Monday.06.07.04
a planet set apart from a planet set apart from a planet [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 2:45am
i shove a roll of toilet paper, a Nam Cao book, and my trip journal that i barely write in into my black knapsack. today i visit my friend from college, who just arrived in Vietnam a week ago. Tay Ninh, a 2 hour drive to a place half countryside and half town.
in the small minibus that looks like it’s about to fall apart, i am squeezed against the window as the workers cruise around the street, shouting at people to come and take a trip to Tay Ninh. there are 12 seats and they manage to swindle 15+ people into the small vehicle. the young men with the sweaty backs shout at passersby and the woman next to me curses them.
“why don’t they just go? this thing can’t fit anymore people? money grubbing assholes…”
i pass out from exhaustion and wake up in the sleepy town of Tay Ninh. i get dropped off, negotiate a meeting place with my friend’s aunt, and wait at a gas station. the girl working there looks like my friend, making me think maybe the whole town looks like her.
my friend pulls up in a brand new car with her aunt (holy crap her aunt is loaded) and it’s like we only met last week. old friends are like that, like another friend once told me over a ridiculously expensive double cheeseburger in London. your true friends, you can see them anytime and it’s like you never left. we pick Chom Chom fruits and i make fun of her for her unease with the unflushable toilet. and then i make fun of myself for not wanting to use it either.
on the road towards an amazing countryside river scene i can’t, and won’t, bother to describe, we see crowds of people on both sides of the road. the car i’m in slows down and i murmur, “what’s going on.. must be an accident.” as we pass my curiosity possesses me and forces my head to tilt up, allowing me to peer over the window. i see bare feet and black pant legs, people standing above and looking down, just like i was looking down. a bright red trickle of blood across the man’s sole shocks me and the sense of DEATH flashes across my eyes. my friend gasps. i look to the other side at the other crowd, and see another pair of legs, motorbike lying by his side. more blood, more people staring down, me just like everyone else.
i cannot see their faces.
“why isn’t anyone doing anything? why doesn’t somehow drive them to the hospital?” i repeat over and over, in a low voice, a weak and defeated cry to no one in particular. i want to shout at my friend’s brother to stop the car, so i can run out and do something. i read in a book once that sometimes no one drives the victims to the hospital unless they know them. or unless a foreigner offers them money. if they wait for the police, they will be dead by the time the ambulance arrives. i want to shout, to stop the car, to offer someone, anyone, money to get these two guys to a hospital.
“someone’s driving them!” someone in the car says. i look behind and see an old man with grey hair and stubble on his face, a sweat-stained shirt clinging to his tired looking body. behind him sits a younger man, and across the younger man lays an unconscious man, blood streaming from his face. something in me breaks and i shrivel up inside. from behind him comes another motorbike, also with two people, and the second victim lying across. my friend’s brother mentions something about this being a small town, so people know each other. i ask him,
“if no one knew the guys who were in the accident, would they drive them to the hospital?”
my friend’s brother replies, “no”. i know it’s not the case always, but it still drags my mind down to the ground, below the car. i look back again and see the old man with the grey hair and beard stubble, a tired yet determined look on his face.
“there are a lot of things i don’t like about this place” my friend says. she hasn’t been back for over a decade and now she is beginning to see clearly the little facts of a larger picture that doesn’t always fit with the ideal.
a cop asking for money. a temple, with the design of a supreme eye representing god, a religion that worships Mother Theresa, Jesus, Hindu deity Brahma, Thomas Jefferson, and Winston Churchill among others. a mentally and physically retarded man in a white robe, smiling at me and scaring the kids, bowing and gesticulating with clasped hands towards pastel colored stone lions.
i arrive back to the company to see my relatives hard at work, putting together the plan i had devised to “increase efficiency and productivity”. i shove down a pizza i order and roll up my sleeves, helping them hammer nails and drag tables across. a sense of peace swirling in the middle of some horribly dark reality, putting to fact that i am on a planet set apart from a planet, set apart from a planet.
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