The word tam means broken. Com tam is broken rice — the grains that split during milling, too small and irregular to sell as premium rice, considered inferior and therefore cheap. In Saigon before 1975, it was the rice of street vendors and working people, sold from carts at dawn to cyclo drivers and market workers and anyone who needed to eat quickly and cheaply. After 1975, after reunification, it became the rice of everyone who had nothing else.
My family lived in District 4. My father had been an engineer under the old government. After 1975 he was considered an enemy of the new state and sent to a re-education camp in the north for three years. My mother raised four children on what she could earn washing clothes for neighbours. The years from 1976 to 1980 are the years I do not talk about much, not because the memories are too painful but because the poverty of that time is hard to describe to people who have never experienced it. You think about food constantly. Not about what you want to eat — about whether there will be anything to eat.
Com tam was often the answer. Because it was broken, it was sold at a fraction of the price of whole rice. My mother would buy a portion in the morning and stretch it across two meals. With it came whatever was cheapest: a sliver of grilled pork if we were lucky, a fried egg on the days we could afford one, nuoc cham made thin because fish sauce was rationed. We ate it without complaint because there was nothing to complain to. This was what there was.
I came to Melbourne in 1992, on a skilled migration visa. I was twenty-six. I had finished my engineering degree in Saigon — my father had come home from the camp, a quieter man, and insisted his sons finish their educations. When I arrived in Melbourne I remember standing in a supermarket for perhaps twenty minutes, unable to move, because I could not process the quantity and variety of food in front of me. I had never seen a supermarket like it.
I have worked as a civil engineer here for thirty years. I earn a good salary. I eat well. I have never, not once, taken a meal for granted. Every Sunday morning I make com tam. Not because I cannot afford other things — because I choose not to forget. I marinate the pork chops the night before, grill them until the edges char, fry an egg until the edges lacquer and crisp. I make the nuoc cham properly, with lime and fresh chilli and the good fish sauce I can now afford. I sit at my kitchen table and eat slowly.
My son, who was born in Melbourne and has never known hunger, asked me once why I always made the same thing on Sundays. I told him about District 4 and the years after the war. He was quiet for a moment. Then he asked if he could learn to make it. We made it together the following Sunday. He is better at grilling the pork than I am now. I told him that is exactly what is supposed to happen.
