The Quintessential Middle East Souvenir

For the past several months, Chris and I have been saving our pennies. Every time Chris has had to work overtime, we've put the extra money he made into an account we called the "rug fund". When we got assigned to Bahrain, we knew before we even arrived that neither of us would want to leave without purchasing an authentic Persian rug. Most Bahraini's can trace their ancestry to Persia, so the carpet vendors in Bahrain are able to go to Persia (Iran) and use their family lineage to buy rugs at a reasonable cost and then sell them in Bahrain for much less than you could get elsewhere. Other Arabs who do not have Persian descent are not able to do the same. If they went to Iran to buy a Persian rug, they would end up paying more than Bahraini's who go over their and use their family connection. And since we can't exactly go to Iran without potentially spending the rest of our lives in jail, we did the next best thing and bought one here in Bahrain!

The whole process was a lot of fun. When Bahraini's are doing a business transaction that requires a lot of money, it's expected to be a process and a relationship is built between the buyer and seller. When we first walked in, they asked us what we wanted to drink and then they asked again a few minutes later. We ended up having water, fresh orange juice, and tea before we were done. Unlike many rug stores in the states, the rugs were not hanging on rods that you could flip through yourself or pictured in a master book. Instead, we gave an idea of what we were looking for to the shop owner and then a few employees picked out several and rolled them out for us on the floor. Since they wanted us to be completely happy with our selection, it was not a bother to continually roll out more and more rugs. We weren't necessarily planning on buying that day, but with the incredible service, we decided to not wait any longer. No two rugs are exactly alike, either, since they're all hand-made. If you see one you can't live without, you better not wait because it could be gone next time!

We actually ended up buying two rugs. One is a silk/wool blend that was made in India and the other is an authentic 100% silk cashmere Persian rug. We didn't really plan on buying two, but I'm glad we did. The Indian rug is on display in our entryway and the Persian will hang on our wall as soon as we get a rod for it. Both rugs were entirely hand-knotted and took at least a year and half to make. I won't tell you how much we paid for these, but when you look at the intricacy and think about the labor that went into hand-knotting each thread, I'm amazed they didn't cost more. Yes, we're going to become those annoying people who ask people to take their shoes off at the door.

This is the front entryway rug that was made in India. Our housekeeper, Jhancy, who is from India, looked at the rug admiringly, paused as if in contemplation, and then said all the nice ones are exported. Ha! We wanted a really big one and I think this one is perfect!

This is the Persian rug that we'll be hanging on our wall...it's a bit too nice to let people walk on. The design of the rug is a "dome" design. This was by far our favorite design scheme for a rug. They had another one that was similar in colors to this but a bit darker. It was a little bigger and had more knots per square inch, so it was almost twice the price. They went and got this from their warehouse and it was worth the wait. Even though it's not as nice as the other, we are still very happy with this one.