Viet Ham

Fresh off his Supreme Court-enforced victory of Pakistan’s presidential election, President-elect Pervez Musharrif will appear without his army uniform this Wednesday. A source close to Musharraf, who chose to remain anonymous, confirms that the Pakistani President’s new look will be very tasteful and artistic, and that Musharraf has a final say in all media stories about this event.

“In the past, President Musharraf has been repeatedly approached by the Bush administration to take off his uniform, but given the recent arrests of thousands of political opponents and the emergency rule enacted, he felt the time was right and was very comfortable with his decision,” remarked his press secretary.

While the theme of rogue military dictators slipping out of their uniforms has always been a key demand of Musharraf’s political rivals, this act has its detractors. What upsets people like Imran Khan, who heads the Movement for Justice Party, is that “it used to be that military dictators were portrayed in their impressively full regalia. Now you get military dictators dressing every bit the democratically elected leader at the UN, even commanding attention in business casual attire on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. The result of it is coverage that is very damaging—that trivializes and marginalizes military dictators because it does not give them the respect they deserve as ruthless powerful men who harbor no moral compass.”

Still, other critics insist the Bush administration’s demand for Musharraf to lose his uniform is yet another adoption of corrupt Western caricatures of authoritarian rule.

In highschool, Duc was an asexual leprechaun who guarded his pot of girlies with a zealous disregard for fraternity. Then it happened. The excess of E in his environment accelerated his sexual maturation with ruthless abandon. He turned his perverted eye to his own pot and decimated the huddled, frightened females with endless waves of demonic debauchery.

There are many stories that could be told about my recent trip to South Korea, but there is one that should be told amidst the steel and flesh of a bustling nation.

I got off the last KTX train coming from Gumi, an inland industrial city roughly 3 hours south of Seoul. It was close to mignight. Most of the luxury name shops had long shuttered their windows and lights, yet the train station in Cheonan was just starting its night shift as a shelter for the entrepreneurial homeless. These folks jockeyed for position, some for room to sleep, others to promote their personal brand of misery and helplessness.

Still an hour from my hotel room in Seoul, I quickly navigated through and over people in the station. I had not waited more than a minute outside when a black taxi pulled up to the curb. A Korean man in his mid forties leaned across his passenger seat and unleashed a torrent of his native tongue. The absence of my immediate response didn’t confuse him, but rather effected a transition in his manner and face, like gearshifter sliding into a familiar gear.

“Where?” he asked me.

“Seoul…..Grand. Inter. Con. Tinental Hotel,” I responded in a slow, deliberate manner.

We seemed to reach an agreement. He motioned me in, and I gratefully got into the rearseat. I looked around the cabin and dashboard and found comfort in all the familiar knobs and dials. Below the taxi meter, there was a framed ID photo of the driver and his license details. The pale young man in the photo held a stern look that seemed intended to mask his youth. I snuck a look the driver and found that same stern look now congealed in dark, leathery skin. I spent the rest of the taxi ride contemplating how his life must have been for the past twenty years. This bothered me a great deal that a person had spent the last two decades of his life picking up people, dropping them off, and waiting in traffic.

That night, I reassured myself that my taxi driver must have passed up chances in his life, missed certain turns that could have significantly changed things for him. It turned out to be solace for one night. By the end of my trip, every taxi driver and photo ID I noticed told the same story.