“That’s Her!” Stan said. But for a minute I wasn’t so sure. We were standing at the edge of Bac Ha Markets and I was suffering from sensory overload. The humidity, the noise and the riotous colour of the Flower Hmong’s traditional dress was swimming in front of me like the opening sequence of a Baz Luhrmann extravaganza. The unfamiliar smells emanating from the open-air kitchens was assaulting my nostrils, as was the more familiar odour of animal dung wafting through from the buffalo market, on what would otherwise have been a welcome cool breeze.
I flipped through the little book of photos I had brought with me. It was her, she was even wearing the same coloured hat and scarf.
We handed her the photo and she stared at it for a long time. I wondered about the quality of her eyesight. Finally she looked up and pointed a bony finger at me and her face collapsed into the sweetest of smiles. We smiled, we nodded, I babbled on in English, and ripple of activity radiated from where we were standing as a crowd of noisy, nosy women closed in around us, grabbing at the photos and chattering excitedly to each other. Pointing and laughing at the photos in turn as they recognised the images of their friends.
A woman standing behind me indicated that she wanted to see the photos too. I reached across to retrieve the photo from “my” lady, but she gripped it tightly and would not let it go. I had given it to her, and there was no way she was giving it back. She held it up for the others to see and her eyes crinkled so much I wondered that she could see out of them.
I asked if I could photograph her again, and she composed herself, stared directly down the lens at me and honoured me again with her portrait.
Meanwhile the activity around us had shifted slightly as another women recognised herself in one of the photos. A shy woman, five years ago she had tipped her hat at me as I photographed her. She had aged, as had all the women. But then, I guess, so have I.