The Carpet Wars: From Kabul to Baghdad: A Ten-Year Journey Along Ancient Trade Routes PDF
Preview The Carpet Wars: From Kabul to Baghdad: A Ten-Year Journey Along Ancient Trade Routes
Christopher Kremmer THE CARPET WARS To Janaki Contents Acknowledgments Author’s Note Epigraph Maps Part One KABUL 1 The Rug Merchant of Kabul 2 Elephant’s Foot 3 A Day in the Countryside 4 Happy Fire Part two THE ROAD TO BALKH 5 The Red Carpet 6 Great Game 7 The Mother of Cities 8 The Taliban Cometh 9 Across the Amu Darya Part three KANDAHAR 10 Habib is Habib 11 Heroes and Villains 12 The Lost Tribe 13 Capital Punishment Part four PESHAWAR 14 Cruise Control 15 Khyber Bazaar 16 Violence by Degree 17 The Siege of Attock Fort Part five BAGHDAD 18 Late for the War 19 Tyranny,Hypocrisy,Bastardry and Confusion 20 The Sheikh with One Million Camels 21 Babylon Part six TAJIKISTAN 22 Tragic Tajiks 23 A Warlord’s Holiday 24 Children of Adam and Eve Part seven KASHMIR 25 Fire on the Lake 26 The Pashmina ‘Conspiracy’ 27 An Afghan in Delhi 28 The Good Shepherds Part eight THE DESERT OF HELL 29 The Gypsy Kilim 30 Death of the Nomads 31 A Prayer for Bad Roads Part nine ESFAHAN 32 Carpet Nation 33 Teahouse of the Misfit Moon 34 The Gates of Paradise Epilogue Notes Bibliography and Suggested Reading Glossary Timeline Interview with Christopher Kremmer Credits and Picture Credits About the Author About the Publisher Front Cover Image Copyright Acknowledgments Prior to this book even being conceived,I was indebted to a vast tribe of fellow writers, photojournalists, diplomats, aid workers, academics, United Nations staffers, officials of various governments, and,of course,carpet people.Serendipitous meetings produced many friendships and favours.Sadly not all of them can be acknowledged here, but I would like to express my gratitude to the following for their help, friendship and advice over the years: Syed Nasir Abbas Zaidi, Ghulam Rasoul Ahmadi, Ahmed Rashid, Jenny and David Housego,Brian Cloughley,Kathy Gannon,Khaled Mansour,Yolanda Hogencamp,Mike Sackett,Nancy Hatch Dupree,Gulam Nabi Butt, John Jennings, Steve Levine, Robert Adams,Tariq Zuberi,William Maley,Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmed,Masood Khalili,Mervyn Patterson, Ruth Harbinson-Gresham,Andrew Wilder,Mukhtar Ahmad,Robert Nickelsberg, Phil Goodwin, Ahmed Muslim, Fiaz Shah, Allan Brimalow,Jolyon Leslie,Hashmatullah Moslih,Geoff Kitney,Charles McFadden,Dinesh Kumar,Salah al-Mukhtar,Hossain Payghambary, David Windsor, Tim and Jan McGirk, Gordon Matthews, Milan Brezny and Bill Evans of Caspian Gallery in Sydney, Inderjit Singh Virdi, Rajdeep Sardesai and Sagarika Ghose, the late Bill Berquist, Cito and Lyn Cessna of Parkham Place Gallery in Sydney, Rupert and Sarah Colville, Geoff Brooks, Hillary Riggs, Sidney Petersen, Stephanie Bunker,Amanullah Khan,Hamish and Penny McDonald, Robin Jeffrey, James De Siun, Jonathan Harley, Dexter Filkins, Naseerullah Babar, Ian MacKinnon, Amitabh Mattoo, Ian Bulpitt, George Fetting,Christophe de Neuville,Rashid Qureshi,Ravi Nair, Saulat Raza, Andrew Meares, Rahimullah Yusufzai, Wahid Baman, Tim Hargreaves, Robert Marquand, Zahed Hussain, Zaheeruddin Abdullah,Zaffar Abbas,Hannah Bloch,Cameron Barr,Gulam Rasull Khan, Robert Templer, Mirwais Umer Farooq, John Sharpe, Professor Hamid Algar, Earleen Fisher and Eric Fournier.To those others who for reasons of privacy cannot be named,your help is no less appreciated. Sanjay Jha laboured conscientiously to transcribe hours of rambling dictaphone notations, and remained ever-energetic and cheerful. At HarperCollins my thanks goes in particular to publishing director Shona Martyn, as well as associate publisher Helen Littleton, senior editor Jesse Fink, senior designer Katie Mitchell, senior typesetter Graeme Jones, freelance typesetters Helen Beard,Rod Mercier and Kim Short,freelance proofreaders Rodney Stuart and Annabel Adair, freelance editor Devon Mills and freelance indexer Madeleine Davis. The professionalism and friendship of my agent Garth Nix was invaluable, as were the resources of several great libraries, including the State Library of New South Wales, the private collections of Krishen Bans, Maya Bahadur and Bill Evans, the Institute for Regional Studies in Islamabad, and the Carpet Museum in Tehran. Ludwig W. Adamec’s Historical Dictionary of Afghanistan is an enduring treasure. A portion of the royalties from this book go to the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage.Anyone wishing to support SPACH can contact them by writing to Nancy Hatch Dupree (ARIC), University Post Office Box 1084, Peshawar, Pakistan or e-mail them at [email protected]. I especially wish to acknowledge a debt of gratitude owed to several friends and colleagues who paid the ultimate price for informing the world about the situation in Afghanistan. Natasha Singh, Mirwais Jalil, Azizullah Haideri and Sharon Herbaugh live eternal in our fond memory. Finally to my wife Janaki, her family, and to Marlene,Ted and Melissa Kremmer,thanks for your support over the years of living, travelling and researching the ‘wars’. Author’s Note Long before 11 September 2001, when terrorism shook America,terror had been the lot of the people of Islamic West Asia. For more than two decades, war, dictatorship and economic hardship have stunted their lives, and the lives of their children. Generally the despots and militias responsible for this have been homegrown,but at various stages they have been aided and abetted by Western governments. This book took shape over a decade of work in Afghanistan, Pakistan,Kashmir,Iran,Iraq,and the Central Asian republics,at a time when events in much of the region were of little concern to most people elsewhere. Since the attacks on New York and Washington, many have realised that a crisis, even in a remote corner of the world like Afghanistan, can precipitate disaster at home. Understanding the causes and effects of injustice in Muslim societies has become critical to the restoration of our own security.The carpet business might seem a curious place to seek such understanding, but as the region’s largest export industry outside oil, those involved in the trade have borne the brunt of disorder. In any case, I present Muslim society here as I found it; it is a personal portrait of a different world in which many of my friends and interlocutors made or sold rugs. The encounters that provided the raw material for this book generally appear here in chronological order, albeit at times heavily compressed.In a few cases I have relocated a character or altered the sequence of events for narrative convenience. Where disclosure of any individual’s identity might have posed a risk to them I have used pseudonyms and altered details which might identify them.The transliteration of foreign words — a source of much confusion and frustration — is based on personal preference,there being no general authority on the matter,and all dollar figures are in US dollars for consistency.Finally,adhering to the principle that a writer must protect his sources, the names of all the carpet dealers have been changed. He who wars against the arts, wars not against nations, but against all mankind — Arthur Urbane Dilley
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