Kobani women preserve heritage... like Mother Khanem

HIZA HASAN/ KOBANI

The carpet weaving profession is one of the heritage professions that have long been known to the Kurdish women and distinguished by her skill and taste, but this profession has become an absentee industry in the present day.

But many elderly women still preserve their heritage and practice their hobby in crafting ancient handicrafts which reflect the talents of Kurdish women with their elegant taste for work inherited from parents and grandparents, one of the living examples is mother Khanem.

Mother Khanem Mahmoud, 75 years old from Kobani city, is still engaged in weaving hand-made carpets, who is still practicing this hobby despite the time evolution and the new generation's adoption on the ready products in knitting and sewing, which in turn inherited from her parents and grandparents.

She describes these works as the origin of "customs, traditions and history," as she said.

Since early morning, the mother sits in front of her doorstep, with all the tools and accessories she uses in carpet weaving, which is made up of the Kurdish language from "masûr- befiş- pijik- şivik- dargûr- hepî- darpişt- tevin "and works on the carpet manufacture up to many hours a day.

According to Khanem, the manufacture of each carpet takes three days in a row.

I work in carpet manufacture when I was 15 years old; at the time it was wrong for women not to make carpets and knitting, "says the mother, who is over seven decades old.

"Today, our heritage is being neglected and forgotten because this craft needs effort and fatigue, because of the adoption of the emerging generation of ready-made products and the abandonment of this heritage, which reflects the originality and history of our people," she added.

She expressed her love for carpet weaving and preservation of the heritage which she has inherited from her ancestors over the past decades.

(H/S)

ANHA