V
Yippeeeee. Finally after a long drought I finish a book. I have been trying to plough through 100 Years of Solitude and finding it impossible to pay attention or really care. I gave up. Finally I feel like I have resurfaced from literally 100 years of pretentious boredom. I've read it before and supposedly liked it. But I think I was dillusional at the time!
Anyway, this book was great. A bit slow at the beginning but once it got going I couldn't put it down. (Plus now my kindle has upgraded I'm a bookworm again.)
I thought it would be a travel book about 7 years travelling along the Silk Road from China to Turkey, but it wasn't. The British guy writing his memories lived in Khiva in Uzbekistan for seven years in his late 20s and early 30s. He is the same age as me (or thereabouts.) so lots of his history reference points are similar to mine.
He vividly created what life in Uzbekistan was like. A country in mad flux between Islamic traditions and collapsed Soviet policies. A country and an area which doesnt know it's place in the modern world. He desperately wanted to start a carpet weaving cooperative with help from UNESCO,employing women and local weavers who could remember the old local traditions of a skill which was totally dying out.
The beginning is a bit dull as he talks about settling in to this quite weird, Borat like hell hole of a place. I was beginning to wonder if he was sane to want to live in such a country. Thenslowly characters formed, stories were told and histories unfurled and the book began to race off in many directions.
I read about the history of carpet weaving in central Asia and how there isn't much local inspiration left. Most locals were making factory produced copies of Turkish carpets. The author took his first pattern from this one local fragment from the15th century. (The only bit left and residing in a museum in Greece.)
He made up patterns, and also looked at old pictures and sourced natural dyes, ending up with a business which was able to sell great carpets to tourists.
It was interesting reading about the history of design and pattern in Central Asia and the great world of Islamic design. Also the history of how Central Asians managed to sneak out the secret method from China on how to make silk and also how to get bright natural colours from madder Red and other natural sources.
Not only was it full of Central Asian history but also the stark realities of life in Uzbekistan now. How locals are victims of a strong Soviet system. How blind people and even just poor sighted people were totally institutionalised. How the KGB still works under a different name, the extreme corruption and how people open new mosques by celebrating with massive bottles of vodka.
I loved his trips into Afghanistan to get looms, dyes and materials and his wonderful descriptions of this country too. The fear of being a westerner, the way he wanted to start a factory here just to stop local woman getting more and more depressed whilst imprisoned in their homes. The hideous beaurocracy he had to deal with to get back over the border. The problems he had with culture and language and how finally the corruption and envy towards his business caught up with him and he finally became blacklisted in Uzbekistan. The ending involves him spending time as a stateless person in aTajikistani airport lounge.
He comes across as a pretty unassuming guy who falls in love with a mysterious and unknown part of the world. I enjoyed living it all through his memories. People, places, colours, smells ,art and history all came alive.
Anyway, well worth a read if you are into this kind of stuff!
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