Free The House on Dream Street by Dana Sachs

commotion I’d witnessed in the last ten minutes. Despite all the fury, nothing had been broken except the social code and the headlight on one Honda Dream. Why had the traffic stopped? Why did everyone congregate to watch? It began to occur to me that Vietnam was a culture not of rubberneckers, but of kibitzers. They watched the occasional fistfight and commuter drama not simply because they were curious, but because they lived in a society that expected everybody to keep an eye on everybody else.
    If for no other reason than this sense of community, Vietnam differed radically from the world I knew in America. The effects were obvious. Outsiders might assume that Vietnam is an aggressive society, but violent crime was rare, and I never witnessed anything worse than the occasional fistfight. I had the freedom—which I did not have in the States—to walk down the street at night without the fear of being assaulted. A society free of violent crime is, of course, one of the reasons repressive governments give for denying their citizens basic human rights. My Vietnamese friends didn’t have the freedom of speech or freedom of assembly that I took for granted. But I found myself cherishing the safety I felt on the streets, a safety that Huong, never having to worry about getting assaulted by strangers, would not have even considered. Viet could run all over the neighborhood and any woman who saw him would take care ofhim with as much care as his own mother, whereas Tra had often complained about how isolated she felt in the States. She could fall down and die on the street and no one would notice. In Vietnam, you couldn’t read a book or eat your dinner without someone noticing and discussing it. If you went to visit friends and they weren’t home, you simply went next door and the neighbors could probably tell you where your friends had gone.
    Over the next few months I would come to realize, all too clearly, the negative effects of being watched all the time. But it was still early enough in my stay that I could appreciate the freedoms I didn’t have at home, without noticing the ones that were missing.
          The motorbike washing and repair business on my street inspired a busy support network of tea stalls. Motorbike workers and their customers gathered for refreshment around low tables covered with various snacks, drinks, and cigarettes. The proprietor sat at the head of the table, within arm’s reach of anything or anybody, investing the atmosphere at her tea stall with the particular attributes of her own personality. My house had a tea stall on either side of it, one run by Grandmother Nhi and the other by Grandmother Ly. Grandmother Ly seemed indifferent to the competition. She was either too distracted by the presence of her newborn grandchild or too busy combing out her knee-length white hair to invest much effort in the business.
    Grandmother Nhi worked harder, and she had the more loyal following. The motorbike guys spent the quiet time between jobs lounging next to her tea table, playing cards, smoking cigarettes, cracking sunflower seeds between their teeth and tossing the empty shells onto the sidewalk. Maybe they frequentedher tea stall because Grandmother Nhi was lovely, with skin the color of uncooked rice, smooth as the soybean milk she kept in a bottle on her tea table. Or maybe they just liked to hear her gossip.
    One afternoon I came home and saw Tung and Phai sitting on the benches surrounding Grandmother Nhi’s tea table. Tung motioned for me to join them. I had never spoken to Grandmother Nhi before, and now her smile was huge with anticipation: The foreigner was finally close enough to touch. “Duyen! Ngồi cho vui! ” she said. Sit down for fun! I sat down. Phai was across the table, and Tung sat next to him. The two looked so different from each other that it was hard to imagine they were friends. Phai was small, dark-skinned, and wiry—in a culture that prized men who were, like