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

by Christopher Aslan Alexander

  Rustam and Mukkadas were patient with our halting Uzbek and gracious about our linguistical blunders, of which there were many. Perhaps the most colourful was when Catriona attempted to describe what church was like in Scotland and how men and women weren’t separated but all sat together, singing and sometimes clapping. Rustam looked horrified and it took us a while to establish that Catriona had mistakenly used the word for toilet instead of church.

  My problem was with similar-sounding words, and I often asked for chopped-up train to sprinkle over my chips, or made enquiries about the onion going to Tashkent at the train station. I also caused a few raised eyebrows at checkpoints as I offered to show policemen my potato – a mere vowel away from ‘document’.

  It was through Rustam and Mukkadas that I met Bakhtior, who became one of my closest friends. Short, dark and muscular, Bakhtior was a wrestler. He had an Afghan grandfather, which accounted for his colouring, and a murky past, having run a gang in his home town that specialised in roadside hold-ups. He was well known by the police in his town but had then become a Christian through a university friend. He left his life of crime and was promptly arrested as a suspected Islamic fundamentalist. He told the authorities that he had, in fact, become a Christian, which seemed a good enough reason to continue harassing him.

  * * *

  I began to feel at home in Khiva, and particularly at home living with Koranbeg and his family. I’d acquired a kilim for the floor in my room and had taken down the garish curtains. The myriad of potential houses for rent, once promised by Koranbeg, had failed to materialise and instead he and the family encouraged me to stay on. However, I found a house for rent in the walled city and decided to visit it. It was simple but liveable, but as I wandered through the empty rooms, I realised suddenly how much I’d appreciated living with a local family, and how lonely I’d feel if I moved out.

  I sat down with Koranbeg later that day and broached the subject of my future accommodation. He urged me to stay with them, to which I agreed as long as I could pay rent. So far, he had refused all payment, saying that I was a guest and that it was an honour to host me. I told him that it would bring me much shame if I was not to contribute towards the family expenses as he had taken me in as part of his family. Mollified, he reluctantly agreed to this proposal.

  My home by the harem was now permanent, and I was feeling a lot more settled. The next challenge was to survive my first summer in the scorching desert heat.

  3

  The madrassah

  The people of Khiva, as all the Soviet people, take an active part in socialist up-building, indulge in socialist emulation aimed at fulfilling and over-fulfilling state plans, at raising labour efficiency and quality … Its true masters – the working class – begin their working day to the beat of the Kremlin chimes.

  —N. Gatchunaev, Khiva Soviet Guidebook, 1981

  ‘It’s a dry heat, a dry heat.’

  I kept repeating this mantra, but as the thermometer crept above 40°C and continued, I accepted that dry or humid, the weather was unbearably hot. We had no air-conditioning in the office so I would douse my T-shirt in water and put it on wet, the table-fan by the computer on full blast.

  The walled city was even worse – the huge mud-brick walls retaining the heat – and my bedroom was impossible to sleep in. I dragged my mattress up to the roof, joining the boys under the stars and enjoying the occasional night breeze. Getting up early felt unnatural but this was the only time when I had any energy. The summer days were long and the sun set around eight at night. I would return from the office, the slanted rays turning the Ichan Kala walls bronze. Girls spattered water from buckets around their house to settle the dust and take the edge off the heat. Grannies sat in the shade of a tree gossiping, and as the evening wore on, families dragged their televisions outside ready for the evening meal.

  Despite the heat, Zulhamar was mortified that I showered with cold water and was convinced of my imminent sickness. I assured her that English people were immune to the evils of cold water, and sure enough I remained alive and well. Cold water, breezes or ice-cream were all perilous and the sources of colds and other ailments. Koranbeg’s mother would bundle up in cardigans drinking hot cups of tea to protect her health, while I simmered in just a T-shirt. Soon, showers, both hot and cold, ceased as we experienced a drought.

