A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road (27 page)

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Neville from the British Council came for a visit, with strict instructions from his wife not to buy another carpet. He was a joy to work with and very affirming of the project. As the British Council director, Neville attended endless official functions and ceremonies but was rarely given the opportunity to mingle
with ordinary Uzbeks. Consequently, he enjoyed sitting cross-legged on the floor asking questions of the embroiderers and gaining more insight into everyday Uzbek life.

We were now on our second intake of suzani apprentices and were producing more than just samplers. We focused on utilitarian items such as cushion covers and handbags, as these sold well, but were also branching out into
more ambitious wall-suzanis and table-runners. I had commissioned a series of embroidered explanations which I planned to hang around the workshop, creating a self-guiding tour. Most of my time was spent in the suzani centre – called to the carpet workshop only when decisions were made or problems needed solving.

I pointed this out to Uncle Richard during another of his trips to Khiva –
the carpet workshop was finally becoming self-sustainable.

‘Yes, but what about the corruption?’ he asked. ‘How do you know that the Mayor won’t just turn up and demand free carpets whenever he wants them?’

This was a valid point and a concern I’d often discussed with Madrim. We knew that the main reason we hadn’t been more aggressively pursued by greedy officials so far was because
the UNESCO name gave us an element of protection, but also that it would only be a matter of time before our relative success proved too tempting for someone.

That evening, Madrim invited Uncle Richard, Koranbeg and me for an evening meal. Koranbeg was in the middle of a lengthy toast in honour of Richard when a car sent by the Mayor interrupted us. The driver had orders that Madrim should
accompany him with the keys for the workshop, as the Mayor wished to view our carpets. The driver hadn’t expected my presence and was obviously uncomfortable when I insisted on accompanying Madrim. We drove through the northern gateway into the walled city where Botir, head museum director, was waiting for us. I realised that something underhand was going on, so went on the offensive.

‘What
is the meaning of all this?’ I demanded loudly. ‘Our workshop has been open all day and the Mayor could have come any time. Instead we get summoned to come out in the middle of the night. I’ve left my uncle – a foreign guest from England – alone at Madrim’s house. He doesn’t speak any Uzbek. I feel ashamed that he must stay there by himself!’

Botir looked uncomfortable and cast an irritated
look at his lackeys. He explained that President Karimov’s daughter Gulnora was visiting to open her new hotel in Khiva and that the Mayor wished to present her with a small gift – a couple of carpets. Would we kindly open the workshop for just half an hour so the Mayor could make his selection?

We unlocked the madrassah and laid out the carpets in the dim courtyard light. I explained that
some of the rugs were not for sale, as they were orders.

‘You’d better put those ones back inside then,’ Botir said hurriedly. ‘It won’t do for the Mayor to be shown something he can’t have.’

It was common knowledge that the Uzbek president was grooming his daughter for succession, and officials all over the country were falling over themselves to out-bribe each other in hopes of her
favour. In a strange way it was flattering to know that our carpets were considered worthy of such an extravagant bribe. We waited for ten minutes in uncomfortable silence for the Mayor to arrive.

He entered with his usual entourage and I greeted him testily, asking why he was unable to visit during opening hours. Everyone else deferentially watched the Mayor peruse the rugs. I chatted with
Madrim, keen to feign lack of interest in the whole procedure. The Mayor asked about prices and I pointed out the label sewn on the corner of each piece.

‘Of course, this price …’ – he gestured at a rug – ‘we can come to some sort of agreement, yes?’

‘That is correct,’ I replied. ‘The agreed price is written on the label. We have only one price. It is the same price that my own mother
paid for one of our carpets.’

A little tic above the Mayor’s right eye twitched but he said nothing. After some further browsing he pointed to three carpets. They were rapidly bundled by his henchmen and he turned to me, saying: ‘I will take these three carpets. If I wish to purchase them, then I will send you the money tomorrow by four o’clock. If not, they will be returned.’

I was
unhappy about this, knowing that possessions were nine-tenths of the law anywhere else – the odds even higher in Uzbekistan.

‘Mr Mayor, I’m not sure if this is possible,’ I began. ‘People usually pay for the rugs first.’ I turned to Madrim and asked him what he thought.

‘Why are you speaking to him?!’ the Mayor exploded. ‘Don’t you know who I am? I am the Mayor of Khiva!’

‘And
this is the director of our workshop,’ I replied calmly. Madrim blanched and nodded at the henchmen, and we watched our carpets – the equivalent of over $2,000 – being taken away.

