War's warp and weft / Afghan weavers incorporate battle scenes, World Trade Center attacks into tribal rugs

War's warp and weft / Afghan weavers incorporate battle scenes, World Trade Center attacks into tribal rugs: "War's warp and weft
Afghan weavers incorporate battle scenes, World Trade Center attacks into tribal rugs
Angélica Pence, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

At first, the fringed rug seems much like any other woven Afghan textile.

Large birds -- some flying east, some west -- are woven into a pungent red background and framed by a floral border in emerald green, yellow and golden hues. But a closer look tells a very different story: The birds aren't birds at all, they're helicopters; and the figures making up the rug's edging are actually bullets.

Narche jangi, or so-called "war rugs," emerged in Afghanistan more than two decades ago during the Soviet occupation, when the Baluchi tribe began weaving the iconography of warfare -- Kalashnikov rifles, jets, helicopters and hand grenades -- into their textiles.

The rugs have since taken on the very modern imagery of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the ensuing war in Afghanistan. Much of the imagery is copied from television news reports and aerial propaganda leaflets dropped by the thousands across Afghanistan by U.S. armed forces. The most controversial depict jetliners crashing into the World Trade Center, or tiny black silhouettes plummeting from the smoking twin towers. And to the surprise of some, the divisive folk art has gained a considerable, almost cult-like following in North America.

"After 9/11, people's interest in war rugs went up dramatically," says Kevin Sudeith, who began selling the Soviet-era rugs in a New York flea market about three years before the two jetliners brought down the skyscrapers. "People suddenly knew a lot more about Afghanistan (and) they wanted the rugs as a way to remember (9/11). Many people buy two at a time -- one to use and the other to show to their children, as a way to talk about the event, much like a document."

Rugs have been made by hand for centuries along the Silk Road -- an ancient trade route that stretches between Europe and the Far East. The oldest known rug, called the "Pazyryk," is housed in the State Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and is 2,500 years old. Nomadic or tribal rugs (along with bags, tents and other sheep's wool textiles) are made throughout Central Asia by numerous ethnic groups, including the Turkmen tribes. Often the only record of a tribe's history, the war tableaux are made chiefly on home looms by women and children, who have smaller, defter fingers than men.

Unlike ancient rugs, "these rugs are shocking because we recognize these motifs," says Angela Bailey-Sundahl, who recently bought a Taliban-era rug from www.warrug.com. "They're part of our everyday lives."

Less refined than the delicately woven Persian carpets that are often referred to as Oriental rugs, the Afghan variety is mostly made of hardy, hand- spun cotton or wool, entwined in geometric designs and tinted with vegetable dyes in deep, vivid hues. The most beautiful usually are credited to the Baluchi -- Sunni Muslims from the southwest region of Afghanistan -- and other hand weavers. Those with more rudimentary designs often come from weavers in refugee camps along the borders shared with Pakistan and Iran.

Emmett Eiland, owner of Emmett Eiland's Oriental Rug Co. in Berkeley, has traveled throughout Turkey, Iran, India, Pakistan, the Caucasus and Afghanistan researching the ancient trade.

"Oriental rug designs aren't just abstractions. What's interesting about war rugs in particular is that the weavers take scenes from everyday life and make them into rugs. Rug designs don't just come out of nowhere," says Eiland, a rug dealer since 1969 and author of "Oriental Rugs Today" (Berkeley Hills Books, $35).

Most war rugs coming out of Afghanistan today are shipped in bulk to distribution centers in New York, London and Hamburg, advertised everywhere from EBay to Soldier of Fortune magazine, and available in showrooms and at swap meets across the United States and Canada. Sudeith buys his supply via several sources, he says, including natives and some U.S. Special Forces agents stationed in the war-torn country.

Last year, Sudeith said his company and its online division sold 575 rugs, up from 150 in 2002, at $160 to $9,500. In the past six months, Bay Area residents bought more than 240 rugs from him. Of those, a good number were American women interested in the human rights of Afghan women.

"I wanted something very subtle, something woven by a woman," says Bailey- Sundahl, who teaches English as a second or foreign language in San Francisco and whose rug was made in the late 1990s. "For women in war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Iraq, weaving is their only voice."