  Koranbeg had a water pump outside but one of the neighbours broke it, so I bought a plastic canister and located the well closest to our house. There were gasps from neighbourhood girls that a man should attempt to draw water and they were quick to offer their services. I waved away their offers and they watched in amusement as the bucket clattered against the sides of the well, emerging quarter-full. Ears reddening, I tried to master the art, eventually tottering off with a full canister which I placed on my balcony. It warmed up during the day, and that evening – the high walls of my balcony screening me from prying eyes – I enjoyed a warm outdoor shower.

  * * *

  Life took on a steady rhythm. I spent the evenings with my Uzbek family or visiting friends, at weekends hanging out at the souvenir stalls with Zafar and the other sellers. We would try to guess the nationalities of tourist groups, and I was privy to any disparaging remarks about them in Uzbek. I discovered that Zafar had never visited the Friday mosque a mere 50 metres away. Worse, there were even two carved wooden pillars inside made by his brothers during the building’s restoration which he had never bothered to go and see.

  At the end of September, Catriona made a cake to celebrate our first year in Uzbekistan, and soon after that Lukas and Jeanette left suddenly due to ill health. I continued to work on the guidebook but was more drawn to my sideline in wood-carving. I was also interested in kilims – hand-woven flat-weave floor coverings, popular in the villages where people couldn’t afford factory-made carpets. If the quality, size and designs could be improved, I was convinced there was a market for them.

  That Christmas I returned to the UK and took a kilim with me, hoping to find someone interested in ordering more. In true Central Asian style, a friend of my cousin knew someone and we met up and discussed a partnership. He was importing dried fruit from Uzbekistan and was happy for us to add some kilims to his containers of apricots and sun-dried tomatoes.

  The kilim designs of Khorezm were too busy for a UK market, so, back in Khiva, I drew up some simpler designs in fewer colours and took them to Miriam, who ran a kilim workshop in a nearby village. Despite muttering at the difficulty and ugliness of each design, Miriam soon had her looms in action with pleasing results. I paid her a premium rate, on time, and insisted on good quality. The kilims arrived successfully in the UK and sold well, and we decided to double our order for the following year.

  During the second year of exporting kilims (this was by now my third year in Khiva), I visited Miriam’s workshop to see how our order was progressing, and she assured me that she had her women working on them fourteen hours a day. This reality, along with the dingy lighting, didn’t fit with the ‘fair trade’ ideals I had rather naively held. If I wanted to provide better working conditions I would need to establish my own workshop, although this seemed highly unlikely at the time.

  Meanwhile, Andrea, our German physiotherapist, had established a successful community-based rehabilitation project which had attracted the attention of UNESCO. They asked her to speak at a conference about inclusive education and afterwards she chatted with Barry Lane, the Uzbekistan director of UNESCO. One casual mention of the kilim project and his eyes lit up. They wanted to set up a school for natural dye-making and carpet-weaving in Khiva but hadn’t found anyone to implement the project. Would I be interested, he wanted to know, and when could he come up to Khiva and meet me?

  Barry called me and explained more about the proposed school of carpet-weaving. A similar workshop had just been set up in Bukhara, about 250 miles away, and an American carpet speci
alist was providing training. The Mayor of Khiva had already agreed to provide a madrassah for our use and UNESCO had funding for start-up costs. My dream project had effortlessly fallen into my lap, and I assured Barry that I was looking forward to working with him.

  Barry visited the following week with Komiljan, his Uzbek translator and assistant. Barry was in his fifties with a neatly clipped white beard and equally clipped speech. It was clear from the start that he was accustomed to giving orders and having them carried out without question. Our main task was to decide which madrassah would make the best workshop.

  ‘The Mayor offered me any madrassah I want,’ Barry explained, ‘but I don’t want other people chucked out, so we’ll just be looking at ones that aren’t in use right now.’

  The Mayor of Khiva, it transpired, owed Barry a few favours and agreed to provide us a madrassah rent-free on the condition that we pay for its renovation. We had an hour or so before the Mayor’s arrival and I offered to show Barry some of the modern carpet workshops dotted around Khiva. He blanched at the proposal, well aware of the poor quality, lurid colours and synthetic fibres being used. The whole concept of hand-made carpets had not sat well with Soviet ideology, as the labour-intensive process required someone poor enough to produce them and someone rich enough to buy them. Instead, the bulk of carpets were made in factories, and most Khivans still preferred a standardised factory carpet over a hand-made kilim for their floors.

