Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham

another building. Viet goes into a third home just a door down. In a moment, lights are turned on in all three buildings as the Nguyen clan stirs awake to welcome me. My cousins and aunts step into the alley to touch me on the forearm—a welcoming gesture. They dash from one building to the next to rouse each other out of bed, the alley the communal hallway of their extended residences, all within two big steps of each other. Fourteen adults, children, and servants live here, three generations in three houses.
    They give me a quick tour of the main house while a servant girl prepares the welcoming tea on a kerosene stove. Since it is late, the clan gives me a brief welcome around the dinner table with biscuits and tea. When I ask them about road conditions to Hanoi, Grandaunt launches into her litany of why I should abandon my trip.
    â€œThe roads are dangerous,” she says. “The country is not safe.”
    â€œPeople are very poor,” Granduncle adds, in agreement. “This isn’t Japan or America. This is worse than Mexico. ”He’s never been out of the country.
    â€œThey’ll kill you for a bicycle,” says Viet.
    â€œI was stabbed right around the corner by two muggers. They wanted my motorcycle.” Hung shows me the scar beneath his shirt.
    â€œOne thousand seven hundred kilometers on a bicycle to Hanoi! A bicycle! When your parents find out that you’re going to ride a bicycle to Hanoi, they’ll be sick with worries. Think about your parents. They didn’t bring you into this world so you can waste your life. Be considerate. Don’t do it. There’s nothing out there but jungle and bandits. You’ll die,” Grandaunt concludes with absolute certainty.
    By the time they bid me good night, I am thoroughly worried. Maybe they are right. After all, they’ve lived in Vietnam all their lives.
    Hung grins at me with his big cherubic face. “ Don ’ t look so glum. Leave it to me. I’ll show you a good time in this city. The rest of the country is crap anyway, ” he says with the generosity of a dedicated host.
    Hung has cleaned up his corner of the room. He emptied half of his clothes from the closet and drawers to make room for me. Hung offers me half of his queen-sized bed.

    Awkward with Eastern sensibilities, I lie—the typical (and acceptable) Vietnamese thing to do. I say, “Sometimes I get really violent in my sleep. I kick hard—a lot.”
    Rubbing his vulnerable teddy-bear belly, Hung quickly acquiesces: “Let’s set you up on the army cot. The bed is a little lumpy anyway.”
    Hung has brought his Vespa inside and parked it right next to his bed. Burglars once picked the padlock on the gate and made off with his last motorbike. We unfold an American army cot and wedge it between the Vespa and the dining table. He turns on two oscillating fans, one for each of us. Mosquitoes, he explains. I fall onto my cot dead with exhaustion, feeling like a side of meat protected from flies by the whirling fan.
    In the morning, Viet, Hung, Khuong, and I go out for breakfast. We walk down the street past scores of diminutive eateries. The neighborhood food scene is the Vietnamese version of the Paris café-bistro life, discounted by a factor of twenty. The streets are twenty times dirtier, and much more crowded and loud. Old women sell food out of baskets. Knuckling their eyes, schoolchildren in white-and-blue uniforms jostle each other, crowding around the women to buy sweet rice, banana rice cakes, fried bread, baked goods, and rice porridge. We take one of the rusted tables lining an alley. A young boy immediately delivers three steaming bowls of beef noodle soup, each starring a six-inch section of ox tail. A rag of a mutt roots around under the tables for bones.
    After the hour-long breakfast, we take my bike out to a major “auto shop,” a ten-by-fifteen-foot storefront where a dozen mechanics tinker