‘It will be OK,’ Madrim said quietly, his tone lacking conviction.

The next day Koranbeg took Uncle Richard fishing at one of the desert lakes. I tried to keep busy. By 4.30, the Mayor had still not returned
the carpets or paid for them. I took Madrim aside, explaining my proposed plan of action. Madrim was to go directly to Botir the museum director for a little chat. There, he would explain how obviously this was all a simple misunderstanding and that, or course, he knew the Mayor would pay for anything he took. Unfortunately Aslan – a foreigner – did not understand these matters and was already
threatening to call the British embassy and UNESCO and even write to the British press. Surely there was a simple solution to this misunderstanding? If the Mayor could simply return the carpets or pay for them, then the matter would be resolved and we could all be friends again.

Madrim liked this indirect approach, always fearful that I might say something rash or offensive in the heat of
the moment. Still, he wanted to give the Mayor until tomorrow before putting our plan into action. I conceded and returned to the suzani centre. An hour later the Mayor turned up there with his entourage.

‘I have decided that the carpets did not please me,’ he began, ‘so we have returned them to your workshop. I just came here to let you know.’

I thanked him, and he left. Madrim was
beaming.

‘Aslan, did you see that? He’s scared of you! He knew that you weren’t going to just let him take the rugs and make empty promises of payment soon. Look, he even made a detour to the suzani centre to let you know!’

We both felt a wave of relief and were soon joking about the event with Zamireh and Aina. I would have felt quite differently had I known that the Mayor would soon
be deciding my whole future in Uzbekistan.

13

Carpet of corpses

‘While people were peacefully airing their concerns, soldiers opened fire from the main street. Everyone tried to save themselves. There was no warning. The people aren’t animals. They’re human beings. They understand words. But they started firing, hunting us like wolves. Those who could, ran away, and those who didn’t run faced death. Men, women,
and children ran. There were women running with children in their arms. Nobody cared that people were getting killed. It was so that a handful of leaders can live.’

—A woman from Andijan, Radio Free Europe, 27 May 2006

I no longer thought of Khiva as just a chapter in my life. I could see myself living there indefinitely. My parents offered to help me buy a house; a nice one would
cost far less than a garage in England. I imagined myself really settling down and perhaps getting married – maybe even adopting from the local orphanage. There was workshop speculation, not altogether unfounded, that I might enter into wedding negotiations with Aksana’s father.

New volunteers joined Operation Mercy, starting a sexual health programme and a solar oven project. Both workshops
flourished. The American embassy loved our carpets and their staff became lucrative customers. I made a third trip to Afghanistan with Madrim and Aina. It was to be our last, as the dyes were impounded on our return until we coughed up a hefty bribe or paid a massive 75 per cent import tax.

We tried to grow our own dyes instead, renting a garden and spending two back-breaking days covering
it in manure. I had brought madder, indigo and woad seeds from the UK which we carefully planted, topping each with a small mound of sand. A few weeks later, the indigo and madder seeds had failed to grow and the woad seeds, we discovered, were not woad at all but flower-for-an-hour mallows. Having penned a strongly worded complaint to the reputable garden centre where I’d bought the seeds, I considered
other options. Buying from Afghanistan still seemed easiest in the short term, but we needed to find a regular trader who already knew who to bribe on both sides of the border and who could buy the dyes in Mazar and deliver them to us in Uzbekistan.

Our house was now officially the ‘Meros Family Guesthouse’. My ginger cat – a consummate beggar – grew sleek on the rich pickings to be had
from tourists. Koranbeg repaid his loans and Zulhamar bought a satellite dish with her share of the money from the tashkil. Some evenings I watched daytime BBC programmes with my Uzbek little brother, who marvelled at how much money the English paid for old and useless items picked up or sold at auctions.

The carpet workshop weavers were also doing well for themselves.

‘Aslan, look
at our girls,’ Madrim said, looking around him one lunchtime. ‘Remember how it was when we first started? No one had new clothes and they were all thin. Now, everyone’s looking healthy and wearing nice clothes.’

It was true. Most weavers wore gold rings and earrings – the traditional way of saving money. ‘You know,’ Madrim continued, ‘If you add up all the people in both workshops it comes
to around 80. And that makes us the largest employers in Khiva.’

