Long Way Round

The building is from the beginning of the last century: a sandstone box with a clock above the door that shows the right time twice a day. Inside it is the high ceiling, the oak counter, the long inkwell table with two pens on chains, and a smell of paper that is slightly damp.

Raisa Kuznetsova has worked behind the counter for thirty-one years. She came in 1984 as a typist. When the telegraph was dying elsewhere, in this office it only changed its customers. Now, she says, nobody sends bad news by telegram except the ones who cannot find the nerve to phone. Everybody sends good news. "A wedding telegram is a flag you can put on the mantelpiece."

The price is simple: 10 words for 9 som, each extra word 1 som. People write in the old style, without commas, in capital letters: CONGRATULATIONS DEAR ASEL AND NURBEK WE KISS YOU BOTH LIVE LONG BE HAPPY. Raisa counts the words with the end of her pencil and says: "Say it shorter, it is cheaper."

"People think a telegram is old. A telegram is the only message you can put in a frame."

I watched a woman in a headscarf write one for twenty minutes. At the end she handed it to Raisa and asked if she could add "forgive me". "Forgive me" was two words. She counted her coins again, put them on the counter, and went out without waiting for the stamp. Raisa stamped it, read it once, and put it in the tray for the afternoon delivery. She did not say anything, and neither did I.

At five the office closes. The last telegram of the day goes to a village above Kara-Buura where a grandfather turns eighty. The boy who delivers it is fifteen. He rides a bicycle. Raisa says he is the third generation of the same family to do the job, "and the first with gears."