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

by Christopher Aslan Alexander

  Fatoulah assumed an expression of abject penitence. ‘We have been so busy and there is all this work for us to do. It slipped my mind, but now we must use it in one of the carpet designs. What about the Mehmon design you want to start? It would look so nice with mulberry purple in the field design.’

  I asked Toychi to collect a bucketful of black mulberries that had fallen from the tree next to the Friday mosque. We made a dye-bath, but dyed only two skeins of silk as an experiment. The skeins emerged a rich purple colour, but after two weeks in the sun had faded to a dull grey lilac. Convinced that a plot was afoot, I called Barry in Tashkent. He wasn’t interested and told me not to get involved in petty, clannish suspicion. He further complicated the matter by inviting Davron, a dye-master from Marghilan in eastern Uzbekistan, to join the training in Khiva.

  Davron’s workshop in the Fergana valley made traditional atlas silk – the national fabric of Uzbekistan. Most atlas silk was made on machines, but in Marghilan they had retained the traditional approach, making their workshop a mecca for textile enthusiasts. I visited his workshop a couple of months later and watched the complicated process of dyeing atlas silk using ikat dyeing, in which warp threads are bound according to a pattern and then immersed in dye-baths, building up a colour pattern through resist-dyeing, a kind of tie-dyeing. The reassembled warp threads are then woven with just one weft colour, creating a vertical blur of colours subtly bleeding into each other.

  A young weaver in love is credited with the invention of atlas silk. The object of his affections was the daughter of a wealthy landowner who showed no interest in the humble weaver. His only hope, she told him, was to dazzle her with the most beautiful fabric ever created. The besotted weaver set to work, but nothing he produced received more than a scornful glance. Finally – his hands worn to shreds – he gave up. Dejected, he went to a stream that ran near his workshop, dipping his bleeding hands in the waters. Blood-red blended with the shimmering yellow of the reflected sun and dashes of green from the overhanging trees and the patches of blue sky. Inspired, he rushed back to his loom and wove atlas silk. His shallow sweetheart fell passionately and predictably in love with both the design and the designer.

  Interesting though the origins of atlas silk were, I was more concerned with the dynamics of another rival usta joining our already strained relations with the Bukharans. I had my own prejudices towards people from the Fergana valley, who styled themselves ‘real’ Uzbeks and despised anyone from Khorezm.

  ‘They are so uncivilised up there! Almost like animals … no, like Turkmen!’ I’d overheard a woman on a bus in the valley exclaim. ‘Who can understand their strange dialect? It sounds so horrible, so mangled!’

  ‘And what about their treatment of guests?’ began her neighbour. ‘You sit down and maybe they say a blessing, maybe not and then what? There’s no “oling, oling”, no insistence that you eat. They just seem to think that if you feel like it you’ll eat and if you don’t, it makes no difference to them. What kind of custom is that?’

  ‘And the tea!’ interrupted the first. ‘Always green and impossible to drink with their salty desert water. And do you know what?’ She turned to a third woman who was sitting in rapt silence. ‘They give you your own teapot.’ This elicited an audible gasp. ‘Yes, they just leave the teapot beside you and expect you to pour yourself. The host doesn’t even say “iching, iching”, just leaves it for you to pour yourself.’

  ‘Or,’ interrupted the second woman, ‘if they do pour tea for you, they pour it all the way up to here in the tea bowl – almost halfway! It’s as if they just want you to drink up and leave! That’s what happens when you live in the desert; you become primitive. Yes, they can dance and sing well enough, but I shall not be going there again.’

  My own experience of being a guest in the Fergana valley had been stifling, with overwhelming barrages of ‘take, take’ or ‘drink, drink’ when my tea bowl was already at my lips. Each time I drank, my bowl was replenished with a few drops more, forcing the host to continually service my cup. Instead I felt inhibited, leaving thirsty and keen to return to the scandalously casual traditions of Khiva.

  Davron, on arrival, immediately allayed my fears.

  ‘Nechiqsiz, Jorim?’ he asked in fluent Khorezm dialect, laughing at my surprise. ‘Look, my best friend at university was from Khorezm,’ he explained. ‘We shared a room and he taught me lots of words in the dialect. I really like it!’

