The meanings of objects in our living room to me, as an illustration of how objective forms serve as devices of cultural memory. For the interest of our grandchildren when they become curious about what their grandparents must have been like.
They are cultural in the sense that the objects in our living room are creations of the human imagination, and also mnemonic devices to which meanings are ascribed variously for individuals and societies. Here I describe what they mean to me. They will mean different things to Rita, even though in certain respects the meanings she ascribes to them are like what I ascribe to them, which makes them devices through which we together share common memories.
Two helpful definitions of culture:
Geertz:
This is a long discussion about things in our house that reflect our lives and our history, which I want to put together for the benefit of our family. But also it’s an illustration of how culture works. Culture in a sense is in the mind in the sense that what we carry with us in our experiences is all private, and when we die, all those experiences and all that history that is unique to us dies with us.
: At the same time, it’s not just all in the mind. In fact, what we have in the mind is cues that bring to mind various associations, and those cues are all material. So the mind thought even itself is material in the sense that we have to make use of symbols or tokens to represent the things that we think about. So language is itself physical, but it stands for things that are [inaudible 00:01:22] what we remember stands for memories.
: In that sense, it’s the bridge between something very material and something marvelous. That is consciousness. I keep hearing a [inaudible 00:01:41] what consciousness is. But consciousness is not possible without the material devices through which the think, through which the remember. So I want to talk about the things that are brought to mind when I see them in our own living room. As an example, again, of how marvelous the mind is. And behind the things that we take so for granted, language, thought, simply consciousness are parts of our character and our world and our experience that are a kind of miracle.
: They’re marvelous if you don’t want to call it a miracle. We can at least call it a marvel, because we don’t have a way to explain how consciousness somehow bridges into the material world. But science is a certain way of looking at the material world, looking at it in material terms. We assume that the universe can be understood in its own terms, and so we understand the universe as a material reality whose properties can be understood in terms of each other.
: That doesn’t get very far when it comes to the great questions of the human experience, human private imagination, as I say, is a marvel. So I’m standing at the window, on the front window next to the front window, and I’m looking out upon the living room. I see, for example, far to my right, a hanging. Really it’s a prayer cloth that Rita bought in Afghanistan. We’ve seem some in museums, and this is as good as anything as we have seen in various museums.
: It tells something about Rita. Rita would never call herself an artist, but she went around in Kabul with a dear friend and those days, Virginia Pruitt. Virginia Pruitt was a professor of home economics in Teachers College. I think she was in Teachers College. She graduated from Teachers College, but I think really she taught somewhere in Kentucky, because I think that’s where she was from.
: Rita and she went around to Kabul, looking in the various shops where old things were kept or where pretty things were kept, craftwork and so on were kept. Rita found this, and brought it home. I’m sure that some of the things that reflect Rita’s taste come from her association with Virginia, because Virginia helped her to grasp something of what was desirable and appealing. So there’s that one thing.
: Something else on the wall to my left is a [inaudible 00:05:42] This is, some people might call it a tablecloth, although it’s hanging against the wall. The other one I was looking at is a deep purple. This one is a rust color with all kinds of other handy work around it. Again, this is something Rita got, so when I look at these things, I think of my wife. I not only think of Rita, I think of her charm and grace and her subtle appreciation of nice things.
: To explain what this [inaudible 00:06:22] is, it’s since the Afghans eat on the floor, they sit on the floor, and they bring their food and lay it on the floor. They sit around in a circle around it. This is usually, bread is wrapped in something like this and laid out on the floor, and then they put their dishes on that or around it. So it stands for, in the Afghan setting, this is what the Afghans would enjoy as part of their every day management of food. So I consider that a delightful memory of what Rita is like.
: So something else that is an illustration of what Rita’s like, straight to the far end of the room on the wall is a [inaudible 00:07:26] board. There’s another one to my right on the side of the wall facing me, next to the carpet. Both of those, called [inaudible 00:07:39] boards, at least in English. I’m not sure what they’re called in Farsi. It’s interesting that I don’t know that. These were built, in the old Afghan tradition, they were built in the walls between the kitchen area and the [inaudible 00:08:07], the guest room, where guests were entertained.
