Happy Hunting

In my element, awash in history


11:14 p.m., Sunday March 8, 2009

Today is my father Edward’s birthday—#79. Just spoke with him by phone a bit ago, wishing him well in Concord New Hampshire during his morning and my evening of the same day.

Today was a grand adventure through two nice warehouse showrooms of textiles young and old. One I’ve been to a number of times, the other was a gem offered by our driver Surjeet, with whose car service I intend to travel to both Vrindavan and Jodhpur, in whichever order unfolds.

I went initially in search of old Gudri blankets, wonderful textiles with a marvelous variety of form and color represented in their patterns, sometimes manically different from front to back. Some I want to use for a small upholstery project, some for making some one-of-a-kind, uber-special party jackets, and some for simply bringing home to enjoy as is.

Lo and behold, the first stop even had a stack of enormous hand-embroidered vintage Afghan Suzani pieces, quite like the ones I scouted out myself last year in Afghanistan for me and some friends in New York. (Though I paid about half this asking price when I was in Afghanistan, no doubt. This year, it doesn’t feel worth the risk to travel there again.)

I picked a few out, sent some pics to a couple of clients to see if they were of interest, and picked a few that were nice enough to want to keep for sure, even though my budget didn’t include a Suzani score. That’s why God made credit cards, right? And scored almost twenty sweet Gudri pieces along the way, too. I’m having those cleaned and delivered to my guest house tomorrow—nice!


A splendid Afghan piece from the day's exploits


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Istalif: Into the foothills of the Hindu Kush

Tuesday April 8, 2008 11:06 p.m.
Turquoise Mountain Foundation Compound
Kabul Afghanistan

Well, today was a fantastic trip out of Kabul, at last. We piled ten of us from Turquoise Mountain Foundation into a mini-van and rollicked across the fertile Shomali plains north of Kabul for the roughly hour and a half drive up to the town of Istalif, in the low foothills of the legendary Hindu Kush mountains.

I never knew that Hindu Kush meant Hindu Killer, but so I heard en route. What a relief to leave the big city behind—there’s so much more to explore, but I’m a country bumpkin at heart and the idea of a beautiful spring day in the hills was a dream come true, especially after so long scrubbing through the hot cities of northern India.

Istalif—a truly beautiful spot. Very small town, renowned for its rustic blue pottery, and reputedly a site of one of the Mughal emperor Babur’s famous gardens. We hiked for a bit less than an hour up the hill behind the main part of town, through the bombed-out ruins of the town, which was a fierce fighting area directly on one of the battle lines where Ahmad Shah Massoud fought against the Taliban (I believe this was in 1997). We walked directly amongst the destroyed area, which the Talib fighters eventually won control of. The Taliban came into the town and gave the town’s residents one hour to leave—after which they came in and ransacked the entire town, burning buildings and essentially razing the town down to the ground. It took five years for people to begin resettling their homes and neighborhoods.

TMF has been working over the last year or two to develop a visitor’s center and work space in Istalif, supporting the local crafts community, wihc is essentially the entire town. We got some great footage of one of the potters up on the hill throwing bowls on his kick-powered wheel, as well as some interviews with several of the old potter/shopkeepers along the old wild west-style main street (pretty much the only street, actually). Also shared lunch with the shura—the council of village elders, with whom TMF will be working as they integrate their educational programs into the local community.

While there we got sun, rain and hail—full on. We totally could have stayed up there for days soaking up the scene and shooting amazing footage. So much more to tell—but I’m so tired and another long day begins early tomorrow.

Briefly, we had an evening adventure too: after dinner, we accepted the invite of a couple of the TMFers to go out for a drink at one of the favorite expat watering holes: The Gandamack Lodge. Filled with journalists and assorted international aid worker types (and cigarette smoke), it was worth the trip—even though we had to willfully ignore the news that came across the transom earlier this morning: the main group that monitors and communicates the local security situation notified TMF (and others) this morning that there were rumors of some sort of Taliban attack to be aimed at symbols of western life here in Kabul somewhere in the next 48-72 hours. Gandamack certainly fits the bill, I’d say. But Allah was with us and all is well.

Afghan Women of Hope

Monday April 7, 2008 8:25 p.m.
Turquoise Mountain Foundation Compound
Kabul Afghanistan

Today we spent the whole day on our very own unsupervised outing. We called Zuhaak, one of the international- and expat-friendly car services here in Kabul, and arranged for one of their fixed-rate (200 Afghanis, or $4 US) rides across town to visit with a woman running a small but extremely hands-on local NGO. Betsy is an American woman who, three months after 9/11, quit her job after 25 years with US Air and moved here to Afghanistan to try and do something, anything, to help out the people of Afghanistan.

Betsy is the nerve-center of Women of Hope, a growing group of Afghan women crafters and embroiderers, helping them with encouragement, administration and marketing of their goods to the international crowd here in Kabul as well as seeking direct markets in the USA. (That’s where Dharma Boutique comes in.) Monday is the day that the women come in and bring what they’ve made in the previous week, so we had a chance to interview several women as well as Betsy, and of course peruse and put together an initial purchase of their hand-embroidered cotton shawls, and recycled burqas (!) made into little “bottle burqas” for wine or water bottles. Unnecessary, sure, but also a very powerful symbol of how much work we humans have ahead of us in order to build societies of equal opportunity for men and women, white and black, gay and straight.

I’m very psyched to be bringing home at least some goods from Afghanistan that really are perfect embodiments of fair trade and of using conscious trade to share stories and cultures and truly improve people’s lives—awesome.