  Madrim joined us at my house for a meal. After supper – during which I harangued him to eat and drink, hoping he’d feel at home – Davron excused himself and went to ritually wash. He returned and unfurled his cloth belt which doubled as a prayer mat. Few people under the age of 60 prayed like this in Khiva. Afterwards we talked about the situation in the valley for pious Muslims and the restrictions and persecution they faced.

  The following morning Davron joined Madrim and the dyers around the cauldrons and was soon correcting much of what he heard, explaining the importance of the pH scale and which products sold in the bazaar could alter it. Fatoulah scowled as Davron revealed other tricks of the trade withheld from us so far. Did we know about bikh, for example? Used to make a sticky meringue-like syrup with beaten egg-whites and sugar, Davron explained that bikh – cream of tartar – washed over a finished carpet, brought out silk’s lustre and sheen. He was with us for only two days, but left us with a wealth of information.

  We were still stuck with the Bukharans. I debated the wisdom of a head-on confrontation with them, deciding that it really wasn’t worth the effort. A few days later they left – taking with them, we discovered later, many of our original designs.

  ‘UNESCO pays them to come here and train us, but who did the training?’ asked Ulugbibi in disgust. ‘Zamireh teaches them a better way of knotting, and Davron teaches them how to dye properly. What did they teach us? Lies, nothing else – and how to steal.’

  * * *

  With the Bukharans gone, we settled into a routine. My day began with a tour of the looms – the two weaving ustas in tow. Sometimes the weavers used mismatched colours and would need to undo a line or two, or had made obvious mistakes that needed correcting. The rest of the day was spent working on designs or giving tours of the workshop. We experimented with local plants to see if any of them yielded colours. The weavers showed us how they used usma, a nondescript little plant that looked like woad. They ground the leaves into a paste, adding a little water and smearing the resulting kohl over their eyebrows, creating a mono-brow once considered the height of beauty. But as a dye-plant it proved useless. The only successful discovery we made was that the broom plant’s seeds yielded an attractive fawn colour, but we could already achieve this with a light madder bath – and a few onion skins tossed in.

  Tourists began trickling through, often pausing to photograph the Pakhlavan mausoleum dome framed in our front archway. Only then would they notice the racks of drying silk and the steaming cauldrons. Some were incredibly rude, marching around the workshop uninvited and not even acknowledging my offer of a free tour. Others sat at the looms learning to weave knots and posing for pictures with the weavers. The apprentices chorused ‘good morning’ regardless of the time of day and learnt that tourists expected them to smile for photos.

  A number of tourists, after a lengthy tour and a look through the albums of miniatures and sericulture I’d produced, wanted to buy a carpet and were frustrated that we had nothing for sale. One or two wanted to contribute anyway, insisting that I take money from them, so we set up an ice-cream fund with this extra cash, dipping into it for birthday celebrations.

  * * *

  As the pace of work slowed, I decided to spend more time with the apprentice dyers. We’d started with four boys but one had quit after a week, leaving Toychi, Davlatnaza and Hoshnaut. I invited them for an evening at the Anusha Khan homom. Madrim declined, stating that it would be undignified to disrobe in
front of his apprentices. The rest of us set off after work, armed with towels and shampoo. The homom – one of the oldest in Central Asia – was tucked between the Strongman’s Gate and the White Mosque. Unfortunately, the interior had been modernised. Inside a domed hallway an ancient television garlanded with plastic flowers spluttered to life, a greasy, threadbare couch in front of it. A home-made bar sold drinks and soap. Next to this was a corridor in which shifty-looking men waited impatiently. Toychi – an authority on the subject – explained that this was one of the most popular brothels in Khiva. The communal homom, once a stone domed maze, had been partitioned into three separate chambers, each with a grubby Russian-style sauna and shower inside.

