THERE’S a particular kind of joy that doesn’t quite feel like joy. It arrives sideways, unexpectedly, the way grief does. It sits on the chest a little differently, because you’ve spent so long not expecting it that your body doesn’t quite know what to do when it comes. That’s what I felt watching Iran troll the most powerful man on earth. Not pride exactly. Not celebration. Something older and more complicated than that. The feeling you get when someone in the room finally says the thing everyone has been too tired, too afraid, too beaten down to say. And they said it not with a speech or a press release but with a six-word tweet from an embassy in Zimbabwe: “Trump, please talk. We are bored.” I laughed.

It wasn’t really about Iran. It wasn’t really about Trump. It was about every time a country in this part of the world absorbed an American threat, an American sanction, an American bomb and was told to be grateful for the attention.

As you may know, I lived in Vietnam for several years. I arrived in Hanoi more than three decades after the war ended, and against all odds, had rebuilt itself. The American war didn’t come up much in conversations. But its images were never far. And underneath everything, quietly,........

© Dawn