February 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Soft Lines

Wendy Erd splits her time between Homer, Alaska and Ha Noi, Viet Nam, where she gathers and writes stories of communities.

"Your design should have flowing edges."  My older neighbor and friend, Uncle Le, leaned over my sketch in my living room. "The concept of Peace is soft, there should be no hard lines in it."

Uncle Le and Wendy Erd with the banner at the gate to their shared courtyard. Photo: Peter Kaufmann

The banner he drew curled as though the wind floated it.  At the top of his drawing, a dove held a long list of the words for "peace" copied in twelve languages. Interspersed between the square geometry of French, Spanish and English were spirals of Cambodian and Lao, brushstrokes of Oriental languages, and the smoke and wisp of Arabic.

We settled on a plan. I rode my bicycle into downtown Ha Noi, and near Silk Street, found an embroidery shop to turn philosophy into cloth. I wanted to hang my sentiments on a banner outside  our door that faces the common courtyard  we share with nineteen Vietnamese families.  As an American living in Viet Nam, this is the kind of flag I choose to wave, now that terrorism at home  has set the world on a crumbling edge.

This  small idea gathered friends and grew. An older auntie  in our courtyard  called me over to where she and her husband sat under the shade of an egg tree.  She handed me a list of words her son had helped compile at his office.  Many Vietnamese hands had penned the word for "peace" in the foreign languages  they had studied.  Only one word was smeared by a drip of ink, Sa lam, Arabic for "peace."

The red-tiled roof of the old French villa that houses the Embassy of Iraq  rises above the neighboring houses a half a block from my home.  On sultry nights I often nodded in passing to a man with dark eyebrows who stepped outside his  high plaster walls onto the city sidewalk  for  air. I decided to stop at the Embassy and ask the two Vietnamese guards if they might help me. They motioned for me to park my bike. Then they slid open a green metal door in the tall wall.

• "Ah come in." This same man welcomed me into the midday glare of the Embassy's inner yard. I explained why I'd come. He led me to a cool room, and we sank onto soft couches under a picture of Saddam Hussein. With a flourish, he penned three tiny waves, then a fluid line that rose and fell. He added the curve of a bird's wing.
• "This says Sa lam," he added.  "That means "peace" in my language." We stood up.
• "What is your nationality?" he asked.
• "I'm an American.  And also your neighbor." Our eyes met as I thanked him, we shook hands, paused a moment, smiled.

Back on the street, my heart beat wildly.  It had taken nerve and no nerve at all to cross into my neighbor's home and ask a favor. Maybe, I thought, this is the soft line Uncle Le was aiming for.

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