The Permit

"Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated." ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

One evening in Saigon, I wandered into a café behind the Ben Thanh market and settled in a dark corner where I could watch and listen to what was going on without being disturbed.

It turned out not to have been a great choice. After a few minutes, a 30-something Vietnamese gentleman, who appeared slightly unsteady on his feet, approached me. I noticed he was wearing a white shirt, black slacks and shoes (rather than the more common sandals), so I assumed he was an office worker or businessman of some sort. Then I noticed an even more interesting feature of his ensemble. From inside his white shirt, he produced a small, black revolver and was poking it, somewhat tentatively, in my chest.

Having been held at gunpoint before, it had lost much of its romantic appeal, but still caught my attention. Under the circumstances, I assumed my new companion was expecting me to hand over my wallet, but as he didn’t say anything, I wasn’t certain. From his appearance and demeanor, I didn’t think he was either a thug or a terrorist, but he appeared to be a bit tipsy and there was, of course, the gun.

Perhaps his silence was due to the fact that he assumed we didn’t have a common language. In an effort to establish a personal connection at this somewhat sensitive moment I stood, glanced at the gun and whispered in my most authoritative and conspiratorial Vietnamese: “Anh có giấy phép không?” [“Do you have a permit for that?”]. The implication of the remark was that if he didn’t have a permit, he could get in trouble flashing it around in public like that and I was concerned for his welfare.

He was astonished, perplexed and, oddly, seemed a bit frightened. He hurriedly stuffed the gun back into his shirt, pulled out his wallet, produced his permit and held it out to me with both hands in a formal gesture of respect. From his permit, I saw that he was some sort of security guard and guessed that he was probably just moonlighting.

Looking at the permit, I focused on his address and asked how long he had lived there, was he married, how many children, where was he from originally and so forth. I then invited him to join me for a drink (not that he needed one, but I was trying to be neighborly and, in point of fact, I felt the need for a drink myself). He did join me and we continued our conversation without any further reference to the gun.

My new friend had first seen me as an object, sort of like a vending machine. He thought that if he stuck a gun in my ribs, the gesture would produce money. He didn’t seem like the sort of man who would rob another person, but taking money from a stranger - a foreigner - didn’t seem like the same thing to him.

Sometimes we can defuse a potentially explosive situation with a word or gesture, sometimes not, but it’s always worth a try.

-- Bill Herod