From Madrasa to Cinema to Suzani Embroidery
The vaulted room where Zarina Isomoa and her mother, Zaynab Murodova work used to be the cinema in Soviet times. It is a cool vaulted chamber, ideal for the blisteringly hot summers in Uzbekistan. It is a perfect space if you want to sew and sell embroidery. The two women practise the ancient skill of Uzbek embroidery –Suzani– in Bukhara, a walled city to the west of Samarkand, on the ancient Silk Road, where embroidered cloths, silks, spices, parchment, and wool would have been piled high on the camel caravans. The women have been in this location since 1991, when Uzbekistan became an independent republic. Before Soviet times, the room was a mosque in a Madrasa. In this collegiate institution, patrician young men would learn the Qu’ran, geometry, and algebra as part of their elite education. But now, the room is a women’s space, where their beautiful blankets, tablecloths, table runners, cushion covers, coats, scarves, and hangings are spread out in colourful abundance. Bounty and beauty. These decorative fabrics are also the substance of a woman’s dowry. The State has vowed to support and protect this traditional craft, along with others such as metalworking, miniature painting and wood carving.
People from all over the world come to watch Isomoa explain the technique in her clear and emphatic voice. She wears a light-blue headscarf, light blue denim jacket, and trousers, while her mother wears a traditional Uzbek floral long dress and head covering. As a third-generation embroiderer, she explains the stitching, the types of material used, and the pigments sourced for dyeing the thread while leaning on the cloths piled high. They are her wonder and prosperity. Passing the 3,000-year-old technique on and down through generations is crucial. Not only has Isomoa learned the skill from her mother, but she is also teaching her four-year-old daughter how to sew. Her ancestors were artists for the royal family, and her great-grandparents made costumes and decorative embroideries for the last king of Bukhara–Emir Alim Khan. Here, gender segregation thrives – while the men make the dyes, the women sew the silk and cotton, but the men sew the gold thread.
We are in a land where borders have been violently contested, but a mix of languages has always prevailed. Suzani straddles two languages, as it derives from the Tajik/Persian language meaning needle. Isomoa explains the three kinds of fabric to sew on: one that is 100 percent silk; there is a thriving silk industry in Uzbekistan–there are lots of mulberry trees for the silkworms, another that is adras cloth, which is 50 percent silk and 50 percent cotton, and the final fabric that is 100% cotton. The material comes from the Fergana Valley, a fertile region southwest of Uzbekistan’s capital–Tashkent.
The skill of Suzani is intimately tied to one of the many charming domestic rituals witnessed in Uzbek society. A girl makes her first Suzani hang in her natal home, but when she gets married, it is transferred to her marital dwelling. That is if it is good enough. Not only does the embroidery become a symbol of her rite of passing, but her learnt skill and talent is transferable. And so the stitch ensures the continuity of marriage and sewing.
Furthermore, the women stitch their wishes for the future into the embroidery, using colours such as blue, violet, pink, light yellow and red. There is raspberry for flowers such as carnations, tulips, and peonies, some with symbolic value: the pomegranate, made to look plump red and juicy for fertility; the chilli, curved and soft for love and the chilli pepper, red hot - for safeguarding against the “evil eye”. Sometimes, you might find an almond for health, and the colour blue is often found to reflect the colour of the stunning turquoise domes of the mosques, which have stood for centuries against the deep blue sky of the day. God is present everywhere. Above all, the evil eye is often stitched into a border to protect one and all. Beware the hook of the needle, which makes the eye. Beware the eye. Beware the power of the needle. In creating symbols through stitching, Zarina’s forebears tried to understand their place within the cosmos and so anchor their physical and emotional health. The embroidery threads its way to make a mark on society and underpins everyday religious practices and culture.
Compartments, borders, and patterns are crisscrossed and interlaced, just like the motifs in the local architecture. However, overall, there is no figurative imagery since the emphasis is on the decorative element.
The dyes to make the threads' colours come from various sources, such as walnuts, where the shell is boiled in a vat. Once the dye has been extracted, the nuts are eaten. Then there is the golden harmala plant, which grows in the desert. It was written about by the great Arabic scholar Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, a Bukhara local (980-1037CE). You can also smoke it to prevent infection. There are also locally sourced plants: pomegranate, turmeric for yellow, and madder root, boiled to make red; although indigo for the blue is bought in from Iran or India. The colours are bound together with a bit of alum, salt and vinegar.
A large bedspread made out of silk and intricately embroidered took Isomoa’s mother eight months to create. The bedspread denotes happiness, for in the process of making, Isomoa says that the brain and body are both calm and happy. The family workshop is growing, and now they have thirty people involved in the work, so the “happy thread” continues, where women can feel part of a community.
Resisting entering the family tradition, which has stood for generations, would be to rebel. While there is a skill that can be taught, talent must surely be required in some small measure. And supposing only some generations have that? Would you want to be the one that breaks that bond or severs the connection of a skill that has such longevity and significance? This was not something you could question. Yet you can make a mistake as long as it is a deliberate mistake. Your stitchwork cannot be perfect, as only Allah creates it perfectly. When you draw out your complex design with borders and compartments, you make sure some feature needs to be aligned.
In pride of place in the main living room, in a Uzbek woman's house, you see the pile of fabrics on a table or box at the heart of the household. You sleep, eat and relax with the embroidery. Tradition shared is tradition endured.
Article by Emma Rose Barber
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