Goran Dohong

However sharp a blade may be, without a handle no one can hold it to do any work at all. The Ê Đê people of the Central Highlands understand this better than anyone. In the fields and in the forest, wherever they go, they rely on a knife, and every knife needs a handle that fits the hand.

The Ê Đê have been telling the tale of Gơrăn Dơhông for a very long time.

In those days, in an Ê Đê village, there lived a husband and wife who knew nothing all year but their hillside field and the forest. They had a baby boy. They could not think of a grand name for him, so they gave him the plainest name that came to their hearts. In the Ê Đê language, that name was Gơrăn Dơhông, which means knife handle.

The name sounded simple, but the parents had placed a whole wish inside it. They wanted their son to grow up and help with many tasks, like a good knife in the house. And a knife that does many tasks needs a sturdy handle, one that sits snug in the hand, so the blade bites deep and cuts hard.

The boy called Knife Handle grew up just like his name. He was hardworking and obedient, and he cared about one thing only: work. When the season of planting seed in the field was over, he went down to the stream to cast his net for fish. Then he went into the forest to set traps for game. His hands and feet never rested. The other children of the village ran off together to fly kites in the clearing, or gathered around spinning tops. He never even glanced their way. In fact, he did not even know what play was.

It was a strange thing. Most parents worry that a child is lazy, but these two began to worry because their son worked too hard. A child who has never laughed out loud beside a spinning top, who has never run after a kite full of wind, is missing a piece of the sky of childhood.

So the parents spoke to him. The first time, he only said yes and bent back over his work. The second time, the third time, he was the same. The parents kept wondering and kept reminding him. By the seventh time they asked why he did not go and fly kites and spin tops like his friends, a feeling of irritation welled up inside the boy.

They had said that working hard made him a good son. Now they were finding fault because he did not know how to play. Very well, then, he would play. And he truly did.

But a thing that leans all the way to one side often tips just as far to the other. The boy who once did not know how to play now loved play so much that he forgot everything else. His top spun from morning until noon. His kite strained against the wind all afternoon. The field behind the house he left alone, and the weeds crept in row by row over the seeds.

In the old days he had sharpened his two forest knives, the rựa and the chà gạc, every single day until they gleamed. Now they lay tossed in a corner. No one had handled them for so long that the steel blades turned a dull, rusty red. He forgot his fishing nets down in the stream for so long that moss grew on them, green moss and red moss. When he hauled them up, they were only a heavy, tangled mess. Inside the house, everything made of iron rusted, and everything made of cord slowly rotted.

The son was named Knife Handle, yet every knife in the house lay rusting.

The parents grieved for their lost goods and their wasted labor, and they scolded him harshly. The boy, angry and ashamed at once, walked out of the house. In truth, he did not want to leave. But his feet kept walking and walking, and they carried him to unfamiliar lands he had never set foot in.

After walking a long way, he came one day to a distant village. That village carried a very old sorrow. For many years, a fierce Water Spirit had lived in the stretch of river near the village. Every year it made the village hand over a beautiful young woman. The people could only grit their teeth and bear it, for no one was strong enough to resist. This year, the turn had fallen to a young woman named Mah.

The boy called Knife Handle stood at the edge of the village. He looked at the bowed faces and the red, swollen eyes, and he felt something inside him that ached and would not let him rest.

And right then, standing amid the sorrow of an unfamiliar village, he suddenly remembered who he was. His parents had named him Knife Handle, the handle that holds a knife firmly for hard work. A handle is worth nothing with no blade to hold. All this time he had let every knife of his life lie rusting, himself included.

He asked the villagers to lend him a forge and some charcoal. He kindled the fire. And for the first time after so many idle days, his two hands set to a truly hard task. He forged himself a new knife. He worked the bellows until the fire roared and swung the hammer until the steel grew thin, until the blade gleamed, keen and bright. The knife fitted his hand exactly, solid and firm, as if it had been forged for a handle named Gơrăn Dơhông and no other.

The Ê Đê tell of his fight with the Water Spirit very briefly. All anyone knows is that the boy went down to that stretch of river. With the knife he had forged with his own hands, he ended the burden the village had carried for so many years. The Water Spirit could trouble no one anymore. The surface of the river lay calm again, clear as glass, as if nothing frightening had ever lain beneath it. Mah was safe, and the whole village, for the first time in many years, let out a long, light breath.

It is said that from that day on, the young man was no longer the playful boy who let his knives rust and his nets grow moss. Nor was he the child who only bent over his work and forgot how to laugh. He had to travel very far to find again the very name his parents had given him.

In the Ê Đê villages of the Central Highlands, the old people still tell their grandchildren this tale. It is about a child of their own village, the child who carried the name of a knife handle.