Forrest and I set off from the house at mid-day, with rain threatening. There is a white fog drifting down from the sky visible at the far edge of Thimphu and the lightest drizzle in the air, so we take raincoats. The errand is simple enough: place an order with a tailor for curtains to be installed in our home in America; buy the fabric for said curtains at one of the many local fabric shops and deliver it to the tailor; purchase Forrest a stylish metal pencil-box at a stationary shop I have seen, and finally check out of the public library the second of the Tolkein trilogy which we brought with us and misplaced, so that the boys can continue their reading in sequence. We leave Thompson in charge (nominally) but the housekeeper is also home, and Jamtsho and his two older sisters and an assortment of adults at the Gadho's home, so Halle and Jacob will be kept busy, fed and looked after while Forrest and I walk down into town.
We stroll "the short way" across the weedy field, down the road to Chorten Lam, and down Chorten Lam to the center of town. We have been told there is a tailor shop in the building next to the fabric store. No sign. We go upstairs and ask at a sewing room for tankhas - a man is precisely pressing and seaming the gorgeous brocade around a painted image, but our Dzongkha and his English are equal in their lack, and we do not find a tailor shop there. Asking at several more fabric shops we finally are pointed across the street (Oh! Across the street!), where tucked under a dingy restaurant we find several men at work at the black Singer sewing machines like something out of the 19th century. None of them speak any English, and finally someone is fetched whose English is nearly as limited but who admits to being the tailor. He has tied the sleeves of his gho down around his waist and is wearing a checked short-sleeved shirt and a camouflage vest; his mouth and teeth are a gory russet from doma. Curtains, curtains, I finally make him understand what I am after (it is confusing because I am asking them to sew what here would be used to cover doorways, not windows), and he annotates my drawing with measurements and explanations in Dzongkha, and then he comes with me to the fabric shop back across the street.
There I become a mere appendage to a detailed transaction between himself and the fabric store clerk, a short, thin woman with a faint black mustache. They discuss, bring out the calculator, discuss some more. Don and I had set aside a bolt of fabric days earlier and it is pulled out; coordinating fabric for the panels and "flowers" at the intersections of the panels is selected and they negotiate how much is needed and she flourishes gigantic, fiercely sharp brass scissors to cut the pieces with a staccato zzzp. He and I arrange for the curtains to be picked up on Monday; I receive his price without bargaining (250 Nu per curtain, plus cost of the fabric? Very reasonable, it seems), and then he is off, across the street, with a large bundle of fabric, to make my odd request into a textile reality.
Now I need to pay the fabric shop for what has been carried out by the tailor. They add it up twice, take off some for a volume discount, and come up with a figure that exceeds what I have in cash in my purse. Luckily I have anticipated this and brought three travelers checks to cash at the nearby bank. They will wait for me to cash them and come back, so Forrest and I head to the Foreign Exchange counter at the Bhutan National Bank. I don't understand how this bank works, because every time I go the waiting area is absolutely full of people sitting in bus-station seats, but the foreign exchange counter never has a line. Unfortunately, I realize at the counter that I have grabbed three travelers checks signed by Don, not by myself. Forrest and I roll our eyes at my mistake. There is nothing to do but go back home, get the correct ones, come back, change them, and then pay the fabric store. We walk up to the store to assure them we are still planning to pay, and then hire a taxi to take us home, wait for us while I go inside (where we drop our heavy raincoats, thinking we are done with the rain), and drive us to the bank (ka-ching, 60 Nu), where it is... raining. I change the checks, run to the store, settle my bill there, and then Forrest and I embark on the other parts of the errand, keeping to the edge of the sidewalk under the eaves of the stores to stay somewhat dry.
The sidewalks of Nordzin Lam, Thimphu's main street, gradually run uphill from the lower traffic circle. Due to the change in grade, and to the non-standardization of buildings, there is hardly a stretch of sidewalk a block long that is not interrupted by steps up or down, ramps, open sewer, torn-up/being repaired sections, jutting corners, strange metal rods sticking up for no apparent reason. The sidewalks are flagstone with the spaces between them (sometimes) sealed with cement, and littered with doma splats, crushed bottles, crumpled paper, wrappers, wilted produce, and dogs. The rain does little to wash them clean.
We walk uphill, frequently having to leave the sidewalk and walk in the street, until we reach the stationary shop. Forrest selects a suitable pencil box, and then we go to the King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk National Public Library. It is one reading room in front, a fiction/childrens room with a separate "women's section" entirely for romance novels from India, and two tiny alcoves for the nonfiction and the reference. The books are as shabby and outdated as can be imagined. I fantasize about sending a box of brand-new books as a gift to the library... I wonder if it would arrive or be ripped open in some foreign airport customs office and distributed among the staff. Our entire family passed a quiet hour at the library a few days ago, reading as a break on our walk down from the other end of Nordzin Lam, so we know that the Tolkien is on the shelf. But in order to check it out we must join the library, and we are sent to the membership desk. I purchase a year's membership (oh well) at 550 Nu (this is too steep for most people, I wonder?). For this price I could surely purchase the book, which for all I know is available in "BookWorld" near the clock tower, but it's probably better to support the struggling library enterprise by buying a membership. This entails a form I must fill out, a fancy blue membership record receipt written from a carbon-paper book (all receipt here are done in duplicate books with actual carbon paper in them, which I find fascinating), a separate pink money-received receipt from a separate carbon-paper pad, an entry in a bound logbook carefully recording my name and the amount I have paid, recording all this information in yet another book, and then filling out two card pockets which are what is used to check out the books themselves... we select our books, bring them and the card-pockets up to the desk where the books are stamped with due date and their cards properly filed in my card-pockets, which are then filed in wooden fileboxes. Forrest is impressed with all this detail and with so many things to keep track for the diligent membership clerk.
After all this effort, we are exhausted, and refuel with ginger biscuits, mango juice, and a bottle of Thai-labeled Gatorade; a taxi takes us home (ka-ching, another 30 Nu).
