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By Root 466 0

with a fine white dust. I begin to pull books off the shelves in an attempt to impose some sort of classification system, but there is hardly enough material to classify. I ponder various systems, but the most appropriate one seems to be: unreadably tattered, moderately tattered, and untouched (all the Canadian readers fall into this category). I lock the door and go home to find three students sitting at the top of my stairs, their ghos splotched with mud from an after-school soccer game. Karma Dorji and Norbu are back, and they have brought Tshewang Tshering, whose standing-up hair has recently been shaved off. “Are you waiting for me?” I ask stupidly. Of course they are. My Australian neighbor on the other side of the building, some sort of sheep or cow or horse insemination expert, has been out-of-station since I arrived. “May-I-come-in-miss?” they chorus as I open the door. Once inside, they stand uneasily. I usher them into the sitting room. They sit in a row on a bench, looking around, smiling at each other, dangling their bare, dirty feet above the floor. Finally, Tshewang Tshering asks me, “Miss, you have snaps?”

“Snaps?”

“Yes, miss. We looking snaps.”

Snaps? I feel my face creasing up into a hundred lines of bewilderment as I try to guess what “snaps” could possibly mean. I have an insane idea that they want ginger snaps.

“Miss,” Tshewang Tshering says. “Snaps. Mother, father, sister, brother.”

“Oh, you want to see pictures! Snapshots!”

“Yes, miss!” They are nodding vigorously.

Oh hurray! I understand! I hurry off to the bedroom and pull out a Ziploc bag of photographs.

“This is my mother,” I say, handing out the pictures which they seize eagerly. “My father. My father’s house.”

“This your sister?” Karma Dorji asks, holding up a picture of my brother, Jason.

“No, that’s my brother.”

“Your brother, miss?”

“Yes, Karma.”

“He is lama!

“A lama? No ...”

“Why—why he is having long hairs?”

“Oh, because—because, hmmm,” I search for an answer. “Just like that only,” I finally say, and they nod.

Tshewang Tshering is looking at a postcard of the Toronto skyline. “Miss, this your house?”

“No, that’s a bank.”

“This your house?”

“No, that’s an office. All offices.”

“This one your house?”

“No, no! That’s the CN tower.”

Another postcard, of Yonge Street. “This your village, miss?”

“Yes. Toronto.”

“Who is this?” Tshewang Tshering asks, pointing to some tourists on the postcard.

“I don’t know,” I say, bewildered by the question. “Just some people.” And then I understand. I explain that there are two million people in Toronto, more people in this city than in all of Bhutan.

“Yallama!” they say softly, the Bhutanese expression for surprise or disbelief.

Karma Dorji is flipping through a stack of magazines and music books. “Miss, this your mother?”

I get up to look and almost fall down laughing. “No, that is not my mother!” It is Johann Sebastian Bach.

Finally, I ask them if they would like some tea. “No, miss,” they say. But I know this is a Bhutanese no, so I go into the kitchen. They follow. Karma Dorji takes the pot from me. “We is making tea for miss,” he says.

“Oh no, that’s okay,” I say. “I’ll make it.” I try to prize the pot away from Karma Dorji, but he won’t let go. “You’re too young to be making tea by yourself,” I explain. “My kerosene stove is very dangerous.” They are reluctant to go, and stand in the kitchen doorway, watching as I pump up the stove. “Back, back,” I tell them, gesturing wildly as I throw a match at the stove and push them out of the kitchen. They think this is hilarious. They have to hold each other up, they are laughing so hard.

“Not funny,” I say crossly. “Dangerous. You boys wait in the other room.”

“Miss, I am doing now,” Karma Dorji tells me when he manages to stop laughing. “I am knowing this one. My house is having same-same stove.” And before I can stop him, he is pumping up the stove. When it begins to hiss, he lights a match and deftly applies the flame to the stove. A strong blue light appears. I stand openmouthed as Tshewang Tshering fills a pot with water.