A Carpet Ride to Khiva: Seven Years on the Silk Road

by Christopher Aslan Alexander

  Mulberry trees used for feeding silkworms were easily distinguishable by their shape – a thick, sturdy trunk which grew to chest height before fanning out into smaller, spindly branches that were cut back each year. Driving past them in winter they looked like rows of severed hands, fingers splayed.

  Tropical countries like India could grow worms all the year round, but in Uzbekistan they were reared only in spring, feeding on fresh new mulberry leaves. I wanted to produce an album of pictures documenting sericulture in Khorezm, hoping it might inspire tourists and other potential carpet clients to buy one of our rugs. Zulhamar’s brother-in-law lived out in Yangi-ariiq village and was responsible for incubating and hatching silkworms for their collective farm. One evening, over supper, I asked my host family if we could perhaps visit him. The response was enthusiastic and the next day we piled into Koranbeg’s red Lada for a family outing.

  We found Nuraddin under a large apricot tree in his garden and he leapt to his feet, hand on heart, to greet us and offer green tea. Having worked through the essential preliminary enquiries after health, family, work and livestock, Zulhamar disappeared inside with her sister to catch up on the latest village gossip, and Koranbeg explained the purpose of our visit. We were in no hurry and would be expected to eat an early lunch before anything more taxing.

  I excused myself and wandered down to the bottom of the garden, where a small mud-brick shed with a sack-cloth covering the entrance marked the toilet. Inside, next to the hole, was a rusting bucket full of hard pieces of clay. These lumps of clay were a common substitute for toilet paper in most villages, except during the cotton season, when clumps of raw cotton were used. I’d never quite worked out the mechanics of wiping with a rock, and was content to use old newspapers or the grey crepe toilet paper available in the bazaar.

  One of my foreign friends had been berated in a village as she removed some toilet paper from her bag, about to head down the garden. ‘Don’t you know that the Holy Koran was written on paper?’ they demanded. ‘How can you possibly use paper for such unholy purposes?’ Thinking quickly, she replied: ‘Yes, but our Holy Ten Commandments were written on stone so I couldn’t possibly use lumps of clay either,’ and continued down the garden path.

  After lunch, Nuraddin took me inside to see his silkworm incubator. A bed, covered in a mosquito net, writhed with tiny worms that had just hatched. These were the caterpillars of the domesticated silkmoth, Bombyx mori.

  ‘Each year we allow a few of the worms to spin their cocoons and grow into moths, mate and lay eggs. These are eggs I’ve kept in the fridge since last year, and warmed them up to hatch them,’ he whispered. ‘We need to be quiet because the worms are very sensitive during this first week of life.’

  ‘Sensitive to what?’ I whispered back.

  ‘To many things,’ he replied. ‘Loud noises and music, perfume, menstruating women. Also the temperature must be just right, not too hot and not too cold, with no draughts, and it must be humid.’ He pointed to the plant-sprayer on top of the fridge.

  I looked down at the tiny little silkworms. ‘They’re so small!’

  ‘Not for long!’ he explained, as we tiptoed out. ‘At this stage they can eat only the very new leaves and these must be finely chopped for them. It is not too much work yet, but soon they will grow and so will their appetites. When they are around ten days old, I distribute them to the village. Come, our neighbour has begun the process.’

  We walked down the street, Nuraddin enjoying the kudos of whispered speculation that I produced, and were ushered inside a house by a toothless old woman who tried a few words of Russian on me.

  ‘Grandmother, he doesn’t speak Russian, he’s from England,’ explained Koranbeg. ‘You can speak to him in Uzbek. He even understands our dialect!’

  She looked unconvinced and led us into the guestroom. Instead of corpuches and carpets, trestle-tables were set up, on top of which were fresh mulberry branches. Dotted all over the leaves were slightly larger silkworms.

  ‘We keep them indoors to protect them from birds and also, in spring, who knows? – maybe today it will be hot or maybe tomorrow it will be cold,’ explained a daughter-in-law, summoned to act as hostess.

