A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road (25 page)

* * *

Another summer came, and I escaped the heat for two weeks trekking in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan with my sister and some others. September and my 30th birthday loomed, as did a visit from my Uncle Richard and Grandma. She
was 82 but determined to see what her oldest grandson was up to. Uncle Richard, as he became known to all in Khiva, had visited before and loved it so much that he’d come back. I warned Grandma that most Uzbeks didn’t make it to 80 and that she should expect semi-deity treatment. Sure enough, Koranbeg doted on her, bolstering the armrest of her chair with extra cushions and worrying over the steepness
of the stairs. The whole family marvelled that Grandma could ride a bike and drive a car at 82 – and as a woman too! Grandma’s every whim was met and her offers to help with the washing up remained untranslated.

Richard’s birthday was close to mine, so we decided on a joint party. I invited all the workshop staff, the Operation Mercy team and an assortment of other local friends. Seeing
as I was starting a new decade, I decided to splash out and invite some live entertainment. Richard helped me buy everything from the bazaar. Feeling decadent, we hired a trolley-boy who careened wildly through the crowded lanes shouting ‘Khosh! Khosh!’ and bashing the shins of those slow to leap from his path. A former classmate of Koranbeg agreed to cook plov on an industrial scale for us, proud
that it would be sampled by international guests.

Mamiko from Japan was one of them. She had previously ordered a set of five small rugs for an exhibition in Tokyo and was back in Uzbekistan, keen to buy more. I invited her and her English travelling companion to the celebration. Although it was September, summer had not yet abated; and despite the size of our guestroom and the presence
of a fan, the air was soon stifling as the room filled with weavers, dyers, Zafar and the souvenir-sellers, other friends and the Operation Mercy team. I stood at the door, offering a jug of warm water to wash each guest’s hands and relieving them of newspaper-wrapped gifts. Thankfully, lots of my friends had souvenir shops and knew Western tastes, so there were only a few brown snake-handled vases
and plastic lotus lamps that flashed.

Each wall of the guestroom was lined with corpuches and the usual long plastic picnic cloth or dasturkhan. Guests sat on the floor eating nibbles and judiciously sampling the Japanese soup that Mamiko had made. The halpa arrived with her entourage, including a dancer bursting from her blue sequinned dress who flirted shamelessly with Uncle Richard, despite
the nearby presence of his mother. Our bawdy halpa had, I was told, been a famous dancer in her youth and was now a large, voluptuous woman. She sang, and soon Toychi the dyer had pulled the more brazen weavers to their feet. As more guests stepped over the plastic dasturkhan and joined the dancing, Richard was dragged to his feet by the halpa, who began dancing with him. Her party piece was
to sing while quivering her buttocks and breasts in unison, the rest of her body remaining motionless, causing much hilarity and embarrassment – a few weavers glancing nervously at Grandma to make sure things hadn’t gone too far. The evening finished with birthday cake and toasts – their main theme being that at 30 I was really getting old and needed a wife.

Grandma and Richard left – Grandma
weeping her farewells, having enjoyed herself thoroughly and been touched by the marked respect given to the elderly.

* * *

Perhaps it was turning 30, but I’d been feeling restless for a while and in need of a new challenge. Madrim managed the workshop excellently and I’d noticed on my return from Kyrgyzstan that things had run smoothly in my absence. We had no more room to expand,
but still our list of women wanting work grew. I began thinking seriously about a second workshop making
suzanis
.

These bridal embroideries were produced mainly in southern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and there was no tradition of them in Khorezm, but they looked wonderful and sold well. Many visitors to the workshop loved our carpets but simply couldn’t afford them. With a suzani workshop
we could produce low-cost items like cushion covers which everyone could afford. And the flush few who did order a carpet could accessorise with matching cushion covers or tablecloths.

The idea of working with Barry on a new project was far from appealing, and I was keen to find other partners. Neville from the British Council had shown real interest in the carpet workshop and was excited
to hear about a potential second workshop, wanting a budget breakdown. I discussed the matter of premises with Madrim and the director of the Ichan Kala. There was a disused madrassah just round the corner from our workshop. It was off the beaten track, and in bad condition, but if we were willing to restore it, we could use it.

