Blog

April 15, 2011

The Quest for Tajik Treasures…The journey begins

As we blogged earlier, we were beyond thrilled to learn that the Swiss government agreed to sponsor our suzani revival project in Tajikistan. (That’s the country next to Afghanistan, Pakistan and China). And now the crazy dream to take back the suzani tradition from the history books and bring pride and economic empowerment to a strong but forgotten people is becoming a reality...

We will be led on this journey by the inimitable Nigora. Nigora does crazy things in her commitment to craft, like traveling right through the middle of battlefields to connect with people preserving their ancient traditions (I’m serious, she was just in Kabul. Yes, as in Kabul, Afghanistan).

So without further ado, I bring you the first in what we hope will be a series of updates and the start of a conversation. The journey begins setting off for Pamir, the Tajik mountain range.

If you have any questions or comments, we would really love your participation. This project is very much in process and your questions, comments or thoughts inspire our work, Nigora's work and most importantly the artisans’ work. The internet is everywhere and they do see this feedback and we will get their responses to you.

Nigora Writes....
Pamir. Our team was so excited to explore Pamir to find if there were any living suzani masters that we didn’t mind the 18 hours drive from Dushanbe [capital of Tajikistan] and the lie down through mountainous roads. Those hours seemed nothing to us as we were heading to Pamir, to the roof of the world.

“If the sun will appear we will start our journey”- said Jamal, our driver, originally himself from Pamir. “But if the weather will get cool and cloudy we should stay in Dushanbe”. The weather was very mild and warm that we didn’t pay attention what he told. How true those words would be…and journey started…

Passing the beautiful mountainous roads and watching magnificent mountains Jamal told: “High and majestic mountains know everything but silent”, and really it seemed mountains were watching us and invisibly showing us the way..
Suddenly in the midday the weather has changed to rainy and snowy, Jamal started get worried, and we didn’t know why. “ We should pass the river before it gets dark otherwise we have to spend the night in the car, yesterday another car was washed away, happily passengers survived”-nervously told Jamal.

March and April considered to be the dangerous months for travelling to Pamir as the ice start melting on mountains, which brings floods and waterfalls. Our car safely passed through 3 big waterfalls owing to our driver and reached Pamir late night. Thank Jamal, you are the best. Sleep well tomorrow we wake up early to speak to villagers to see if there are any masters. I make my prayer and now to sleep.