  The Mayor arrived – sober and obviously keen to impress. We were ushered to the door with promises of wonderful madrassahs, whichever one we might fancy. The first madrassah on show was the Kutluq Mohammed Inaq madrassah, and I had noticed during my guidebook research the significant cracks in the turrets on either side, and the odd angles at which they jutted out. I was sure the Mayor hoped Barry would choose this madrassah and save the local government a small fortune in restoration. The brickwork on this one was beautiful, and as one of the larger madrassahs it contained two storeys of student cells. We passed between the carved wooden gates into a corridor with doors to the right and left and archways leading to the main courtyard. An enormous old woman with a rolling gait and a perpetual grimace was there nominally to collect tickets, swathed angrily in headscarves, skirts and vast baggy pants. She had not been informed of our visit.

  Barry investigated the room to our right, pushing open the small, carved wooden door, and quickly retreated, retching, at the stench. The Mayor, alarmed, peered into the gloom where curled dollops littered the floor of what had become a makeshift toilet. I stared at the old woman I knew to be the perpetrator, having once interrupted her mid-squat.

  ‘My God! This is a madrassah and they let old grannies shit all over it!’ Barry muttered. Komiljan did not translate.

  Handkerchief to his mouth, Barry led us inside. It was a magnificent room with an enormously high ceiling that had once been a winter mosque for the students living here. The plaster was crumbling and extensive building work was needed, but this didn’t detract from its overall grandeur.

  ‘This would make a good show room, wouldn’t it?’ I ventured. ‘We could hang all the carpets up on the walls and install some spotlights.’

  ‘We’d have to get rid of this appalling stench first,’ Barry observed from behind his handkerchief.

  The opposite room was slightly smaller and smelt a good deal better, and we warmed to the place. Out in the courtyard we poked our heads down some stairs leading to a cool, spacious cistern, and then looked into some of the empty cells around the courtyard.

  ‘They’re not that big, but I think we could probably fit at least two looms into each one,’ said Barry. ‘Let’s have a look at the corner cells – they’re generally a lot larger.’

  He went over to a corner cell and opened the door part-way – enough to see a dirty mattress on which a girl hid her face as a naked young man attempted to wrest the door shut.

  ‘Good God!’ Barry was visibly shaken. ‘That old witch has turned this place into a brothel! This is a madrassah, for God’s sake! A historic site, a holy site, and she shits all over it and rents out rooms by the hour!’

  Komiljan, keen to avoid a scene with the Mayor who was pottering in one of the other cells, blissfully unaware, hurried us out to view our next site.

  We turned past the Islom Hoja minaret towards the Pakhlavan Mahmud mausoleum – Khiva’s holiest site. Pakhlavan Mahmud, known by Khivans as Palvan Pir, the Strongman Saint, was buried here. He was a curious combination of poet, hat-maker and wrestler, said to be the strongest man in Central Asia. Today he was the patron saint of barren women, who would come from afar and weep at his tomb, cupping their hands in prayer and making offerings of diamond-shaped fried dough called borsok.

  The Mayor stopped outside the mausoleum and presented us with the madrassah opposite it. This was the oldest madrassah in Khiva and had been built by slaves including a remnant from the first unsuccessful army of invading Russians. Today, the Shir Gazi Khan madrassah was famous among Khivans not for its history but for its bottled conjoined twins. The madrassah had been converted into a museum of medical studies during Soviet times, although it was the freak-show value that attracted the punters. All that was left of this display was a glass container in which the pickled twins lay, joined at the hip. The rest of the museum was now incongruously devoted to the republic of Karakalpakstan, leaving just the courtyard empty and free for us to use. Giving it no more than a cursory glance, Barry felt it would be unsuitable to share a workspace with an existing museum. What we really needed was a whole building to ourselves.

