Beyond The Sky And The Earth Part 6

A bird sings out, a two-note song, and I come back to myself. "Let's just stay here," I say, because the road ahead bends and quivers in the heat, and we still have twelve kilometers to go, and standing here is like drinking spring water. Even the river hesitates at this spot, curling around the large rocks and murmuring against the banks before the current tugs it away.

The last two hours of the journey take forever. We turn a comer and see Tas.h.i.+gang dzong, perched on a cliff in the distance, but that's where it remains, in the distance, a mirage, and I limp along, feet burning, stomach empty, with the refrain of "Run Joey Run" on permanent playback in my head. "I wish the Vomit Comet would come along," I say.

"No you don't," Leon and Tony say in unison.

"Which would you rather have right now," Leon says suddenly, "a sandwich with Black Forest ham on thinly sliced rye bread with Dijon mustard and a cold beer or-"

"Oh no," Tony groans. "Not the Food Game."

"OR, a pizza with extra thin crust, sun-dried tomatoes, onions, black olives, cheese and-"

"It's his favorite game on long walks and bus rides," Tony explains. "It's torture."

"AND a bottle of your favorite red wine," Leon finishes.

"The sandwich," I say. "You?"

"The pizza. Okay, now, which would you rather have for dessert, Haagen-Dazs chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream or ..."

Time speeds up. We cross Chazam discussing the merits of seafood over falafel above the loud flap and flutter of tattered prayer flags tied to the bridge railings, and take a short cut to Tas.h.i.+gang dzong, a forty-five-minute ascent up the steepest slope ever to bear a path. I am dizzy and painfully out of breath when we reach the cl.u.s.ter of prayer flags at the top, but now I understand why the dzong was built here, on this una.s.sailable spur overlooking the river.

At the Norkhil bar, we are joined by a cla.s.s VIII student Tony knows. He begins to tell us about Tas.h.i.+gang, how a local deity had to be subdued before Buddhism could flourish there; a small dwelling halfway down the mountain is said to hold the deity now. The dzong was built in 1688, continuing the Shabdrung's campaign to bring the whole country under one rule. "Hey," I interrupt, "what happened to the Shabdrung anyway?"

"What do you mean, miss?"

"In the cla.s.s VIII history book, the Shabdrung's reincarnations suddenly disappear."

The student glances over one shoulder, then another, and begins to tell us a story. Sometime in the 1920s or 1930s, he is not sure when, the then-Shabdrung began to cause trouble with the monarchy and soon after died mysteriously "in his sleep," but everyone knows he was a.s.sa.s.sinated, suffocated with a white silk scarf, and everyone knows the family of the man who killed him was cursed with illness, madness, loss and ruin. The next reincarnation was found somewhere in the eastern districts, but this Shabdrung also disappeared. Some people say he was pushed out of a window in Tas.h.i.+gang dzong.

The student pauses and looks around again. "As he was falling, a bird tried to save him, and caught him with its wings, but the men in the dzong threw stones and he fell again. The river itself didn't want to take him, and sent him back to sh.o.r.e, but the men came again and pushed him back in and so finally he had to die."

He tells us that the next reincarnation was taken out of Bhutan by the Indian army during the Indo-China war, and now lives in New Delhi.

We sit quietly, digesting this, and I remember the Pema Gatshel history teacher's reluctance to talk about the current Shabdrung. After the student leaves, we look at each other. "How much of that do you think is grounded in fact?" I ask.

"Who knows?" Leon says, shrugging.

I think about all the half-complete stories I have heard since I got here, how their incompleteness makes them resonant and powerful. History here seems a combination of official, unofficial, and forbidden stories. This tale of the Shabdrung, for instance: I don't know where to look it up or who to ask for more information. There's no way to know for sure. It could have happened, it might have happened, I heard it happened ... It is the impossibility of knowing for sure that makes everything possible. I am dying to know (no, I don't want to know) the rest of the story, the whole story, the real story.

We drink several cold beers in silence. "Now where's my ham sandwich with Dijon mustard, that's what I want to know," I say. But what I really want is rice and dahl and potato curry at the Puen Soom, which is fortunate, because that's all there is.

