Remote mountain villages create art on the loom. Written and photographed byPinaki Chakravarty
Rain splatters over sheep as they scramble up to Al Khatim, on the edge of Oman’s Grand Canyon. The wind had picked up minutes ago, flipping half a carpet over us and sending scraps of paper and the odd tuft of wool high into the air and over the edge, swinging wildly over the gaping mouth of the gorge. The basket of miniscule fruit called boot overturned, and we scrambled over the rocks, eating them as we picked them up, spitting the seeds out into our hands till they turned purple.
Two families and 20 people are all it takes to populate the last
village on the road at the ridge of the canyon. Al Khatim is living on the edge, barely a few houses crammed against rock, looking out over nothingness. Schools, electricity and medical facilities lie at the foot of the mountains, but at least they have a road. Some tend goats, others work in the army. And most children will be found across the plateau, selling carpets and key chains made from wool.
Suleiman bin Hamed bin Mohammed al Khatra shields his binoculars from the rain as we scurry for cover. He bought the old Russian-made model 12 years ago from Nizwa for RO15 and treasures it, slinging it by its leather strap across the thin white of his undershirt. Through it, he peers across the canyon or over its slopes, keeping track of his goats and make-believe enemies, whiling away the time. Can he see jinns through it, we ask. “No,�he says, breaking into a two-toothed smile, “even the jinns run away when I take out my binoculars!�
Suleiman might look like he’s never left these scraggly slopes all his life, but he’s seen further than the old binoculars with Cyrillic writing can show him. He’s been a coolie on the Saudi Arabian train network at Dammam, a block maker in Muttrah. Now, he munches on boot, scrapes by on the monthly RO12 he gets from the Ministry of Social Affairs and looks out over the ledge.
The rugs are his best bet �they are what elevates the handful of mountain villages above obscurity. Without this, all they could offer are cups of kahwa, a handful of dates and views. Where did these designs originate, how did they devise their looms, and why is this craft restricted to only a minute percentage of settlements? The villagers couldn’t tell us.
200m under us, a stone’s throw down the gorge, was Nakhr, at the end of the wadi that is named after it, the base of the Grand Canyon. Here you will find even more carpets than what Al Khatim can hold, and the village, tucked away more than half an hour’s drive deep into a thin, serpentine wadi awash with rain water, even has its own majlis where the rugs are hung on display. Other
villages, each remote and generally unknown to the outside world, peek out of the crevices of the Western Hajar with their weaves: Al Hail, Dar as Sawda, Misfat al Khawateh, Dar al Aqur, Subayyeb, Qurub. The intricacies of weaving and money have made them savvier than the half-flooded wadi roads to them would have you believe. Saif Hamood Saif al Abri insists they have only between September and April in which to profit, for the tourists, along with their money, dry up with the heat. Although he insists they can weave any design you want, this doesn’t really follow through, for no one buys them to order �the business is too disorganised, the
travel too long. Most buys are on a whim, more for the novelty of it than for serious purchase. And at their prices �pegged at up to RO70 (before bargaining) for a 1x2m piece, their market is restricted to senior European tourists on a quick holiday through the country. “Ten years ago,�says Saif, “our carpets had no value. This is the blessing of tourism in Oman.�br>
Apart from an indifferent pricing system, there are other hiccups in the trade. You will have to look hard to find more than a handful of variations apart from the four or five you will find strung up. And the largest loom in the village isn’t that big, which means that the largest of carpets are actually smaller ones stitched together, with an unpleasant ridge in the middle.
Six families and about 100 people live in Nakhr, and they make rugs, tend fields and see to their goats. Here, the women roll the balls of wool �it is the men who weave. The best carpets, most prized by Europeans, are those in the natural colour of the sheep, typically earthy beige and grey. The most common ones are red and black, their dyes bought in Muttrah.
High above is the Grand Canyon with Al Khatim poised on the edge, an eight-hour hike away. Now, of course, all you have to do is clamber back in your 4WD and drive over, but you can imagine how isolated these villages were before the road came. Even now, the road that makes its way half-heartedly through the wadi barely exists, washed away in the rainwater that used to isolate Nakhr
for months at a time. It had just been reopened, we were told, but barely slithered through, almost getting stuck in the many pools of muddy water and gravel you have to drive into.
It is such conditions that give the rugs another dimension. Such basic weaves and rough designs might never look anything more than rustic, but they’ve been made over generations of isolation and hardship. Buy them for character instead.
GPS in UTM
Al Khatim
40 Q 0520700, 2565000
Elevation 1,100m
Nakhr
40 Q 0521747, 2565596
Elevation 899m
Ghul (turnoff to Nakhr, on your
way to the Grand Canyon)
40 Q 0520986, 2559987
Elevation 763m
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