Like Bailey-Sundahl, Oakland resident Melissa Hahn became interested in the pictorial rugs after hearing about them on National Public Radio. She soon logged on to the site and bought a 13-year-old carpet for $450.

"My interest was from a cultural perspective," says Hahn, a licensing manager for www.levi.com and a folk art collector. "I imagined an uneducated weaver looking up at the sky, seeing these bombers above their city, turning around weaving (the sights) into a rug."

Among the first rugs made after the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were those that portrayed the 2001 bombing of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Some of the more recent styles come from Ghazni, between Kabul and Kandahar. These tend to have a thicker pile than the more prevalent Kazar rugs.

One such carpet recently for sale for $1,250 on www.warrug.com seemed to pay tribute to U.S. troops -- depicting an ATV and tank roving across a desert floor, while a U.S. predator drone, F16 fighter jets and a Blackhawk helicopter flew overhead. Colorful slogans scattered throughout the 4-by-4- foot rug declared the "War Against Terror," "Afghans Liberated From Terrorists, " "FDNY" and "WTC."

Hahn and Bailey-Sundahl opted against buying post-Sept. 11 versions.

"I didn't want anything mass-marketed," says Bailey-Sundahl, whose Taliban rug contains opium poppies inside hand grenades. "I wanted something with more freedom of imagination."

An estimated 4 million refugees fled Afghanistan to neighboring Iran and Pakistan during the decade-long Soviet-Afghan war, which began in 1979. Some longtime rug dealers and textile historians argue that what began during those times as folk art born of a people's suffering has since become a product created by poverty-stricken craftspeople who are less interested in making a political statement than a product that will sell to foreigners.

"They're no longer a message in a bottle," says Richard Habib, owner of Alexander's Decorative Rugs in San Francisco. With the Soviet-era rugs "you had to look at a puzzle and discover the message -- messages coming from weavers. But they started becoming very obvious after 9/11."

It takes between two and six weeks to weave a typical 4-by-6-foot war rug, which is secured by a wool-and-cotton foundation and 60 to 100 knots per square inch. Ardabil rugs from Iran, in contrast, are customarily made of 100 percent worsted wool and tied with 150 to 200 knots per square inch.

Habib, who deals in high-end Oriental, Persian and European antique rugs and tapestries, and contemporary Tibetan and Romanian rugs among others, says that as demand grows for the Sept. 11 war rugs, so does the prevalence of lesser quality fabrics and dyes, including synthetic neons, that are used to make them.

"If a war rug appeals to somebody, they should buy it," says Habib, a rug dealer for the past quarter century. "But they should know that they're not collectible. There's always going to be a limited audience for them."

Tony Abrahim, a native of Afghanistan, and co-founder and owner of IMG Home in SoMa, agrees and, like Habib, refuses to sell the post-Sept. 11 style of war rugs -- particularly those depicting the Twin Towers collapsing.

"I love America and these rugs, they are disturbing to me," says Abrahim, who fled his native Kabul during political unrest in the early 1970s when 16 members of his family were killed. "Yes, put guns and tanks on the rug. But you don't put blood on the rug."

Sudeith, who first caught sight of a war rug in 1996 at the New York dinner party of a wealthy Italian businessman, readily allows that the latest incarnations aren't for everyone. While the Soviet-era war rugs are of a higher quality, rarer and worth more money, that may change, he says, as those inspired by the day-to-day scenes of the U.S. occupation age with time.

"These war rugs are traditional folk art," Sudeith says. "They're a means of expression and in many regard (a weaver's) sole voice. And just like Persian rugs from Iran, they are woven to sell."

Resources
War rugs, www.warrug.com

Emmett Eiland's Oriental Rug Co. (includes information about "Oriental Rugs Today"), www.internetrugs.com

Alexander's Decorative Rugs, 2 Henry Adams St., Suite 330, San Francisco, www.alexandersrugs.com

IMG Home, www.shopimg.com

-- Angélica Pence

E-mail Angélica Pence at apence@sfchronicle.com.

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