On Tuesday morning, we search the bazaar in vain for a private vehicle going south. "It's the Vomit Comet for sure," Tony says.

"It's full. We'll never get on," I say, watching as a woman with a jerry can of kerosene, a baby, and a bundle of frayed, faded cloth tries to press her way up the bus steps.

Leon walks around the bus, peering into the windows. "That's not full," he reports back scornfully. "Full means the ticket collector has to walk on the backs of the seats. Let's go."

We squeeze ourselves onto the bus, which reeks of mildew, vomit, kerosene, and betel nut, struggling over legs, bags, boxes, sacks, jerry cans, children and bedrolls. It is like being pushed through a sieve. Still more people pile on, until we are jammed in too tightly to move, and the ticket collector has to walk on the backs of the seats. The engine rumbles to life and Hindi film music comes screeching out of a speaker. "Oh misery," Leon groans, "we've got the one with the sound system."

After thirty minutes on the winding road, a few people begin to vomit, out windows if they are near them, onto the floor if not. People cover their noses and mouths with their sleeves against the smell. A chicken escapes from somewhere and a child kicks my s.h.i.+ns trying to catch it. Someone spits betel nut juice on my shoes. The ticket collector sways precariously from his perch and clutches at a woman's head to prevent himself from falling into her lap when the bus brakes suddenly. People who want to get off at an unscheduled stop gesture to him, and he pounds loudly on the ceiling or the back wall: bangBANG, bangBANG, bangBANG. Disembarkation requires a contortionist's skill and a great deal of determined uncivility. The open windy ride to Rangthangwoong seems like a luxury now. "Which would you rather have," I ask Leon, "eggs Benedict with freshly squeezed orange juice or ..." I cannot finish.

"Valium and a Scotch," he answers flatly.

We say goodbye to Tony in Khaling, and Leon gets off in Wamrong, wis.h.i.+ng me luck getting a gypsum truck from Tshelingkhor. "If there's no truck, and it's getting dark," he says, "stay in Tshelingkhor. Don't walk in the dark. A kid fell off a cliff last year trying to take a shortcut somewhere along that road."

"Yeah, okay, I'll just book into the Holiday Inn for the night," I say grumpily, thinking of the two miserable, bamboo shacks by the roadside.

"The Hilton has better room service," he says. "Bye!"

There is already a large group of people waiting at Tshelingkhor when I scramble off the bus. It is dusk, and a heavy mist is creeping over the tree tops. Inside one of the huts, Tshering's shop-c.u.m-bar, I study the shelves behind the counter. I have a choice of Orange Cream Biscuits and tea, or Orange Cream Biscuits and several brands of Bhutanese whiskey: Dragon Rum, Triple x.x.x Rum, Black Mountain Whiskey, Bhutan Mist. I drink three cups of lukewarm tea and then switch to Bhutan Mist. Tiny knives sc.r.a.pe my throat on the way down but the final product settles warmly in my stomach. "Gari mala," "Gari mala," the old man beside me says glumly. He is drinking Triple x.x.x Rum. I ask him where the toilet is and he gestures to the door. Outside. I stand up but he waves me back down. the old man beside me says glumly. He is drinking Triple x.x.x Rum. I ask him where the toilet is and he gestures to the door. Outside. I stand up but he waves me back down. "Ma di, ma di, "Ma di, ma di, " he says, making a strange wriggling gesture with his fingers. " he says, making a strange wriggling gesture with his fingers. "Pat-ba!" "Pat-ba!" Finally, a young boy steps forward and translates shyly for me. "He is telling don't go, miss. He is telling leeches." If leeches can get up your nose, they can also get into other orifices. I sit back down. Just then, everyone in the room jumps up. I can hear it too, the distant rumble of a truck. Outside the mist has turned into a fine, cold rain. The truck stops, a flatbed already overloaded with sacks of rice, but the driver waits while we clamber on before turning onto the Pema Gatshel road. Finally, a young boy steps forward and translates shyly for me. "He is telling don't go, miss. He is telling leeches." If leeches can get up your nose, they can also get into other orifices. I sit back down. Just then, everyone in the room jumps up. I can hear it too, the distant rumble of a truck. Outside the mist has turned into a fine, cold rain. The truck stops, a flatbed already overloaded with sacks of rice, but the driver waits while we clamber on before turning onto the Pema Gatshel road.