  The room felt humid and had a mingled scent of bird-droppings and freshly cut lawns. The worms slowly and methodically ate away the sides of each leaf.

  ‘Now, the work is easy,’ we were told. ‘But in a week’s time the worms will get bigger and want feeding all the time. They won’t eat dried leaves so we must give them fresh leaves five times a day. We’re up and in the fields before six in the morning and give them their last new branches at eleven at night. All they do is eat and sleep and all we do is work. I don’t even have time for the Kino.’

  I smiled at this last reference to the nine o’clock showing of the wildly popular Mexican or Brazilian serialised telenovela, known generically among most Uzbeks as ‘the Kino’. If a village woman didn’t have time for the Kino then she really was overworked.

  I asked her how much they were paid for all this work and she looked enquiringly at Nuraddin. He nodded back: ‘You can speak openly with him.’

  ‘Well,’ she began, ‘during the Soviet times, of course it was much better. Then the collective farm leaders weren’t allowed to keep everything for themselves. Now though, many of us don’t want to grow the worms. It’s such hard work and sometimes we don’t get paid. I told Nuraddin that we wouldn’t do worms this year, but so did lots of others and soon the collective farm directors were down here making a noise, so we had to do it. Boshka iloyja yoke – there is no other way.’

  The state had a monopoly on silk and no one was allowed to sell privately. Although it was possible to sell silk surreptitiously on the black market, this was risky and incurred large fines. Nuraddin explained how many cocoons per gram of worms had to be returned by the villagers to the collective farm. For the two months of solid work it would take each extended family to grow the worms, they were meant to receive around $80 or goods in kind, such as flour or oil. Instead, the collective farm bosses would often not make any payments or, if they gave goods in kind, would give far less than had been agreed.

  ‘Last year, do you know what we got for all our efforts?’ asked the grandmother angrily. ‘A couple of crates of vodka. Do I want my sons to turn into drunkards? We tried to sell them but everyone got vodka that year so no one wanted to buy.’

  Nor were these two months of forced labour all that was required of the villagers. They joined the urban population each autumn out in the fields, harvesting cotton. Doctors, nurses, government workers, schoolteachers and their children spent two months of the year cotton-picking. I remember talking with a bitter surgeon who showed me his calloused hands at the end of harvest. ‘How am I supposed to operate when my hands look like a peasant’s?’ he asked.

  There had been a big drama in our house when Malika, Koranbeg’s daughter, had joined her classmates in the cotton fields. Zulhamar was concerned for her daughter’s health in the primitive conditions, and Koranbeg for her honour. Schoolchildren often enjoyed the adventure of being away from their parents, and for some of the girls the work was no greater than the burden of household chores that fell on them at home. Surrounded by classmates, including boys, there were opportunities to flirt and joke away from watchful eyes, with even the occasional diskoteka in the evenings. Many a scandal had erupted over illicit liaisons in the cotton fields at night.

  Malika and her classmates had arrived at a distant village school which was to be their accommodation, camping in classrooms and cooking in the playground. Early in the morning, the whole class would head for the fields and work there all day. They were supposed to be paid, but the amount was so low that once charges for food (however unpalatable) and accommodation (however basic) had been deducted, many students ended up owing money for the privilege of two months’ forced labour. This had been the case
with Malika.

  Only a doctor’s certificate provided exemption, and obtaining one required a large bribe. There was one case I heard of where a disabled girl with no hands had been sent to the fields because her parents had refused to pay a bribe for the doctor’s certificate.

  Koranbeg had fretted while Malika was away in the fields and eventually decided to drive out and check up on her. I joined him. She was fine, but grateful for the piles of food that Zulhamar had baked. We were given a tour of their fields and I tried tugging a fluffy cotton lump from its stem. Malika’s classmates taught me some of the tricks of the trade. It was important to pick as much as possible before seven in the morning while the cotton was still damp with dew. If this was then covered over, the damp cotton would weigh more, making it easier to meet the daily quota. Peeing on it helped for the same reason.

