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

by Christopher Aslan Alexander

  Sumalek, I was told, was first created by Fatima – daughter of the Prophet Mohammed. One early spring day, she searched her kitchen in vain for something to cook for her two young sons. The cupboards were bare, and her small vegetable patch outside seemed devoid of anything green after a long cold winter. On closer inspection she discovered shoots of wheat beginning to sprout, which she collected and minced, throwing them into a pot with her last handful of flour. She stirred the mixture but, weak with hunger, soon dozed off beside it.

  The next day she woke up, remonstrating with herself for not feeding her sons. And yet a rich, sweet aroma pervaded the air; the wheat-shoots had transformed into a thick, nutritious paste. On top of the thickening mixture she saw the imprint of her own hand. Trembling, she offered up a prayer to God, for who else could have performed such a miracle? Our sumalek usta explained that, God willing, our caldrons of sumalek would also be imprinted by the hand of Fatima as they cooled.

  As some stirred and others went for their first watery ice-cream of the year, we prepared for an open-air lunch, laying down plastic tablecloths and corpuches. Friends and casual passers-by dropped by to observe our progress and to take a turn stirring.

  After lunch most of us were free to enjoy the festivities going on outside the workshop. In the Ichan Kala, streets teemed, everyone in their best clothes, and gaggles of teenagers preened and flirted. Photographers equipped with large stuffed toys and plastic thrones offered their services, and there was a sense of spring in the air, everyone determined to enjoy the most important festival of the year.

  I headed for the stadium – the roaring crowd audible from far off. It was crammed with men watching wrestling. A few strapping youths in bright red spandex outfits flexed before sparring, but all eyes were on an older, bare-chested and burly challenger wearing a traditional tunic and heckling the crowd for a worthy opponent. A teenage boy pushed forward by his mates scrabbled back to the safety of the crowd, and groups of friends challenged the strongest among them to compete. Wrestling, along with football, was the most popular sport in Uzbekistan, with some excellent champions. Bizarrely, the President had decreed tennis – a game little known before independence – as the official sport of Uzbekistan. Tennis courts were duly built and instructors trained.

  The wrestler remained unchallenged and was given a prize. The field was then cleared of all but two men, each tugging a rope with an enormous ram attached. I’d always been against blood sports, but ram-butting, more concussive than bloody, proved extremely entertaining. The two rams, with huge overhanging bottoms, were lined up by their owners; one was shorn, making recognition easy. With a slap on their wobbling rumps, the two rams charged each other, colliding in mid-air and rebounding with a loud ‘tock’. Dazed, they went back to chewing grass until lined up for a second charge, their fat bottoms rippling as they clashed, accompanied by a lusty cheer from the crowd. On the third charge the shorn ram veered away to the derisive yells of his owner and the crowd. He was led away in disgrace, and the woolly ram – still a little unsure on his feet – pronounced the winner.

  I left after the ram-butting with no intention of watching dog- or cock-fighting, and took a short cut through the park, where the sap had risen in the trees and the first new buds were bursting open. Back at the workshop, the sumalek had darkened in colour and had steamed down considerably. Shadows lengthened and a nip in the air drove the weavers inside to fetch extra layers. The workshop had arranged for a traditional singer, known as a halpa, to entertain us. She arrived sporting an entire set of gold teeth, her mono-brow painted with kohl. Two other musicians came with her, one playing the doyra – a round drum held at the heart – the other a small six-stringed instrument known as a tar.

  As the sun set, the older, married weavers busied themselves with food preparations, leaving the dancing to the younger girls. At first shy, pushing each other into the circle and squealing before returning to clap at the rim, it didn’t take long before inhibitions were shed and they wove between each other, wriggling their shoulders suggestively. A gaggle of drunk youths wandered in and made a nuisance of themselves until accosted by our knife-waving sumalek usta. Three local policemen, enjoying a break from bribe-taking, came to stir the cauldrons for a while – the mixture thickening nicely. A few curious tourists drifted by and were beckoned in and invited to dance. The older weavers had brought their children, and I rolled out a large plastic ‘Snakes and Ladders’ board which kept them entertained.

