Dr. Eiland has stated in his Chinese and Exotic Rugs of 1979, p. 35, that "A rug...will succeed or fail on the basis of its aesthetic qualities rather than its symbolic meaning." I brought this up while in conversation with my grandfather a few weeks before he died. He had lived a long life, much of it under various European government auspices in the Near and Middle East, and he had a heartfelt love for and understanding of the traditional culture and handicrafts there, including the handwoven carpets of which he had a large collection. He chuckled, gave a long, slow exhale, and lit a new cigar. I knew this gesture from my childhood and knew he was about to give an account of some incident in his life to refute Eiland's claim. His story has as its main characters a great man and a Kurdish carpet, two entities which are not altogether mutually exclusive.
He began by noting that with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, many of the countries formerly under Ottoman rule were falling to European powers -- chiefly Russia, France, and Great Britain. The British government had enlisted his services to keep tabs on the political currents against the Ottoman Sultan in the volatile region of southeast Asia Minor. British intelligence had arranged for him to stay with Mehmet Ali Khan, a wealthy Kurdish tribal leader who was friendly to the British (it was rumored he'd graduated from Oxford) while still supporting the Ottoman Sultan, Abdul Hamid. Mehmet was under a great deal of pressure to join his powerful clan to the Hamidiya troops whose function was, to be brief, to kill Christians and other minority groups for the Sultan. Mehmet would have no part in this barbarity and he had as servants, in fact, a number of Christian Armenians, as well as a fire-worshiper or two from the mountains to the south and other Kurds to think of.
My grandfather continued:
We spoke about this problem once and Mehmet replied, "You will see one day that these religious and ethnic names are inherited and do not represent people any more than the color of their hair represents them. You are mistaken as well in calling them my servants: who is master and who servant? I can do no more without them than they without me."
These words stuck with me. I noticed that Mehmet Ali never called his servants. They went to him as though called by some inner voice or they would bring him tea or a book without a word passing between them. The fault was mine. I had mistaken them for servants because of their humble dress. But if not servants what were they doing there in a Khan's house? What did Mehmet mean by "I can do without them no more than they without me"? I began to understand that this unlikely assortment were students of Mehmet and 1 saw him at times giving them chapters from Persian classics to read. This is only a small example -- perhaps an irrelevant one -- of the kind of man he was.
Mehmet's position as head of the tribal clan took him away from home for days at a time. In meeting with other tribal leaders his refusal to submit to the Sultan's bigotry made him unpopular but at the same time respected because he had no reason to fear the Sultan or the other Khans. His clan's strength was unquestionable. Tribal leaders came to his home and pledged their support to him privately while publicly maintaining their distance.
Once after dinner I asked Mehmet if he foresaw the Sultan's ruin. He said, "These massacres are the last vanities of a condemned man: Hamid cannot last." And then, "You must see that the man's life is not his own. His life belongs to the life of the Empire. He is an instrument of its destiny and he has forfeited his own." I'd gotten used to his philosophical manner and never pressed him for explanations as I was his guest
We spoke on many subjects besides politics. The Khan had a telescope brought from Germany in order to study the heavens; he'd read the Greeks and was familiar with all the Persian classics as well as Western writers such as Goethe, Kant, and Schopenhauer.
We arrived one evening on the topic of the handwoven carpets of the Middle East and Mehmet took a great interest in them. He said many designs as well as color combinations were quite ancient and had specific, almost technical effects on the viewer. He mentioned nonchalantly that he was weaving a rug himself and, when I expressed a desire to see it, he said he would show it to me the next day.
That evening I awoke to voices coming from the main house. It was a quiet evening and I could easily hear the conversation from across the compound. Some of the tribal leaders were urging Mehmet to join the Hamidiya troops as the Sultan's soldiers were confiscating pasturage and exacting unwarranted taxes from the less powerful clans. They reasoned these outrages might cease should the power of Mehmet's clan align itself more closely with the government. Mehmet said he supported the Sultan but could not kill for him and assured the Khans that they need only wait a little while longer. They left unsatisfied and unresolved.
The following afternoon I asked about this midnight meeting. Mehmet cut me off saying, "I will show you my carpet now." He led me to a small dirt-floored room off the main house where one of his daughters was weaving on an upright loom. Apparently he was not doing the actual weaving but was directing it and having the rug made to his specifications.
"This rug is special. Many have forgotten the designs in their true forms, forgotten the meaning of colors. I have not forgotten. My father taught me and his father him. You recognize beauty as paramount and then say beauty is only skin deep or again that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is clear you are confused. Beauty is an echo, an echo of a successful recording of Reality."
I did not understand and I said so.
"This rug is me. It is my family and my people. It is Abdul Hamid and Anatolia itself. It is the ascension of the West and the decline of the East. You will say it cannot be these things, that it is but a beautiful carpet. It always amused me that you Europeans take the Greeks as your cultural ancestors. The Greeks understood symbols while you believe they are a game. This medallion" (he pointed to a large octagon) "does not represent Sultan Hamid; it is Sultan Hamid. It is his failure. You see this one side is longer than the rest; it is unbalanced. If it were perfect, Hamid would be perfect. This upper medallion when finished will be cut short by the border surrounding the main field. Maryam will weave it this way tonight. The medallion is perfect, but incomplete."
"But this is sympathetic magic," I found myself saying, somewhat alarmed.
"It may be and it may not be. It is the truth but it is not the truth yet. Time will make it so."
"How long have you been weaving this?"
"Almost 10 years."
"Are you saying you control history from here?"
"No. However, this carpet and this history are sensitive to the same forces."
He went on to elucidate other aspects of the carpet including color. The background color changed from yellow-orange to red-orange from bottom to top. The metaphor (another, though less refined, method of symbolism) was the sunrise and sunset of the Eastern World via the Ottoman Empire.
I did not speak with Mehmet the rest of the day, but in the evening after I'd retired he came to my quarters.
"You will leave tomorrow for Istanbul. You will take the rug you saw today with you and deliver it to Jamal Farid, one of the Sultan's advisors. He is expecting you at his home for dinner one week from today. It has been a pleasure having you with us. I wish you great success in your affairs."
I never saw Mehmet again.
That night I lay awake thinking about the carpet, its meaning, and the suddenness of my departure. I was not offended by this last fact but was absorbed in the rug. Was I somewhere in the rug? Mehmet had said so much so fast that I could scarcely recall it. I was intrigued by the superstitious Middle East. Mehmet's idea that the variety of history and the making of a carpet could be simultaneous and related acts was hardly plausible and yet led my thoughts to fascinating and remote areas. I was curious about the upper medallion, the one that was to be interrupted by the border: the lower one was Sultan Hamid. What or who was the upper one which was "perfect but incomplete"?
All at once I leapt up. How could I have missed it? Predictably, I heard gunshots from the main house. I knew Mehmet was dead. Dead, probably, at the hands of the other tribal leaders. I lay back, stunned, on my cot. There was no need to get out of bed.