The Garden of Weaves
Papree Rahman
Translated by Sukti Sarkar and Bishnupriya Chowdhuri
In the villages along the Sitalakkha river, three families of Jamdani weavers spin gold from little more than moist air and inherited skill — a richly peopled novel about the artists hiding in plain sight inside their craft.
Full Synopsis
In the villages that line the Sitalakkha river and the still waters of Panam Pukur, three families of Jamdani weavers spin thread finer than hair from little more than moist air and inherited skill. Papree Rahman's richly peopled novel follows a dozen or so lives bound together by the loom: an old master craftsman adrift in memory and song, haunted by the lightning that once took his wife and, later, him; a matriarch who loses her sight so gradually she mistakes it for a herd of oxen blocking her view, and who guards a small gold necklace through every loss that follows; a young dyer chasing the impossible, weather-fickle blue of a peacock's throat; a boy who cannot stop asking for one more folktale. Woven through with the vines, checks, and floral patterns of the fabric itself — and with the surreal images that seep into ordinary life, a saree's vine turning to a live green snake, rain falling as a shoal of silver fish — The Garden of Weaves is at once a portrait of a vanishing craft and, more essentially, a novel about the artists hiding in plain sight inside it: the men and women whose labor the world sees, and whose inner lives it rarely does.
Rights.aboutAuthorHeading
Papree Rahman (b. 1965) is a noted writer from Dhaka, Bangladesh. She graduated from Dhaka University and got engaged in writing apart from doing freelance journalism. She has many collections of short stories. Her notable novels include Bayan (2008), Palatia (2011), and Nadidhara Abasik Elaka (2019). Papree also edited many important magazines and anthologies.
Excerpt
The orange haze of the brick-lay had ensnared Sabed Ali’s ancestors– Baap-dada- pardada and all their forefathers before it pulled him under. All those men too had gone adrift in the dust. And it started when the Mughals ruled. An era when the weavers first spun muslin from phuti kapas–bloomed cottonflower. Moistened air was a must for the thread to be fine as hair. That is why Sabed Ali’s grandfather, great-grandfather, and all their forefathers had always been lured by the neither moist nor dry, nor clayey smell. Dry spells furrowed their foreheads. Work was forced to a halt as they waited for the air to dampen. Not just Sabed Ali’s ancestors, all the weavers in Pabankul, Moikuli, Borabo, Dighiborabo, Tarabo and Bekur– everyone counted hours. A thousand turns on the spindle won’t spin a single thread of muslin if the air was coarse. Waiting at their loom-room verandas for the wind to soften, the spinners succumbed to a lull: the spool of love, I turn If the thread snaps, Won’t waste any but rejoin, ‘Coz of unshaken faith in God. If the thread comes away, Will rewind it on the spool. It’s not to be feared, I do adjust to all that’s old, I’ll wind the thread evenly, Without a single knot. Oftentimes, their song puts the drowsy to sleep, but cannot stop the dust from rising. That it is still a long way for the moisture to return. So, they must move closer to the water–sit by the banks or get on a boat to spin. Rivers-canals-lakes- ponds-marshes-eddies-the touch of water shall fill up those spindles. Soon, the cascade of thread fine as hair takes the form of the regal weaves of Mulboos Khas, Ali Bali, Shabnam, Jhuna, Abrawan, Tanjeb, Tarandam and Jamdani and more. Stories from days long gone. It was not for Sabed Ali to keep stock of all those. He did not even want to. What was in it for him, anyways? But deep within, he felt the grappling crave—an undeniable longing for the familiar scent —neither moist nor dry nor earthy. An inexplicable desire churned within. Oh, if only he could catch that smell, just once! He would fill his lungs and plunge into the river. It would rush out of his nose and mouth and mingle into the waters of Shitalakshya, clear like the crow’s eyes. From his lungs, the smell would set sail across the canal, lake and the river, carried over by the ocean waves to the land, faraway–probably Bilaat…But Sabed Ali, he would never get to see that, nor would he come across the folks of the fabled land, pale as toadstools! Oh, how ill–fated– how badnasib!
