Table Of ContentChristopher 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
