The Kashmir Shawl (25 page)

From the room at the top of the stairs a voice called something and the hoodie youth answered over his shoulder. Mair
reached his side and slid past him, smiling politely as she did so. She looked into a room that was empty of furniture but full of men, seated cross-legged against the four walls. It was cold in there with the tall windows on two sides standing wide open.

Everyone looked up at her. There were ripples of soft wool covering every lap. They had all been sewing. ‘Excuse me,’ she murmured.

‘May I help you?’ At the far end of the room, a man stood up. He seemed a little older than most of the others, maybe in his mid-twenties. ‘Are you here to buy shawl?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ She explained that she had been sent here, and named the fourth shop in the Bund. The old woman who had given her the address must have been watching and listening from behind the bead curtain. Most of the men bent their heads to their stitching again. One wasn’t sewing, she noticed, but his cupped palm was thickly blackened with dye. The only sound was a rhythmic slapping of flesh as he pumped a block into the dye and worked the black print border design on a delicate pink pashmina length.

‘Would you like to come with me?’ the foreman softly asked.

Mair followed him into a windowless office backing the workshop. There was a neon overhead strip, harsh after the natural light suffusing the other room. The only furniture was a cheap laminate desk and two chairs.

‘I am the
karkhanadar
,’ he said, in the same soft voice. The workshop chief. ‘My name is Mehraan.’

‘How do you do?’ By this time, Mair knew better than to offer her hand to a Muslim male. She spread out the shawl instead, covering the desk top with glory.

Mehraan had no lens. He took up a fold of fabric and gently stroked it. A minute passed in silence, then another. At last he looked at her. ‘I recognise the work.’ His English was good.

‘Please tell me about it,’ she begged.

The man’s liquid stare was intelligent, curious, and without a hint of prejudice or hostility. Mair was suddenly convinced
that here at last was someone she could talk to. She said, ‘I don’t want to sell it, or find out what it’s worth, nothing like that. But I’ve come all the way to Srinagar to trace its history. It belonged to my grandmother, my mother’s mother, and I think she was here in the city maybe seventy years ago. That’s all I know.’

Mehraan nodded. It was obviously his way to consider his words before he spoke. ‘It is a beautiful thing. The maker was in the same village as my grandfather.’

Mair’s face broke into a wide smile. Through the open windows came the first cry of the muezzin, taken up across the old town.

‘Excuse me. I have to go to pray,’ he said.

‘Wait. Please, you can help me. The shawl meant a lot to my grandmother, I know that. I’ve followed the story from Changthang to Leh, and on to here. I’m sure you can tell me more.’

Mehraan hesitated. ‘You can wait here if you wish. I will not be long.’

He turned and followed the troop of
karkhana
workers down the stairs. They slid their bare feet into the row of plastic flip-flops and muddy trainers ranged by the door. Mair sat listening to the muffled sounds of hooting and dung-heap cocks crowing. Once she got up and looked into the workroom. The shawls lay on the matting in pools of colour, the tiny leaves and petals taking shape in minute stitches of silk.

Within half an hour, the men filed back. The youngest of them couldn’t have been fifteen. He ought to be out playing football, she thought. He shot a look at Mair before he bowed his head once more, and she noticed that his eyes were sore and reddened from the close work.

‘Come,’ Mehraan said to her. ‘We will drink tea for ten minutes.’

He led the way to a corner
dhaba
, a workers’ place with plastic tables and chairs that was steamy with hot food and crowded after prayers. He exchanged greetings with half a
dozen other young men as he passed to the back of the room, and sat down at a table next to the wall. A picture of the Hajj, its shiny surface rippled with heat, hung above them. A waiter brought cups and poured tea from a metal pot.

‘Where are you from?’

‘England.’

He regarded her over the rim of his cup. ‘Why are you in Srinagar?’

‘As I said, to follow my grandmother. She was married to a missionary, and they worked here in Kashmir during the Second World War. I never knew her, though. She died before I was born. Is your grandfather still alive?’

‘No, nor my father. I have my mother and two younger sisters in my family, that is all.’

‘That’s a lot of responsibility for you.’