I know we are driving along the edge of a very steep gully, but in the darkness I can see nothing except the occasional glimmer of the truck's headlights on the clouds in the ravine beneath us. In my gut, though, I can feel the immense emptiness between the soft, deeply rutted road we are on and the bottom of the gulch somewhere down below. Beyond, across, I know there are mountains but I cannot see them. It is like driving on the edge of the world.

The truck turns a corner and we are splashed with mist from a waterfall. At the next corner, the truck flounders in mud, rocking back and forth. The Bhutanese begin to pray. I don't know what I am more afraid of: the road giving way, the truck tottering and the whole lot of us tumbling over the edge, or my bladder full of tea bursting. The truck lurches forward, engine straining, then slides back. Everyone is scrambling to stay perched on top of the hard rounded sacks of rice, and I look desperately for something to hang on to. The old man from Tshelingkhor offers me a length of rope which is not secured to anything, a shovel handle, and his own cloth bag full of empty bottles. I shake my head to each. Finally, he grins lewdly and motions at his crotch. "Apa! Yallama!" I say, exasperated. Our fellow pa.s.sengers, who have been watching this attempt to find me a handhold, burst into laughter. They laugh for the rest of the ride. Just when they begin to quiet down, someone shouts, "Apa! Yallama! " and they explode again. I laugh, too, looking up at the sky of s.h.i.+fting clouds illuminated by the moon buried somewhere deep inside them.

Do Not Eat Your Spelling Tests

In the staff room during morning break, Maya is opening a stack of mail and skimming the letters. I pick up an envelope addressed to "Miss Dorji w.a.n.gmo, cla.s.s VIII B, Pema Gatshel Junior High School" and ask Maya what she is doing. "Girls' mail," she says. "First the matron has to read."

"But why?" I ask.

"Love letters," she says, not looking up. I don't know what to say to this. An inquiry into the privacy of mail is obviously pointless.

"See this one. The boy is writing 'from your dear brother Tandin w.a.n.gchuk' on the envelope, but look here, inside. 'My dearest sweet Dechen, I am missing you a h.e.l.l lot,'" she reads triumphantly, then crumples up the letter. She looks up and sees my expression. "We have to," she says. "Otherwise these girls will spoil their studies."

"But you don't read the boys' mail," I say.

"No," she says. "I am the girls' matron."

"But does anyone read the boys' mail? The boys' warden?"

"No," she says.

I stand there, chewing on the end of my pen, remembering Mr. Om Nath's strange tone when he talked about looking after the girls, thinking of how often the boys are singled out for responsibilities and recognition by the staff while the girls are pointedly ignored, how the number of female students decreases sharply in the upper cla.s.ses. During the orientation, we were told that women in Bhutan enjoy much more freedom than women in other Asian countries. Women in Bhutan own shops and hotels and small businesses, they travel when and where they want, and schooling is free and open for both s.e.xes. Unlike India, there is no dowry system and very few arranged marriages; daughters are as valued as sons, divorce is acceptable, widows remarry, and family property is usually pa.s.sed down matrilineally. And yet, in the school, another set of values seems to be at work. In the lower cla.s.ses, the girls are still bold and confident, but they become increasingly shyer as they move into the upper grades. They put their hands over their mouths and giggle when addressed; they defer to the male students and seem to shrink a little more each year. I wonder if s.e.xism is somehow a by-product of Western-style development, or the number of Indian teachers in the school system, or if chauvinism is just as deeply embedded here as anywhere else. When I ask the older girls why so many of their friends have dropped out, they tell me they were needed at home, or they had gotten married, or their parents thought that education was irrelevant since their daughters were going to inherit the family house and land.

"One letter is there for you, in the headmaster's room," Maya says, and I slip across the hall. It is a letter from Robert. I have this idea that I will put it, unopened, into the top fold of my kira until lunch, that I will take it home and savor it slowly. I do not. I rip open the letter and read it right there, standing in the headmaster's office. Robert writes that he misses me. He has received my postcard from Thimphu and my first long, long letter. He wishes he could call me. He writes about school, what's gone wrong with his car this time, the weekend with his parents, the skiing is finished, it has been a mild spring. The letter is full of details of daily life, and I feel reconnected and homesick, close and far, at the same time. And then I get to the end, just before the love and x's and o's. He says he has read my letter over and over again, but he just can't get a handle on where I am and what I am experiencing.

