The Heroic Tale by Anna Badhken "The world is a carpet"

An unconventional heroic account;perhaps this is the experience that would define Anna Badhken's "The world is a carpet" the best.one comes across many such courageous accounts in which women journalist or writer travel to a perilous war zone and survives to tell the tale.

But that is one thing.it  is however a completely different thing and quite rare, to say the least to experience and endure the hardships of war once, actually yearn for more and travel back for it willingly.And then pen a tale not from behind some 40-feet high security barricade, but while actually try on foot.this is Badkhen, a Philadelphia based American writer, mousing about plot and narrative amidst absolute turmoil, faction battling for power in and out of the different cities of Afghanistan.Needless to say, it s only natural that when ever someone endeavors to undertake such daring quiets risking life and limb quite literally the results are nothing short of extra ordinary and so is the case with the world is a carpet a first person narrative with ability to keep readers glued to the pages.


The book begins at a relatively slow pace. there is not much plot or character development at the put-set and Badkhen is merely contact with rendering a few hints about the events that would unfold later when she goes on a journey with some afghans companions across the prominent cities of the country. instead, what we get to experience in the opening chapters is badkhen's command over the history of this part of the world when she discusses the past invaders of Afghanistan and how history played a pivotal role in shaping the present and the future of the country. This manner of narrating the story continues on other occasions as well. At times, Badkhen almost leaves the narrative at hand completely and ours out incidents she had undergone over the year:

" i was afflicted with a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed" i had spent my adult life in motion of one sort or another in the war-wrecked hinterlands of central Aisa, Arabia, Africa. that i had been warplanes dropped their first payload in kabul in 2011"

Badkhen sheds light upon how some America merchant might make thousand f dollars off a product a standard-sized carpet for example which is weaved in extremely adverse conditions in Afghanistan. these carpets make their way to the highly lucrative markets of places like Dubai and the United stats. 

Irrespective of their final destination and price their weaver will have to settle for something as meager as less than a dollar per day for all the hard work that went into the making. it would be quite a feat to not get carried away and start fantasizing while writing about a land that has such a storied past.In an attempt to portray the lighter side of things. a writer might paint a picture slightly colored by romanticism. But Badkhen manages to portray reality quite gracefully and imaginatively:

"This temporal grand canyon where millennia condensed in valleys between the crescents of dunes and unfurled again out of carpet knots, this seemingly organic realm...Then a newborn overdosed on opium.Women wailed over the slight body of a six-year-old boy mangled by a 30-year-old land mine."

Tentatively, out of many commendable aspects of the narrative, if one were to highlight the single most important, it could perhaps be thw way Badkhen captures the perpetual struggle that this nation is going through.

" a village unmapped, unremembered, unaccounted for. we could not see it from the ditch. but was there and Amanullah would never escape from it. In the spring, when winter wheat would rise above the knee in the rain-slaked fields of balkh, Amanullah and baba nazar would ride to Dawlatabad and buy skeins of yarn that would smell like sweet and sheep dung and lamb fat and juniper smoke and bring them to the village. Boston would roll the yarn into balls. Leila would fasten pale warps to the rusty beams and thawra would hang Sarah woven cradle over the loom and tie the first knot of her next carpet.In a year or two, two or three million knots later, Leila would join her and then Sarah Gul.They would weave their fore-mother;s lotus blossoms and their kinsman's wars, the golden eagles of their desert, the music of their village and its silences, it weddings and funerals,their own joys and sorrows. they would sever the yarn with old sweat-stained sickles in time with the sacrosanct rhythm of their hearts. on the edge of a sand-dune sea, on the edge of a war zone, in their crepuscular loom room on the edge of the world, past and present would converge"

Here are some pictures of Carpet which are made up of different types of beautiful colorful flowers. The interesting thing is that this carpet is hand-made. Craftsmen put flowers in the pattern which inspired by the African clothing.The design of the carpet which include different shapes and make the look of the carpet surprisingly eye catching. Many craftsmen are involved to design these carpets with there hands no any machine no any equipment. Some beautiful scene of the carpet in Brussels:-

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About angelina Moly

I m moly aneglina and doing blogging since 2 years when i found my deep interest in writing and searching. I try to make good article for my readers and visitors.