Library Day

We finally got our passports back on Friday, after the lengthy process of extending our initial visas, so I decided today was the day I needed to get registered at the library. Eventually I have a suspicion that the library of the Tajikistan Academy of Sciences will be more useful to me, but since right now I am still getting my feet wet, I began with the Firdausi National Library.

I had an experience that is not really all that exceptional to a foreign researcher in the former Soviet Union, but even in that context it was a slightly bewildering and humorous episode (if it had taken up any more time it would have been annoying, but it was ultimately too quick to be worth anything more than a chuckle and a shrug). Still perhaps it merits a remark here, for those who've not had the pleasure.

I went to the front desk and asked "how do I register?". I figured the answer would be pretty simple -- even though I still need to summon up some amount of energy and chutzpah to face the challenge of these places, the registration part really isn't what's daunting for me anymore. The process can vary a bit: sometimes you go inside and fill out your forms at some fancy old wooden desk (like at St. Petersburg's National Library), sometimes it's all done out in the area outside the "turnstiles" or their equivalent, through which you enter the venerable institution (like it happened in Khabarovsk last summer). But by now I guess this is the part of it all -- especially at what is basically the public library, where any Jamshed with an address ought to be able to get a card -- that I expect to go smoothly.

The guy sitting at the entrance and coatcheck with his two female colleagues -- who look fairly typical for local women with their loose headscarves and the constant stream of sunflower seeds that enters one of their mouths, although I don't think I've seen anyone knitting such expert booties in public yet -- tells me quickly that it costs 2 somoni.

I rummage through my wallet to present him the roughly 60 cents together with my passport. He glances at my documents and quickly says "Oh, for you [I can only assume it was because I was foreign; maybe because I hold a diplomatic foreign passport] to register, you'll need to get a spravka [memorandum of permission] from the Ministry of Culture." I say, "OK..., I know that's located just down on the corner." So far I can handle this one, I'm thinking. "Can you tell me what section I go to?" He can't quite come up with a name -- he discusses it briefly in Tajik with his colleagues and another man trying to enter, and I catch only about 20% of what is said, but they come up empty-handed anyway. I say, "OK, rahmat [thank you in Tajik]," and his face lights up -- "You know Tajik?" And I quickly say, "oh, no -- kam-kam mifahmam," which I think in itself is a slightly wrong way of trying to say "I only understand very little," and ought to have solidified the fact that I was really just giving it my best college try.

I head out and down to the corner, and the Ministry really is literally only a 2 minute walk away, so, so far, so good. I ask at the little window with the administrative checker where I need to go for my spravka, and the first sign that this is going to take a good old Kafkaesque turn is the puzzled look she returns through the little square. She shakes her head and tells me I need to go to the library itself to get registered. I explain that, noooo, they just told me to go here. She asks the man working the inside of the Ministry entrance, and both of them seem to be encountering this supposed rule for the first time in their careers; they can't come up with what department would distribute such spravki.

She tries to tell me using sign language together with Russian, which I clearly speak well although I think the request has her so dumbfounded that she assumes I need the extra dimwit-help, that I should go back to the library to register. (In all of these conversations, I already kind of instinctively don't even bother to try or provide introductions in Tajik, or to apologize for using Russian, since it's been no problem -- except when some don't speak enough Russian -- to use Russian for everyday business in the private sphere. But this experience as a whole makes me think that using a few words in Tajik as an opener may well smooth the way a little in government institutions.) I know it isn't going to work to just return to the library, so I press on, and even as she continues to wave her arms in a signal for me to go back down the street to the library itslef, I half-act, half-am confused enough to bumble my way through the entrance with a puzzled look on my face and pleadingly try my luck again with her colleague just inside. The guy posted at the door still has no idea, but together they finally come up with a name: Jahongir! Let her see him.

So I'm led about 5 doors down the hallway to an office, and after trying one door which is locked, Mr. Entryway knocks and opens the door across the way and we are greeted by a pleasant if slightly puzzled young man in a blue suit and tie. I open with a "Salom aleykum" and explain again in Russian what I've been told I need. He has me sit, looks at my passport, asks me a very few questions, which he tries to do in English, which works fine -- the main thing he asks me is how long I've been in Tajikistan (which ought to be clear from my passport, of course) and what I'm going to look at at the library (I say historical journals and the history of Tajikistan. Why, he asks? Because it's interesting to me, and new, I say with a stupid smile.). And he folds a piece of A4 paper in half, carefully rips it along the fold, and handwrites a "spravka" that I ought to be able to register at the library. He wishes me good luck and I'm on my amused way.

The library guy of course barely even looks at the spravka, helps me fill out the brief Tajik registration form and sends me over to the cashier and library card office, which is surprisingly modern compared to the rest of the place: my 80 cents buys me a card with my picture, taken by digital camera, and slated to be ready and laminated for me tomorrow. And I then spent a rather chilly (though it didn't hold a sputtering, icy candle to my sojourn at Tbilisi's national library in January 2005) but fruitful morning working with the card catalog and figuring out what sources I'll consult first on the modern history of medicine in Tajikistan.

Like I said, by no means a very unique experience for those who frequent these kinds of institutions in the former socialist world, but just a taste of what happens when you try to go about this business. I guess for me it is only remarkable in 2 respects: one, as I said initially, for the pleasantly short time it took to do the little bureaucratic dance, and, two, also for the sheer lack of logic or understanding on the part of my various partners. Usually, at least in my experience, even if there is little in the way of rules laid down to lead us in the dance, the participants put on a good show of everything needing to follow a set process, which maybe I don't know but of course they can recite backwards and forwards in their heads. Clearly (as I've already had chance to see and hear from others), Tajikistan plies its own particular brand of post-Soviet crazy, so now I'll go about trying to learn this one and see if anything I learned most recently in the Russian Far East will apply here...