| Before
marriage, while mastering the textile arts, young girls create
the ceyiz, a dowry collection of beautiful things that will be
useful in their future homes. A girl might knit socks and create
a heybe, a saddlebag, for her husband to carry over his shoulder
at the market in a public display of her domestic skills; she
will embroider towels and weave pillows, carpets and
wallhangings. Her new home will be decorated with memories of
her girlhood and family. As she looks at her kilims she will see
herself and her sisters and her neighbors woven together in
affection. While creating the ceyiz in youth, the weaver makes
things that, if necessary, can later be sold to benefit her new
family.
Except at harvest when all hands
are busy in the fields, a carpet is rising on the loom in every
house, and when the sun is up, at least two women are at work.
Most weaving is done by girls and women between the ages of 14
and 26 who form together into a special community of work within
each neighborhood of the village. They move fluidly in and out
of each other's homes with no need to knock. They come to visit
and when they visit, they sit and weave. Their fathers and
husbands are away in the fields or sitting in the teahouse. A
young girl learns gradually in childhood by sitting beside her
mother, her sister, the other women of the village; she learns
by watching and by absorbing what is going on around her. The
master weaver must begin to learn early and build the art into
her process of growth. In this
way, she learns the habits of the hand that make the work easy
rather
than self-conscious, and thus gains the ability for innovation
and mastery.
As young women move through the
village, stopping to visit, weaving while they visit, carpets
accumulate the contributions of a wide circle of friendship.
Sitting to weave a spell with her friend, the visitor might
create an intentional inversion in a minor motif or introduce a
spot of surprising color. For the weaver it is a hatra, or a
memento of the time a girlhood friend stopped by and helped for
a while. The carpets record the friendships and events of
girlhood, and when the weaver leaves, taking the carpets of her
dowry with her to the village of her husband, they will remind
her of these times. |
