The sparsely furnished apartment in central Durham is kept neat. The kitchen in particular is immaculate because Glik, who is reported by Lap and Dar to take up to three showers a day, is the cook. Glik is a good cook--rice and fish, mostly--and a scrupulous cleaner of the white countertops.
The four men share two bedrooms--one for the "old men," as Lap refers to himself and Dar, and one for the babies, Glik and Loa. Each room has two twin beds scooted against their respective walls. Among their personal things are several half-filled photo albums with pictures of themselves taken last winter in North Carolina and pictures of their family in Vietnam sent after their arrival. Lap shows a photograph of his eldest son in school uniform--crisp white oxford shirt and navy slacks--riding his bike on their farm. This is the way schoolchildren should look, according to Lap. To him, American kids look "like they're crazy," constantly pulling up pants hanging off their hips.
The last time Lap talked to him, his son told him that he was going to quit school to help run the struggling family farm. Lap forbade it. "I can always send money," he told him, but he can't guarantee his son will have a better life if he quits school.
Lap is brimming with his new language. After a year, he is finally able to sit on the couch and talk for hours about his convictions to the Americans he sees as the best hope for his people. Short and muscular, he massages his forearms while he talks. If he doesn't understand a word, he'll jump up and grab a Jarai-English dictionary and look it up.
Dar and Glik have had a harder time. Dar understands more than he speaks, and Glik understands a little less than Dar. During the first six months of their stay, the sponsors were worried that Dar, the oldest of the group at forty-one, and uncle to Loa, remained withdrawn and silent. He would sit under the trees outside the apartment building, sketching his farmhouse in a journal.
Hni Rahlan, a Montagnard man in his early thirties who came to North Carolina in 1992, volunteers to translate for Glik and Dar in interviews. Hni wears an orange Nike cap and has a new baby named Rocky. When Glik and Dar tell him about how they dream of Vietnam at night, Hni puts his head in his hands and laughs with an equal mix of exasperation and empathy. He is frustrated that they are stuck between two lives, unwilling or unable to move on.
Time passes in Apartment #34R as people sit around watching news on a bulky old TV, waiting for work, English lessons, or someone with a car to come along. The coffee table is strewn with phone books, flash cards, and ESL books. People are constantly flowing in and out. Save one family, all of the Montagnards that moved to Durham last year live in this apartment complex.
Around 6 p.m. one evening, a mustached white man in his forties knocks and marches into the living room. Glik and Dar scramble to get ready. It seems they're going to work this evening. Steve Rowley, who works the night shift with them at the graphics plant, gets $20 a week from each of them for providing rides to and from work every day.
Work at the graphics plant is inconsistent at best. Steve explains that supervisors decide how many workers they're going to need for that night's shift only hours before. Often Glik and Dar don't know whether they'll have work that night until Steve shows up.
Finally ready, Glik emerges from his bedroom and he and Dar follow Steve out their front door. We all say good-bye a few times. Glik leaves and then pokes his head back in with a wave.
Finished with his workday hours ago, Lap is left alone on the couch. "Glik," he sighs. "Sometimes Glik cries at night in his dreams. When he sees his children and his wife in his dreams at night, he cries. Three times he's cried in this apartment. Sad!"
Dreaming Vietnam