By Priyan R Naik
Founded by Conrad Hilton, the Hilton hotel chain is a well-known global hotel brand with a presence in India. While there is no Hilton hotel in Shillong, residents know the brand is a flagship of the American multinational hospitality company Hilton Worldwide. A notorious prison in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, the Hỏa Lò prison had earned the nickname “Hanoi Hilton” from American prisoners of war due to the association with this well-known Hilton Hotel chain. The American POWs, enduring poor food, unsanitary 
conditions, and harsh treatment, a veritable “hell on earth”, sarcastically used the name “Hanoi Hilton” to refer to the prison, highlighting the stark contrast between the perceived luxury of a Hilton hotel and the unpleasant, miserable conditions within the prison.
I hadn’t originally planned to visit the gloomy Hỏa Lò Prison but as I strolled through Hanoi’s French Quarter, the faded colonial facade of the prison with its ominous yellow walls pulled me inside, paying for what I thought was a 
steeply priced entry ticket. There was an immediate perceptive shift, the buzz of scooters and vendors outside faded, replaced by a hush and the scent of old cement, something metallic lingering in the air as if rusted memories of cruelty still clung onto the iron bars.
The first few rooms detailed the prison’s use under French colonial rule, built by the French in 1896 to house Vietnamese political prisoners. The exhibits were alarming to look at life-sized mannequins in shackles, dark cells where prisoners sat hunched and skeletal, haunting black and white photographs of men with eyes both defiant and defeated. The French were apparently masters of cruelty, 
their guillotines tall frame-like structures with a weighted, angled blade suspended at the top used as a beheading device. A condemned person was positioned with neck under the blade, the blade designed to fall swiftly to sever the head. I looked at one, encased in glass, its blade rusted, its wooden frame silent and imagined high-pitched torturous screams!
One cell had the word “death” encrypted in Vietnamese on its peeling wall. I stood there, reading stories of men who smuggled letters out in their bodies, who learned French in the dark just to argue back at their jailers, who sang through the night to keep their minds from crumbling.
Soon the narrative shifted, the next section carried exhibits from colonial horror to wartime irony. Devoted to the American pilots captured during the Vietnam War, including Senator John McCain, who lost the 2008 US Presidential Election to Barack Obama. Images young, uniformed, now ghost-like lined the walls. There were photos of gallant prisoners decorating Christmas trees, playing volleyball, attending church services. Stories from POWs tell of isolation, broken bones, and mind games. McCain himself had spent over five years here, much of it in solitary confinement, after his plane was shot down over Hanoi. The room 
showcasing his flight suit and parachute felt surreal. I stood there, staring at his youthful photograph – bruised and unbowed. Standing there, I thought of how much the dynamics between the two countries, Vietnam and the USA had changed.
Upstairs, a long corridor of prison cells stretched like a spinal column. I walked its length alone, passing through what felt like time itself. Each door had a slit through for either light to filter in or to provide food, offering a glimpse of suffering. I peered into one dark cell where three stone beds lay, shackled iron rings still 
attached and found it hard to imagine anyone surviving here, let alone leaving with their sanity intact.
Outside in the small courtyard, the sky had gone pale blue. I sat on a bench under a frangipani tree, watching leaves flutter down onto the cracked flagstones. The walls around me, once impossible to scale, now crumbled gently at the top, like history softening its edges. A group of Vietnamese students passed by, giggling, taking selfies, their cheer felt jarring but 
surprisingly they were least bothered.
As I walked back out onto the busy streets of Hanoi, I thought of Shillong’s district jail road jail, built in the 1890s, around the same time as the Hỏa Lò Prison. The Shillong jail was built under British rule, unlike the French built Hanoi Hilton and was primarily a colonial administrative prison. Starkly different in scale, history and purpose from the Hanoi Prison, yet both serve as haunting remnants of colonial and political conflict. I left the Hanoi Hilton, thinking about French cruelty, Vietnamese resilience, American trauma, Communist 
narratives realising it was the past that was speaking. Today’s Vietnam is a dynamic country with a young population and a promising future, even though poignant echoes from the past refuse to die!
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(The author is a regular contributor at The Shillong Times)
