War Rugs In Translation

It was sometime around February 2002 that an itinerant Afghan rug salesman pulled into our parking lot with a truck filled with rugs. From time to time we had visitors like this: traveling rug salesmen driving thousands of miles across the country in search of retailers who might have a use for their wares.

The Afghan merchant had visited our store before. We exchanged greetings, and I immediately climbed into his truck to see what he had brought. I found a few pieces we could probably sell, but then he showed me several pictorial rugs he called “war rugs.” Intrigued, I asked him to bring some into the store. The smaller ones—none bigger than 2′ x 3’—contained designs of guns and tanks. One depicted an aircraft carrier, realistically drawn, with helicopters flying overhead and missiles firing into the sky. The Twin Towers, too, were realistically rendered, leaving no doubt about the subject of the rug. It was meant to depict the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and their aftermath. The American aircraft carrier illustrated the U.S. response to the attacks. A small map of Afghanistan indicated the land from which the terrorists had originated—or at least the country that ultimately paid the price for the attack.

Greetings To Arms

At first I was amused by these small rugs containing so much information in such a literal way, attempting to capture everything that had happened on that awful day.

But I was also alarmed that, at that particular moment—barely a year after the attacks—the rugs could easily be misinterpreted as celebratory rather than what they really were: the reflections of an ordinary designer or weaver attempting to depict a historical event.

So I packed the rugs carefully away and placed them in storage.

Tragedy Again

The ongoing conflict involving the U.S., Israel, and Iran recently made me revisit a package I had long kept aside: Afghan war rugs. Once again, I was struck by the literalness with which these rugs depict war. Throughout history, Persian rugs have often represented mythic narratives—heroes such as Rostam and Sohrab in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the Book of Kings, completed around 1010 CE, and perhaps immortalized for the western reader by Matthew Arnold’s translation of the tragic tale.

A Better Fit

These mythic stories, with their timeless gravitas, seem more suited to the art of pictorial rugs than the recurrent, contemporary tragedies of the Middle East. Yet, whether depicting myth or reality, both forms share a striking quality: a sense of literalness, an exactness of events rendered from the weaver’s perspective. In this sense, pictorial rugs belong to a vernacular common to many arts often labeled “naive”—a self-taught expression seemingly devoid of technical mastery. Yet, it is precisely this lack of formal pretense that can make such art more compelling, more immediate, and more expressive.

A Persian Tabriz Rug depicting the battle of Rostam and Esfandyar from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.

As a salesman, however, I have long hesitated to display Afghan war rugs, not out of aesthetic doubt, but out of concern for offending clients in an increasingly polarized political environment. For years, inquiries have come in, yet we have been reluctant even to show these works, fearing further misunderstandings between cultures.

The weavers themselves, of course, were likely sympathetic to the American cause, hoping to earn a modest livelihood. But we feared that their well-intended designs might lose meaning—or even be misread—once translated across cultural and political divides.

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