: It made it possible so that the women could peek through these boards into the room without showing themselves, because they were not usually … If it was not family, they probably wouldn’t come into the room, but they could look into the room and see what the food needs, or what the needs of people were. Rita, again, found those charming and illustrative of the creativity of the Afghans and their way in solving a social problem, but also of course you see the beauty of their work, of the craftsmen.
: Also if I look back toward the window to my right, hanging on a tree horse, are some clothing, Afghan clothes. Most of these are of interest to me, although Rita saved some beautiful blouses hanging here. Again, you see the taste of the Afghans, the beauty, the capability, the artwork of Afghans, women. Again, the taste of my wife in choosing interesting kinds of clothes to bring home as souvenirs of our experience in Afghanistan.
: Among these things hanging on this tree horse are two chapans, one of them more ornate than the other. Chapan is the word for an Afghan coat, and when I was in Hazarajat, some of those were considered priceless gifts. The nice ones that were given away, and I remember the peer would give to people, was felt white, felt warm coats. Notice they have long arms. That was a way of making sure if it really got cold they could crawl in it and wrap themselves in it. Even in summer though, men would wear them loosely around their shoulders, and especially if you’re walking in the heat. The sweat provided a way for them to survive wearing those coats.
: The more ornate one, I bought as a birthday gift to Rita. I looked all over the place trying to find something nice for her, and I just couldn’t be satisfied. But this one I saw, I was told it was made in Nuristan. It’s a distinctive pattern, not like the other patterns, and it’s a very heavy wool. This wool is hand woven and there’s a name for it. I used to know the name. I’ve now forgotten what the name is for this wool. But they are, it’s of course a heavy wool and very, very warm.
: I meant for it to be a bath robe for Rita, but if you were to put it on, you would see it weighs about 11 pounds [?]. So in the end she didn’t really use it as a bath robe, but it’s a memorial piece to me, of my intent anyway to do something nice for Rita and the discovery of something that appears to have been made in Nuristan. It’s certainly not the usual kind of thing you find in Kabul.
: Next to that are the double doors that Rita got for me. It was an amazing decision on her part, and it’s a sign of her thoughtfulness and love for me to come home with these amazing doors. They are like the kinds of doors that we used to see in Afghanistan. They’re actually hanging upside down, I think, but in any case, they’re characteristic of the kinds of doors that you find all over Afghanistan. I’m not sure they’re from Afghanistan. They are from some place in that part of the world, but it was a big expenditure that Rita just somehow couldn’t pass up. Of course I cherish it as a special gift to me.
: Just to remind you, none of this means anything to anybody else. But to Rita and mean, and what it means to Rita’s going to be a little different than what it means to me. Each one of us has a history, a view on history and a history we would tell. It’s an example to me what a marvel it is of the human mind to retain memory, to attach to specific objects all kinds of subtle sentiments, and for them to represent what we are.
: So when I’m gone, this will be gone. Except however much I can remember to tell you about what’s here. I use the room as a way of providing a record of something of what our lives have been like. Obviously you look around the room and you see objects that tell that the Middle East Central Asia is an important part of the world for us.
: I see hanging at my right a thin layer of, I’m not sure it’s wool, but hanging over covering a little lightweight door just to the right of the fireplace. This I got when I was this, and the one to the far end of the room hanging behind the bookcase, I believe I got them both at the time when I was in Kabul for the last time. I was in Kabul, I don’t know, six years, seven years ago. I was invited to give a paper for a conference on Tarzi.
: That’s kind of another part of my life and experience that I think is interesting to say. I was invited to give a paper in Kabul as part of a conference on Mahmud Tarzi. He was the founder of the Office of Foreign Affairs in the time of Habibullāh. They were celebrating the founding of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Somehow they seemed to have lots of money and they invited a bunch of us to come and write about Mahmud Tarzi. Well I don’t know anything about Tarzi, although I know I read in a … There’s a very nice book about Tarzi by an Italian woman whose name I don’t remember.
