by Jamie Zeppa
When I open my eyes again, teachers are shouting contradictory orders at the students who are rushing to and fro, colliding into each other in a farcical attempt to obey each new command. All students line up on the playing field! All students return to your hostels! All students assemble in the dining hall! You, class VIII girls, bring water and clean these stairs! Class VIII girls, stay where you are! Class VIII girls, why you are just standing there? Go to the road! Where are you going? Who told you to go to the road? Go to the road, we are walking down to Gypsum!
This last order is reinforced by the Dzongda. Yes, we will go to Gypsum. We will all walk down, everyone, now! I go inside to use the staff toilet, and on my way out, stop to look at the wall magazine. I particularly like a poem by a class VIII student describing the temporary beauty of life:
Despite all these colorful sceneries, wonders,
Nothing remains,
No matter the floodgates of our joy.
One board, set apart, contains Mr. Iyya’s epic poem. It begins with the sun rising to the zenith of its glory and continues through vales and dales of peace and happiness, with many a rushing river and gamboling lamb, until it reaches this, our humble valley, where “the King’s golden face shone like the purple sun yonder over these eastern hills! O! Bridal Bower of Bliss.” I am still laughing weakly when Jane comes to find me, and we set off down the road to Gypsum, arguing over the reference to the bridal bower of bliss. Jane says that Mr. Iyya is making an allusion to the King’s marriage last year to four sisters. I say Mr. Iyya is insane and therefore it is best to make no connections between the poem and the external world.
At Gypsum, we are given Gold Spot pop. “No Natural Ingredients!” the bottle proudly proclaims. The fizz settles my stomach. Then a truck pulls up and we are told to get in. We have been called back up to Pema Gatshel. “What on earth,” I mutter to Jane.
She laughs. “I don’t know! But let’s not miss the ride up.”
At the school, the gate is being dismantled. I don’t even bother to ask why. Someone shouts, and everyone rushes to line up. There is a glint of silver on the road above town—a vehicle! No, it is nothing. After thirty minutes, the lines begin to dissolve, and everyone goes back to milling around in the school yard. At 4:30, we are called again. A vehicle, the pilot jeep, is coming down the road. I stand nervously with Jane, fretting with my raichu, squirming in my kira. The pilot vehicle approaches. We can see several other cars behind it, mostly dark blue landcruisers. Horns and drums sound from the dzong, and I am excited. The pilot car drives by, and suddenly I am looking down and bowing deeply like everyone else. When I straighten up, I see the last of the cars disappearing down the road to Gypsum. And then, after a full day of preparing, putting up and taking down gates and practicing to meet the King, we are sent home.
The next day, we sit in a large tent made out of heavy white canvas with blue lotus flowers painted on the roof. Jane and I are in the second row. The air is hot, heavy, and motionless but I am glad to be sitting down after another full morning of lining up, falling out, milling around, standing about. A man in military dress enters the tent, signaling everyone to rise. The King walks to the front of the tent, followed by an entourage of government officials and bodyguards. He is taller than the average Bhutanese, and as handsome as his pictures, with sculpted cheekbones and a Cupid’s-bow mouth; he is wearing a simple checked gho and traditional felt boots. I glance around furtively: everyone’s head is bowed. The King takes his seat in front of a low carved table. We sit, and he begins to speak in Dzongkha in a stem, sober voice.
My stomach is still in motion, and I press my hands over it. Please God do not let me have to get up in the middle of his speech. I look sideways at Jane, who is looking up, so I look up, too. We are caught, staring outright, and lower our eyes again. A great wave of sleepiness settles over me. When I wake up, I am looking at the roof. My head is thrown back and my mouth is open. How long have I been asleep? I am mortified.
Students stand to ask carefully rehearsed questions, which the King answers, and then the meeting is over. “Jane,” I whisper, “I fell asleep ! ”
“I know,” she says.
“Did I snore?” I ask.