We decided to investigate. The Abdul Rasul Bai madrassah –
fronting an ordinary street of squat mud-brick houses – was built at the turn of the 20th century in an unusual shape. A beautiful medallion floret was carved into each front door, which I could already imagine as a suzani. Inside, a large room to the left – once a room for communal instruction – gave way to a small covered courtyard with one other room. Access to the second floor was prevented by
a clumsily bricked-up stairwell. To the right was a second, larger courtyard with seven small cells radiating from it and a powerful smell of drains. The place was filthy and derelict but I saw only potential.

Madrim was soon scribbling down the materials we would need for renovation while I made lists of equipment to buy. We decided to appoint Zamireh as our suzani usta. She had no idea
how to embroider suzanis but then nor did anyone else, and she’d proved quick to learn and reliable. Rosa would be our designer, and Madrim would oversee both workshops and the dyeing of silk threads for the suzanis as well as for the carpets.

There were still many unknowns. Who would teach us how to embroider suzanis? Where would I find a loom for weaving the cotton cloth backing? And who
still knew how to use such looms?

Neville wrote back a few weeks later with confirmation that the British Council had approved our budget. We now had a powerful protector for the new suzani centre, much as UNESCO had been for the carpet workshop – after all, I wasn’t sure how long I’d be around for.

I’d be leaving sooner than I realised.

12

Signed with a pomegranate

The suzani – from the Persian word ‘suza’ meaning needle – hung among many in the Bukharan Emir’s summer palace. Peacocks had once roamed the palace gardens while the Emir watched his harem frolic naked in an outdoor pool.

This particular suzani, produced in the Nurata oasis, contained a solid burst of colour and embroidery emanating
from a central medallion and surrounded by curling fronds and blooms of lotus and peony blossoms. For the casual observer, the piece was impressive though purely decorative, but there was more to it.

Samovar and teapot motifs, representing hospitality, radiated like spokes from the medallion centre, as did water jugs, representing purity. Abstract birds flitted around the border, able to
cross over from the spirit world. Rows of ram-horn motifs – potent symbols of strength – were embroidered to ward off the evil eye. There were other motifs – their original meaning lost. More recognisable were the peacock-feather eyes embroidered in each corner. These were particularly apt, for like the feathers of a peacock, the beauty of this suzani was also designed to attract a mate.

An anonymous embroiderer – a sequestered beauty of fifteen or sixteen – had lovingly worked on this piece. No suitor would ever glimpse her beauty; this privilege was reserved for the wedding night. Instead, potential husbands would content themselves with the beauty of the suzani. A glance was enough for a young man to ascertain that this was the work of a well-bred young lady – her time devoted
to embroidery, not menial household chores. The intricacy of her stitches spoke of patience, the ambitious size spoke of endurance, and the symbols within promised a wife pure, hospitable, spiritual and hard-working – qualities eagerly sought after in young women and often sadly lacking in the suitors themselves.

The sheer number and quality of suzanis in the young girl’s bridal trousseau
reminded any potential match that they were marrying into an extended family of useful connections.

It was impossible for one embroiderer to complete an entire trousseau, so an army of female relatives were enlisted. First, our embroiderer’s grandmother – as tradition demanded – drew out the design. The strips of loosely stitched cotton were then pulled apart and parcelled out. Each woman
stitched with a different tension and the reassembled suzani often contained mismatched colours and disjointed patterns along the seams. There were other imperfections too; a suzani was never finished – a leaf or flower left untouched – for completion meant the embroiderer could now depart this life. Also, attempts at perfection might rouse jealousy in the evil eye or even the Almighty himself,
for surely God alone is perfect.

Despite the help of female relatives, a trousseau still took many months – if not years – to complete. It included larger suzanis for wall hangings, a lavish suzani for the bridal bed, a suzani prayer-mat – an archway facing Mecca. Smaller suzanis were made for wrapping stacks of freshly-baked bread and gifts, larger ones for food cloths, and a special cradle-covering
– rich in symbols to ward away evil – in hopeful anticipation of many children.

Had this particular suzani wooed a good husband, or was it squirrelled away by a bitter and disillusioned kelin – a painful memory of her embroidered hopes and dreams?

* * *

Rosa, Zamireh and Aina looked closer at the suzani, noting the different stitches and marvelling at its finesse – noticeably
better than the commercial suzanis for sale all over Bukhara’s old quarter. Aina was with us more for the sake of propriety than anything else. She was a Norwegian nurse and an Operation Mercy volunteer. She was chaperoning us, ensuring that there would be no gossip about young Uzbek girls taken for trips alone with their foreign boss.