: All I know about Tarzi is what I read there, so I wrote them a note back and said, “I’d love to come. I’m flattered that you asked me to come, but I can’t say anything about Tarzi. If you would accept a paper, since I do want to go, I can give a paper on what was going on in Bamyan in the 1920s about the time when Tarzi was founding the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Habibullāh was the king.” So that seemed to me the only relevant topic I could offer.
: I didn’t get an answer back. I thought … I actually got my passport up to date, started growing a beard so I would fit in with the scene in Afghanistan, and waited. I didn’t get an answer. Nothing came through to me, and so after several weeks, I gave up. I shaved off my beard and forgot about it. On the Monday before the conference, which was to begin on Saturday, I got a note in my email from the Ministry, from the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington saying, “We’re so thankful you’re coming to conference.” They told me what to do.
: Of course, I was thrilled to go, but I was totally unprepared. I didn’t have a paper, but nevertheless I scurried around and got some shots and so on. Fortunately I had a passport that was up to date, and I went. I wrote the paper on the plane and gave the paper. I arrived filthy dirty because I’d been traveling 24 hours, stopping overnight in Delhi, where I sat around for eight hours and then got on the plane. I was so embarrassed to arrive there, because as soon as I arrived, they drove a limousine up to the plane to pick me up and to take me to the conference.
: I said, “No, no, no. I have to go my hotel. I have to get a shower. I have to get cleaned up. I’m so unworthy.” “No, no,” they said, “You have to go.” So they take me to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with all my baggage in total disarray. They did let me use the bathroom, so I brought all my baggage into the bathroom, and for half an hour did my best to clean myself up and change clothes. Then I went to the conference and I had to give a paper, so I gave that paper because they said they were going to publish all this. As far as I know, it was never published.
: But in the end of course, I had time to meet other friends while I was there. It was a great time for me sort of as closure to the years I’d spent in Afghanistan. We stayed in a hotel that just above the hill was a little shrine. I went up there to … These shrines have all these hanging cloths that people would come up to the shrine and pray and leave a cloth and pray something will happen. Whatever they’re suffering with, whatever their pain is, crisis in the family, they’re coming there to pray.
: For me it was a moment for me to give thanks for the great privilege I had of being in Afghanistan for so many years, and not only that, but I had the privilege of studying Afghanistan, learning more about the country that I hadn’t known when I was there. So it was a special privilege. In the meantime, a dear friend, Afghan woman whose name I’ll have to recover, invited me to go with her into the Bazaar. We went together to look what was there, and that’s when I bought these two hanging cloths in the Bazaar.
: In the meantime, she took me to meet friends of hers, and I was entertained by a truly … a woman who was a member of the royal family. Didn’t meet her husband. She was tall, stately, graceful, and I thought she was even pretty. I thought, “What a wonderful tribute she is to the royal family.” She was married in. She actually was not born into the family, but she took me around her garden and showed me the things that she had there. I found a time when several other guests were there, and I was just privileged to be with them and enjoy the friendship that they provided, the graceful. They were so gracious. Of course the Afghans are always great [inaudible 00:23:00] I love to provide many good things to guests.
: Now something else in the room, to my left is a [inaudible 00:23:20], this brass boiler. When I got it, I was so privileged to find it, and it turns out the man that he was doing it on, selling it on consignment for, someone in the family. It’s the family of the King of Bohara, who fled, who was driven out by the communists in the 1920s. The King of Bohara was driven out by the communists. After the Bolshevik Revolution, there was all through Central Asia, a number of uprisings against the communist regime. Those, they were known as, and I’ve forgotten the name. I’ll have to look it up.
: But this [inaudible 00:24:36] from Bohara, you can see the insignia on it in Russian somewhere. In any case, it’s a beautiful piece of brass work that I was thrilled to have. It works. In Kabul, when we had a bunch of guests, we put it out and used it. It’s made for you to put charcoal in the bottom. You light the charcoal and then the air is drawn out through the center and heats the water. In order to make it heat faster, you use this handle that’s now formally attached to it, because I turned it into a lamp. It’s much nicer as a [inaudible 00:25:52] and it goes back to the 1920s in Central Asia. I don’t know if the story that it came from the family of the King of Bohara is true, but that’s what I was told. In any case, it obviously was owned by somebody of wealth.