"Where are are you?" he writes. you?" he writes.

The bell rings for the next period but I stand in the office, the letter dangling from my hand. I don't know how he can ask where I am, how he cannot understand. I wrote everything.

The monsoon has begun in earnest. The rain in March was just a little prelude. The mornings are often clear, and I get up early just to watch the sun float up over the dark hills behind the school. By early afternoon, the clouds have rolled in again, blocking up all views. It rains most heavily at night, and I like the sound of the falling water on the corrugated iron roof now, the steady rea.s.suring pressure of it. I no longer worry about the road and what it might or might not bring-mail, visitors, supplies. I will not starve. I will be taken care of, I know that now.

If I get up early enough, I have an hour or two to myself before someone knocks at the door. I boil water for coffee on the new gas stove Trevor has brought me from Samdrup Jongkhar. It cost one month's salary (which I had to borrow from the headmaster) but it is worth it. Back in bed with my coffee, I read, write in my journal, listen to the now-familiar sounds of chickens and roosters and cows and children. Once or twice, I have gone out for a walk at dawn, and have been surprised at the number of people already at work: tending cows, carrying water, collecting firewood. I think of the students who have already begun their three-hour walk to school, having risen and dressed and eaten a breakfast of cold rice in the dark.

The first knock at the door is usually one or two kids, bringing me vegetables. I pay for these things, even though the headmaster told me not to. "It is because you are the teacher," he said. "They want to give something." He said that respect for the teacher is a Bhutanese tradition, and the parents do not expect to be paid for vegetables. But I don't know how I can suddenly stop paying them now that I have started, and it is such an inconsequential amount (for me)-not even a dollar for a week of fresh tomatoes or spinach. The news of this payment has spread, though, and now kids from other cla.s.ses are bringing me vegetables as well. Dozens of kids, armfuls of spinach, baskets of onions and radish and beans. I cannot possibly eat all they bring, and yet, I do not know how to refuse it. I cannot take from some and not from others, cannot pay some and not others. I regret my misplaced generosity and then wonder if it is even generosity at all, or just guilt at having so much, and a desire to be liked, to be accepted by the village, to be thought well of. I have upset something, changed expectations, brought something foreign into the picture. I have created a transaction.

I wonder what other things I have unthinkingly done, if I will do more harm than good here. I do things without thinking, I forget where I am. This is harder than living without a refrigerator and hot running water, harder than being cut off from family and friends. This is, in fact, the hardest part: the same imperfect self immersed in a completely new and incompletely understood setting, the same desires and longings clouding judgment, the same old heedless mind, leaping from impulse to action.

No mindfulness, I think. Every Buddhist treatise I read stresses the importance of bringing the mind to focus on itself, developing the awareness necessary for right thought and speech and action. Mindfulness is both a means and an end, the way to enlightenment and the product of it. It has allowed me several times to pull myself out of a quagmire of homesickness and futile longing for material comforts, and bring myself back to the moment or task at hand, but I wish I had a stronger, less random sense of it. Perhaps I expected that I would automatically become wiser in a Buddhist culture, maybe through osmosis. But mindfulness will only come through effort. Meditation is one way to acquire it, but I am also beginning to wonder if all the Buddhist rituals I have witnessed so far-the turning of prayer wheels, recitation of mantras, circ.u.mambulation of prayer walls-are practiced in order to develop mental discipline.

I think about this through morning a.s.sembly, watching my kids' heads bent in prayer. I love them, each and every one of them. They have already taught me far more than I can ever teach them. Jane was right: they make everything worthwhile. I bow my head and pray that I do not do more harm than good. I pray to remember where I am.

I push open the cla.s.sroom door and they leap up. "Good morning, cla.s.s II C," I say. They are cla.s.s II C, and I am Miss: Miss Jamie, also Miss Jigme, sometimes Miss Jammy, nurse and babysitter, cheerleader and referee, general a.s.sistant and, occasionally, teacher.