During our browsing of stalls in Bukhara earlier that
day, I called in favours from one or two hawkers who had done well out of my previous visitors, and furnished myself with phone numbers of suzani workshops in the region. Zamireh contacted a workshop in Shiberhan and arranged a visit for the following day. We spent the evening with my friend Galya, who had invited us to her home for supper.

Whenever I was in Bukhara I would always drop in
on Galya, a Tatar English teacher who lived in a beautiful old Jewish merchant’s courtyard – a maze of rooms, each boasting exquisitely carved wooden beams. There were few Tatars in Bukhara and the number continued to decline.

Galya’s husband answered the door. He rarely spoke – a silent presence behind his easel, lost in his paintings. His bedridden mother lived with them. She praised Stalin
at any given opportunity, despite the fact that her husband had died in a gulag under his regime. Suspected of bourgeois tendencies during Stalin’s reign of terror, she slavishly devoted herself to the Communist cause and had remained inconsolable since the Soviet Union’s disintegration.

Galya escaped her mother-in-law’s querulous demands by retreating to her study, where she offered private
English tuition. We felt a kinship from our spanning of two cultures, and always enjoyed an opportunity to swap novels or gossip over bowls of green tea. It was through Galya that I had heard about a grisly Bukharan tale to rival Sweeney Todd.

A plastic bag abandoned on a rubbish-tip and torn open by strays had spilled a collection of human body parts. No one knew exactly what had happened,
but it seemed that a well-respected couple (he worked at the university and she ran a women’s cooperative) had opened an agency assisting those wishing to emigrate to Canada. Unsurprisingly, they were soon inundated with enquiries.

All candidates were given full medicals and those who passed were told to pack their bags and say their farewells. They were then taken to a special flat for
quarantine purposes and fed on a diet of lemons. There was one last medical procedure necessary before they could be approved by Canadian immigration, which required a general anaesthetic. Few suspected anything. Once sedated, a trained team of physicians moved in, removing all useful body organs, which were packed in ice and flown on for sale in East Asia. The carcasses were stripped of their meat,
which was turned into
kalbasa
– a Russian-style sausage – and sold in the bazaar. Somehow a plastic bag of tit-bits had ended up on a local tip.

The couple had not acted alone. High-ranking members of Bukhara’s main hospital were involved; and as an investigation took place, the airport director – afraid of implication – drank a bottle of potent vinegar in attempted suicide. The guilty couple
were placed on trial, the wife accepting all blame as there was no death penalty for women.

There was shock and speculation over such terrible wickedness, but the story did little to quell the tide of emigration from Bukhara. Minorities were particularly keen to leave. A few elderly Jews remained, with a handful of Russians, Koreans and Tatars, diminishing Galya’s friendship pool considerably.

We were entertained in Galya’s study away from her mother-in-law. Rosa and Zamireh picked gingerly at the Bukharan plov (‘But it’s not how we cook it in Khiva!’) while we chatted in English. Galya’s son was returning shortly from America where he’d been working. This was a relief, as America was a dangerous place. Her son had worked as a cleaner in the World Trade Center, resigning the day
before they were destroyed. His Uzbek friend was nearly caught in the second tower, as calls over the speaker system requested all staff to remain calmly in their seats. Most Uzbeks have a well-founded distrust of institutional authority, and the young man bolted down the endless stairs and out of the building – living to tell the tale.

* * *

The following day it took us almost two
hours to get to Shiberhan, squeezed into an overcrowded, asthmatic bus that juddered slowly through every village en route. After our previous experience with Fatoulah the Bukharan and Ulugbeg, I instructed the girls to observe always, ask lots of questions, and to assume they would not be taught all they would need to know.

We eventually found the workshop address and were welcomed by a
large woman called Mubarekjan. After tea, bread and pleasantries, she gave us a tour of her workshop. Most women worked from home, and Mubarekjan used the tradition of dividing suzanis and parcelling them out to good effect – ensuring that none of her workers could complete a suzani and sell it independently. There were a few embroiderers, hunched over their work. A young man drew circles around
a bowl with a pen onto a large suzani backdrop, adding curls, fronds and florets with an ease that suggested much practice. Satisfied at the quality of the work, we negotiated a price for three days’ training.

