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LOST CHILDREN OF THE BAZAAR
Independent, The (London), May 15, 2008 by DEBORAH ORR
Their trade is almost as old as the hills that encircle the Afghan capital. But the lives of Kabul's rug-weavers reveal the fault-lines that scar this proud, complicated nation - and which condemn its people to poverty, desperation and addiction
On Chicken Street, under the serene azure sky, it is almost possible to imagine that the last 30 years never happened. Kabul's craft market is open for business, its rows of glass-fronted, two- storey shops replete with the iconic wares of the hippy trail, that in the 1960s and 1970s found their way off this street and around the world. There are Afghan coats here, and hookahs. There are majestic kaftans here, and lapis lazuli jewels. There is brassware, and china, carved wood and turquoise pottery.
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And there are rugs, of course, Afghan rugs, hand-knotted from the finest wool, gleaming in the perfection of the skill of their making, seductive in the symmetry of their ancient patterns. These rugs, piled high, bloody passionate red, inky solemn blue, creamy tender white, once adorned the floors of the most chic of the radicals who flocked here to buy. Why would they not? Afghan rugs, it is common knowledge, are among the finest in the world. For Afghans, ownership of such rugs is a symbol of status, and of wealth. The rugs are an important symbol of Afghanistan's nationhood, maybe even, in material and in cultural terms, the country's most resonant symbol of all.
The weird thing about this market though, is that it is almost too good to be true. The range and the quality of the artefacts is far greater than that found in most tourist markets in most countries. In part, this cornucopia simply reflects the wealth and diversity of Afghanistan's venerable ethnic culture, comprising more than 20 distinct groups. In the main, though, this plenty has piled up here because few tourists have come to pick it over for three decades now. The traders wait, with heroic patience, for customers to turn up and browse. But they are few and far between. Afghanistan - who doesn't know? - is one of the most dangerous countries on this earth. War has hollowed out this nation so thoroughly that even the rugs, one or two of them, have stories of violence to tell.
For there are war rugs here in this market, little rugs whose patterns have no symmetry, and whose subject is not timeless and abstract but horribly modern and direct. These rugs are illustrated with Kalashnikovs and B52s and helicopters and fighter planes. They have the Stars and Stripes woven into them, or Union Jacks. They have English words woven into them. USSR 1989. Invasion. Mujaheddin. Taliban. Twin Towers. USA 2002. Tora Bora. Racket. That should say Rocket. But there are a lot of mis-spelling on these rugs.
When the war rugs started to appear on Chicken Street in the 1980s, some luxuriously fastidious people found them to be in appalling bad taste. But others argued that the making of Afghan rugs is a living folk art, evolving with the times. Why should there not be rugs that described the hellish present? Why not, indeed?
The nearest thing to these rugs that we have in the west, right now, is the work of Tracey Emin, those embroidered quilts and blankets with their own naive mis-spellings, telling the intimate story of the battles of artist's life and psyche. It's a valid connection. Emin's own ethnic heritage is partly Turkish. In Afghanistan, it is the Turkmen of the north who are the most celebrated of the country's rug-makers.
But it is, of course, not only the rugs that have stories to tell. Talk to the market traders, and their stories are all the same. They feel nostalgia for the boom times, when Kabul was thriving as a fly-in/fly-out tourist destination, before the Russian invasion. They each confirm that, despite the impression that it has remained untouched by the fighting that has razed so much of the city, Chicken Street has been comprehensively gutted by violent incursions three times as various factions have taken control of Kabul. These traders have had the fortitude to repair and rebuild their businesses each time, borrowing money and goodwill to do so, and living on hope.
Like most of the Afghans I met and spoke to, the traders have mostly abandoned their shops at some point or another, shut them up and taken refuge in Pakistan or, far more rarely in this part of the country, Iran. They returned, optimistic, when the Taliban was routed from the city and Hamid Karzai came to power. For a time, business was OK, as the early days of reconstruction brought foreign nationals flooding into the capital. But as the effort to rejuvenate the country, and make it secure, faltered, and became mired in bad faith and corruption, so did the appetite for souvenirs of the incomers.
Like pretty much everything else in Afghanistan, the rug business has been all but destroyed by invasion and civil war. Most of the rug traders fled to Peshawar, in Pakistan, and conducted what was left of their businesses from there. Now many of the rugs that are still classified as Afghan, are really made in Peshawar, sometimes by machine. But because of its talismanic importance, there were early efforts in Kabul to revitalise the rug business, and reclaim national ownership.
