fighting in public
I have just born witness to the most amazing display of domestic conflict management in Viet Nam. Imagine if you will the factors at play: a narrow street woven together by food stands, bars, after school activities, and what would appear to the Western eye as extremely reckless driving.
A woman in her thirties is shooting off rounds of Vietnamese expletives at an older white male who is situated on his motorbike with a small child in tow. The man is sucking on a half consumed cigarette and blankly staring at the woman as if he only half understands her vitriol. She’s too far away and far too angry for me to clearly understand her Vietnamese, but I am almost positive that every other word is an f-bomb.
The woman has nearly haulted all passing traffic and those of us on the sidewalk are too captivated by the train wreck to look away. So we keep watching, and she keeps shouting.
By now the woman has taken off her shoes. Save for the clothes on her back, she has thrown everything else in her possession at the man, including a janitor sized cache of house keys.
As item after item narrowly misses the small child – who is now crying furiously – and hits the man, he becomes angry. With little regard for the baby’s safety or his own, the man releases the kickstand of his motorbike, unmounts his seat, and begins chasing the woman around the busy street.
Bystanders have become involved. Some restrain the woman with broomsticks and others tell the man in broken English to “go now, go now!”. Neither he nor the woman listen and they continue their brawl. The woman, who has cleanly landed several blows upon the man, retrieves her items from the pavement of Do Quang Dau street and reloads for another round.
The woman concedes to the fact that the man is far too large to be injured by her weak attemps to bean him, so this time she takes the keys in her hands and throws them atop the roof of one of the nearby bars. You can nearly hear a collective groan from us all, as we know that either the woman or the Westerner will regret this argument later on when they realize that they are locked out of their home.
Shoes continue to fly, bad words remain suspended in the air courtesy of the woman, and what was entertaining has now become sad. I begin wondering who the child belongs to, if it is mixed, and if the man and woman are related via business, pleasure, or debt. These types of thoughts tend to enter the mind upon the sight of a public fight between a Western male and a Vietnamese woman.
In the blink of an eye ten minutes have passed and the man knows that it is time to flee. He returns to his motorbike, resituates the child dangling off of the vehicle, and starts his engine. It is not without its difficulties, however, as the woman continues to rain blows down upon him with all of her might.
The man speeds away and the woman chases after him on foot, out of breath and shoeless. She won’t catch him, but she will be damned if she doesn’t try. She summons a Vietnamese man on his motorbike, hops on the back of the two wheeler, and follows the Westerner. We bystanders look at each other in pure delight and half shock. And part of me wonders if we are shocked due to the fight or due to the fact that the woman’s keys were never retrieved from atop the roof of the nearby bar.
In any event, at this very moment, I no longer feel like a foreigner in Viet Nam. Right now, I am a witness to history with other human beings who simply happen to be Vietnamese locals. For once in a blue moon, eyes no longer pay attention to me but to the clothes, shoes, and keys strewn about Do Quang Dau street.