. Ngô Xương Văn did not take revenge. When some people spoke of punishing the uncle, the old tale says, he himself answered that Bình Vương had once done him a kindness. He remembered the years of being sheltered and the hand that had raised him. That gratitude was greater than any anger.

So he did not lay a finger on his uncle. He only invited him to withdraw and become Chương Dương Công, gave him land to govern, and let him live a quiet life. No harsh word was spoken, and not a drop of blood fell.

It was a gift from one heart to another. The nephew held out a hand to forgive, because the uncle had once held out a hand to lift him up. And the uncle, Dương Tam Kha, received that kindness with a calm mind. He went back to his fields and gardens, to the land he had been given, and lived out his last days in peace.

Picture an evening in the land of Chương Dương. A man with graying hair sits on his porch, looking out over rice fields cleared by the hands of his own people. The orphan he once raised has grown into a man and now carries the whole country. The two of them still have each other, and the family is still whole. In the evening wind there is a gentle peace, the peace of a heart that knew how to give and a heart that knew how to remember.