Fragment No. 24

The next morning we’re out and about in the bazaar. I don’t know how it came about, but tiles from Isfahan have long been a magical object for me. My early, excessive reading of Karl May can’t be to blame. My daughter rings the bell at a tile shop; a man opens the door, she speaks to him – I can’t make out a word – he invites us upstairs and we climb a steep flight of stairs into a bright studio.

Music plays from a small stereo; there are workers. One man, occasionally making grunting sounds, stirs a bowl of thick gray paint. A second applies dotted pink lines to white tiles, while a third—an older man—traces over them with black paint, his hand remarkably steady. Near the center of the room, a tile mosaic—outlined in black—lies spread out like a carpet, and two younger men (all of them squatting on small rugs on the floor) are carefully filling in the colors. In a partitioned enclosure separated by a glass pane, a portly man is crouching behind a stack of ledgers, talking on the phone. Farther to the left, another man—who had been painting pieces of mosaic stars until we walked in—warms his back by the stove and stretches languidly. Only then do I spot someone stacking tiles in the gloom of the kiln.

We pick out a few tiles and my daughter negotiates the price—the pricing system remains a mystery to me. Sometimes two zeros are dropped, sometimes not... huge numbers. We move on.

The bazaar is fascinating. Some shops are so narrow that the shopkeeper couldn’t even stretch out both arms. Someone is sitting on a parapet in the winter sun, mending a carpet; a trader approaches me asking if I might have a minute for just one single question. He doesn’t want to sell anything—he is a restorer, he says in good English. Did we know, he asks, which city is Isfahan’s German partner city? Evidently, it is obvious that I am German. And then comes his question (by my count, the third one): would I like to buy a flying carpet…

...What am I supposed to do with a flying carpet, pray tell? Unfortunately, neither my knowledge of German law, let alone my command of English, is sufficient to quote the German Air Traffic Act (LuftVG) verbatim:

‘(1) The use of airspace by aircraft is unrestricted, in so far as it is not restricted by this Act, by the regulations issued for its implementation, by international law applicable within Germany, by legal acts of the European Union and by the regulations issued for their implementation.

(2) Aircraft are:

1. Aeroplanes

2. Rotary-wing aircraft

3. Airships

4. Gliders

5. Motor gliders

6. Free and tethered balloons

7. (deleted)

8. Rescue parachutes

9. Model aircraft

10. Air sports equipment

11. other devices intended for use in airspace, provided that it can be operated at altitudes of more than thirty metres above the ground or water.

Spacecraft, rockets and similar projectiles shall be regarded as aircraft whilst they are within airspace. Unmanned aerial vehicles, including their control stations, which are not operated for sporting or recreational purposes (unmanned aircraft systems), are also regarded as aircraft.”

It would be difficult to convince the German authorities that a carpet is a 'device', so I decline with a smile.

In January, after some stunning days spent amongst the glistening snow in the Alborz Mountains north of Tehran and the hot dunes east of Yazd, the taxi driver drops me off at Khomeini Airport with a handshake. My daughter had translated the opening exchange with him for me: “You’re like a sister to me; how could I possibly charge you a fare?” “Let’s do the same as on the way here.”

Inside the airport building, I was briefly disoriented amidst all the signs and unfamiliar characters. Then I spotted Baggage Claim No. 3, where I was supposed to go. I then queued at the Lufthansa counter to get my boarding pass; there were queues at the Economy desks, but the Business Class counter was free. Two staff members beckoned me over, but I declined, explaining I had an Economy ticket. One asked if I wouldn’t like to fly Business Class; in a fit of delusions of grandeur, I asked how much it would cost, and he replied casually: “Nothing.” Whether I wanted a window or an aisle seat – I chose seat 24H because of my long legs and because you wouldn’t be able to see anything outside on the night flight anyway.

No sooner had I settled into my seat on the ‘Baden-Württemberg’ than a flight attendant offered to hang up my winter jacket and offered me some juice – the seat can be reclined fully, it has a massage function, there are pillows, a blanket (reminding me that, back in my Swabian childhood, we used to call a blanket a 'Debbich'), and the Iranian woman sitting next to me (there are only two seats here), a doctor practising in Switzerland who had been visiting her family in Tabriz, asks how I’d found Iran. After I’ve raved about it, she brings me back down to earth, so to speak; we talk about the conflicts with Israel and the US, about the rules of conduct in the country, about young people with no prospects, about prostitution due to a lack of other sources of income. Then we must have slept for a while; suddenly it was breakfast time—there was a delicious aroma, and a flight attendant—looking remarkably fresh-faced, as if neither the flight nor the night had taken any toll on her—served the meal... and I suppressed a grin at the thought of flying home on a magic carpet, quite possibly without a seatbelt...