Mehraan acknowledged this with a nod. ‘Tell me, you make this journey just to see some goats and a workshop for embroidery? It is unusual.’

‘Is it?’

‘Most people are concerned with today, and with wishing for better tomorrow.’

At first sight Mair had recognised in Mehraan someone she could talk to. There was no point in making a connection like this and then
not
talking. So she told him about her father’s death and the uncovering of the shawl on the last night in the old house. She explained that her sister and brother were married and had young families, but she was single and free to make the journey. ‘On behalf of all of us,’ she concluded, as if to legitimise what he might consider a self-indulgent as well as an eccentric undertaking.

‘I see,’ he said. He placed his empty cup neatly on the table.

Mair knew that he didn’t completely accept her explanation. She said, ‘I needed a quest. All the obvious signposts in my life were pointing down roads leading to places where I didn’t particularly want to go, so I chose a footpath. If I’ve learnt anything from following it, in the last month, it’s how much I
love the place where I grew up. And how much I value my family. I never did while I was there.’

Now Mehraan smiled. It was the first time he had done so. ‘That is good. You are here in Kashmir alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are not a journalist?’

‘Of course not.’

‘And you are unfortunately also not wholesale buyer of fine Kashmir pashmina to stock your shop in London?’

‘I’m sorry, no.’

‘That is a shame for me.’

They both laughed. He looked at the clock on the wall above the Hajj picture. ‘I must go back.’

The bag with her shawl in it lay in Mair’s lap. ‘When will you tell me about your grandfather?’

‘I can meet you tomorrow. I take a few minutes to eat, before afternoon prayers.’

‘Here?’

‘Of course.’ He stood up to go.

She asked, ‘Do those young men I saw enjoy their work?’

‘It is work at least. But do you not think they would rather be teachers, or doctors, or even work in a bank? Today there is nothing for them in Kashmir. Nothing.’

Thoughtfully, Mair watched his retreating back.

The next day, she was sitting in the same seat when he reappeared.

‘Have you eaten some food?’ he asked. A tin plate of chopped onion and sliced limes was placed between them, sprinkled with green chillies.

‘Not yet. If you order for both of us, I would like to pay for it.’

He looked as if he might object to this, but he ordered rapidly from one of the men who raced up and down between the tables with steaming plates. ‘And so, what would you like to know?’

Many things, Mair had realised overnight. She wanted to know about his life, as much as his grandfather’s. She had read in the newspapers about the stone-throwers, groups of militant young men who believed in free Kashmir. They collected rocks and gathered in mobs to pelt the security forces. When the police and army retaliated, sometimes a boy was killed. Riots in protest at a death had led to curfews, increased police and military pressure, a period of uneasy calm, and then the cycle would begin again. How did a man like Mehraan interpret the violence?

Mair began carefully, ‘Why is there nothing for your embroidery workers in Kashmir?’

‘No money, no jobs, no investment, no prospect. That is nothing.’

‘Do you support
azadi
?’ Freedom, independence.

This time Mehraan’s laugh was bitter. ‘Freedom, for a poor man, is an idea only. But, no, I do not myself believe that Kashmir can be independent. It is a matter of economics.’

‘Or joined to Pakistan, then?’

‘Maybe, after Partition, that could have been a solution. The maharajah, Nehru, your Viceroy of India, they made a different decision. But now, today …’ Mehraan shrugged and blew out his lips. ‘Pakistan has problems enough. Why do you wish to talk about our troubles?’

‘Because I’m here. I was out on the Bund the night before last and I saw the grenade attack. Or perhaps I should just be taking photographs of the lakes and shopping for carpets.’

‘That would be to be a tourist, yes. A person like you, ma’am …’

‘Mair.’

‘Yes. Naturally you wish to look further than shops. But the difficulties of Kashmir are here for a long time, and they are not easy to understand. I am not even sure myself what I believe. Except in God, and his Prophet, peace be upon him. Of course it is not right to throw stones or worse things at police and soldiers, but young men are angry, and to be without
power in our own country makes more anger. On the whole, what you are already doing is wise – I mean, that is to concentrate your attention on your own history. And on shawls.’

