Thursday.04.29.04
the night raid [ ] - quoc viet - -@_.com @ 10:31pm
at 2 in the morning i’m sitting on the street with my three other relatives, eating Hu Tieu and watching a deep yellow light spread across the four storied buildings, a handful of people sitting on plastic stools on the sidewalk below. blackness is the story and the low yellow light are the words. the feeling of living in a dream is the contrast.
“that’s one amazing sight,” i comment to no one in particular.
at 3am i’m on a Mercedes-Benz minivan, a type of transport that is seen everywhere here. we drive around the nearly empty streets and i am hypnotized. the lights are so yellow, so melancholic… the air so warm. we stop outside a place where apparently they’re assembling newspapers for delivery, a load of people working. a prostitute stands on the side, waving at the back of a reversing taxi. the driver and another man gets out, grabs a sack of newspapers, and stuffs it next to my seat. the prostitute and another working girl get in the back. from place to place we go, picking up people, one consisting of a couple and their young son. around 4am i see people readying their stands on the side of the street. a chubby old woman power-walks to the side. amazing. it is so peaceful, the night here. i feel like i’m drifting….
despite the intense calm of the outside scenery i fall asleep and wake up around 5am. a sky alit with the rising sun greets me and i grab my camera, taking a shot within 5 seconds. the streetlights run alongside palm trees and a burning sky, twisting in graceful arcs to the side in some areas, straight down like a runway for an alien spaceship in others. people on motorbikes on the sides, cars, passing into incoming traffic to pass slower moving trucks, honking. every night in Saigon i fall asleep to the sounds of trucks and cars and motorbikes doing their deliveries and today i am in one.
then, we’re away from the city, among a small nowhere town with nowhere commodities sold in stores that haven’t quite opened for the day yet. out of thin air mountains rise out of the ground and i see large masses of farm fields, small tropical trees accentuating an already unbelievable sight. eden then disappears and we are in a town center. a man on two gigantic buffalos the size of small trucks crosses the street. he is standing, barefoot, upon a rusty cart being pulled by the massive beasts. i fall asleep and then am awoken by a light tapping on my shoulder.
“hey, little brother… i need the fare.”
i am in Phan Thiet and recognize the sights immediate, the low-rise buildings, the countless disenfranchised on the sides of the street, kids and old people on bicycles. and glistening new cafes, signs that things are getting better along signs that things still haven’t changed.
i walk to the school and see my students and they seem tired. the younger kids have off for the week. i recognize the change in my older students, once young 2nd graders, the start of a hardening of the spirit. they are coming to grips with their future lives, impoverished things that lack the sweet scent of hopes and dreams. i had noticed it two years ago, a distinct separation between the younger and older class, the older class much more somber and tired than the younger. and now my students, once spilling with joy, are a fraction of their former selves. i saw it when i visited them a few months ago, i just didn’t want to admit it. two of the girls have broken stares, and i suspect abuse. when we leave a few don’t say goodbye. instead they go along on their creaky bicycles, floating away from me in surrounding brownness. i dont teach here anymore because i don’t have the time. i imagine i come here to show them how i’ve changed, how i’m still the same, and them with me. we are like two sides of a former family on the banks of a river, wondering at how the other is doing despite looking right at each other. i feel sad for them, for me, for this place, for the world that doesn’t speak for anyone. brownness, the color of Phan Thiet.
i’ve seen so much today… and i want to write it down, give it out, show you why this place is so beyond describable. i usually end my blogs after writing all i can, after the fire has left my stomach, but right now i can’t… something is out in me. i’m sorry. maybe some other time.
Comments (2)