However, my youngest daughter was disappointed when I told her I’d turned down the offer. And she started imagining all the things she could have done with that magical fabric. I promised to accept it next time.

Unfortunately, on subsequent visits to the ‘Orient’ (these notes summarise the debate following Edward Said’s 'Orientalism'), I was no longer offered a flying carpet.

When I stopped off in Selçuk in 2014, I discovered a beautifully renovated building, in front of which women were sitting weaving carpets, some with a pram standing beside them. As I approached, the owner of the premises hurried over – a well-groomed, slight man with a gentle voice, perhaps 50 years old – who spoke to me from below, emphasising that he didn’t want to sell me anything, just show me something. I listened, admiring the colours and patterns of the carpets, and, flattered, he invited me inside the workshop, the former Selçuk Chamber of Commerce. He insisted I had to see that they were also capable of processing silk, if only the women weren’t so inexperienced, unfortunately …

In an adjoining room stood a wooden tub full of water, in which a few white cocoons were floating. A forewoman demonstrated how to unwind the silk threads – but I couldn’t see a thing. It was only when she placed three white, hair-thin threads in my hand that I recognised them. Normally, the cocoons are dissolved in hot water, but here they only do this for demonstration purposes; lukewarm water is sufficient. She worked the cocoons vigorously with a sort of coarse shaving brush, skilfully drew the threads onto a small spinning wheel, nimbly pressed a pedal with her foot and wound the thread onto the spool. – Right next to her stood baskets and earthenware pots containing plant parts suitable for use as dyes. I thanked him and made my way towards the exit, but then the man invited me into the main room – ‘just for information, not to buy’ – to show me the local designs. I gladly accepted the invitation and used the brief pauses, whilst the boss unrolled carpet after carpet – ‘a piece like this could make a lovely souvenir’ – to ask questions.

To summarise: up to twelve young, mostly married women from the area spend three months at this sort of school learning carpet weaving – specifically, the double-knot technique – subsidised by the government, which aims, on the one hand, to provide employment for the women and, on the other, to prevent the craft tradition from dying out. Back home, depending on how much time they can spare between looking after the children, cooking and attending to their husbands, these women produce carpets as home-based work. They (allegedly) receive 70 per cent of the proceeds from sales, with the remaining 30 per cent going to the school – minus the cost of materials, I assume. The women could certainly put the money to good use; life had become harder and more expensive, and one could always use a few extra lira—for the children’s school supplies or clothing, for instance. The women spend anywhere from forty-five days to two months working on the slightly more refined rugs featuring iridescent color shifts. The rugs he had spread out before me—"there’s a 20% margin for negotiation, by the way"—cost 1,600 TL, or 400 euros; just for information’s sake, of course, though one could certainly support the women... "and a rug like this is a sound investment, after all." In the summer, a total of about fifty women are involved in the work—which is quite an achievement. He says he won’t offer me tea—it’s such a cliché, after all—but if I happened to want a glass... And then I confess that I have underfloor heating at home—just like the ancient Romans in nearby Ephesus—and very little space: three daughters, a cat... the only thing that might fit would be a flying carpet... He offers a somewhat pained smile; no, he can’t offer me a flying carpet.

A few years later, almost at the same time as the COVID pandemic, my youngest daughter started university. Britain left the EU, the then US President Trump had the Iranian General Soleimani killed (with a drone, incidentally; he, too, didn’t seem to have any flying carpets at his disposal), Joe Biden won the US election, whereupon, on 6 January 2021, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, here at home, people were scrambling for toilet paper and baking yeast, and my youngest daughter met a girl called Farzaneh in her shared flat, who had a slightly younger sister in the north of Tehran who wanted nothing more urgently than to leave Iran and study in Germany. But her German was full of gaps and mistakes.

It then occurred to my daughter that her father had just retired, that he was unable to travel to the ‘Orient’ or anywhere else due to the pandemic, and that, as a former German teacher, he might be well-suited to give a young woman a leg up with the language, especially as he’d raved so much about Iran.