"Good morn-ing, miss! " they shout back, beaming. And we begin.

Most days are still a travesty of pedagogy. Today, I hand back spelling tests and Sonam Tshering promptly stuffs his in his mouth and swallows it. For a moment, I am too surprised to speak. Karma Dorji says, "That boy is very hungry," and everyone laughs, but I am not amused. Frowning, I fold my arms and say crossly, "Cla.s.s II! Listen to me!" They sit up straight, serious, expectant. "Cla.s.s II," I say sternly, "do not eat your spelling tests." And then I burst into laughter. My announcements and queries are growing more absurd daily. Tshew.a.n.g Tshering, you cannot write your test with a cat in your gho. Sangay, put away those chilies. Well, eat them if you're going to eat them, but don't play with them during math. Cla.s.s II C, who is bleeding all over the floor? Cla.s.s II C, who is ga.s.sing? Cla.s.s II C, why is there a bottle of pee in our room?

Moments of work and understanding and order arise briefly out of the uproar. In between accidents, emergencies, spontaneous expressions of affection, and moments of brilliant mischief, they learn the five senses, the months of the year, the rain cycle. Miss, they tell me, you is very good. Miss, you is coming my house, my mother is very happy to you. Miss, you is always teaching us English, today we is teaching you our language; you say long-sharang. long-sharang. I repeat it-long-sharang-and they fall over laughing. I have just learned the Sharchhop for d.i.c.k-head. I repeat it-long-sharang-and they fall over laughing. I have just learned the Sharchhop for d.i.c.k-head.

After school, they come to take me roaming. There is so much to show me: a crumbling chorten, a flowering orange tree near a stream, a grove where ghosts are seen at night. They have so much to tell: the woman in their village who can talk to the dead, the time someone saw a demon and fell ill, the great hairy ferocious beast that lives in the mist on the tops of mountains and feeds on human flesh (one kid demonstrates by trying to bite another kid's head). They tell me what they will be when they grow up: a dasho, a driver, a farmer. They tell me about their parents, who drinks arra and who does not, whose house has gla.s.s windows and whose does not, who died and when and why. They talk about G.o.d. G.o.d is Sangay, the Buddha, and G.o.d is also Guru Rimpoche. And Chenresig and Jambayang, they say, naming the Bodhisattvas of Compa.s.sion and Wisdom. Lha shama. Lha shama. Many G.o.ds. I ask if they believe in heaven. Yes, yes, they say. "Being very good, then going up to Guru Rimpoche's place. Being bad, then going down." I ask them what it means to be good. They say "good" means being kind, giving, not killing, not even a bird, not even a bug. Many G.o.ds. I ask if they believe in heaven. Yes, yes, they say. "Being very good, then going up to Guru Rimpoche's place. Being bad, then going down." I ask them what it means to be good. They say "good" means being kind, giving, not killing, not even a bird, not even a bug.

"But you eat meat, yes?" I ask. They nod. "So isn't that also bad?" No, they say, they themselves do not kill the animal. "Only eating, not killing." This reminds me of stories I have heard about pigs being tied near cliffs. The pig eventually falls off and then it can be said that the animal killed itself. I don't really understand how this solves the prohibition on harming any sentient being, but they obviously do.

We walk back up the mountain in the cool evening shadows. At home, I write Robert another letter, reiterating, describing things again, in more and better detail. I am so lucky to be here, I write. Even when it is difficult and confusing. Maybe especially then. I am so glad I came. But I wonder if Robert will take this as a sign that I do not miss him, that I like Bhutan more than him. I rewrite the last page, saying I can't wait to see him at Christmas. Christmas. Christmas. The word looks foreign and unreliable on the page. The word looks foreign and unreliable on the page.