  In the dark, songs of love, loss and passion mingled with woodsmoke and the fragrant steam of sumalek, the hypnotic beat of the doyra and the crackle of logs burning. Older women circled the cauldrons stirring, while the younger women danced in two large circles. The evening took on a dreamlike quality: a meeting of Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I struggled to keep my eyes open and eventually left quietly, hoping no one would notice and that someone would save a jar of thick brown sumalek for me.

  * * *

  After Navruz we began increasing our staff with four new weaver apprentices. This required a complex re-shuffling of the best weavers to ensure that each apprentice was flanked by two experienced women. Braced for a storm of protest, we knew that none of our existing weavers would want to leave their loom-mates and train up new girls – the time taken resulting in a loss of earnings. As an incentive, we decided to pay apprentices a mere $10 a month for the first two months, with the additional earnings split between the trainers.

  Safargul, the remaining usta, oversaw their induction, while Madrim and I discussed the success of the rebel rug, which was completed while I was away. The majolica tile colours, in vivid turquoise, white and midnight blue had been reproduced to good effect with natural silk-white, indigo and zok. Carpets in this colder palette were unusual and I was sure they would sell well.

  We visited the Khan’s harem in search of more potential designs. This rectangular two-storey courtyard with balconies on one side and five huge iwans on the other was the gilded cage that had once accommodated the Khan’s wives and concubines. The walls were covered in tiles, each with a repeating field design bordered by complex arabesque swirls of stalks, tendrils and blossoms. Everywhere were beautiful potential carpet designs.

  On one tiled wall, a complex geometrical pattern of white latticework left deep blue spaces where turquoise flowers bloomed. Madrim began tracing this design, which we called ‘Olma Gul’, meaning apple flower. In some cases the same design could be seen on the tiled walls and also carved into the wooden doors. I hadn’t considered doors as a source of carpet designs until now, and began exploring each of the carved doors in the harem.

  In the Kunya Ark – the Khan’s fortress – we traced more doors and tiles with stunning designs. Entire walls were covered in majolica tiles. These had been so numerous that, when commissioned by Allah Kuli Khan in the 1830s, they were fired in different kilns, each tile with a painted Arab numeral, to be assembled like a giant jigsaw puzzle. There was a small hole in the middle of each, where it could be nailed. Their name came from the island of Majorca where the colour combination of blue, white and turquoise predominated in ceramics. The ceramics were traded, and the cooling colour combination rapidly became popular among the inhabitants of hot, arid North Africa, and later Persia and Central Asia.

  The tiles were coloured with white glaze made from lead, and with turquoise (meaning ‘colour of the Turks’) made from copper sulphate. The vivid midnight blue, however, was a pigment harder to come by.

  In the 1960s a team of Russian specialists had been dispatched to Khiva to begin restoration. At the time there was one aged master ceramist left who knew the secret of midnight blue. Thrilled that his city would be restored to its former glory, he sought council with the Russians, offering to reveal his secret.

  ‘I’m the last person alive who can make midnight blue,’ he explained. ‘Of course, everyone knows that it’s made from the ash of the forty-joi
nt desert bush, but do they know what I mix with it, or the exact temperature to fire it? No! But I will share it with you.’

  His offer was spurned in favour of modern Soviet scientific methods of colouring the tiles. The secret of midnight blue was lost, and today the replacement tiles can easily be distinguished from the spectacular originals, appearing as if coloured in by a slightly dry marker pen.

  * * *

  Madrim spent the next few days in a reverie of design. There was nothing he enjoyed more than losing himself in arabesque swirls, ensuring each stalk and tendril curved and curled exactly where it was meant to. We planned four new designs based on tiles and doors, including that of the Grandfather Gate which I had walked through on my first day in Khiva.