“Well, not exactly,” she says. What the hell does that mean? Either I was snoring in front of the King of Bhutan or I was not! There is no time to discuss it. We are served suja and desi, sweet, saffron-colored rice with raisins and bits of cashews, and then the teachers are called outside.
The King thanks the staff in English for our work, assuring us that it is of utmost importance because Bhutan’s future depends on the education of her children. The Bhutanese teachers look awed, almost rigid with veneration. For the last two days, I have wanted to laugh at the frantic preparations, but now I see this is no laughing matter for the Bhutanese. This is their King. I don’t even know what that means. Although the monarchy is less than a century old, the culture of obedience, hierarchy and loyalty is much older (take the Shabdrung’s name, for example—“at whose feet one submits”). Centuries of history have gone into forming the reverence on the faces of my Bhutanese colleagues. Having been raised in a culture in which authority is always suspect, I am a stranger here where it is still considered sacred.
On his way out, the King stops in front of Jane and me and shakes our hands. He asks in a kindly voice if everything is all right and if we are enjoying our time in Bhutan. We tell him we are. Then he is gone. We see the convoy of cars winding its way up and out of the Pema Gatshel valley. The King’s license plate says BHUTAN.
Back at the school, I find the headmaster and the Dzongkha lopens shaking their heads in dismay. The headmaster explains: “His Majesty asked me if Mr. Iyya understood Dzongkha, and I said no. I didn’t know why he was asking. Now Lopen here is telling that Iyya was looking at His Majesty all through the speech! Smiling and nodding through the whole speech as if he understood! ”
I do not mention my own serious breach of protocol. “Did His Majesty have time to read Mr. Iyya’s poem?” I ask.
The headmaster smacks his hand to his forehead. “I hope not,” he says, and we both break into laughter.
Entrance
Just off the headmaster’s office is a closet which contains the school’s ancient, manual ditto machine. Using it is almost as much trouble as copying everything by hand: the copy fluid leaks, the machine chews the paper and swallows it, the handle jams after every third copy. I tried to operate it myself this morning, and now Dorji Wangdi is pulling out shreds of wet, inky paper from the machine’s jaws. I stand around uselessly in the headmaster’s office which contains a desk, a heavy, old, oily typewriter, grey metal filing cabinets, and a globe. I put one finger on Bhutan and another on Lake Superior, amazed at how far away I am from home, half the world away. I have come as far as I can. In fact, if I go any farther, I will be on my way back.
Dorji emerges from the ditto room, hands smudged black. “Sorry, sir,” he tells me. “Today no.”
“Oh well,” I shrug. “What to do?”
I shouldn’t have tried to do it myself, but I was feeling particularly able after fixing my leaking roof. Yesterday, I had climbed into the rafters and placed an empty coffee can over every waterstain on the wooden beams. Early this morning, when it began to rain, I sat up in bed, listening with great satisfaction to the sound of water dripping into tin. The day before that, I had taken a few planks and bricks from a pile of building materials behind the school and built a low platform in the bathroom. I wasn’t able to fix the drain, but at least I no longer have to stand in dirty water to bathe.
After school, I go up to the market to get my daily half-bottle of milk and a ball of cheese from Tshering, the woman who owns the last shop at the end of the road. The cow, a silent black and white bulk, is tethered to a pole just outside the shop. Today I give it a tentative pat. My kids find my fear of cows extremely funny. “Miss, you is not having cows at your village?” they ask when they see me making feeble shooing motions a
t cows on the road. “No, I am not having cows at my village,” I say crossly. “Shoo! Shoo, cow, shoo! ” They come to my rescue, swatting the cow’s flank with a stick and hissing “Shhhht!”
The shop smells warmly of grass and manure and fresh milk. Tshering removes the bamboo covering from the metal bucket and fills my bottle with a hand-carved wooden ladle. Today I have to tell her that I cannot pay her. Once again, my salary has not come. The other teachers line up outside the headmaster’s office on the last day of the month to receive their salaries in cash, but now, for the second time the headmaster says that my name is not on the payment list. The Education Department has not received my posting order yet, and the headmaster has no money to pay me. He has sent a message to Thimphu, he says, but it will take some time. I have finished the last of my ngultrum and yesterday went to the Bank of Bhutan (Pema Gatshel Branch) to cash a traveler’s check. The sole bank employee in the bare room took the check and studied it, back and front, for a long moment, before shaking his head gravely and handing it back to me. I owe money for milk and cheese, and I need rice, coffee, chilies, soap, kerosene, everything.