Beating Nicely

It is the language that confuses me at first. "Our sir is beating nicely," a cla.s.s IV student informs me. Beating means. .h.i.tting, with a strip of willow or a thin stick, across the palm or the backs of the legs. But beating nicely? Perhaps it means a beating without force, a mild or apologetic beating: this hurts me more than it hurts you. But nicely is used in Bhutan to mean well-done. So this is a thorough beating, a terrible beating. The sir in question is Mr. Iyya, but almost every teacher in the school has a stick and they are all beating nicely. An ugly narrow piece of bamboo, brought whistling down onto a trembling hand, a vicious crack, an indrawn breath, silent tears. I do not often understand what the beating is being given for. One morning during a.s.sembly, several of the smallest students receive a stick across the back of the legs. Mrs. Joy tells me it is for coming to school without shoes. "But what if their parents can't afford to give them shoes?" I ask, horrified. She shrugs. "They have to wear shoes. Headmaster has been telling and telling," she says.

In the cla.s.sroom, students are hit when they come late, when they talk out of turn, when they have forgotten their books, when they don't understand, when they can't remember, when they dare ask a question, when they give the wrong answer and, occasionally, especially in Mr. Iyya's cla.s.s, when they give the right answer. Teachers come to school with a notebook, a pen, and a stick. When the stick gets lost or broken, they send a student outside to find another. I should have expected this the first time I heard the Alphabet Song sung with a sinister twist: "Oh my madam don't beat me, now I know my ABCs."

I remind myself that this is not my country, not my education system. I remember fragments from our orientation session, a lecture about the monastic system, harsh punishments meted out by the guru to the student as a way to achieve total submission. The goal in the monastery is not submission for its own sake but the breaking of the ego, liberation from a false sense of self, leading to enlightenment. But it is very hard to see how this applies to cla.s.s III students who do not understand multiplication. The final goal in school is knowledge, understanding, and a stick will not help. Another part of me argues: it is part of a bigger cultural system, it involves different values. You can only judge it from your perspective, from your own cultural background and upbringing, and even if you are right, what can you do about it? Back and forth I argue, right-wrong, east-west, judgment is possible-impossible. It reminds me of arguments in a first-year university philosophy cla.s.s, the impossibility of ever saying anything, one way or another.

One afternoon, from across the playing field, I watch Mr. Rinzin slap Karma Dorji across the face and I go running across the gra.s.s, heart swollen with rage, how dare he, how dare dare he? "What seems to be the problem?" I ask Mr. Rinzin. My voice is shaking but he does not seem to notice. "Nothing, nothing. There's no problem," he says, smiling, and walks away. he? "What seems to be the problem?" I ask Mr. Rinzin. My voice is shaking but he does not seem to notice. "Nothing, nothing. There's no problem," he says, smiling, and walks away.

"What happened, Karma?" I ask.

"He is calling me to come, but I am coming there too slowly." He shrugs and plods off to join his friends, and I burst into tears.

I go to talk to the headmaster. He listens sympathetically as I explain. I say that hitting a child for disobedience is one thing, maybe, maybe, but children are being hit all the time, for everything, even for things they have no control over. They are hit when they don't understand and become afraid to ask questions. How can they learn if they cannot ask questions? Learning and fear are not compatible, and, as for discipline, there are other methods. The headmaster nods. He has heard this before. He says that he agrees in principle with me, but that students in Bhutan are used to the stick, and perhaps they will not behave without it. He says that if he stopped using the stick, the students might think he had no authority over them. "But all the students are so well behaved," I say. but children are being hit all the time, for everything, even for things they have no control over. They are hit when they don't understand and become afraid to ask questions. How can they learn if they cannot ask questions? Learning and fear are not compatible, and, as for discipline, there are other methods. The headmaster nods. He has heard this before. He says that he agrees in principle with me, but that students in Bhutan are used to the stick, and perhaps they will not behave without it. He says that if he stopped using the stick, the students might think he had no authority over them. "But all the students are so well behaved," I say.

"Yes," he agrees, "they are, but why? Because they've been brought up so strictly, isn't it?" I feel my throat tighten, and I command myself not to cry. The headmaster does not speak for a while, and then he says that I can use whatever method I choose in my own cla.s.sroom, and that maybe I will be an example to the others. I nod because I still cannot speak. He asks me if I have heard of NAPE, the New Approach to Primary Education, which the government is introducing. Under the NAPE system, he says, there will be no hitting. But it will take some time for people to get used to the new ways, he says.