  The warmer weather ushered in the tourist season, and my time was consumed with tours. I was keen to make us more sustainable and trained up Aksana, the stunning older sister of Rosa the weaver, as our new workshop guide. Aksana spent a couple of days shadowing me as I gave tours, writing down new words. Soon, dressed in a national costume of atlas silk, she was conducting her own tours, introducing a guestbook for tourists to write comments or specifications for a rug commission. She also taught the weavers some basic phrases, and they were soon chorusing ‘What is your name?’, ‘I am glad to meet you’ and ‘I made this carpet’.

  Tourists enjoyed the tours but didn’t seem interested in buying; our carpets were deemed too big and expensive. Numbers were still down after the World Trade Center attacks the previous year, followed by the SARS epidemic. Our UNESCO budget was dwindling as our stock of unsold carpets grew. What we needed was an exhibition of some kind to boost sales.

  A perfect event was on the horizon: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) had chosen Tashkent as the location for its annual conference. Surely some of these rich businessmen could be persuaded to purchase a silk carpet or two? The choice of Uzbekistan for the conference had caused a storm of protest from international human rights groups. How could the EBRD ignore its own charter condemning the use of torture and repressive regimes, by holding their conference in Tashkent – capital of one of the worst-offending regimes? The EBRD’s response was that economic engagement provided a better carrot and stick than ostracism. This conference was the perfect opportunity to challenge President Karimov and his regime to embrace democracy and economic progress.

  In Tashkent, frantic efforts were made to upgrade the crumbling Soviet hotels. The city was garlanded with flags, welcoming banners and a new series of ‘happy worker’ posters emblazoned with the President’s oft-quoted statement: ‘In the future Uzbekistan will be a great nation.’ One defiant poster of factory workers declared in Uzbek: ‘We are not less than anyone else and we never will be.’

  I was curious to see how an autocratic regime like ours would cope, jettisoned into the liberal world of European economics. How would the government react to investigative reporters roving around its capital asking ordinary people to comment on the current economic situation? This was a far cry from the propaganda parroted by Uzbek journalists, and the secret police would be clearly stretched.

  I phoned Barry, asking if he could make enquiries about craft stalls in the conference centre. I heard nothing further until two days before the conference, when Barry called having secured us a place on the condition we were ready to set up the following morning.

  Uzbeks have a particular talent for making things happen at the last minute, and the workshop galvanised into action. Two of the weavers, Shokhla and Zamireh, were nominated to join Madrim and myself, as both spoke a little English and would be the most useful weavers. The dyers dismantled our smallest loom to use as a demonstration and bundled up the carpets.

  A few hours later, we were on our way to the Urgench bus station. The trains and buses had all left, and one lone car remained. Through a complicated series of contortions we managed to wedge the dismantled loom parts into the boot, cramming bags, bundled carpets and ourselves into the car itself. The chassis sat heavy on the road as we set off.

  We reached the edge of the oasis an hour or so later, the car buffeted by a sandstorm, and scuttling desert rats and foxes caught in the headlights. For both Zamireh and Shokhla, this was the furthest from Khiva they had ever travelled.

  At some point I fell asleep, wedged between carpets, and woke at dawn as we entered Samarkand. This seemed a good place to pause for breakfast. Our driver had already stopped to buy heavy rounds of Samarkand bread from the roadside. Samarkand bread – delicious when fresh, and a formidable bludgeon when stale – was usually purchased by passers-through, and most cars displayed a row of bread in their rear window. We clambered out of the car to the nearest tea-house, which was furnished with generic plastic garden furniture, vinyl tablecloths, chipped blue and white cotton-motif teapots and matching drinking bowls. We ate greasy fried eggs, perking up after some tea, followed by a wander outside to admire the panoramic view.

  Samarkand stretched below us, carpeted in trees, the occasional flash of sun gleaming on the giant portals of the three madrassahs of the Registan and the ribbed, turquoise dome of Amir Timur’s mausoleum. Although we were quite far off, the Bibi Hunum mosque – another crumbling Timurid masterpiece – towered above the surrounding trees, clearly visible. Much of Samarkand’s ugly Soviet architecture was masked by the trees, and only its magnificent historical monuments soared, glinting in the sun, above them. This was Samarkand at its best.

