Night dreaming of the city

A familiar place we left behind

Huong texted me that, while lying between four deserted walls while the streets of Hanoi were still noisy outside at night. I imagined that my “special” friend – a young woman who was both weak and strong and resilient – ​​was most likely hiding her face behind her pillow. Outside, cold winds were blowing along the crowded sidewalks. People were wearing warm scarves and buttoning their sweaters like in a song written by Duong Thu about Hanoi: “I love Hanoi, to love my sweaters and button them up quickly”. I knew for sure that Huong would go out to the balcony, after wiping away her overflowing tears. Huong looked at the street, at the rustling banyan trees, at the pale sixteenth moon shining a lonely light in the dark sky. That light could not reach the streets filled with electric lights. To remember a familiar place that Huong had just left.

Huong left him because of an unsuccessful marriage. Huong said that she had to leave this city to forget her unhappiness and suffering. And Huong wanted to start over with her life that still had many unfinished things…

I couldn’t say much to Huong the day you decided to leave, but I know one thing for sure, for someone like Huong, forgetting is very difficult even though you appear strong on the outside. Just like this text message tonight…

Isn’t that right, Huong, you are standing from the balcony of the 8th floor of your building in the middle of Hanoi, looking down and seeing the sidewalks, the cold moon, the rows of banyan trees… all the hustle and bustle down there, all of which do not belong to you? The place where you belong is our streets. The streets that are now lying still under the yellow lights and under the full moon. Isn’t that right, Huong, you are dreaming of the vast sidewalks, where at night the footsteps of people who often wander in the cold winter wind are warm. Dreaming of the smoke rising from familiar shops: Le Loi bone porridge, Hong Bang pork porridge, Tran Phu egg stir-fry, Tran Hung Dao wet rice cake, eel soup at the city gate… Dreaming of the moon, the same moon, but on Vinh street it seems brighter if you sit and eat grilled corn, grilled sweet potatoes under the rows of palm trees right at the gate of Nguyen Tat Thanh park. Or if you want to see it with more splendor, run to the Lam river embankment. There, there was a patch of soft green grass right at the edge of the waves where we used to sit there with firelight nights and sing to the sound of the guitar. Huong once said, there is no city as peaceful as this city, where every morning people meet each other with greetings, laughter, and end the day sitting and singing with the river and such close people.

Dreaming of the scent of the old neighborhood

Is that right, Huong is dreaming about the old apartment complex where she grew up. The knitting-spinning apartment complex with more than 240 households in a small alley of Phong Dinh Cang Street. The apartment complex that Huong also said was very strange and bizarre. It was a hidden, different thing among the crowded streets that were getting taller and more modern. The houses of a few dozen square meters, damp and dated back decades ago, are still intact with mossy tiled roofs. The small gardens with fences built with firewood or rusty steel wire that people painstakingly collected from somewhere to build fences. The soccer field was the happiest place in that apartment complex every afternoon. The place where, even now, when the 4.0 revolution has reached every house, the residents here still burn firewood, burn coal, and raise pigs in a very traditional way. Every afternoon, the smell of wood smoke, coal smoke, the smell of livestock pens, the smell of damp walls, the smell of thick layers of leaves on the roofs... all spread out, making me feel nauseous.

Huong used to take us for many walks around her small neighborhood. Her family had moved away a long time ago, but she still came back from time to time because she “missed the scent of the old neighborhood.” Huong said it jokingly but truly. The scent haunted my friend even when she was a grandmother in her 40s. It was in her blood, even though she often wished that the old neighborhood would change soon because the fate of the people living here was still full of hardships and difficulties. She knew every alley, every house, every situation… And I saw her, who was considered a successful person in her career, return to her old place with innocent, childish joys. She stopped by to chat with the women returning from the market, or waited for cooking time in each small alley, where on the rustic wooden fence there were still clumps of Malabar spinach clinging to the ground. You showed me the tangled and hanging gac vines hanging over the electric wires that seemed to hang down in the middle of the road, showed me the house with the rose bushes shining brightly in the gray winter afternoon, bent down to pinch the cheeks of the children being carried by their grandmother to eat on the street, told me to look deep into each rusty door that held so many stories about the lives and fates of the workers around this Ben Thuy area. Huong once said that you stepped out of your beloved neighborhood with so much pride, because your family's dream was to no longer have to endure floods and water bailing every time the rain poured down on the city, which was also the dream of many people here. But then, your glamorous life, your success, and the happiness you thought you had in your hands, one day slipped away, leaving behind a pain that was not easy to fill. You longed to return to the damp house of the past, longed to hear the sound of rice boiling on the wood stove, longed to smell the smoke, the moss, the smell of the newly cooked bran pot. I miss the alleys where simple joys are just blooming roses and ripe red gac fruit...

The afternoons we ran away together

Isn’t it true, at this time, Huong is remembering the afternoons when we “invited each other to run away”. Who were we hiding from? Hiding from the busyness of a working day, hiding from the noise of the city. Going to the Hung Loc, Hung Hoa dike, watching the vast fields, the cows leisurely returning, following the path of wild grass running down to the roofs of the shrimp huts. There, there were not only sedge fields, but also a field of reeds blooming with gray flowers this season. There were creeks, small canals, wooden bridges, and even wild bushes with the rustling of cicadas running away when they saw any movement. What a strange city, what a city that had the vastness of the countryside wrapped up in it. We still talked about Vinh like that, the afternoons we “invited each other to run away” here…

Huong left Vinh in a strange winter. A winter that you said, you never felt the cold from the vastness of the sky and earth, but only felt the cold from within. And now, in the 8th floor apartment in Hanoi, my friend is standing on the balcony, listening to Thuy Chi sing “Dem nam mo pho” to dream about Vinh street. The place where you grew up, loved, got to know, missed… and now want to forget. But I know, your own pain will not be enough to erase all the flesh and blood that you have with Vinh. And I believe, if you could wish, you would dream in the blink of an eye, you would return to the middle of the street. Walking on the sidewalks that used to be yours, sitting by the river that used to be yours, with all the sadness that you grew up in it.

Huong, in our street, the sidewalks, the rows of trees, the Lam River, the rose bushes, the mossy tiled roofs, the scent of the old neighborhood… are still waiting for you!