How can you live in the Middle East and not end up buying a Persian rug? Or two, or three? And so we did. The rugs are works of art, unique in every way. Handmade with painstaking care and patience, they have reached their final destination.
There is an art to selling rugs as well. You need to research your agent very well - he needs to have an expert eye for design, colour, weave quality and material quality. And most of all, he needs to be passionate about his craft. Riyaz fits the profile.
Riyaz loves what he does and his youthful looks belie his real age of 43. He is a devout Kashmiri Muslim who has lived in Doha for twenty years, and is married to his cousin. Each year he travels back to the rural highlands of his birth country Kashmir, where he meets up with his father - chief of the village, who is a highly respected and award winning weaver in his own right, having won gold medals for his works of art. Father Bhat protects and provides for a village 200 strong, many of them family members. He supervises and instructs a team of 40 weavers who sit each day weaving the most intricate and detailed patterns into spectacular stories of silk.
In search of high quality rugs, once Riyaz has gathered his team together, they push further into the mountains, crossing into Peshawar Province and the Khyber Pass. They rattle along in a well-worn lorry loaded with a suitcase of worn, low-denominational bills and a herd of sheep and goats in the bed of the truck. Along the way they meet caravans of traders who tread backwards and forwards along time-worn paths in the annual ritual of exchange of goods, bringing with them their prized rugs loaded on camels. Riyaz explains that most times he must barter sheep and goats with the tribesmen in exchange for rugs, as money is of no use to them. In time-honoured practice, they sit around a camp fire outside a goat hair tent, drinking tea and exchanging news and views of the world, before getting down to the business of bartering rugs for livestock. Once negotiations are complete, rugs are loaded up on donkeys or camels and brought down from the mountains to the truck waiting below. From there, they are driven back to Peshawar, freighted overland to a port, and finally stowed away in a container on a ship bound for the Persian Gulf, destination Doha, Qatar.
Riyaz explains that he is saddened of late, as the bedouin lifestyle looks to be on the way out and twenty years from now the knowledge accumulated by the weavers will be lost as more and more of the nomads opt for urban realities. Tribal rug making as an art form may cease to exist. The other issue for Riyaz is the reality of the current political situation that has made his journey fraught with danger. He is having to consider fewer trips or attempting to increase his security in some way.
Riyaz tells me the story of my particular rugs. First is the Afghanistan tribal rug that he fell in love with deep in the Himalaya mountains. These rugs are purposeful and are used as floor surfaces in tents in the desert. A Shirvan tribe family will weave a new carpet every couple of years and once they have carpets for all the 'rooms', they begin a new rotation whilst selling off the old. Dishevelled, dirty and foodstained, as it had lain on the floor of a goat hair tent for twenty years, my carpet was examined by Riyaz and deemed worthy of buying. He exchanged the rug for eight Jakoub and Karakul sheep - these are the animals that provide the raw base wool that is spun, and then hand dyed with natural pigments like oak bark for black colour, pistachio nuts for light green, saffron for the yellows, walnut shell for browns, and blue from indigo, which is then wound into skeins to use for weaving. My Shirvan rug is 100% wool with a 450 knot count per square inch. Tribal symbols and patterns tell one woman's particular story, her dreams and wishes interwoven on the canvas - like peacocks for divine protection, rams for progeny, and camels for wealth.
The second rug is 100% natural silk with a 950 knot count per square inch. Riyaz tells me that this rug was "made by my dad" in our village in Kashmir. He is very proud of his father's rugs and it is easy to see the expertise and craftsmanship of the weaver in the intricate designs of this one. It is truly beautiful. I ponder displaying it on a wall, but Riyaz says that rugs are sensual and made for bare feet. He says walking over a silk rug when you get up in the morning does more for your soul than a cup of coffee.
The third rug is a Pashmina wool rug from Kashmir, and the design just spoke to me - it is a double tree of life pattern - very symbolic of Arabian and Muslim cultures, that will be a constant reminder of my time in the Middle East.
"These rugs are woven into the manuscript of your life" Riyaz explained. "My father made this rug especially for you". "The tree of life is yours". And finally, he said: "When the Shirvan weaver made her rug twenty years ago, the weaver knew that she was only the holder of the rug. You are the keeper of the rug".
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