So, on 2 July 2021, I met Laila via Skype; she was sitting in shorts, not on a taht, but on a light grey upholstered sofa, and had long, dark, curly hair and a very lively disposition. From then on, we practised in a jumble of a bit of German and a lot of English; at the same time, she was attending an online language course in Tehran, and in January 2022 she failed the exam; I’d feared as much. So we extended our sessions to at least two hours, discussed assignments daily at times, practised the types of questions on the tests – often involving interpreting graphs or statistics in writing – and grappled with grammatical problems: irregular verbs, prepositions followed by a case ending, and differences in meaning, such as between the present and past participles: Why is it important to distinguish between a persecutor and a persecuted person? and so on. Sometimes I managed to console Laila with Mark Twain’s critique of the German language (“I heard a student from California in Heidelberg say, in one of his quietest moments, that he would rather bend both knees a hundred times than bend a single adjective even once, and he wasn’t talking about a gymnast”).

In the meantime, Russia invaded Ukraine (“What’s the difference between a war and a ‘special operation’?” Laila asked), the Bundestag approved a so-called ‘special fund’ for rearmament, war refugees arrived in Germany – and we Skyped tirelessly. In Iran, the demonstrations, arrests and executions intensified. Laila wanted to leave for Germany. Would the authorities let her leave the country? In May, she passed the language test at the second attempt, in Isfahan.

On 31 August, she reported, absolutely thrilled, that she’d got a visa. Then I couldn’t get hold of her until she got in touch from Germany via WhatsApp in October. A week later, we met up at her university – she’d already got a room in the halls of residence, and we went to a café for the first time in her life. As she tucked into her first Black Forest gateau, Laila was suddenly preoccupied with the question of what would happen if we couldn’t pay. “Will we be arrested?” I laughed and explained the situation to the café owner, who, with typical Palatinate humour, listed alternative solutions to a large-scale police operation. Later, we strolled through the city centre, and I asked her what she feared most in her new, unfamiliar world. “The police,” she said. She told me that in Iran she was never allowed to go out on her own because her mother was worried that male police officers would take her money, humiliate her, abuse her or arrest her – they’d always find a reason.

Finally, she showed me her room on the top floor of the hall of residence; she shared the kitchen and bathroom with her neighbour. And then she hauled a heavy roll, longer than an arm’s length, from under the bed. “I’ve brought you something from Tehran,” she said. “I hope you like it.”

I was completely taken aback when she unrolled it: it was an Iranian silk carpet. She’d managed to bring it with her when she left the country! “Now you’ve got a flying carpet from Iran after all.” “It’s not a flying carpet, but a carpet that’s been flown here,” I said, once I’d regained my composure, “and it’s a stunning gift.”

For a few days now, another ‘flown’ carpet – or rather, one-hundredth of a carpet from the Berlin project ‘CulturalxCollabs – Weaving the Future’ – has been lying in my flat, prompting a few memories. From textile to text.

Incidentally, Laila has now mastered the use of participles with ease, has got married and is studying successfully; not in Saxony-Anhalt, where Persian carpets might also be deported in future. I’ve come across the pitfalls of the participle again elsewhere. A friend accompanied me on a walk across the fields some time ago; she was hit by a girl on a bike and suffered a complicated ankle fracture. As the injured woman was lying in the ambulance, I was asked to sign the police report: ‘(…) the woman was grazed on the foot by the bike.’

After a moment’s hesitation, I signed it without comment.

The fragment lay on the floor. Its edges touched the joints of the herringbone parquet.

I'm disturbing the pattern, it said.

The parquet said nothing. It was used to being taken for a single surface.

I noticed that my apartment was full of fragments. The joints between the parquet strips fragmented the floor, the window frames fragmented the view, the walls and doors fragmented the room. Everything before my eyes began falling apart into separate pieces.

What's suddenly going on, I asked quietly.

The carpet fragment gave me a pitying look.

What if the parquet strips suddenly no longer wanted to belong together?, I asked. If they all went their own way? Or wanted to lie beside different neighbors?

I put my hand to my head and went into the bathroom.

There, the grout lines between the tiles broke the floor down into even rectangles.

I stared at them.

You can also be a fragment without there ever having been a whole to begin with, said the tile, turning slightly to the side as if wanting to study its profile in a mirror. I've always had this shape. I was only lightly ground down at the edges.

I went back to the living room. The carpet fragment and the parquet strips rolled their eyes.

That's not something you can compare to us, snorted the carpet fragment. Being cut apart. The change in essence. Going from being part of something to becoming a part. The bathroom tiles have no say in that at all.

What actually makes a fragment a fragment, I asked.

Humans have such a strange need to define things, said the carpet fragment, in a tone that struck me as faintly contemptuous. Whatever it is, it's more than the sum of its edges, joints, and former relationships.

I took my camera and photographed the fragment as it tried out, briefly, new joints and patterns with the parquet strips, the windowsill, the tiles.

The edge is bleeding. One continuous wound. Four sides, four corners. It's dripping everywhere. I'm afraid it will lose its color. That all its pigments will run out of it and it will sink into itself, gray and pale.