: On the floor in front of me is a tray, a copper tray, which we bought in Peshawar. Rita found it and because you can’t eat on copper, because whatever it does, all of these trays were covered with tin. This is very heavy copper, but was covered with tin so that it could be used. That’s in the local setting, it would be used as a tray for a feast. There would be a pile of rice, huge pile of rice on that tray, and people would dip into it. Inside that rice, of course, the way the Afghans do it, is the meat was hidden inside. People had to reach inside to find all the goodies that were inside. It was always delicious.
: Rita didn’t want it for that purpose. She saw the value and charm of the copper base. So she had someone take that tin cover off with steel wool, and what it now has is copper. If it were cleaned up for guests, this would be gleaming copper, just as the brass [inaudible 00:28:12] would be gleaming brass if we would take the time to burnish it. So anyways, again a sign of Rita’s taste and Rita’s imagination in putting together, taking something local and using it for our own purposes. The frame, the legs under it come also from Peshawar. I think it was [Hyot 00:28:46] is the place where they’d make, they take very hard woods and make very beautiful cabinets and these legs.
: When were away in Kabul another later time, we rented our house to some people, some girls for the first year. They were not very nice so the Wegmans, who managed it for us, got someone else, some guys. They were very nice except that somebody sat on this tray until the legs broke, so we had to have them repaired. But, poor thing. I’m so thankful for it.
: Now to my right is a, hanging above the fireplace, is a print from the work of a British artist some time probably mid-to-late 19th century. It has been colored by hand, and it reflects what the British were doing. They always had artists to go with them when the military went out so that they would have a visual record of the places where their armies fought. I remember friends who would scour the old book sections of London looking for these kinds of pictures, and some of them a large price was paid for it.
: I just said it was mid 19th century. On the lower left corner, the artist has provided his own name, David Roberts. March 18, ’39. This is Petra. Petra being the old Eden in Biblical times and Biblical history. There have been studies of Petra now to show that in fact they had a very elaborate water management system, which made it possible for the large population that lived here to survive. It’s a hidden place. It’s a great natural fortification area, and in fact in the Bible sometimes the word Eden was used to refer simply to a … metaphorically, as a metaphorical extension of the concept of fortress.
: Then to my left, to my feet, you will see on the left and right side of the fireplace are more relics of our Afghanistan period. The pitcher on the left, we would love to use it but it’s full of holes. It’s rotted out so that it wouldn’t work, but that’s the kind of device that is used when dinner is served. They take one of these things around and pour it over everyone’s hands with, they have a basin under it to go with it. We don’t have the basin. They would pour it over … Everyone would wash hands. So it’s a memorial of mnemonic device of those times, again.
: But to the left of that is something else. This is a pot that was given to me by my boss, the dean of the faculty. He had been brought in by the chancellor to make some major changes in a way that the university was managed. Turns out the way he did things offended a lot of people. He wanted to completely restructure and reexamine all the departments in the university under his authority, which is the liberal arts departments. I was chair of anthropology at the time, and virtually all over the university nobody wanted him to get into the file, into the department and began to tell them how they ought to reorganize.
: We had a discussion, a faculty discussion. In the end, we decided to invite him to come and spend some money on getting counsel on what our department should look like and how to improve it. That gave us a special relationship to him. Until that took place, our department was a very marginal department in the university. Once we got his interest and the department began to prosper, we actually got a couple of positions out of it in the long run, and he brought in several people to look at the department and make suggestions.
: One of them was Laura. This was Laura Nader, N-A-D-E-R. Sister of Ralph Nader, the famous guy who ran for president against Al Gore and probably caused his defeat. But Laura was a well known anthropologist in her own right. Her special area was the Arab Middle East. She is herself Lebanese. The Naders are from Lebanon. So, all other Middle East specialists, her recommendation was, “It’s a great department of anthropology. You have several really good people on the Islamic world, but you don’t have anybody that’s a specialist in the Arab Middle East, so it’ll be a great department if you bring in an Arabist anthropologist.”