The embroiderers invited us to sit with them and gave us each a sampler with a flower drawn on it, as we began a couching stitch called
basma
. I hadn’t expected any training, but thought
I should make an effort. After an hour, my cack-handed flower might generously have been described as a cloud or possibly an amoeba. I decided to talk with Mubarekjan instead. She assured me that all the dyes were natural, but after further probing, she grinned guiltily and explained that the silk was ready-dyed and she knew nothing about the dyes themselves – only that tourists liked natural
dyes and usually took her word for it.

Rosa and Zamireh – faces furrowed in concentration – were doing well, but it was Aina who proved an effortless natural. Her patch of beautifully embroidered flowers was passed admiringly among the ladies, some disbelieving that this was the work of an apprentice. Aina had moved over to one of the more experienced women and was asking her questions about
different stitches, jotting down new words. She would become an integral part of the suzani centre and – as with Madrim – I would look back and try to imagine how the workshop could have succeeded without her.

Our three days of training went well, leaving us one day to visit the Bukhara workshop. None of us was particularly keen, but Barry had asked us to teach the Bukharans how to use metal
looms. It seemed fair that in return Fatoulah’s daughter Zarina could teach us more about suzanis. But despite our best attempts, Zarina skilfully evaded each of our probing questions on suzani stitches and clearly had no intention of helping us at all.

We taught them all we knew about metal looms, leaving disgusted at their lack of reciprocation. Fatoulah had ousted all the other ustas,
including Ulugbeg, installing his own wife and daughter in their place. Fatoulah had amassed a small fortune for himself out of pricey carpet sales and now had plans to build a hotel with the money. Meanwhile, his weavers were paid a measly $15 a month, working for a year and then forced to ‘graduate’. Far from empowering the local community, the workshop merely reflected the corruption and oppression
around it.

None of this came as a surprise. Without new structures put in place, rigorously enforced and monitored over a long period of time, most locally-run projects would naturally slide back into a corrupt default mode. As most development organisations paid large Western salaries and couldn’t afford such a long-term approach, they handed projects over with little true accountability,
calling this project-dumping ‘empowerment’.

* * *

We returned to Khiva, where Madrim had begun work on the Abdul Rasul Bai madrassah. We needed to replace most of the courtyard paving as well as the flooring in some of the cells. While Madrim renovated the madrassah, Aina worked with Rosa and Zamireh practising different stitches, and I prepared for a winter holiday, braving the Genghis
Khan Express from Kazakhstan to China in outside temperatures of –35°C. My travelling companion spoke Mandarin and I managed to communicate with the Uighars in Urumchi and Kashgar, who are very similar to Uzbeks in language and culture.

I returned to Khiva laden with cheap, gaudy gifts for the weavers, and a new bike which had turned heads at the airport. My home in Khiva was now a building
site, presided over by Koranbeg, muffled in a long padded robe. Keen to expand on our two guestrooms, he was building four more on the roof. To finance this venture he’d borrowed $3,000 at a rate of 10 per cent interest a month. I asked how he hoped to service this debt, and received a vague reply that, God willing, it would be repaid one day. I lent him my rather measly savings, and Uncle Richard,
hearing what had happened, offered to stump up the rest, aghast that anyone would borrow at such usurious rates.

Life took on an element of indoor camping, Zulhamar and Malika spending their days cooking plov for the builders. The building site proved a perilous place for my ginger cat, who fell into a large vat of whitewash and almost drowned. Despite the ensuing scratches, I managed to
soap him down in a tub. He remained a dusty white, and resentful, for several days afterwards – seldom venturing outside.

Meanwhile, renovation work was nearing completion at the madrassah and we gave more thought to training. As no one in Khiva knew how to make suzanis, we decided to call twenty women from the carpet workshop waiting list and give them all a week of embroidery training.
The ten most adept would become our new apprentices.

This approach worked well, and soon our first ten apprentices moved in to the madrassah. They worked in awkward silence the first day, graduating to quiet whispers and eventually becoming just as raucous as the carpet-weavers. At first they simply worked on samples while Rosa drew Timurid, door and majolica tile designs onto hand-woven
cloth we’d purchased in Shiberhan. But despite her best attempts, the designs were always wonky and stretched. The problem was solved by tracing the designs onto interfacing and stitching this papery material onto the cotton cloth and then embroidering over it – cutting away the remaining interfacing at the end.