Dear Zari: Hidden Stories from Women of Afghanistan (13 page)

I pleaded with Pana’s auntie to make her niece aware of the situation, and explain why she was going to this new house and how she wouldn’t ever be allowed to return. But the auntie said that was impossible. If Pana knew the reality of what was going to happen then she might refuse to go, and her grandfather would be very angry. I persuaded the auntie that she must at the very least buy lots of food so Pana didn’t go hungry.

That was the last I heard of Pana. No one knows what happened to her. When I first recorded Shereenjan’s story I took comfort from the fact that the events described in it happened many years ago, but here I was confronted with just the same story in the present day, and one that was taking place within my own family too. How wrong I was to think that such customs only existed in the last century. Cultural roots run deep in Afghanistan and many people believe in them completely, often even more than they do in the Islamic faith.

Qamar is a Turkmen girl who composed a poem about carpet weaving which we broadcast on the programme. When our reporter first made contact with her she was sixteen years old, and living in Shirbighan in Jawzjan province in the north of Afghanistan. Qamar told us she would rather be at school so she could one day become a doctor or a teacher, but as she was the family’s main breadwinner she had no choice but to spend her days at the loom. We broadcast her poem because we wanted our listeners to be aware that Afghan carpets tend to be made by women and girls whose skill and hard work is hardly ever acknowledged. When did someone like Qamar’s name ever appear on the small label on the backs of those carpets, which sell for hundreds of dollars?

Much of the story of Afghanistan can be seen in its carpets. The country’s ethnic diversity – Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara, Kuchi and Pashtun – is there in its patterns. The wool comes from the sheep, goats and camels that graze on our hills, and the traditional dyes from our plants, fruits and vegetables. Pomegranate peel and walnuts make brown, red comes from the roots of the madder plant, yellow from saffron or chamomile, and blue from the indigo plant. But above and beyond the materials, our carpets are threaded through with the emotions and feelings of the women and girls who weave them.

No one knows when Afghan women first started carpet weaving. Whenever I ask about its history I’m told that it goes back centuries and is a skill that has been passed down from mother to daughter, along with particular carpet designs. One thing is certain, though, and that is that our carpets represent the very finest example of Afghan art. In the past Afghan kings would offer carpets as gifts to foreign dignitaries, and now the president gives them to other national leaders. When there is an official event with top politicians or celebrities, everyone will walk on a red Afghan carpet, and when an Afghan girl marries she is given a carpet for her bedroom by her parents or relatives.

Setting up a loom in the home is easy and the tools needed to weave are both inexpensive and easy to obtain. For nomads there are even small portable looms – with the threads of wool attached to them – that can be hitched to a donkey. Carpet weaving is mostly something women and children can do without having to leave their homes. During the Taliban period when women were prevented from going out to work – and girls banned from going to school – they could still earn money by weaving carpets, and women and girls who were not originally from carpet-weaving families acquired the skill. Then when many Afghans became refugees in Pakistan and Iran they took up carpet weaving again, and from there exported their handicraft to the rest of the world.

Through making Afghan Woman’s Hour I met many female carpet weavers, but up until then I had no idea of the hardship they had to endure to make these works of art, and I was struck by quite how unhappy many of these women were. I discovered that in the north of the country girls are valued according to their capacity to weave. These girls were pouring their hearts into their carpets, but no one cared how they felt; they were only concerned with how much money the carpet could fetch. Some girls told me that they were forced to become carpet-weaving machines by their parents. All they did was knot, tap, tie and cut for hours every day. They were becoming old and tired behind the looms, their energy, beauty and health ebbing away. They had no concept of
what price their carpets could fetch on the international market, and knew only that they were chained to the loom. I now look with fresh eyes at the Afghan carpets in my home and wonder about the women and children who made them.

Samira, like Qamar, is from Shiberghan and is a typical carpet-weaving girl. After reading Qamar’s poem I was keen to meet other girls like her, and in north Afghanistan they are not hard to find: almost every house has a wooden loom. The north of the country is predominantly made up of Turkmen and Uzbek people, and they certainly value their girls according to their degree of skill in carpet weaving. If, for example, a girl is able to make beautiful carpets that can fetch a high price then a boy’s family will pay a high price for her in marriage, and the girl’s family would say, ‘Her five fingers are five
chiraghs
(lights).’

I am permanently reminded of those five lights when I look at the Afghan carpets I have bought. After hearing the life stories of Samira and Qamar I now value those carpets even more because I recognise the real cost of them in terms of sacrifice and dedication.

Samira swiftly wove the colourful threads together. Beside her on the floor lay the blade for cutting the threads, and in front of her was a drawing of the carpet pattern. She barely glanced at it, though. She didn’t need to because she could weave with her eyes shut. After a while, her small, thin fingers began to ache from all the twisting and turning of the thread. Samira sat on a round cushion in front of the
kargah
, a large wooden loom on which the carpet strings were stretched. It reached to more than six metres long and filled almost the entire length of the room. Samira had to stretch up high to reach where she was sewing.

The room she was sitting in was dark and full of dust from the wool. Samira would start carpet weaving early each morning before her mother joined her. She was the eldest child; her younger brother went to school and her sister was still a baby. By the time her brother left the house for school, Samira was already at work at the
kargah
(loom) that her father
had built. Samira and her mother would have to sit in front of the loom all day. This was their job. Samira wore a square scarf tight around her head and sat hunched over her threads as she worked. Sometimes, when she was very tired, she would lean against the
kargah
, resting her body against its frame.