: We never did, but it was typical the way everyone who deals with the Arab Middle East thinks. In any case, the dean put a lot of effort into trying to give us support, and I think that was the beginning of what the department eventually became. It became the most popular department with respect to undergraduate majors proportionate to the student body anywhere in the country. The department of anthropology became the third largest major in the liberal arts college after biology and psychology.
: The dean told me one time, a different dean, told me one time that … He pointed out that students come to the university knowing what biology was and what psychology was, but they had no idea what anthropology was. But once they began to find out what it was, it began to be very popular. It is very popular even now. In any case, we had a good relationship with the dean who was trying to transform the university. In the meantime, he made lots of enemies. At the certain moment, to this great surprise while he was traveling in the far east, he was fired.
: Most chairs of departments rejoiced. I was conflicted about all that. He had been so nice to us, so I wrote a note to him telling him how much we appreciated what he had done, and especially regret that he was fired. I sent a carbon copy of that to the chancellor who had fired him. I worried about it, what would that do, I didn’t really know what it meant. I actually didn’t have any impression with that respect. But the dean was so grateful that I would in any case, and our department would in any case, express regret that he had been fired. We took him to lunch as a group one time afterwards, and then he called me over to come to his house.
: I had no idea what he was doing. He asked Rita and me to come over for coffee and for drinks I think he said, and to the house. I didn’t know what to take, so I got a bottle of wine. Well, I don’t know what wines are. So I paid $20 for a bottle of wine. This guy turns out, is a connoisseur of wines. He’d never heard of it, and I suspect he found out it was not anything special. In any case, what he gave me when we came over to the house was this pot. This pot he bought I’m sure for several hundred dollars in Mexico. It’s a pot in which the locals, some tribe, he didn’t know, I say paperwork goes with it. This is how they make beer. The beer is made out of corn, and you can see around the edge of the pot the ways that it has actually been used.
: The scorching on the bottom is evident, and you can also see places around the edge where people reached in and got something, some of the beer and dripped onto the edge. It was of course very hot. So it’s a really beautiful piece. It’s a beautiful piece for an anthropologist to have because it’s, again, physical manifestation of the handiwork of a certain group of people in Mexico. But also for me it stands a lot for a special relationship we had with this dean and the ways in which he treated us. One of the things that I also noticed was he thought my wife was very pretty. And she was.
: So anyway, this stands for a lot of things. There are many other things I could tell you about what it stands for to me, but it’s a relic, a memorial of a special moment in my own history, and relationship with somebody. This man was a close friend of … He was an economist himself, and he’s a close friend of Douglass North, who got The Nobel Prize at one time. The Norths had invited us over for dinner to meet them. The reason I knew the Norths was because as chair, one of the signs of the dean’s support for us was he provided me a small stipend for my own research so I could continue to doing research.
: I used that to ask for the editorial help of Elisabeth Case. Elisabeth Case had been an editor for Cambridge Press many years ago, many years prior to this. Then she had married Douglass North, and so I came to know her. She was a great critic of my own work. I learned a lot by working with her. It was thanks to her, I think in the long run, that the School of American Research agreed to publish the Turko-Persia book.
Second Half of my exposition of the meanings of souvenirs in our living room.
: This begins the second portion of my dictation on what exists in our living room that reminds me of our life and our affairs. And I want to just look around the room and point out some of the things that I have not yet commented on.
One of the things that we appreciate so much is a pillow that Kim produced for us with a picture of Kim, Howard, and Steve on it, and everyone who comes into this room notices it and makes some kind of comment on it. We’re grateful for that.
As I stand here looking with the window at my back, I’m looking at the far end of the room, and at the center of the room, of course, is this cabinet of things that Rita has mostly inherited from her mother and her great aunts. Above that is [inaudible 00:01:13] board there, I’ve already said something about. And on either side of this are gifts that were given to me. The bow that’s on the wall there is a replica of Ottoman work given to me. It’s modern. It’s not old. It was given to me by one of my graduate students who’s Turkish herself. She did her work in Kyrgyzstan, and I appreciate very much to see it.
