I was busy doing uninteresting things so I have not updated this weblog for ages...
I travel a lot and I live in the West (here and there) and I do love it. I never feel homesick for my beautiful beloved Iran. Never! Because, I have never left Iran! I kept it in my heart. How can you miss something you keep so closely to your heart? But I admit my eyes miss the magical beauty of Persia.
You know what I do when my eyes misses that magical beauty? I open the cover where I keep my little Isfahan Persian rug (a present from my most wonderful mother) and I look at it for hours while listening to Persian classic music, heavenly voice of Shajarian. The magic of my rug and the beauty of that music takes me to far away lands, to Naghshe Jahan Square, the second largest square in the world and I dare to say the most beautiful one.
In Isfahan, I always felt hungry, not for food (oh well ...) but for watching, smelling, listening, living, and for being. In Isfahan, I was anxious all the time, simply because I did not know what to watch and how to absorb so much immortal beauty with my mortal eyes.
That is why I love Persian rugs. They transform me easily from this world to wherever I want to be. There is something enchanting to them. They cast a magical spell on you so you cannot keep your eyes off them. They transform you to a Persian village where they were made, to the warmth of a villager 's home, to the purity of the women who made them, and to the liveliness of the children who grow up with them while they were being made. They tell you all sort of stories but in a very abstract visual form.
It is a dry hot summer in central Iran, and villagers long for rain with tired eyes? They weave a blue Persian rug, so blue with which no sea could ever compete. Persian blue!
Is it so cold and freezing in snowy mountains of western Iran? They weave a rug in red, orange and yellow as warm as the warmest fire ever.
Want something more intellectual? Isfahan, once the largest metropolitan in the world, lends its sophistication and intellect to its rugs. Isfahan was home to many of greatest mathematicians, scientists and philosophers of the ancient world for years. Every motif on those rugs has a philosophical meaning. Those fractal shapes have lots of nice mathematical properties(Ok I am a nerd and I know it). I look at my Isfahan rug and I let it transform me to a simply different world.
Isfahan rugs are full of colours, like shops in Isfahan Bazar, saffron ice cream with pistachio, colourful spice stalls, handicraft stalls, exotic food and magnificent ancient buildings decorated with colourful ceramics. Isfahan is full of surprises. You can never predict what you are going to see...
Tabriz, Mashhad, Kashan, Kerman and every city or every village in Iran have their own Persian rug style which tells stories about their history, culture, environment, nature, dreams, past and present.
If I am to pick up one thing that fully and perfectly manifest Persian culture, I would chose Persian rugs. It is fair to say that Rugs are not furnitures. They are livings. They have a soul. They preserve the soul of the people who made them. More than that, they share it with you generously and unconditionally. I feel their generous soul when I touch my rugs. I can feel it with all my heart and I let to enchant me.
So I guess I told you why I love Persian rugs. If you have your own collection or you are to start having it, remember they are "livings" so treat them with respect.
I promise that next time I tell you more about how to buy a carpet, some thing more technical. But I needed to tell you why rugs matter so much ! Right? ;)
XOXOXO