These things take time, it is true, I want to say, but what about Mr. Iyya? Time is not going to help Mr. Iyya. There is a big difference between Mr. Iyya's beatings and everyone else's. A few days ago, I stopped outside cla.s.s I B, my heart in my throat at the sound of weeping. Inside, the entire cla.s.s was lined up in front of the Dzongkha lopen who was seated at the front of the room with a bucket of water and a handful of stinging nettles. He dipped the nettles into the water and struck each student across the palm. He did not look angry or happy or not happy to be punis.h.i.+ng the students for whatever infraction they had jointly committed or their simple failure to learn. He just looked tired. But Mr. Iyya is different. I have heard him shout himself gleefully into a black twisted rage over a misspelled word. The senior girls tell me that he slaps them in cla.s.s and says nasty things to them. "What kind of nasty things?" I ask, but they are too shy to tell me. His methodology for teaching English to cla.s.s IV is to make them copy out and memorize pages from the dictionary.

That afternoon, as we walk out of town, I ask Karma Dorji if his parents. .h.i.t him. "My mother is not beating," he says.

"But what about when you are very naughty?" I ask.

"Then shouting," he says. "My father is shouting and then sometimes beating. But Phuntsho w.a.n.gmo, you know Phuntsho w.a.n.gmo, miss? Our cla.s.s Phuntsho? Her mother is beating. Her mother is very kakter." kakter." Kakter means hard, difficult, rough. Kakter means hard, difficult, rough.

"And the teachers at school, they are beating, yes?" I ask. They all nod, and Norbu says, "Only miss is not beating. Why not beating, miss? "

"Because cla.s.s II C is very good," I say, and they laugh. "Not good, miss. We is very naughty."

Then I tell them, slowly so that they will understand, "In my village, in Canada, if I beat my students, their parents would get very angry. They would call the police and I would have to go to jail." But even as I say it, I hear the falseness in it. I try to calculate how many years ago corporal punishment was used in schools. I remember the strap in my elementary school. I cannot explain to them the complexity of the issue, the debate over physical punishment, the legal aspects, parents suing teachers, children suing parents. I cannot explain the state of things in North American schools, where teachers do not hit the students but students sometimes. .h.i.t the teachers, the slow poisoning of the relations.h.i.+p between teacher and student, breaches of trust and abuse of authority, the hopeless lack of self-control that no one seems to know how to address. Things are different in North America, but in the final a.n.a.lysis, not any easier or any better, and I am sorry now that I have given that impression. Here again is the mind, leaping from emotion to speech without reflection. I have learned nothing.

Three days after this conversation, tea break in the staff room is interrupted by a disturbance outside the headmaster's office. A man with a stick is speaking quietly, angrily in rapid-fire Sharchhop. Maya tells me that Mr. Iyya split open a girl's knuckles in cla.s.s and her father has come looking for him. The door to the office closes and we can hear nothing more. We sit in the staff room, watching the mist settle over the school yard, listening to the start of the rain on the roof, waiting for the end of the story. The office door opens, and the man leaves the school. The headmaster looks exhausted. The father was furious, he says, and he was hard-pressed to stop him from taking that stick to Mr. Iyya. He has promised to keep Mr. Iyya under control. The father in turn has promised not to beat Mr. Iyya on school property, but warned that Mr. Iyya now comes to the bazaar at his own risk.

I walk slowly across the playing field, letting the cold rain soak me. The hem of my kira is wet and heavy against my ankles, and my flip-flops sink into the mud. I feel like I am struggling through deep water. You do nothing, you keep quiet, and a teacher breaks open a girl's hand. But at least something has been done. Perhaps it was right to stay out of it and let the parents come forth on their own. But if the girl had been a boarder, if she had had a different, less confident father, perhaps no one would have come forth. The girl would have been sent to the hospital for st.i.tches, and Mr. Iyya would continue to hit and degrade the students. I want to know whose responsibility it is to do something. Just because I am a foreigner, an outsider, just because this is not my home, does that mean I should stay silent while children are beaten by a crazed, vicious adult? It's a slippery slope on all sides, and I do not know where to draw the line between cultural sensitivity and plain old cowardice.