  We entered one of them and I watched Davlatnaza peel off his filthy trousers, explaining superfluously that this was his first time in a homom. There was no bathroom in his house and I wondered when was the last time – if ever – that he had actually washed. He used the shower first – a thick snake of dirty water pouring down the drain. Once showered, we sat in the sauna and I asked them if they knew how the Anusha Khan homom got its name. They didn’t, and – as it was one of my favourite stories garnered from Isak the guide – I decided to tell it to them.

  There had once been a young prince called Abdul, who fell madly in love with his distant cousin, Anusha. They talked of a future together, the prince declaring that he would take no other wives, for his heart would always belong to her. Tragically, Anusha suffered from incurable ill health and as she lay on her deathbed, the prince sobbed, clasping her hand. He vowed never to forget her, promising to name his first daughter Anusha in her memory.

  The years passed and the grief-stricken prince became Abdul Gazi, Khan of Khiva. Determined that Anusha’s memory should live on through a daughter, the Khan was constantly frustrated as his plethora of wives bore him son after son. Finally, in exasperation, he summoned his entire harem and railed against this conspiracy. The next woman to bear him a son, he declared, would be executed along with her baby.

  This was particularly bad news for one heavily pregnant wife, and even worse when she gave birth to a son. In desperation, she wrapped the baby in swaddling clothes and – with nothing to lose – presented him to the Khan, saying: ‘At last, my master, here is your first daughter, Anusha.’

  The Khan, happy to take her word for it, was delighted and Anusha quickly became his favourite – the mother showered with favours.

  Anusha grew up freer than other girls, keen to ride and hear stories of battle. The Khan enjoyed her company, secure in the knowledge that a daughter would not be plotting patricide as some of his sons were wont to do. Anusha, pained at the deception, longed to tell her father the truth, but knew that this would condemn both her and her mother to death. The Khan, oblivious to this, could not understand why Anusha, at the ripe age of fourteen, had dissolved into tears at the mention of marriage.

  But all plans for Anusha’s betrothal were placed on hold as the Khan prepared for war against the Emir of Bukhara. Together with his sons and vast army, the Khan rode off to battle, leaving the city of Khiva largely undefended. This fact had not escaped the attention of a marauding band of Turkmen robbers. They planned a massive raid on Khiva to loot and pillage with impunity. Wisely, the Khan had installed his spies among the Turkmen and one of them sent word to Khiva of an imminent attack.

  Pandemonium broke out within the harem, but as the Khan’s wives became hysterical, Anusha veiled herself and ordered the Royal Guard to assemble before her. She had a plan, simple and audacious. The remaining soldiers were to call up the entire adult population of the city and have the women dress in men’s clothes, bringing with them all horses and donkeys. They would then assemble in battle formation outside the Grandfather Gate, with the Royal Guard stationed in the front two rows.

  This done, Anusha joined the ranks of unlikely soldiers standing before the gate. Soon, a cloud of dust, visible in the distance, announced the arrival of the Turkmens. They drew closer and closer until the captain of the Royal Guard gave the order to charge. The pretend army surged forward on horseback, on donkeys or on foot. The ruse worked. The bandits, assuming that the Khan had discovered their scheme and returned to slaughter them, turned tail and galloped away as fast as they could. Anusha had saved her city from certain destruction.

  Hearing of this, the Khan swiftly returned from the battlefield, throwing a lavish banquet in honour of Anusha. As the celebration progressed, the Khan summoned his daughter before him.

  ‘Anusha, my daughter,’ he began. ‘Today I owe you my Khanate and my honour. What is it that you want? Name it and it shall be yours.’

  Anusha thought for a moment and said in a quiet voice: ‘If it please my father and master, I ask for only two things: my life and the life of my mother.’

  There was a puzzled silence, followed by assent from the Khan. Anusha then took his father aside, revealing his true identity and explaining his mother’s subterfuge. The Khan was gracious, and declared: ‘Behold, my son Anusha. To him will I give my inheritance and he will become Khan after me.’

  And so Anusha became Khan, and he and his father are both entombed in the Pakhlavan Mahmud mausoleum. The Khan bequeathed Anusha the city of Hazerasp, and named Khiva’s homom after him.

