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CraftsRug MakingThe rugs of the Zuberi women are very famous and are similar to the oriental rugs of the "modern era". It can take five women more than a year to make some of these rugs. The specific patterns are intricate and passed down through families. The patterns are memorized, sometimes by men who are blind. The rugs are made on simple looms and the pile is knotted onto the warp and weft. Some rugs may have up to four hundred knots per square inch. Each of those knots is tied individually by hand by a Shaula woman. Most of the dyes for the rugs are mostly natural dyes such as vegetable dyes, or others from barks, leaves, roots, flowers, and animal products. Rug makers are a subgroup of the tailors but they consider themselves a separate trade. The carders, dyers and weavers are all part of the rug makers. Tents(Bedouin reference) Bayt char – ‘house of hair’ - the black Zuberi tents are traditionally woven from camel hair. Nowadays the woven strips can be bought, but many women still weave their own. When it rains the weave contracts and doesn’t let the water in. In the heat of the summer the outside of the tent feels very hot to the touch while the inside remains blissfully cool. At night when it is cold outside with a small fire inside the reverse is true, and the tent stays warm and cozy. The unexpected visitor will be invited into the men’s section, although subject to close scrutiny through any holes in the curtain dividing it from the women’s section! As you sit on cushions and rugs on soft sand, watching smoke from the cooking fire curl upward, you smell the aroma of freshly ground and brewed Gahwa. As you wander through the rooms of the spacious, low-roofed dwelling, you are caught by light drifting through the weave of the cloth, throwing its pattern on you and the undulating cool sand underfoot. You are told that your hostess made the tent and her daughters, the rugs, cushions and saddlebags which are in use throughout the tent. She shows you her loom. Yarns over twenty-five feet long are stretched on heavy beams which are staked into the sand. It looks deceptively simple until she starts to weave. She sits on the ground, pushing and pulling, beating and plucking, to create the thick dense cloth that will withstand the severe sand, wind and wear of nomadic life. She shows you how she spins the strong, heavily twisted yarn on a simple hand spindle. She sits with a distaff full of twisted bunches of hair tucked under her left arm. She holds the spindle in her right hand and turns it quickly in her open palm, guiding the stream of hair from the distaff with her left hand. She shows you the patterns she has woven into the interior tent wall, which faces the part of the tent where male guests are entertained. Perfumes and scented oilsThe Zuberi have perfected the arts of perfume making and the extraction of scented oils from the various types of desert flowers and plants. The process of extracting the oils involves boiling the fragrant flowers, stems and leaves in water and collecting the oils that escape in the condensation process. The boiling vat is covered so that the oils collect on the lid and can be harvested. These oils are used in their natural state and added to fresh water for the washing of their hands after a meal. The oils can also be used and blended with others to make fragrant perfumes for trade within the Zuberi culture as well as exported to others. |
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