  I turned to the weavers, about to point out another ancient monument, but they were facing in the opposite direction, transfixed. Silhouetted against the rising sun were the Zerafshan mountains. Growing up in our flat desert oasis, the highest point the weavers knew was the Islom Hoja minaret. They viewed their first mountains with awe, followed by a more pragmatic desire to pose for photos.

  We arrived four hours later in Tashkent, the weavers craning their necks out of the car window to watch passing high-rise buildings, scandalised at the plunging necklines and tight jeans worn by Uzbek women as well as Russians. We drew up outside the Intercontinental Hotel, which was acting as the main conference site, and were directed to a disused shopping plaza, spruced up for the occasion with craft boutiques. Madrim and the weavers stopped to admire the reflective glass of its 45 storeys, then negotiated their first-ever revolving doors and marvelled at the gleaming marble interior, their jaws dropping at the indoor fountain cascading from the ceiling.

  Our shop, we discovered with mutual vexation, was to be shared with the Bukharans. Fatoulah, our old nemesis, had already hung out his carpets in the best spots, but after some forced pleasantries we negotiated a fairer division of space. He eyed my albums explaining silk production, natural dyes and Timurid carpet designs and I warned Zamireh not to allow them out of her sight.

  Once set up, there seemed no point in hanging around, as the conference started the following day. The weavers weren’t interested in museums, but wanted to see the Amir Timur statue and Tsum, the largest department store in Tashkent. I decided to follow this with a trip to ‘Broadway’, a pedestrian street full of candyfloss and ice-cream stalls, fortune-tellers, artists, sellers of trinkets and antiques, and large gazebos that served plov and sticks of piping-hot shashlik kebab.

  Zamireh and Shokhla were happy meandering slowly down the busy streets in their bright village dresses, overtaken by bustling Tashkent women with dyed hair and tight leopard-skin leggings. After their first experience on a tram we took the metro – far cleaner and nicer than the London Underground, and a fraction of the cost. On the way out we took an escalator – the girls jumping on and off dramatically, never having been on one before. The weavers would be hosted by a South African couple who were good friends, and I would stay with Madrim at the Operation Mercy guest flat – it being improper for the girls to stay with us.

  The following morning Madrim returned to Khiva and I took the weavers back to our shop. The conference
had started but all the delegates were at the opening address, leaving us with time on our hands. I joined Zamireh and Shokhla at the loom for a lesson in weaving. Shokhla explained the correct way to hold the hook-knife and how to reach for a warp thread, hook it forward and then twist the silk around it. I tried and failed, then tried again successfully. For each of my knots, Shokhla had woven four or five, tidy and uniform. I completed a few rows. It was my first time.

  Absorbed in the work, I didn’t notice a couple of smartly dressed businessmen peering through the shop window, no doubt wondering why a casually-dressed delegate might require carpet-weaving tuition. They seemed politely interested in photos of our workshops and explanations of Timurid designs, taking a casual sweep around the shop. Instead of then leaving, as I expected, they both produced credit cards and wanted a carpet each. We directed them to the nearest cashpoint, feeling thrilled.

  Once the rugs were bundled up, I asked them how the first day of the conference was going. The EBRD president, they informed me, had lambasted the Uzbek government in his opening speech, condemning the destructive economic policy, the two-tier money-changing system and the appalling human rights abuses. Clare Short, Britain’s Secretary of State for International Development, gave a similarly fiery speech naming and shaming President Karimov. He sat at the podium looking completely devastated. This had all been broadcast live on Uzbek TV (a condition imposed by the bank), and the image of Karimov holding his head in his hands later cost the political editor his job.

  I questioned the businessmen on the topic of human rights abuse. This had been acknowledged from the podium with specific examples, including a particularly infamous case. I’d first heard about it through a young Norwegian on the staff of Human Rights Watch. Over an evening meal he’d told me about two inmates housed in a new prison in Karakalpakstan, built specifically for suspected Islamists and as far from the Fergana valley – where most of them came from – as possible. Conditions inside were thought to be appalling, but nobody knew for sure.