Samira was busy weaving and cutting the threads when her mother called out to her, ‘Oi! You lazy girl, the minute I turn my back you stop weaving and lean on the
kargah
.’

Samira began weaving even faster. ‘No, Mother, I’ve been weaving all the time you weren’t here. Come and look. See, I’ve done the first pattern already. Are you happy now?’

Her mother looked closely at the piece she had woven.

‘All right, my child. Well done, you’ve sewn it beautifully, but you’ll have to work faster now because your baby sister won’t let me do as much work as I need to do, and if we don’t finish this carpet in time your father will get angry. And what excuse will he give to the
tojar
(trader)?’

Samira stared at the
kargah
and threaded even faster. With every knot she tied she got even angrier, and with every breath she took she swallowed yet another mouthful of carpet dust. Her mother came to sit near her. She was a large, chubby woman and wore a long, traditional Turkmen dress and a dark green, glittery scarf under which she wore a glittery hat. Mother and daughter looked similar: both had large round faces, small noses and thick red lips. Samira’s cheeks were pinker than her mother’s, but otherwise the only difference between them was seventeen years.

Samira always asked her mother lots of questions and her mother would answer without missing a beat of either her own weaving or her checking of Samira’s work; she would watch her daughter’s work carefully and correct any mistakes, teaching her to weave with precision and style. Samira’s mother also had a talent for mixing colours and creating new, elegant designs.

‘Mother, when we finish this carpet, do we have to start another one?’

Her mother smiled. ‘My child, you ask this question every day when
we start weaving and my answer is always the same; yes, we will have to do this all again. We will have to carry on weaving for as long as we can, as your father has already taken so many other orders from the
tojar
.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ Samira replied, ‘I know, but I am bored of it, and I want to go to school like Naeem. How come he gets to go to school and I don’t? I’m eleven years old and he’s ten. There’s not much difference in our age, is there?’

‘Listen, my child, did I go to school?’

Samira shook her head. ‘No, I know you didn’t go to school.’

Her mother waved the large metal needle in front of her daughter.

‘So! There’s your answer. Your mother didn’t go to school, so you won’t go either. But your father did go to school when he was a child, so now your brother goes too. Don’t forget you only have one brother. One day you and your little sister will go to live in someone else’s house and then you will both help your husbands with all the household jobs in just the same way as I help your father now.’

Samira wasn’t too happy with her mother’s response, but said nothing for a while and kept on weaving. Her mother tuned the radio to a local station playing music, and the song of the Herati girl came on. Samira immediately went to turn up the volume, and her mother laughed when she heard the song because it was an old favourite of theirs. It was sung by Sitarah the Herat, an old Afghan singer. They continued weaving as they listened to the song.

I am the Herati girl

I come from a village

I am a carpet-weaving girl

I weave beautifully and colourfully

I am the new flower of this house.

Samira liked listening to Sitarah’s song because it felt as though she was singing just for her. Her mother turned down the volume a bit, and said,
‘You see, my child, carpet weaving is a great skill, even someone like Sitarah sings about our work!’

But Samira wasn’t impressed. ‘What does Sitarah know? She can enjoy singing about weaving but she doesn’t have to do all the hard work like us, does she?’

Samira’s mother laughed. ‘I thought you liked the song, but now you’re cross with it.’

Samira looked at the
kargah
and said, ‘I want to be a singer, not a carpet weaver, and how’s that ever going to happen?’

Samira’s mother shook her head and said, ‘You’ll never give up arguing with me about work, will you? You’ll never be a singer because your father wouldn’t want our family to be shamed.’

Samira paused for a moment. ‘If father isn’t ashamed of showing off the carpets I’ve woven, then why should he be ashamed of people hearing my voice? Singing is just as much of a talent as carpet weaving.’

Samira’s mother wondered how her daughter had come to be so clever and realised she couldn’t win this argument, so she tried to bring her attention back to their work.

‘Let’s just get on with the job. You’re still young and don’t yet understand all our traditions.’

With that, mother and daughter carried on weaving, their fingers moving in and out of the threads at great speed. It was soon lunchtime and Samira asked her mother if she could stop and have something to eat. Her mother agreed and Samira went outside. The air was dry and crisp. Autumn had turned the leaves on the trees in the yard to yellow and orange, and a strong breeze was blowing them to the ground. Samira tried to look up at the sky, which despite the cold weather was bright and sunny, but found she couldn’t open her eyes because the light hurt them too much, so she covered them with her hands. As she traced her fingers around her face she felt an ache in her joints, and when she tried to stand up straight she felt a stabbing pain in her back. Hours hunched over the
kargah
in a darkened room meant she could no longer stand up properly, and because she had been in the weaving
room since early in the morning, this was the first time she had seen daylight.

Samira walked slowly towards the kitchen and headed straight for the breadbasket, which was filled with the round flat bread her mother had baked in the
tanoor
early that morning. She took out a piece, and then went to the gas stove and put the kettle on to boil. Every day at about midday she would come back to the kitchen, make some green tea, take two cups, some sugar and bread and carry it back to the weaving room. This was their lunch. Her mother would only cook in the evenings when her husband came home; she wouldn’t take a break from weaving during the day to make food for the children. Besides, it was cheaper to make only one proper meal a day.

Samira sat by a small window near where her little sister was sleeping in her
gahwara
(cradle). She poured tea for her mother and herself, adding lots of sugar, and bit into the bread. Samira enjoyed every sip of her tea and every bite of her bread. After a while, Samira’s mother asked her to check on her baby sister. It had been a long time since the baby had stirred, so Samira knelt down by the
gahwara
and looked at her closely.