It sounded impressive, but Khiva – a small town of 50,000 – needed more than a couple of workshops to keep it going. Although there were a conspicuous few who were doing well – petty oligarchs, secret police, traders, and those working in tourism – the majority of people struggled with a dwindling standard of living. Regina,
our German occupational therapist, noticed how offers of lunch during home visits became increasingly vegetarian. Many people could no longer afford meat.

Prostitution was on the rise, including furtive housewives who hadn’t received remittances from their husbands in Russia or Kazakhstan. The population of Khiva now shrank noticeably each spring as more and more men left in search of work.
National propaganda on television merely irritated the masses, who became increasingly outspoken in their dissatisfaction. At first, shortcomings were blamed on the transition to independence. Later, people complained about corruption in government, sad that their beloved president was so unaware of what was really happening in the country. Finally, there was outright animosity towards President
Karimov and his cronies.

Apart from some grumbling there was little sign of popular resistance, although Tashkent taxi-drivers proved the most vociferous critics. Most people simply shrugged their shoulders: ‘
Boshka iloyja yoke
– there is no other way.’ This phrase was used as much by women trapped in abusive marriages as by oppressed communities well-practised in helpless disappointment.

Western political analysts had been predicting an uprising of some kind for years and yet it still hadn’t happened. The Karimov regime made little effort to stem the tide of its unpopularity. A country tense with pent-up frustration needed only a spark. It came in May 2005.

The flashpoint occurred in the city of Andijan. Greedy officials had been eyeing the few remaining factories in
the city, and their owners, all pious Muslims, had formed a loose coalition. Each factory was targeted for tax evasion, but when this proved unsuccessful, the authorities branded the factory bosses Islamist extremists and had them brought into custody. There was nothing particularly unusual about this act of injustice, but employees, friends and relatives of the factory bosses were tired of corruption
and began to protest outside the prison. They were joined by curious onlookers and others with grievances and the crowd swelled.

Many of the protesters were women, as the men were mostly away in search of work. The protests were initially peaceful, although it seems that radical elements also joined the crowd. They eventually rushed the prison, breaking out the factory bosses and setting
fire to the county hall.

Tanks arrived. Most protesters assumed they were there as a peace-keeping measure. Suddenly the army opened fire on the crowd, mowing down hundreds of protesters and anyone else caught in the main square. Bodies carpeted the square and heavy spring rains mingled with their blood, flowing down the streets. A terrorised crowd fled, heading for the nearby Kyrgyzstan
border, hounded by the army who picked off stragglers.

Later I spoke with a foreign friend who was in Andijan at the time and who described the overwhelming shock and fear felt by everyone in the city. No one was allowed near the city morgue. Other parts of the city where hasty mass graves were dug were also off limits. The wounded were taken to hospital until it became apparent that they
were being rounded up by the secret police and taken away – never to be seen again. After this, relatives of the wounded cared for them as best they could, terrified of informers or a late-night knock on the door.

Most people in Khiva knew nothing about it. I happened to watch the news breaking on the BBC, but internet sites were blocked, and in Tashkent Russian TV stations on cable were
jammed during news broadcasts. The one road into the Fergana valley was sealed off and soon the bazaars were full of anxious rumours over what might be happening. Uzbek television continued its usual blend of dubbed Mexican telenovelas and traditional singing. There was no mention of anything amiss on the news.

While Uzbeks remained unsure of what was going on, the international community
responded with outrage. The UN called for an independent investigation into the massacre and there were threats of sanctions. The hasty government response was to invite a plane-load of diplomats to Andijan, assuring them that everything was peaceful, giving them a bus-tour of the recently scrubbed square and then rapidly returning them to the airport. President Karimov appeared on television explaining
that wahabis had once more attempted to destabilise democratic Uzbekistan, but those who loved peace and freedom had prevented them. The official death toll was 169 people, most of them said to be wahabis. Eye-witness claims put the figure between 500 and 700.

The massacre – worse than that of Tiananmen Square – left American foreign policy towards Uzbekistan in a tricky situation. The US
State Department had regularly glossed over the brutality of the Karimov regime, determined not to upset the owners of their important airbase in Karshi (within convenient bombing distance of both Afghanistan and Iran). Despite the outspokenness of the British ambassador and international human rights groups, America had turned a blind eye to the regular use of torture and the repressive nature
of the Uzbek government. Now, though, even a master spin-doctor was unable to describe the events in Andijan as anything other than a massacre, and as such, the Americans had no choice but to condemn it. President Karimov, feeling threatened, immediately gave the US forces six months to leave the airbase in Karshi and began battening down the hatches.

