Aylanmak

Aylanmak: to take a walk, stroll, or travel around.
The carpet man, aka Serdar, lives just outside of Ashgabat and makes good money selling Turkmen and Afghan carpets to foreigners both in Turkmenistan and abroad. He and his wife are really nice people and I have visited his house twice in search of carpets, once when my family came and a second time with another volunteer on July 3rd.
Serdar’s family is originally from the region of Turkmenistan that I live in. His family fled Turkmenistan for Afghanistan when the Russians arrived. Serdar was born in Afghanistan. When war came to Afghanistan they fled to Pakistan. He returned to Turkmenistan with his family in the mid 90’s. Carpet making in Turkmenistan has moved away from what it traditionally was. Most carpets made now are made with synthetic dyes and only made to last 10 years or so. Traditionally carpets were made to last forever. Because Serdar and his family weren’t here for the transition to synthetics he still knows how to make all of the dyes by hand, how to take care of the naturally dyed carpets, and how to wash them without bleeding. As far as I know he may be the only person in the country who still uses traditional dyes. Serdar obtained his Turkmen citizenship shortly after arriving back in Turkmenistan and got married shortly after that.
Back to the story: after the second visit Serdar’s wife mentioned that Serdar would be traveling to visit some of the girls who make carpets for him in Halach (my local county). She asked Jess and I if we would like to aylanjak (future tense) with him. We replied with enthusiasm.
He arrived in the region on Monday and didn’t call. Tuesday his wife called Jess and said he might take us out then. He didn’t call. Wednesday he called me at 9am and asked if I would be ready if he picked me up at 11 that day. I said yes!
11:00am: Serdar arrives in my village and we travel towards Halach center and stop on the way. There are six girls who are about to cut a 4m by 3m silk carpet from the loom. We watch as they cut the carpet down and tie off the fringes on the ends. Serdar folds the carpet and puts it in the trunk.
12:00pm: We travel to a village just outside of Halach center where Serdar is using a small house owned by one of the families who makes carpets. We drop off the carpet, I take a bunch of pictures of all the yarn he has in this house. The colors are simply beautiful!
12:30pm: We go and pick up Jess from her village and then return to this village outside Halach.
1:15pm: Lunch: beef stew with potatoes, peppers and tomatoes, bread, yogurt, watermelon, cantaloupe and beer.
3:00pm: Visit at least 10 different houses to look at carpets. Each tribe in Turkmenistan has its own carpet pattern. We saw several of these patterns as we were traveling. Jess saw a pattern that involved the five main tribes ‘flowers’ in one carpet and decided she needed to buy another carpet.
Carpet stats: Serdar has girls and women in each welayate (region) making carpets for him. There are over 100 girls just in my region. The silk carpet that I mentioned above took 6 girls 3 – 4 months to make. For each square meter the girls collectively get 1.5 million old manat (about $100). They split that money up according to the amount of work done. For the large carpets the person whose house it is and whose loom it is gets a percentage of the money and the rest goes to the girls.
4:30pm: Watermelon break followed by an hour nap. The sun is so intense here that at least 90% of people take afternoon naps sometimes sleeping as much as 3 hours in the afternoon.
6:00pm: Serdar takes Jess and I to see the Amu Daria. I have only seen it once before and we weren’t allowed to get out of the vehicle to actually get a good look at it. The section of the river we saw was 2km wide. It was absolutely astonishing how large it really was. The water by us was moving very slowly but we could hear rapids and see the water towards the middle of the river bubbling and turning as it sped along.
7:00pm: Return to my village. Tell my host family about the trip. Onat aylandyk (great trip - past tense)!