“Ama Tshering,” I say. “Tiru mala.” No money.
The woman shrugs. “Dikpé, dikpé,” she says. “Omé bilé.” You can give it later. I go down to Sangay Chhoden’s shop, where I tell her mother my story and she nods sympathetically and gives me tea and the same answer. She doesn’t even bother to write down the amount I owe her. I walk back home, partly relieved, partly still worried. Even though no one seems particularly alarmed or surprised that I have no money, I feel terrible buying things on credit here. I know that my students think I am immeasurably wealthy. Miss, how many cars your mother is having ? How much money your father is making? Zai! Yallama! Miss, you is very very rich. I try to explain: in Canada, that is not rich. In Canada, my family is an average family, like your family. But this is an obscene lie. I am appallingly rich in comparison.
I am also appallingly wasteful. Last weekend, they came to visit while I was cleaning up, and watched anxiously as I piled garbage into a box until Karma Dorji finally burst out, “Miss! You is throwing? ” Yes, I said, looking down at the empty beer bottles and scrap paper. “Miss, we are taking, okay?” he asked. I said of course they could take it, and remembered the roomful of stuff left behind by the last Canadians. I had not yet figured out how to dispose of the bottles, plastic containers, and tin cans in there. It took me several weeks just to figure out how to take care of my own garbage, after realizing with a shock one morning that no one was going to come along with a truck to clear it away. I had to go through my overflowing bucket and separate what could be burned, what could be composted, what could not be thrown out after all. The more complex and developed a society becomes, I think, the less responsibility individuals have to take for their actions. As long as I could lug my garbage out to the curb two mornings a week in Toronto, what did I care what happened to it. But here, we are made to see the consequences of our consumption.
“Most of it’s rubbish,” I told the kids, leading them into the room off the kitchen. Except I could see right away it wasn’t. The bottles could be stopped with cloth plugs, the empty tins could be measuring cups and plant holders, the lengths of string and wire, the paper, the cardboard boxes, the torn plastic sheeting—all of it was useful, valuable. I felt ashamed, watching them pulling open the boxes excitedly, jubilantly waving a plastic jug with a broken handle, a squashed soccer ball, an empty shampoo bottle. They quarreled over a French-English board game with all its cards and pieces missing. “Miss, you is throwing?” they asked in disbelief. I nodded. What would they do with it? With the squashed soccer ball? They looked so pleased when they left, telling me over and over, “Miss, I am very happy to you,” that I wanted to cry.
It occurs to me now that in Sharchhop, the same word is used for both “thrown out” and “lost,” and there is no distinction between “to need” and “to desire.” If something is thrown out, it is lost to further use, and if you want something here, you probably also need it. When I study my Sharchhop book, I wonder who is richer, who poorer. English has so many words that do not exist in Sharchhop, but they are mostly nouns, mostly things: machine, airplane, wristwatch. Sharchhop, on the other hand, reveals a culture of material economy but abundant, intricate familial ties and social relations. People cannot afford to make a distinction between need and desire, but they have separate words for older brother, younger sister, father’s brother’s sons, mother’s sister’s daughters. And there are two sets of words: a common set for everyday use and an honorific one to show respect. There are three words for gift: a gift given to a person higher in rank, a gift to someone lower, and a gift between equals.