Russia and China – keen to exert their
own geo-political influence on the country – were both quick to congratulate Karimov on his strong-arm approach to the protests. The Uzbek propaganda machine creaked into action with ‘documentaries’ explaining the wiles of wahabis trying to break terrorists out of prison, aided by traitors. The people of Andijan were demonised and a new scapegoat was produced.

Western NGOs had claimed an
important role in the pro-democracy Rose Revolution in Georgia and Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Now they were accused of destabilising the Great Nation of Uzbekistan, pulling strings in league with traitors and leading young people astray. The ripples from this incident were to affect me far more than I realised.

In Tashkent, strategic roads were dug up and planted with trees overnight,
ensuring that protesters couldn’t easily collect in one central location. There were even more police on the streets. NGO workers applying for visa renewals found the process dragging on for weeks. The Peace Corps finally got so fed up that they set a deadline for all visa renewals, threatening to leave if these weren’t provided. The deadline passed and the Peace Corps shut down. The government became
increasingly anti-religious, not only towards Islam but also Christianity. Rustam, the pastor in Urgench, was arrested and released only due to ill health. It was clear that the government were shaken up and were now consolidating their grip on society, anxious to ensure that no other protests took place, or were witnessed by outsiders.

* * *

The first ripple from Andijan to affect
me in Khiva took place at the orphanage a few months after the massacre. We’d run a number of fun camps there and continued to make visits. In summer, orphanage graduates now away at university or in the army returned, having nowhere else to go. One graduate – a tough-looking lad called Alisher – hadn’t stopped smoking since coming back. I asked him how he would complete his army training if he kept
smoking; didn’t he know that smoking kills? He shrugged and told me he wanted to die.

Alisher, I discovered, had been in Andijan during the uprising and had lost his friend there. We went for a walk and he told me more. His best friend at the training camp was Dilshod, a boy from Bukhara. They were inseparable, always watching each other’s backs. Although still in training, they had joined
the army stationed at the main square in Andijan.

‘We were both responsible for a big gun that was mounted up on the steps. Below we saw all these women protesting and then some people came by with suitcases. They were wahabis and took out guns and grenades. Before we knew it, they were firing at us. I heard a massive explosion next to me. It went through my whole body, knocking me over.
I was sure I was dead, but then I opened my eyes and began to feel myself. I was covered in blood and bits of bone but I didn’t feel any pain. I sat up and Dilshod’s leg was twisted with mine. I pushed him away from me and saw that his head was gone; it was all over my clothes.’ He paused, biting his lip. ‘So, why shouldn’t I smoke? They gave me his tags and I wear them around my neck – look. He
was the only family I had. Now I just want to fight and get myself killed so I can join him.’

Alisher had received no counselling or emotional support. I asked him to describe the things he would miss most about Dilshod, and what he would like to say to his friend. He began to weep and then we sat for a while in silence.

The younger children at the orphanage had been sent to a summer
camp and we joined them for a couple of days, running sport and craft activities or jumping off the bridge into the chocolate waters of the canal. I was happy to escape the heat, and had plans to join my friend Ryan in August, trekking in Azerbaijan. He had come for a visit the previous year, having heard about the workshops and keen to start something similar. Now I wanted to see how his project
reviving traditional woven kilims of the Caucasus was going. I would also meet up with Ruslan, a good Azeri friend of mine who lived in the capital, Baku. My flight was booked and my passport had sat in Tashkent for the last month or so, awaiting a new visa.

I grew more anxious as my departure date loomed, yet with no word on the visa. I rescheduled my flight twice, no longer merely annoyed
that my holiday plans were ruined, but also worried that I might miss an important conference in Turkey. The Operation Mercy office in Tashkent were promised ‘tomorrow, tomorrow’ on a daily basis. Tiring of this, I decided to leave without a visa, planning to collect my new visa from the Uzbek embassy in Azerbaijan. This was to prove a costly mistake.

There was nothing special about my departure,
no tears or fond farewells. I had no idea that I wouldn’t be coming back. I asked the tashkil to wait until my return before our next gathering, and discussed which carpet designs to begin with Safargul – leaving more important matters until I got back. We had a large order of carpets to deliver, so Madrim left with me, planning to combine a trip to Tashkent with a detour down to Termez
where we hoped he might find a trader to buy natural dyes for us. There was the usual rush to get to Urgench airport in time, hauling three huge bazaar-bags of carpets to the taxi rank just outside the walled city. I never even turned around as we drove off, for one last glimpse of Khiva.