Quick, we have to stitch the wound!, I call out. Bandages and needle and thread. We have to sew, before it's too late. Do the scars remember their neighboring pieces? Can seams grow back together, if they find their neighbor?

Was I dreaming?

I have no blood, said the fragment. I reject that idea.

Is the wound the edge, or the piece?, I asked myself silently. Or does it not exist at all?

The fragment still lay beside the book.

I wonder whether I really do end at my edges, it said. Did you know that some people who have lost a body part still feel pain where it used to be?

I nodded.

Sometimes I feel as though I don't end at all. As though my edge dissolves into infinity.

I thought you only existed once you had an edge, I said skeptically.

It was silent for a moment.

Sometimes it's hard to say where one thing ends and the other begins, it answered. Or whether there's still something in between.

I feel at ease around other edges, it said suddenly. There's sometimes a particular closeness between us. As if we'd once shared a memory.

I scanned the living room for edges.

I like the edges of books best, it said. I admire paper. It's cut too, but it needs no seam. It simply holds, without fraying. It's only bound on one side. I'd like to have a spine too, it sighed.

It seemed to me as though the fragment moved a little closer to the book.

Let me stay here a little longer, it said to me. The two began whispering softly together.

I wondered whether it got along especially well with one particular page. I gave them their space and withdrew.

Images words names letters

half a story

shared memories

split without a seam

My memory

a gap, it says

Mine too, I say

Some fall out

Do the other pieces

and the ones that fell out

live in the gaps

between us?

Which memories are mine

which are borrowed

and which have long since

been guests

in someone else's memory?

I have to move on, said the fragment one day. I once carried a dragon. Traces of its restlessness still live on in my threads. I can't stay in one place too long.

A shame, I said. But I understand you well. Where will you travel to?

I want to fly, it said. It doesn't really matter where. I like talking with the air. I ask it whether it feels torn into pieces by the houses, bridges, airplanes that divide it up; by the rain and birds and trees.

I've heard of Tempelhofer Feld, it told me. Apparently the sky there is full of kites. Close enough to dragons — especially in German, don't you think?

Maybe I can set you free there, I said thoughtfully. Then you won't have to go back into the DHL box.

I'd like that, it sighed. It's so stuffy in there.

I nodded. I'll take you there.

Safe travels, then, I said. And maybe we'll see each other again sometime. Maybe we won't recognize each other, because we'll both have changed. But maybe our memories will travel on together.

What happened in Syria or Lebanon barely reached the German public—just as little as the fact that every day between 10 and 11 a.m., two Phantom jets of the Israeli Air Force thundered low over the Beqaa Valley. You could see the pilots in their cockpits. On Fridays, they came in fours: two flew high as lookouts, while the other two dropped a few bombs in the Rachaya Valley, where Palestinians lived and which was a military restricted area behind the Anti-Lebanon mountains we could see from our balconies. That dull booming was among the first bombs I ever heard fall. In the following days, Lebanese newspapers casually reported that a few houses had been destroyed and some people injured. There were also photos of fighters posing with Kalashnikovs in front of olive trees. They had supposedly returned safely from a commando mission in the southern neighboring country, the papers said. Seen up close, the Middle East conflict had sharper contours than the distant newspaper reports in Europe.

Lebanon had grabbed and fascinated me, so I was all the more shocked when, just months after our departure, the civil war broke out. I followed the news closely, looked for places I knew, read the novel The Falsification (1979) by Nicolas Born, and watched the film adaptation by Volker Schlöndorff. At home, I continued brewing my Arabic coffee and occasionally listened to Fairuz—I had brought an LP from the Baalbek Festival 1973. Back then, there were no Lebanese restaurants yet in Berlin, but the emerging Döner culture at least offered a faint substitute, and I made tabbouleh myself—the greener, the better.

... participating in the 2nd survey of the Tübingen Atlas of the Near East (TAVO) at the University of Tübingen, during which settlement mounds were measured, mapped, and photographed along the Khabur River between Hasaka and Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria. I then drew the pottery shards collected during this survey, even though I am not an archaeologist. I also worked in both cities doing internal office tasks. That meant I had to shop at the market, cook, and of course draw shards. This brought me into closer contact with the local population. Hardly anyone there spoke English or French, so I had to try, like a guest worker, to learn a few scraps of Arabic as quickly as possible. That was fun, because the Syrians did not expect visitors to attempt speaking Arabic. The effort and the gesture were always well received, and this also helped me later as a journalist in other parts of the world. I learned individual words, sometimes phrases, and wrote everything down.