The Vietnam Lawyer Association has extremely graciously offered us a tour of Hanoi. (Those in tracks 3, 4 and 5 could take a tour today while 1, 2, and 6 worked on their recommendations for resolutions; tomorrow, we switch.) Our first stop was the Masoleum, with Ho Chi Minh beautifully preserved after 40 years. He looks like he is asleep, and will open his eyes and talk to you at any moment. Pictures cannot do justice to the size and grandeur of the building and the huge open lawn and plaze in front. The VLA had donated a funeral wreath on our behalf, which was laid at the door of the Masoleum with great ceremony by the guards in their funeral white uniforms. As we began to filter in, one guard raised his finger to his lips to indicate we should be respectfully quiet, a quizzical combination of white gloves and white uniform in the librarian's pose.
We came in through the VIP/foreigners' entrance; through a snafu with directions, some members of the tour and I had originally come to the People's entrance, the Vietnamese entrance. The line from there to the other entrance looked like it was at least a mile, with 10,000 crammed into the narrow walkway that wraps around the outer circumference of the complex. People come from all over Vietnam to see the complex. One of the staff members of the front desk of our hotel said he has seen it many, many times, too often to count.
After you come out of the Masoleum, the line snakes through the complex to view first the Presidential Palace, built by the French for their French-born governor (Ho Chi Minh felt is was too grand for a single, simple man) and then appropriated by the Vietnamese and the two buildings he lived in, one a two-room simple wooden structure, raised on stilts to provide single wide area, about the size of a small conference room, where the breeze could blow while he and his ministers met around a straight-forward table.
At that point, I spied them: a group of Vietnamese soldiers in the old green uniforms that I had seen so often from pictures of the war with the U.S., some of them with medals hanging from their front pockets. I became as curious and stared as much as all the Vietnamese stare at me (white faces are still vastly in the minority, despite the opening up of Vietnam and the encouragement of toursim). I was excited and so much wanted to talk to them: what state were they from? where had they fought? Did they get to met Ho? Did they ever hear him talk? How do they feel about the U.S. today? We are supporters of the U.S. group, Veterans for Peace, which helped to start the Vietnam Friendship Village, an organization that helps children and veterans affected by land mines and Agent Orange. We know several Americans who fought in the war. I ached to reach out to them, to offer a bridge of peace, or even a contact of peace. But it was too sudden, to come across them like this. I could not formulate the words to tell our translator why I was so excited, and my Vietnamese is non-existent. We stared at each other several times in the walk through the complex, sometimes only two or three feet away, but it might as well have been opposite sides of the Grand Canyon. I finally asked permission to take a photo. I wanted to have a picture with them, but even that part didn't come across. They shook their heads no. To have it come down to such a dumb tourist kind of gesture. I feel so sad. They are clearly all older, they must be in their 60s and 70s, who knows if we will have another chance. And who knows how they feel about being approached by this overweight middle-class American woman after all they had been through.
I will write again about the Congress. It is incredibly exciting to be here, the ideals and solidarity expressed are deeply felt and reach across all kinds of barriers of language and experience. That makes the contrast with the experience with the Vietnamese veterans all the more pointed in my heart. But this took me an hour, and I have to up early to get to the meeting point where the very organized VLA has suttle buses waiting for us to get us to the Congress site. Thank you, Eric, for setting this up, and giving us this opportunity to share.
Karen Weill
Seattle, Washington
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