She also wove a scarf for me at one time, which made out of local wool. I suppose that a lot of times when we’re in the field we don’t know what to do with our time. And often we have time, we write up our notes, and we have lots of times when we’re sort of marginal to everything that’s going on. And she must’ve been making scarves for people. So it was very nice to have that. It’s been stolen by now.
The other side is a panel of a Chinese, I guess, it’s meant to be a wall hanging, given to me by another student of mine. He had already had a PhD when he came into anthropology, and he had a hard time getting out of the abstract mode of philosophy into the more empirical mode of what we do in anthropology. We’d go out and talk to people, and it’s what we have to say and what we find out in our conversations with people that are sort of the fundamental baseline of what ethnographic work is. And he gave that to me.
His wife is Chinese. He didn’t do his researching on China, as he at one time had intended to. But his wife is Chinese, and they spent a lot of time in Taiwan, and this comes, I think, from Taiwan. So it’s another relic of a relationship that I appreciate it very much from the past.
On the walls to my right and to my left are other pictures that remind us of special things. On the wall to my right, came to us from Eloise James. Eloise was in Kabul with us for much of the time we were there. She was a teacher of, I think, Howard and later on Steve because she taught in the international school, I think, second and third grade. And she had, in Kabul, collected many interesting things. And also I think this comes from London. The British saved… As I mentioned before, the British had artists to go with them to produce images of the world that these military people were living with. So it’s not the original, but it is a print from it, and it has been colored by hand, and is an image of Kabul in about 1841 or 1842 when the British were there about the time of the first Afghan war.
This is downtown Kabul. I don’t know why I thought so, but I thought it was [inaudible 00:05:15]. [inaudible 00:05:16] was a place that did exist the first time I went there, but it was torn out later and a major hotel was built there later. In any case, it’s a treasure that reminds us of the many years we spent in Kabul.
And then I had a very interesting experience that also I attach to this picture. Several years ago, I got a note from a man who had decided he wanted to translate into Farsi an article that I wrote in anthropology. He liked it well enough that.. He himself has a PhD from Germany, did not have a stable teaching job, but nevertheless was still interested in academic affairs. I, of course, was flattered that he would want to do that. And at one time he then presented me with a Farsi translation of this article.
Actually, it’s a difficult article, and so I’m sure that he had a lot of trouble figuring out the kind of terms he wanted to use. It’s about spatial relations and the way that special relations affected the way that power was exerted out from Kabul to its provincial areas. So in any case, I was flattered.
Then one day he wrote, and he said he wants to come and visit me. And it turns out that the time he was going to come was the weekend of Easter. And I thought he was coming by himself then it turns out he’s bringing his wife, and I said, “Okay, well then, you will be our guest at Washington University. We’ll find a place to put you up, and it’ll be great to have you here.”
Then he sent me a note and said, well, his son who is a student in California wants to come, so they will be coming. And he has a daughter who was a student at Boston University, it turned out, she wants to come. So here is a whole family of five that wants to be my guest on Easter weekend.
And so they showed up, and we decided we had no choice but to put them up at the Knight Center at Washington University, which a very nice place. And so then I said, “I don’t know how much time I can give you because it turns out it’s Easter, and we will be going to church on Easter Sunday, and you’re welcome to join us if you want or not.” And so he said, “Well, we will join you.”
So here this Afghan family comes and joins us to go to an Easter service produced by The Journey. There were probably six or 7,000 people there in the Shabbat Sabbath Center because The Journey at that time had several satellite areas, and they all came together for one major Easter service. And so this family came with me. Fahim was in town, and he came as well, so we all had a huge [inaudible 00:08:51] that then went to the Easter service.
I don’t know how we managed lunch. Did we have lunch here? We must have had lunch here because they came to the house, and it was nice to see them. They were certainly interesting people. And I pointed out this painting. They all were dazzled by this painting and they wanted to have their picture taken with it.