  The Mayor led us away from the Pakhlavan mausoleum, up some stairs and past a few small wood-carving workshops and an orchard. We stopped outside a simple madrassah portal studded in green Zoroastrian butterfly tiles. This was the perfect location for a workshop, as all the tourist groups walked along this street and we wouldn’t have to lure the guides away from their established routes. One of the Mayor’s entourage unlocked the madrassah door for us and led us inside. This courtyard was small compared with the others, but I liked the size. I tried to imagine it without the flotsam of rubbish strewn all over the place, picking my way between dusty broken bottles and boxes, wondering why a battered motorbike side-car had been left there. Ten cells radiated from the courtyard and we peered into each one. Most of them had thick wooden beams supporting a sleeping niche above. Barry was concerned that this might pose a problem for the looms.

  ‘If we’re going to have the looms purpose-made, I can make sure that they’re not too tall for these cells,’ I offered.

  In one corner was a small cell that I thought would make an ideal office; and in another, a spacious room that had obviously been the winter mosque. Flanking it were two dim little rooms that would provide useful storage space. A larger room to the left of the entrance way was nearest the gas pipes, making it an obvious choice as the dyers’ workshop. In the centre of the courtyard was a drain, but there was no well.

  ‘You’ll have to arrange for a water pump to be drilled in the courtyard,’ Barry declared. ‘We’ll also need electricity and electric sockets in each room. I want there to be adequate light for the weavers, and we’ll need the gas pipe so that we can heat the rooms.’

  We both knew, without anything said, that we had found our workshop.

  Outside, I stood back to take in the madrassah. It was dwarfed by the huge green bricked dome of the Pakhlavan Mahmud mausoleum and the towering minaret of Islom Hoja behind it. The madrassah – our madrassah now – was named after Jacob Bai Hoja (whoever he was) and built in 1873, the year Khiva was successfully invaded by the Tsar.

  It was perfect.

  Thanking the Mayor, and commissioning a restoration budget from the chief architect, we returned to my house to discuss matters further. It was now late October, and we hoped to begin training the following March or April, once spring had begun and the weather was warm enough for
fermentation dyeing. This also gave me time to finish the guidebook, oversee the madrassah restorations and buy the looms, dyes and other paraphernalia. Barry handed me a list that his American consultant, Jim, had drawn up for the sister workshop in Bukhara. It read like a coven wish-list: ‘Six large copper cauldrons, 25kgs oak gall, 25kgs madder root, 30kgs pomegranate skins – dried …’

  I would do my best to find all these dye-stuffs, and also a master dyer. Quite where I’d find one, given that the art of natural dyeing had faded out, I wasn’t sure.

  ‘What we need,’ suggested Barry, ‘is someone who’s already a craftsman, who knows colour and design and has some basic artistic talent.’

  I asked Koranbeg, who was sitting with us, if he knew of anyone through his work contacts. He thought for a moment.

  ‘I have a brother, Madrim. He is unemployed right now because there are no more contracts for restoration work. He is a very hard worker and he is an excellent craftsman with many years of experience in restoring the Khan’s ceilings. He understands colour and patterns very well.’

  I wasn’t keen on employing one of Koranbeg’s relatives, hoping to avoid the usual nepotism prevalent in Khiva. Still, I had no other suggestions and Madrim, once summoned, seemed to be keen; he was given an address in Bukhara where Jim was conducting a training session and told to join them there the following day. Madrim was to become our master dyer and the untiring manager of the workshop.

  * * *

  The next few weeks were devoted to the long list Barry had given me, as I worked out what items of equipment needed construction – including looms, drying racks and skein-winders – and which items needed purchasing. In the midst of this, events took place on the other side of the world with an effect that would ripple out as far as our workshop in Khiva.

  Koranbeg, while lurching home after a heavy drinking bout, had tripped on the uneven stone paving outside our house, breaking his leg in the process. He was now ensconced in a huge cast with Zulhamar fussing over him. She’d installed him in the downstairs bedroom and even moved the television there. It was one evening in September that, idly flicking channels, he watched world events unfold.