A glance at the title of this book will stir in the imagination vivid images of shady carpet merchant cartels trying to outfox one another with the intention of becoming the No. 1 choice for both importers and individual collectors.
However, "The Carpet Wars" is not about carpet cartels. It’s about the Australian journalist Christopher Kremmer’s epic 10-year journey through the ancient carpet trade routes of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, India, Pakistan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. His insatiable desire to visit and write about these beautiful, historic, cultured — and at times internally troubled — lands and their people was not without risks, be it from a stray mortar shell, a hidden land mine in Afghanistan, Kargil or Kashmir or the haphazard firing of a Taleban rifle. Death was always lurking in the shades, looking for a victim; and he was never too far away from whoever it chose.
The book is a treasure trove of information: Historical, religious, geographical, cultural, political and artistic. Christopher Kremmer describes, with a clarity that is magnified by his razor sharp observations and colorful imagination, his personal meetings and interviews with the many personalities he encountered on his travels.
Interviews included the likes of former Afghan President Dr. Muhammad Najibullah, internationally famous warlords such as Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ahmad Shah Masood and numerous high-level Taleban representatives.
The interview during the 1980s with Najibullah took place in the president’s carpet-decorated office in Kabul, Afghanistan. The old, deep rose colored carpet had the large, classic Afghan filpae design (elephant’s foot). It was during this interview that Najibullah predicted that former Afghan King Zahir Shah would never return to Afghanistan.
The author was fascinated by Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Masood. He reveals how Masood helped finance his early battles against Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was being financed by the Pakistanis by selling emeralds and the blue stone lapis lazuli from Badakshan (once the prime supplier to Egypt’s Pharaohs). At a much later meeting with Masood, Kremmer asks him about his Taleban prisoners and the rumors that they were being mistreated. Masood ordered one of his four Russian helicopters to be readied and had Kremmer flown to a Northern Alliance-controlled prisoner of war camp full of Taleban. All the Taleban prisoners appeared to be in good health, and when interviewed by Kremmer many insisted that they were lied to when they were recruited in Pakistan. They were told that jihad was necessary as the Soviets were still inside Afghanistan and that they would be fighting the infidels. The truth of the matter was that they were fighting against their fellow Muslims.
In so many wars on the planet, the surreal often gets mixed up with the fighting and madness, and Afghanistan is no exception. The author and his friend were in a Shia village in Mazar-e-Sharif when the Taleban forces decided to attack it. The quiet, dusty, innocuous village exploded into gunfire and then round after round of rockets descended on the village. The Taleban found themselves up against some Uzbeks and militia who were defending the village. Feeling exposed and fearing for their safety, they dodged bullets and rocket fire and ran through the side streets. They eventually decided to run into a house for cover. Once inside, with the deafening sound of war on outside, they startled the occupants — an Afghan family huddled together in fright. The Afghans looked up at their unexpected guests and for a few minutes the war was forgotten, superseded by legendary Afghan hospitality.
"Make our guests some tea," the Afghan man instructed his wife.
The author’s obvious affection and knowledge for carpets, along with a myriad of carpet trivia, largely defines this book, as do his nagging doubts and suspicions about some of the colorful and hyped sales talk used by the carpet salesman to lure him into parting with his money. He admits to having been ripped off by unscrupulous carpet dealers. On one occasion he was duped while visiting Peshawar in Pakistan after he spotted what appeared to be a pair of small matching carpets which, on closer inspection, he noticed had the Turkoman gul design.
"Yes, they were indeed wedding carpets woven by the bride for her dowry," exclaimed the dealer, hovering around him like a vulture about to pounce on his prey. The sale was done, and it was not until many years later that a carpet expert saw them and informed Kremmer that they were not small wedding carpets but chuvals (matching tent bags usually made in pairs).
The book is peppered with human interest stories such as his visit to Chicken Street in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the carpet shops are located and where one dealer friend of his had to hide his many hundreds of dollars worth of carpets from the Taleban behind a false wall of a friend’s house.
The author’s friendship with an Afghan Hazara Shia led him to initiate contact with the UN political asylum agency, recommending his Afghan friend for safe passage out of Afghanistan as the Taleban were searching for him and his family.
The full impact of the Taleban’s rule — and in particular its consequences for women — in encapsulated in the sad example of one Afghan woman, obviously one of many thousands, who with only four months to go before completing her degree at Balkh University was prevented from completing her course due to the "no education" rule imposed on all women by the Taleban leadership.
A chance meeting in Peshawar, Pakistan brings back together Kremmer and an old carpet dealer friend from Kabul. The carpet dealer has moved to Peshawar to escape the Taleban but longs for the day when he can return to his beloved Afghanistan.
There is fascinating insight into his government-escorted trips around Baghdad, Iraq arriving a day after the end of the US and UK Operation Dessert Fox. It was great testimony to the character of the ordinary Iraqi that he was still treated as a guest in their sanction-devastated country despite their anger at being targeted yet again. When visiting an auction in Baghdad, antique carpets were seen being auctioned off for less than $100 each.
A brief trip into Dushanbe, Tajikistan, once a major trading center bustling with merchants, reveals a poor nation left to fend for itself after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The merchants have long disappeared, to be replaced by warlords and Mafia-type gangs that roam the streets at night and are not averse to kidnapping tourists.
When visiting Srinagar, Kashmir, Kremmer meets an extraordinary man who was involved in a family business dealing with carpets, antiques and curios. However, this experienced carpet and antique dealer became the victim of a huge fire in his shop, which destroyed 1,100 fine Persian and Kashmiri carpets (along with the odd Ming vase or two). The poor man was not insured. Further exploration into Kashmir revealed why the Kashmiri shawl is so expensive and highly sought after in the Western world — and why today the Kashmiris prefer to weave silk carpets to woolen ones.
A book involving carpets would be incomplete without the inclusion of Iran, and the book takes the reader through to the Iranian cities of Nain and Yazd, with the journey gracefully ending amongst the aesthetic elegance of Esfahan. Kremmer reached Iran by train, traveling from Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The journey took well over 20 hours to reach the border town of Taftan, on the Pakistan-Iranian border. On his arrival at the Iranian border, passport in hand, the heavy thud of the immigration officer’s "Permission to Enter Iran" stamp in his passport lifted his spirits and swept aside the extreme tiredness and boredom of the marathon train journey.
Interestingly, Kremmer, while acknowledging the fine weaving skills of the Nain weaver, thinks the carpets lacked color vitality and appeared to be made up only of dull monotones. Iran is internationally renowned for the weaving of fine carpets and the book reveals that a carpet woven for the Grand Mosque in Oman measured five thousand square meters, weighed 22 tons, and consisted of 1.7 billion knots. This carpet is truly a modern day wonder of the world and a magnificent example of human endeavor in the field of the arts. (I feel honored to have visited that mosque myself to see the carpet with my own eyes.)
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