So they came, their whole family arrayed around the picture, and we took a picture of them for their benefit. What I don’t know is did I get one for myself? I’m not sure that I did. In any case, what I remember is this weekend when what I thought would be a man coming himself to visit, but his whole family came, and they were our guests for that weekend. It was a privilege to be with them, and it was fun to see how much they enjoyed being able to see this picture, which of course, reminded them of many things that have long passed in Afghanistan.
Opposite this picture, on the other wall, is a painting of a young girl wearing Kalash dress. Kalash are the peoples who lived up in the mountains between the northern part of Pakistan and of Afghanistan. And she was on the Pakistani side. On the Pakistani side, they’re called Kalash or sometimes called Kafir, Kafir Kalash, unbeliever Kalash. But the unbelievers and the Kafirs point goes back to the days when they were being harassed by a Muslim population. They had retained all traditions that went back before the founding, before the arrival of Islam into Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On the Afghanistan side, Abdur Rahman, in the late 1890s, decided that as a way of securing his credentials as a proper Muslim ruler, he decided that he would convert the people of Nuristan, what is now called Nuristan. It was then called Kalfitistan, and he took an army up into Nuristan and forcibly converted the people in that area to be Muslims and changed the name from what he was calling Kalfitistan to now Nuristan, the place of light. And here she is, she represents that old tradition which is better preserved on the Pakistani side where Abdur Rahman did not venture in his war against unbelievers.
Now I want to say something about the carpet that is hanging on the wall near the fireplace. When we were in Kabul, this would have been in about 1960, I decided I wanted a really nice carpet. And I looked all through the bazaar and negotiated at various times. Never bought anything until I finally found a carpet that was the finest, most beautiful carpet I could find anywhere. It was just glorious. The Turkmen were out, of course. That’s what are available in Afghanistan, and I brought it home.
I was so proud of it. We put it on the wall and turns out after a while the gardener, [Imam Ali 00:00:13:40], wasn’t paying attention and somehow he poured water…. He was watering the lawn. He wasn’t paying attention and the water came into the house and got all over this glorious carpet. And I was humiliated. Of course, it’s shriveled up and it began to have parts of it that need to be straightened. It could be straightened, but nonetheless, it wasn’t straight at that. It was all messed up.
So I took it. I realized that for me, for my family, with three kids, to have something this nice was just too much. So I took it back. The man who sold it to me had said that he would buy it back at that price, so I could take it back. I took it back, and he straightened it, and he gave me my money back. But I did decide with that money I would buy several less perfect carpets. This was one of my favorites of those that I retrieved from that experience. I bought two or three. And this is pretty old. It was old when I bought it, old in the sense it was like 30 years old when I bought it.
I bought it, as I said, about 1960. So it’s probably getting close to a hundred years old and I like it very much. It reminds me of many of the beautiful things about Afghanistan. There are lots of better carpets and finer carpets around, but the colors fit our color scheme here, and it certainly represents the fine workmanship of the Turkmens in Northern Afghanistan.
As far as I can note right now, this concludes my comments, my discussion of the memories that I bring to the souvenirs of my mind in the many years and times past. And as I say, they are mnemonic devices that remind me of my affairs, my life, and my experience because they are shared because in various ways each one shares something about the mnemonic device for me with other people. They’re Cultural. They’re devices that bring to mind significant memories and associations. But they’re different for each one of us. So when I’m gone, maybe somebody will be interested. I can’t believe there are very many people that would care about our experience, but I assume that we will someday have grandchildren or great grandchildren that will want to know all of this.
Let me add one more thing. There is a table in this room. We call it the red rosewood table. I can’t remember what part of it is rosewood. The legs were not invented to go with this table, but it’s a nice combination, and Rita was delighted to have it. She was thrilled. Rita went through a time when she wanted to… She loved furniture, and she wanted to get an additional few things. And so this is one of them.
I think that she is really proud of of it. And you’ll notice the lion claw legs. The lion claw legs are sort of like the lion claw legs that Kim has in her house on the table that Kim has in her house that was made by my grandfather on my mother’s side, a man whom I never knew because he died young. I understand he had been a painter, mostly busy on the Oklahoma A and M Campus, now named Oklahoma State University, in Stillwater.