In the village, few written records are kept, but everyone knows who is related to whom, why that person left the village, what inauspicious signs shone down as they set out, what illnesses and misfortunes befell them after, what offerings were made, what consolation followed. Here the world is still small enough that knowledge is possible without surnames, records, certificates of birth and death. The world is that small, and yet it seems vaster to me, bigger and older and more complex than my world in Canada, where there is an official version of every life and death, and history is lopped and fitted and trimmed into chapters, and we read it once or twice and forget. It is written down; there is no need to remember. There is no need to remember, hence we forget. Whereas here history is told so that it can be remembered, it is remembered because it is told. The Sharchhop word for “history” translates into “to tell the old stories.”
Back at home, I collect my two buckets of rainwater from below the eaves. The tap water has been off for two days, but the rain has been plentiful. I am managing. In the evening, I am surprised by the sound of a vehicle outside my window. A white hi-lux has wedged itself in front of the building, and boxes, crates and tins are being unloaded onto the muddy ground. My Australian neighbor, I think, and it is. He knocks on the door later, a man with tufts of greying hair standing on end and a big grin. He introduces himself as Trevor and starts handing things over. He has brought my tin and a note from Sasha, bread from Thimphu, Swiss-made cheese from Bumthang, peaches and plums from Tashigang, and letters from home that ended up at the field office. I start to help him cart his luggage up the stairs but he waves me away. “Go read your mail,” he says kindly. I tear open the envelopes and read hungrily. Then I put my groceries away, arranging things carefully on the shelves. I feel immensely rich and unaccountably lucky, as if I had just won a lottery.
At my desk, I start a letter to Robert about the difference between arrival and entrance. Arrival is physical and happens all at once. The train pulls in, the plane touches down, you get out of the taxi with all your luggage. You can arrive in a place and never really enter it; you get there, look around, take a few pictures, make a few notes, send postcards home. When you travel like this, you think you know where you are, but, in fact, you have never left home. Entering takes longer. You cross over slowly, in bits and pieces. You begin to despair: will you ever get over? It is like awakening slowly, over a period of weeks. And then one morning, you open your eyes and you are finally here, really and truly here. You are just beginning to know where you are.
I write about all the things I have learned. Mustard oil must be heated until it smokes before you fry anything in it. Climbing a mudslide is easier barefoot. Water has a lower boiling point at high altitudes. Now I am knowing, as my students would say. All my former knowledge and accomplishments seem useless to me now—all the critical jargon I carry around in my head, tropes and modes and traces, thirteen definitions of irony, the death of the author, the anxiety of influence, there is nothing outside the text. So what? That doesn’t help me in the least now. Let Jacques Derrida come here, I think. Let him stay up half the night scratching flea bites and then deconstruct the kerosene stove before breakfast. I have had to learn everything all over again, how to walk without falling headlong into bushes, how
to clean rice, how to chop chilies without rubbing my hand in my eye and blinding myself. Eight year olds have had to take care of me. My ignorance amazes me.
Now when I long for the small comforts of my Canadian life, I remind myself that someday I will be home, longing perhaps for the misted view of mountains from my bedroom window, the smell of woodsmoke, a room lit by candlelight, the sound of rain moving into the valley. The rain has stopped, and the clouds are shifting to reveal a sharp, thin crescent moon and one bright star. It’s the kind of moon you can climb into, a silver boat, a rocking chair. Robert, I write, I am just beginning to realize where I am.
Movement Order
Early in June, the
rains set in, and
were so constant
that ... there
generally fell a
shower in some part
or other of the
twenty-four hours,
and the tops of the
hills were constantly
involved in clouds.
—Samuel Davis
in Bhutan, 1783
Rangthangwoong
The start of a three-day holiday, and I have a list of things to do: get rid of the rat in the kitchen without the aid of the trap that so horrified my students (oh miss, they told me, you is killing this rat, then you is coming back as rat for many lifes), fix the screens that let in a thousand flies a day (the same karmic rule applies to killing flies), bake bread using the old pot-in-the-pot-on-the-kerosene-stove method. But then Trevor knocks on my door to say that he is going up to Tashigang for the weekend and do I want to go. I stuff a toothbrush and a clean tee shirt into my jhola and race down the stairs to where the hi-lux is coughing up a cloud of gritty smoke.
