carpets!

I moved to the middle east with a little Arabic carpet buying experience under my belt from travels in Morocco, Turkey and Jordan and I knew that being here in the middle of the Arabian peninsula, I'd be feeding a lovely, if sometimes spendy, addiction with some regularity. And so it has come to pass that in the 6 months I've been here I've purchased 9 carpets! Two were gifts and one is only borderline considered a carpet- I currently have it on my dining room table- it's a delicate little embroidered thing that won't really spend time on my floor.

souk is 2 buildings connected by bridges

I've purchased the vast majority of these from a great Yemeni vendor named Rashed who operates the Sheeba Iranian Carpets shops in Sharjah's Blue Souk. It's good to have a carpet guy. And it's good for the carpet guy to have us- a handful of expat shoppers with friends and colleagues we'll bring along for the experience of buying. And it IS an experience.

gold shop window

The Blue Souk is a pretty building designed in an older style, plunked down in modern Sharjah (the Emirate/city just to the north of Dubai.) It's featured on the five dirham currency note. Carpet shops abound there, as do shops for pashminas, souvenirs and gold. The carpet shops hang beautiful knotted carpets, often in silk or sometimes wool, with fantastically intricate patterns in all colors. The hanging carpets conceal tall stacks of folded and rolled inventory which doesn't stay hidden for long when shoppers come looking.

We arrived fairly close to opening on a recent Saturday, around 10AM. I'd called to let Rashed know we were coming so he was there to greet us. These things start out a little slow... we sit, are offered a

knotted wool

tea or water or soda, we start talking about what we might be looking for in terms of size, style or color and then the rugs start flying. Over the course of a few hours 2-4 people look at dozens of rugs, I should keep count some time, I wouldn't be shocked to learn we'd looked at over 100 rugs, over 200. Some it's easy to say, "No, not that." Others get draped around the sides of the room as "maybes" for awhile, sometimes later being taken down and put in a "no" pile, sometimes getting buried under other, more likely "maybes". Meanwhile, on the floor, the piles get thicker. This last visit we started with knotted wool carpets and I had a couple of strong contenders draped on the sides. Then Rashed suggested we consider some kilim (woven wool) or hybrids with carpet and kilim in one rug. I found the one, or OK, I guess the two, among those selections.

Rashed standing on a hybrid maybe that became yes

While we were there, a couple from Europe came in. They were interested in some of the larger, finely done, knotted silk carpets. We were waiting on a guy to come back from the remote storage with a few carpets featuring a certain shade of blue and so we sat around and watched a bit of their carpet shopping as well. The colors on the silks are so amazingly rich and the designs so delicate. Also, it's really lovely to walk around barefoot on the silks. The wools are quite pleasant as well, don't get me wrong. Actually, my last trip to Rashed's netted me the rug under my dining room table which is a lovely soft soft wool taken from the necks of camels!

Carpets selected, deals made, extras (like getting a channel of cloth sewn on for hanging smaller carpets on a rod) negotiated and it was already lunchtime. Rashed invited us, the European couple, another random American guy who hangs out at the shop now and again, and an Irish woman who does a little PR work with him out for lunch

the silks

at a traditional sit-on-the-floor Arabic place. It was fabulous and it's just that kind of impromptu and deeply ingrained hospitality that makes me love the people of this region. Yeah, there's commerce and good business sense in building relationships with repeat customers who bring others in but there's something else too. Just a genuine sense, I think, that it's a pleasure doing business together.

lunch

all carpets require the butternut seal of approval