  * * *

  A week later, I returned to Nuraddin’s village with Koranbeg to see how the silkworms were progressing. We knew their appetites had greatly increased before we even arrived. The roadside mulberry branches were cut and stacked on donkey carts, brightly coloured village women heaving huge bales of branches on their backs. Nuraddin took us back to the same house and we could hardly squeeze in past the front door. The entire hallway was filled with trestles heaped with mulberry branches over which a sea of thick, white silkworms slowly churned. They had doubled in size and the sound of their munching reminded me of Rice Krispies floating in milk. I tried to pick up a worm but it reared up at me before attacking a leaf. A couple of lethargic worms had fallen from the tables. They moved sluggishly on my hand until I placed them back on the branches, at which point they began decimating leaves at a frantic pace.

  ‘So, now you know why it’s such a lot of work for us,’ Nuraddin said.

  I had read that during their six weeks as caterpillars, they would grow from two millimetres to twelve centimetres in length and become 10,000 times heavier in the process.

  ‘What happened to the worms that you had before in that room over there?’ I asked.

  ‘These are the ones,’ replied the old granny, who was watching my face with amusement as I surveyed her worm empire. ‘They have filled up all the space in that room and in here, and next week we will have to keep them in the stable as well.’

  Sure enough, the following week the worms were overflowing even the stable, like a domesticated plague of Egypt. Nuraddin pointed out the different markings for male and female and the spinneret behind each head. Everyone in the village looked worn out, especially as all the nearby mulberry trees had been denuded and they were having to travel further afield to collect branches.

  Uzbekistan, the third-largest producer of silk after India and China, often made claims to be ‘The Heart of the Silk Road’ in tourist brochures. Watching the activity before me, this title seemed well-deserved. Alongside my village visits I was researching more about the Silk Road and the network of routes between China and the West that had given rise to the name.

  The secret of silk – according to tradition – was discovered accidentally by the Yellow Empress of China around 4,500 years ago. She was reputedly enjoying a bowl of green tea in her garden when a cocoon plopped into her cup from the overhanging mulberry tree. She tried to fish it out and it began to unravel – changing the fortune of her empire in the process. Not only did silk provide a warm, comfortable fibre for making into cloth, it also possessed a unique luminescence and lustre that made it the queen of fabrics.

  The secret of silk’s origin was known only in China, and the Chinese little imagined that it would eventually be traded with the far-flung empires of Greece, Persia and Rome. In fact, no one in China was sure that these empires even existed. China was hemmed in by a barbaric tribe they called Shiongu (possibly the Huns) who barred all exploration westwards. It was only a century before Christ, after enduring one raid too many, that the Han Emperor went on the offensive.

  Aware that his army was no match for the guerrilla warfare of the horseriding barbarians, the Emperor desired more information about potential Western allies. In 138 BC, General Chang Chien was dispatched with over 100 men to seek out kingdoms beyond the barbarians – should rumours of their existence prove founded – and enlist these Western allies in a fight against the Shiongu.

  His quest took him through hostile barbarian territory, and he was captured twice by the barbarians, spending eleven years in slavery. Eventually Chang Chien managed to escape with a few of his men and, undeterred, continued westwards. He made contact with the kingdom of Bactria, and arrived eventually at the capital of Khorezm, the largest kingdom of Middle Asia. The Khorezm Shah demurred at the suggestion of a unified battle. He had no intention of unleashing the fury of the barbarians upon his own empire.

  Actually, the Shah and his courts were far more interested in General Chang Chien’s wardrobe than in any plans for battle. They had never seen such dazzling material, shimmering with a bewitching iridescent sheen. Chang Chien made a mental note that silk was an unknown and highly tradeable commodity. Having, presumably, sold his clothes to finance the journey home, Chang Chien returned to China via the fertile valley of Fergana. Here he made a second important find. Not only did the people of the West eagerly covet silk, they also possessed horses vastly superior, not only to the feeble horses of China, but also to the warhorses of the barbarians. These heavenly horses were said to sweat blood and run like the wind. His discovery of fine horses and a market for silk would prove more useful than any potential allies.

