The Carpet
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कालीन

The Carpet

This woollen carpet, four feet wide and six feet long, contained three hundred forty-five thousand six hundred knots. Each one of them had been tied, one by one, by the two boys at a time when they could not have been more than nine years old. Their real names were Rafiq Masih and Rashid Ali, but the rough Punjabi habit of renaming had turned them into Pheeka and Sheeda so completely that perhaps even they themselves no longer remembered their original names.

The weaving workshop owned twenty looms, forty children, and one master, whom the children called Ustad-ji. In the dim, narrow room, the smell of fresh wool mixed with the smoke of the master's cigarette, the dampness of floor and walls, the sour scent of unwashed clothes, and the sweat of small bodies — all these together gave the place a character of its own.
Then came the voices rising from each loom—
“Two blue… four yellow… six red…”
It was a kind of chant, a rhythm to which the rustle of coloured wool being knotted onto the warp threads moved in harmony. This rhythm of colours ensured the balanced pattern that grew from the edges of the carpet towards its centre.
Sliding to that rhythm, Pheeka and Sheeda sat crouched on a wooden plank before the loom, moving hundreds of times a day from the edges to the middle and back again. Every design had its own tune, and each pair of boys sang it like a chant.
Their elders had chosen the looms instead of school mats and benches for them. Here, pieces of cardboard marked with colours formed a language of signs, a language they were taught to read and obey. This mechanical atmosphere of the workshop quickly turned every new child into a machine. If the master, chatting with a friend, suddenly burst into laughter, the children too would laugh without hearing the joke, without understanding a word. And when he grew serious, their heads bent lower and their hands moved faster.

Three rope-beds, a hand pump, and a small latrine beside it made up the entire courtyard behind the workshop. Lunch was distributed there — one flatbread with thin lentils, or sometimes a watery vegetable broth. The same courtyard also served another purpose: it provided space for beating the children. The master had given this beating a name—
“Oil for the machine.”
The duration and intensity of the oiling depended less on the child’s mistake and more on the master’s mood. It was expected that immediately after being oiled, the child would quietly return to his place and resume work from the exact knot where he had stopped.

Two aluminium cups, chained to the hand pump with iron links, served not only for drinking water but also as a kind of weather instrument. In the sun they grew hot, in the rain they gathered drops, and in storms they filled with dust.
During work, if any sound rose above the chant of weaving, it was the clinking of those two cups striking each other when the wind passed through the courtyard.
Somewhere along the way, Pheeka and Sheeda had begun to take that sound as an alarm meant only for them. They would look at each other, and if they felt thirsty, or needed to go to the latrine, they would stand up together. It was there, by the chained cups, in the brief pauses between gulps of water, that their lips found the chance to speak a few words different from the endless recitation of colours.
“How much debt is in your account?”
“Fifteen hundred. Yours?”
“Same… fifteen hundred. Six months ago it was a thousand. Took six hundred for my sister’s wedding.”
“How will it be paid?”
“Don’t know. Do you?”
“No. I don’t know either. Maybe it never gets paid.”
“Rukno has been working for ten years. He says one carpet finishes after another, but the debt never finishes — it keeps growing. He worked for another master before. His account was brought here two years ago. He gets money on top of food, but he smokes.”
“Our carpet is the best one. Ustad-ji likes it.”
“Yes… ours is the best.”
“My back and legs hurt all the time.”
“Mine too… and the coughing…”
“Yes, everyone coughs. We’ll keep drinking water.”
“Yes… we’ll keep drinking water.”
They looked gratefully at the aluminium cups tied with chains. From striking each other again and again, dents had formed in their sides.

It took Pheeka and Sheeda six months to finish the carpet.
In the centre was the face of a lion, in the corners two peacocks and two deer, and along the border small birds. The carpet was better suited to be hung on a wall than spread on the floor. And that is what happened.
In Italy, while hanging it in their home, the newly married couple decided that one day they would travel to see real lions, deer, and peacocks roaming free.
Five years later, when they finally went to India to fulfil that dream, the debt of Pheeka and Sheeda, in a workshop somewhere in the Punjab of Pakistan on the other side of the border, had grown to several thousand rupees. Along with it had grown the constant pain in their legs, and the cough that sometimes brought blood.
And after all, what difference does the border make?
The aluminium cups.
The mysterious rustle of wool.
The endless chanting of colours.
The never-ending sequence of knots.
The same on this side of the border.
The same on that side.

Riaz Akber