Mair looked at her plate. There was a hot, fragrant naan glistening with melted butter and chopped fresh herbs, a dome of rice and a metal pan of vegetable curry. Mehraan wadded a chunk of bread in his right hand and deftly scooped up the thick sauce. She knew that, like Farooq, he was advising her to be careful for her own sake.

‘History, then,’ she repeated. ‘And your grandfather. Tell me about him.’

Mehraan’s sombre face brightened. His teeth looked very white within his dense black beard. ‘In those days, before Partition, Kashmir was a different country. In Srinagar, out in the villages also, we were Muslims, Sikhs, Hindu, Buddhist, all together. There was of course trouble sometimes, neighbours and disputes, but not so to tear apart a country. My grandfather lived in a village called Kanihama, on the way to Sonamarg.
Hama
means a settlement place, and
kani
you know is shawl-making. There was clear, fresh water there, gardens for vegetables and grazing for animals. Like me he was
karkhanadar
and in his workshop the finest shawls were made, a whole year or more to make one such as yours, in our tradition.’

Mair listened, entranced.

Mehraan painted a picture of a simple life in the idyllic valley, of families working co-operatively as they had done for centuries. The finest items were made in the hope that the completed shawl would find a wealthy buyer, perhaps to be worn for a wedding, or laid in as part of a bride’s dowry. In Kashmiri families, he said, shawls of all grades represented the women’s security. They could be cut up, sold in pieces to buy food or pay debts, retrieved and pieced together again, stored away in folded linen scattered with bitter herbs to deter moth, and brought out for the great family occasions. Shawls were given as gifts, hoarded as treasure, passed on from mother to daughter. This was still the case, Mehraan said, but the finest examples, the
kani
pieces, like Mair’s
grandmother’s, these were hardly made nowadays and the techniques were all but lost. They were too costly, and the weavers couldn’t any longer afford to spend months bent over a loom in the hope of their shawl fetching a good price when it was finally completed. There were copies, of course, machine-woven, but they were nothing.

‘Have you seen this work as it is done?’ Mehraan asked. The plates of food were empty, although Mair had been so absorbed in his story that she had hardly been aware of clearing hers.

She shook her head.

‘If you are interested, there is one place, not far – the
karkhanadar
is one of my friends. He has a buyer for
kani
in Delhi, but that man is a hard, hard bargainer. There is not much profit to make.’

‘I would love to see it.’

‘I will find out. Come again tomorrow.’

‘I will,’ she promised. ‘Do you have any idea, Mehraan, how my Welsh grandmother might have come to own such a costly piece?’

They walked out into the sunlight. The afternoon was fresh and cool after the steamy
dhaba
.

‘She was a Western woman so she would have been rich enough to pay my grandfather for it. Perhaps a gift from her husband.’

What other explanation? But Mair was sure that the Reverend Evan and Mrs Watkins had not been rich, not even well off, and she still couldn’t imagine Nerys, the minister’s wife, draping the radiant shawl over her modest shoulders.

‘Same time tomorrow.’ She smiled.

But when she met Mehraan the next afternoon he was in a hurry.

‘I do not eat my meal today. I have to go to see a buyer. If you can be quick, we will visit the workroom now.’

They ducked through some narrow lanes to yet another
doorway in an old wood and brick façade. Tall windows were designed to admit the maximum amount of daylight for the workers within. Almost all of the space in the small, silent room was taken up by three wooden looms, primitive-looking affairs of beams and knotted string. Three young men sat at the loom benches, intent on what they were doing, but when Mehraan spoke to the nearest he sat back and allowed them to see his work by unpinning the black cloth that protected the shawl length. Laid out in a tidy row across the breadth of it were hundreds of
kani
bobbins, each one wound with a different shade of the hair-fine weft yarn. For each row of the pattern, an intricate design of flowers on a black ground, Mair understood that every one of the bobbins would have to be taken up in order and passed between the warp threads. Each time, the exact number of threads had to be counted before one colour gave way to the next. The pattern-maker’s instructions were written out on a rough grid pinned up in front of the weaver, a tumble of scribbled digits that looked like the mathematical calculations of an early astronomer. Next to this was a sketch of the finished design.