  As the story reached its conclusion, all three dyers gratefully staggered out of the sauna to douse themselves and get some air.

  We began scrubbing ourselves, and as the streams of filth slithered off Hoshnaut and Davlatnaza they both became visibly lighter in colour. Toychi – ashamed of nothing – scrutinised me, wanting to know whether British men were usually circumcised, why I didn’t shave my pubic hair, which brothels I frequented and who was my favourite. He then explained his own sexual frustrations. Although just seventeen, he’d been engaged and set to marry when his father unexpectedly died. All wedding plans were postponed until a year of official mourning had passed, leaving Toychi’s passions untrammelled. This inevitably gave rise to the subject of donkeys.

  My first confrontation with this subject had taken place while wedged in the back seat of a shared taxi on my way from the Tajik border to Samarkand. The journey was long and, as I tried to read, my fellow passengers quizzed me on my sexual conquests in Uzbekistan. Disappointed with my answers, they then suggested that, as a wealthy foreigner, the least I could do was to pay for a trip to the brothel. I declined. Would I, they ventured, prefer a stable-stop instead? At first I thought this was a joke, but soon they were regaling each other with amusing anecdotes of their own teenage liaisons with donkeys, agreeing on a preference for foals. Hadn’t I heard the proverb, ‘An Uzbek man’s first wife is his donkey’?

  I asked whether any donkey would do, or whether it had to be female, provoking an outraged response. What sort of men did I think they were? Of course they would never touch a male donkey, and nor would any other animal arouse their ardour. I was obviously extremely ignorant, and they helpfully asked a policeman at the next checkpoint where the nearest donkeys were tethered, to initiate their foreign guest. Only a feigned deep sleep changed the topic of conversation.

  Eager to avoid more talk of donkeys, I asked the dyers about their family backgrounds. Toychi’s was predictably scandalous. His mother had left her husband and eloped with a young musician, despite the fact that she already had three sons. This was unheard of, even among the few Russians living in town. Toychi had been their love-child and had inherited his father’s impudence and charm. His older half-brothers had all gone to Russia in search of work and Toychi would have joined them if he hadn’t been given a job at the workshop.

  Hoshnaut – small and wiry – was born in Turkmenistan but had moved to Khiva as a child. It was from other sources that I learnt he had been placed in the Khiva institute for those with learning difficulties and was considered something of a joke. He strutted around the workshop declaring to no one in particular that he was a dyer now and a man of imp
ortance, and the weavers took great delight in baiting him. Toychi and Hoshnaut bickered and fought like cubs, but Toychi leapt to his defence whenever Hoshnaut was picked on.

  Hoshnaut and Davlatnaza were good friends and neighbours – Hoshnaut living in an equally tiny and squalid hovel. Davlatnaza was thrilled to have work. He had always been told what he couldn’t do because of his disability, but now he wasn’t just living on a pension and maybe people would take him seriously.

  * * *

  It was a week after a subsequent trip to the homom with the dyers that I finally decided to investigate the source of constant itching. Having stripped, I discovered that these were no mosquito bites but colonies of body-lice – one particularly fat louse in the process of laying eggs. Cursing Davlatnaza – undoubtedly the source of these creatures – I wondered what local or Soviet cures were available to get rid of them. All I knew was that I had no intention of being ‘radiated’ again.

  ‘Radiation’ was probably my most bizarre experience of Soviet-style medical treatment. It took place during an integration camp for the disabled run by Operation Mercy in the mountains near Tashkent, and began with the discovery that two deaf brothers from Namangan had scabies. The camp doctor examined them and – rueing the day she had ever consented to let these disabled vermin into her camp – ordered that we must all leave at once.

  Catriona reasoned with her and we were grudgingly given permission to stay. There was one condition. All those from our camp wanting to use the swimming pool must be radiated. Some of our foreign volunteers, horrified at what this might entail, refused. I on the other hand had endured a long dusty summer in Khiva and was unwilling to relinquish my swimming rights for anything.

  That afternoon, I found myself in the medical facility monitoring a group of boys from our camp, all of us stripped to our underwear. The girls had been radiated that morning and had told us the routine.