The Shrub's Name Is Miss Jammy

I am perched on a counter in the kitchen, waiting for a pot of water to boil, remembering how in the beginning, I hated to come in here. The discolored walls and cracked concrete sink made me think longingly of warm and well-lit kitchens with shelves full of pretty things. Porcelain cups and saucers, ceramic canisters, quilted pot holders and matching oven mitts. Table cloths, place mats. A bread box, a b.u.t.ter dish, salt and pepper shakers. Junk and clutter, I think now. Clutter and junk. am perched on a counter in the kitchen, waiting for a pot of water to boil, remembering how in the beginning, I hated to come in here. The discolored walls and cracked concrete sink made me think longingly of warm and well-lit kitchens with shelves full of pretty things. Porcelain cups and saucers, ceramic canisters, quilted pot holders and matching oven mitts. Table cloths, place mats. A bread box, a b.u.t.ter dish, salt and pepper shakers. Junk and clutter, I think now. Clutter and junk.

I have one kerosene stove (used only for boiling water), a plastic jerry can, and a s.h.i.+ning new gas stove with cylinder. A few tin plates, mugs and tumblers. Three spoons. A flour sifter, a tea strainer. One sharp knife. Two woven bamboo baskets, an a.s.sortment of empty cans with plastic lids. A frying pan, a pressure cooker, two pots. A beer bottle with the label washed off (the rolling pin), two shoulder pads (the oven mitts), one plastic bag full of plastic bags and one water filter. Overall it is still the ugliest, coldest, dirtiest, bleakest, barest, least comfortable kitchen I have known, but I have everything I need.

First-term exams have finished, and I have just started marking cla.s.s II C's science papers. Even the preprimary students wrote exams. All week, students wandered around the school yard memorizing their textbooks. Cla.s.s II C wanted to join them. "We have to have to by-heart it," they said. by-heart it," they said.

"No, you don't have to by-heart it," I argued. "You have to understand understand it. Do you understand it?" it. Do you understand it?"

"Yes, miss."

I pour boiling water into the tin mug, stir in coffee powder and carry it to my desk, where the papers are stacked up. What is a shrub? A shrub is a shrub. Shrub is mugspit. I am not a shrub. The shrub's name is Miss Jammy. Shrub is I don't kanow Miss. What is a shrub? A shrub is a shrub. Shrub is mugspit. I am not a shrub. The shrub's name is Miss Jammy. Shrub is I don't kanow Miss. Most of them fail science. Maybe I should have let them by-heart it. I press my head against the window. Most of them fail science. Maybe I should have let them by-heart it. I press my head against the window. I don't kanow Miss. I don't kanow Miss.

Outside, the wind picks up, sounding strange and ominous, and a flock of crows settles on the edge of the playing field. From a neighbor's house the sounds of a puja, horns and drums and a chanted prayer, rise up over the crying of a baby. The puja is for the baby who is thinner and more yellow each time I see her. I swat at the flies that buzz angrily around my head. I cannot grade any more papers. I have to get out. I open the door to find Lorna climbing the staircase. "Howdy," she says. "Wanna go shopping with me tomorrow in Samdrup Jongkhar?"

Samdrup Jongkhar, on the Indo-Bhutan border, is three hours away from Pema Gatshel by truck. At the orientation in Thimphu, it was referred to as sort of a shopper's paradise for eastern Bhutan, where Indian goods of every kind were readily available. "Are you kidding?" I say. "Let's go right now! "

We get a ride in the back of a gypsum truck, sitting on a pile of stones as the truck roars out of the valley and onto the main road. The sky is clear, a brilliant, heartbreaking blue. "This is so much better than the Vomit Comet," Lorna says. I tell her about a teacher who claimed the woman behind him on the Comet gave birth and no one even knew about it until the ride was over and the happy woman and her husband got off the bus with their new baby. Lorna says a very young monk peed on her foot on her first bus ride and a Bhutanese man proposed to her.

"Really? What did he say exactly?"

"He didn't speak English, so he got his friend to ask," she says. "His friend said, 'Bhutanese man wants marriage you.' "

"And what did you say?"

"I said I'd think about it. There wasn't anything in our contracts about remaining celibate, was there?"

"I don't think so."

"Good," she says, laughing. "The old libido is starting to rage."