Sylvia's Journal

We finally made it to Sadiq the woolman’s factory. We met Sadiq last fall at the agricultural fair. I have been buying wool from him and trying to sell the woolen hats made by the women who card, spin, knit and knot for him. Since last December we have been trying to visit him and finally we did this morning, on a beautiful spring day.

The ‘factory is located in a bare-bones house with concrete floor and bare brick walls. No heat, plastic on holes in the walls that serve as windows. Today several of the women were sitting outside in the warm sun. The whirring of spinning wheels and the sight of these ladies reminded me of the scenes described in Grimm’s fairy tales where princesses sit in bare rooms spinning flax into gold. These very destitute ladies did not look at all like princesses.

In one room two women were knitting hats on four small needles. I gave them Alison’s package of needles which she had brought from the US. It included needles of all sizes and length. It took a while for them to realize that these needles were for them.

Outside two women were cleaning out heaps of dirty wool and pulling the knotted clumps apart. The result of their work then went to the spinners. One was spinning by hand, a tedious job that required giving a ball of wool a big whirl while feeding the wool to the whirling ball. Upstairs more women were spinning, using simple wooden spinning wheels, turning the rough goat wool into skeins for the carpet workers in yet another room.

Five carpets were under construction. One young boy was working on a carpet from a picture of someone. Sadiq suggested I bring a picture of myself next time and they will make a carpet of me. A boy and a girl were working on a carpet with the Chelsea Football Club logo. The patterns look just like my cross-stitching patterns grid. Two of the carpets were more to our liking. It will take another month or so before they will be finished.

As we drove back through this dense and enormous shia part of Kabul, where most of the Hazaras live one of our drivers was making politically incorrect remarks about what he called ‘these Chinese people,’ while commenting on life size posters of now dead men who, revered by the Hazaras, were certainly not revered by our guard and driver. If I didn’t know it, this country, even without the Taliban, is still much divided.