It was mid-morning as I made my way through Hue’s market. Its interior is usually packed with vendors and shoppers and hawkers and children darting under tables and around legs like some half-crazed squirrels. But it was too early for that and the only sound was the ceiling fans struggling to circulate.

She wasn’t the only meat vendor fast asleep. Several stretched out on the cool cement floors and if you didn’t watch look where you were going, you would have accidentally tripped and woken the women from their slumber. They were all women, and I wondered how late they must have worked the night before or earlier that morning to slice, chop, or, most of the time, hack the animal parts.

I stepped away from her, turned off the automatic flash, and held my breath, hoping the “click” of the camera would not wake her, or any of them. Nobody stirred as I turned to tip-toe out of the building.