The Carpet of Blood

          
           Persian carpet (Farsh-e-Irani). the unique treasure. The essential part of Persian art and culture. The combination of aesthetics, nobility, time and pain of a nation. Carpet-weaving is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished manifestations of Iran and dates back to the ancient Persia.

            Iranian people always have had these small woven gardens in their houses.Their children have grown up on them, they have eaten their food, gathered the family members, listened to stories of grand parents, read poems, studied and got old on these colourful floral backgrounds. The other countries’ people from all over the world have been experienced being on this nobel and honoured handicraft of Iran even once in their life time as well. But we seldom have thought about the hard process of making a Persian carpet hidden behind their extreme delicacy and beauty. Nor have thought about their modest unknown designers and weavers that have dyed the silk and wool yarns with natural pigments , sitting behind the wooden looms for seasons and years, combing and weaving the threads, making the small harmonic herbal patterns in all of the  carpet-making workshops of Iran which have their special designing and knotting style.

            It has been a long time I thought nobody use children for making the rugs anymore but the fact is they still do it. The dealers buy the handmade carpets of children with the lowest price and sell them to the highest price and export them to the international bazaars. Small hands of children knot the wraps and wefts tighter and more accurate than adults’ so using kids as carpet weavers increases the quality of carpets. The carpet maker children of north,east and northern west of Iran spend main part of their short lives in the dark humid workshops. In some of the famous carpet-making provinces of Iran the 6 years old children are still working in the -30 Cg winters, knotting the silky yarns, cutting their hands with knives and combing the woven lines with their bleeding bandaged fingers. The traditional hand-knotted workshops that produce magnificent colourful rugs are usually dark, cold and humid and it won’t last so long until the young weavers lose their lives from tuberculosis and pneumenia.

            Persian carpets contain the untold stories of love and mania, delicacy and pain, gentleness and blood of an idealist nation. From the masterpieces of Esfahan, Kashan, Ardebil and Yazd carpets to the small valuable naive simple designs of Turkmen, Ghashghaie, Balouch, Kurd and other Iranian ethnics who have made Kilim(Gilim), Jajim and Gabbeh (which are alike Paul Klee’s and Mark Rothko’s paintings!) we can see the signs of a very creative mind and craftsmanship of the carpet makers. Another point which makes the Iranian carpets more mysterious and above all other handmade rugs, is that whatever they work more and get older, their value, beauty and quality increase and the colours will be bright more cheerful than the first day and never get pale, unlike the machine-made carpets. It seems like the young carpet makers who often die before starting their 20s, dedicate an eternal life to their handmade creatures.

            For an Iranian person, a carpet is rememberance of childhood, Persian gardens, folk songs that the little girls sing between knotting the silky threads while coughing (Maybe a reason for Iranians who take off their shoes inside of the house). For a foreigner a Persian carpet might means nothing but an expensive beautiful handicraft covering the ground under the feet or hanging on a wall as an antique. But in both cases this is a valuable work of hand, eye and imagination that needs to pay more attention from the majority of people and international markets. The more NGO’s will be active about the carpet-makers situation, this harmonic poetic piece of art will be appreciated more and the young weavers will have more chance to study and live a healthy life.

            Let’s take a new look to the Persian carpets and teach our children to know and respect the result of the young carpet makers’ short life.