  Arriving home after thirteen years of adventures and with just a handful of his original entourage, Chang Chien was given a hero’s welcome by the Emperor, who had given him up for dead. The Emperor obtained Fergana horses to build up his cavalry and the first trading parties were sent out, laden with bales of carefully wrapped silk. Their Middle Asian clients were mystified at the origin of silk and what ‘heavenly vegetable’ might have produced such a fabric. The Chinese, quite sensibly, refused to share their secret with anyone. Silk eventually made its way to Rome, where it scandalised society. Wealthy noblewomen wore silken ‘glass’ togas that left nothing to the imagination. Unsurprisingly, demand went through the roof and soon silk was worth more than its weight in gold.

  Caravans of a thousand camels braved their way across Middle Asia. It could take as little as 200 days to traverse the entire route, but most traders chose instead to ply just one leg of the numerous routes available. As a result, caravanserais sprang up in the many desert oases, offering both accommodation and the opportunity for goods to change hands. Before long, these caravan stops had mushroomed into fully-fledged cities.

  Silk was by no means the only merchandise to make its way from China along the Silk Road. Porcelain, paper, gunpowder, mulberries, rhubarb and spices were just a few of the products taken westwards, with horses, coral, ivory, glass, asbestos, onions, peas, cucumbers and even ostriches returning via the Silk Road to the Celestial Empire.

  As merchandise changed hands across the caravanserais of Central Asia, so new religions, philosophies and inventions passed to and fro. Buddhism, on the decline in India, was brought eastwards and continues to dominate many Eastern countries to this day. Nestorian Christianity – a persecuted heresy in the West, led by Bishop Nestor who fell out of favour for opposing icons – found fertile soil in Central Asia, and soon cathedrals dotted the Silk Road, including the Cathedral of St George, built where the Registan stands today in Samarkand.

  Eventually the secret of sericulture escaped the Jade Gates, travelling westwards along the Silk Road, hidden in the elaborate hairstyle of a Chinese princess. Marrying a barbarian she was prepared to do, but living without silk was an impossible deprivation. Later, a single cocoon was smuggled to the West in the hollowed-out staff of a Nestorian monk and silk production was established in southern Europe and the Mediterranean. China still produced vast quantities of silk, but alternative sea routes meant that th
e long, arduous overland journey was no longer necessary and the Silk Road declined in importance. Today, few could name the countries found en route, except that most of them end in –stan.

  By the 20th century there were few places where silk was still worth its weight in gold, but Khiva was one of them – the Khorezm oasis hadn’t ended its love affair with silk, and wove it into money. Until 1924 the Khanate of Khiva was the only country outside China to use silk money, each note hand-woven and then printed in the mint located in the Kunya Ark. When the money got dirty, it was quite literally laundered. After 1924 the short-lived Khorezm Socialist Republic was absorbed into the USSR and silk money was no longer legal tender. Instead it became fashionable, stitched together to make robes or patchwork quilts. They made popular wedding gifts as a wish for new couples to be prosperous together.

  And all this started with voracious little monsters like those happily munching on their mulberry leaves before me. I picked up a leaf with a worm hanging upside down from it, determined to let nothing interrupt its guzzling. The life-cycle of these worms was also a silk road of sorts, and they were nearing the end of theirs.

  ‘It feels really good to be …’ I paused, trying to find the right expression, ‘… here in the middle of it all,’ I said, still pondering the impact of the Silk Road.

  ‘Yes, you can be,’ replied Nuraddin, misunderstanding me and pointing to a hole in the middle of the seething mass of worms and branches. The hole had been strategically placed to allow access to the worms in the middle of the trestles and ensure an even spread of fresh branches. Realising that I was expected to emerge from the hole, I crawled through worm droppings, getting my hair caught in the mulberry branches above and feeling the odd worm bounce softly down my neck, before standing up and brushing myself off. I was surrounded by the undulating ripples of thousands and thousands of worms.

  The following week Nuraddin called to say that there was no need to come. ‘The worms are bigger than the last time, but otherwise the only change is that they’ve stopped eating. They’ll be like this for another four or five days.’