Nguyen Van Duong at his home and office - the traffic circle at the end of September 23 Park - six months before he died
I first met my xe om driver at the end of a lost, drunken evening.
He was sitting on a stone bench on an oblong divider at the southern end of September 23 Park, his head resting on the seat of a beat-up Honda Cub.
Sensing a deal, I woke him up and hired him to drive me home, in District 7, for about US$2.50.
The old man spent his days waiting for customers amid the din of traffic and at night he took catnaps sitting upright on a stone bench with his head resting on the seat of his motorbike.
When it rained, he’d get up and go sleep in a doorway across the street.
Otherwise, the bench was home. Even as I write this, I cannot recall his name.
Every Thursday, after a night of post-deadline drinking, I’d wake him for a ride home. During the day, I’d see him trying to get some rest.
His body was small and slight and he wore the same blue work shirt and black pants every day. His arms and chest were slender, nearly emaciated, and his face was dark, almost purple — the result, perhaps, of a lifetime of cigarettes and sunburns.
A few faded hand-drawn tattoos dotted his skin, but they were hard to make out.
His body and his bike seemed to rattle as they dragged my huge, beer-soaked frame to the edge of Phu My Hung.
Some nights I’d nod off on his back and wake up realizing that I was crushing him into his handlebars.
When we’d arrive at the guard gates outside the giant white towers of Hoang Anh Gia Lai III, he’d raise a grateful hand and smile when I handed him a red VND50,000 bill.
After enough rides, I began to think of him as a friend and did not quite know what to do about the fact that he was homeless.
I started paying double the price, but he remained tired, sick and poorly fed.
I learned how to drive an old Bonus and stopped taking him home. But I’d see him every night sleeping on his bench.
Some nights, I hoped he would just disappear.
The question of where he came from and how he had ended up in such a state finally overwhelmed my desire to forget him. So I set up an interview and brought a translator.
He brought his two brothers — Hung, a Cambodian war veteran, and Tai an ex-con fresh out of jail for running heroin, who said very little.
The three had grown up together in the wet market across the street. The police allowed him to do business in that circle because he was a local.
Hung produced a document attesting to his own extended service in the war against the Khmer Rouge.
Both brothers were conscripted to fight genocidal hordes of Cambodian child soldiers.
As they moved through ravaged villages in the Mekong Delta, across countless killing fields and up to the Thai border, they came across the scenes of some of the worst atrocities in modern history.
Neither man received any compensation for their service. They were entitled to no benefits, they said. My driver could not even get treatment for his various ailments.
Hung said his brother had spent two years on the front. Hung fought more and when he got home, he kept fighting — with knives, with his fists.
He shot heroin, drank and spent his life in and out of jail. A few years ago he got clean and took a job as a motorbike attendant in front of a pho shop.
My driver’s life was equally sad. After he returned from the front he married and had a son. Numerous malarial infections continued to plague him, rendering him unable to work for large stretches of time. At some point, Hung said, his brother’s wife took another man, threw him out of the house and set fire to his identification papers.
Hung’s narrow home in a tangle of alleys a few blocks away was already packed with people. There was no room for my driver.
So he began living in the traffic circle.
About a month after our interview he painted the various parts of his Honda Cub in bright rainbow colors in the hope that it would attract more customers from the backpacker district.
He began to look like he was going to die soon. On a few nights when I could not drive home, he declined to give me a ride. The skin of his face and arms was burned ruddy with fever. He stayed on the bench all day and all night, not even getting up to urinate. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out pills prescribed by a pharmacist.
I started to hand him fistfuls of cash. I don’t know how much I gave him — probably $50, all told.
Then, one day, he disappeared.
His brothers told me they had pawned his bike for $25 and dumped him at the Saigon General Hospital on Le Loi Street without giving their names, fearing they would get an exorbitant bill.
I found him lying shirtless on a wooden bed at the public hospital.
The other poor families in the room said they had given the old man money and food to pay for his treatment — but they were running out of charity. I gave him $25 and said I’d be back the next day. Two days later I returned to find that he had been thrown out onto the street.
No one seemed surprised at the office when I told them about my driver and no one could think of an institution or organization that would provide help to anyone in his circumstances.
Days later he returned to the bench without a bike. He seemed better for having rested for a few days. But a week later his health began to falter again and he disappeared.
Exasperated and without options, his brothers took him to a government hospital on the outskirts of town where he died alone.
His bench is no longer in the traffic circle.
The oblong divider where he once lived has been raised, painted and filled with flowers. There’s no marker for my driver or all of us who failed him.
Two days later I returned to find that he had been thrown out onto the street
Đăng ký: VietNam News