LinH
4:00 AM at the South China Sea.
It’s still dark but the clouds have disappeared. From the resort’s collection of chaise longues at the edge of the beach -- very short at low tide -- the sky is clear enough to reveal stars. Below them, twinkling just a little brighter at the horizon, a line of anchored fishing vessels have spent the night idling or working, I’m not sure. As I’m describing this dusky scene, I’m spotted by a security guard. He’s more surprised to see me than I him. He walks over and asks, “Where are you from?” I move my bag from an adjacent chair as we talk and he sits down. We manage a real conversation despite serious linguistic limitations. Through my four words of Vietnamese and some basic English, I learn I’m talking to Linh. Linh learns that I am from the United States, that I’m twenty years old, my name is Danny, (with some visual aid from my camera) that I drink beer, and I love Vietnam. Anything else I said might have been lost in translation, but Linh tells me quite a bit about his life. He is from a small town near the capital, Hanoi. He is nineteen years old and has been working security here for three months. He doesn’t drink beer or probably any alcohol at all. When I offer him some peanut M&M’S, he politely refuses. Linh tells me in one honest, well-constructed sentence, “My family is very poor.” It’s hard for me to imagine the home life of this clean-cut, uniformed teenager. Linh, who is perfectly literate in Vietnamese, speaks enough English to communicate with a native speaker, and is just about my age must work at an expensive resort to support his family hundreds of miles away. I don’t know whether to be heartbroken or impressed. I came to the water’s edge to see something beautiful. Being on Vietnam’s east coast, I assumed I’d witness a spectacular sunrise. Turns out this jagged beach faces south. The sun rises to my left, brightening shadows and warming the night’s dull colors. But, across sand and over buildings I can’t see the process in great detail and I don’t mind. Talking with Linh -- conversing with another human being, in another place, from another world -- and feeling that indelible truth, that people aren’t so different, that everyone wants a little companionship and a little conversation is just as natural and maybe even more beautiful than the sun rising over the South China Sea. In Vietnamese, beautiful is “đẹp.” I guess I know five words now. Thanks, Linh. |