Minoi

Their fingers touched as they gathered the last few grains of rice from the bottom of the shared bowl. Eyes met and held, startling each in this new unity. Both lowered their eyes, embarrassed yet pleased in the recognition of the other’s awareness.

Still dressed in wedding finery, each sensed the other’s anxiety. He, the gallant bridegroom, left the last morsel for her. She smiled shyly and raised it to her lips.

He set the bowl aside.

"Minoi,” he said.

"Minoi," she echoed.

In the tradition of the Montagnard peoples of upland Vietnam, a married couple never refers to their spouse by given name. Instead, they use the pronoun “myself.” In each and every verbal exchange of their married lives, from the first ceremonial utterance to the day of their separation by death, they are reminded of the other as themselves--“Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” in Adam’s oft-repeated but seldom-lived words.

In marriage, we see a high ideal-a joining, a merging of two into one—a beautiful representation of giving. Could we but see one another, not as “other” but as “self,” how easy giving would be. Are you cold; I shiver. Are you in pain; I hurt. Are you in poverty; I share what little I have with you. You are me; we are one. No longer would I look on another as an object, something to be used, exploited but as a part of myself for which I expend every effort to make comfortable and relieve of distress.

I know not how this might happen in me, in us all, but sense that, could it, then the world would be transformed into a vast field of sisters and brothers, with each of whom we are joined by gene and with whom we are delighted to share because they are us and we are them.

“Minoi” my sisters and brothers, “Minoi.”

Note: This story is taken from The Bamboo Cross, a book about Vietnam before, during and after the US invasion.