Azhi and the Master Rugmaker

In a city where the houses were built of clay and the evenings smelled of cardamom and roses, there lived a girl named Azhi. Her home stood beside a narrow lane where bats cut through the air at dusk, and right next to that lane was a small workshop with a blue door. Behind the door lived Master Behrouz, who had been weaving rugs so long that his fingers remembered the patterns better than his eyes did. He had white eyebrows like two small gulls and a voice that sounded like honey in a glass. Every evening, as the sun sank behind the rooftops and the call to prayer faded away, a soft oil lamp glowed in his window. Azhi always stopped outside and looked in. She did not know that the old man had already noticed her.

One evening Master Behrouz opened the door and waved her closer. 'You look in every evening,' he said in a low voice. 'Would you like to see how a rug is made?' Azhi nodded silently. Inside the workshop the air smelled of wool and wood and warm lamp oil. A great wooden frame stood in the middle of the floor, and hundreds of threads hung from it, as straight as rain. Master Behrouz set a cushion down for her on the floor. 'A rug always begins with quiet threads,' he said. 'The pattern comes after. But first you have to listen to the threads.' Azhi leaned forward and listened.

Master Behrouz picked up a strand of wool, red as a ripe pomegranate seed, and showed her how to tie a knot around two threads. His fingers moved slowly so that she could follow every step. 'Like this,' he said. 'The thread behind, around, through, and down. Then you let the end go, snip it off, and begin the next.' Azhi tried. Her first knot came out thick and crooked and hung the wrong way. Her second was a little less crooked. Her third slipped away entirely. But after a while her fingers began to guess right without her thinking about it. Her tenth knot looked almost like a real little red dot. Master Behrouz smiled beneath his white beard. 'That is how it begins,' he said softly. 'With many small dots waiting for one another. None of them have to be perfect. They only have to be there.'