But Saigon had no horizon, no empty spaces that hadn’t already been claimed and filled full of unmediated life. The city flared intensely against the senses the way its incessant traffic flowed all around you, and whatever nervous resistance I might have initially offered was soon swept away in absolute bewildered surrender. In those first few days after my arrival it wasn’t languid oriental images, or a Zen-like calm, that pressed against my consciousness but rather the frenetic intensity of the moment from which there was no escape and from which I desired none. So on those early mornings when I walked the couple of blocks to the downtown offices where I worked I was almost overwhelmed by the scenes and sensations that blazed through me.

Men brushing the streets with what looked like fantails of twigs, swishing rotting crimson and yellow fruit into the gutter; already a stream of Hondas weaving round cyclos and cyclists, one with a gas cylinder propped on the handlebars, one with hens in a bamboo cage and a pyramid of boxes so the rider was barely visible; an open-fronted barber’s shop with a poster of James Dean in the doorway and the bee-like buzz of clippers zipping; the sound of the Mamas and the Papas from an open window and paper lanterns hanging from a wooden rail; the spicy sizzle of a noodle stall; the wavering blue wick of a welding flame in a courtyard as a man worked on a bike repair; sunlight splaying against beer and soft-drinks kiosks and under one of the scantily leafed tamarind trees that lined each side of the street a trio of shoeshine boys called out to me, their voices high like a harmonised descant. They weren’t the only inhabitants of the city who spoke to me those mornings. There was a begging, legless vet on a bamboo mat always in the same spot who held out his wooden bowl; an old woman all in black perched on a little stool massaging her feet who raised her face to me and uttered what might have been a daily greeting or a curse; and a young woman with sleep in her eyes wearing a white halter top and denim hot pants, who invited me inside the darkened doorway of the steam and massage parlour behind her.

My very first night in that city, however, had seen me make a fool of myself. A combination of jet lag, some questionable airline food and a general sense of disorientation saw me slip into a fractured sleep, awash with the swirl of crazed images that had their origin in television’s portrayal of the war. I woke repeatedly before forcing myself into a shallow doze but suddenly jerked awake as gun and heavy-arms fire burst all around the building. My first night in Saigon and I was taking incoming fire. I tumbled out of bed, ducked to the window and tried to look out without making a target of myself. Intermittent, luridly-coloured light flared behind a building on the other side of the road. I backtracked and opened the door, then stepped into the corridor to meet an American who appeared to be responding to the attack by taking a six-pack of beer and a girly magazine to his room, three doors down from mine.