The Kashmir Shawl by Rosie Thomas Read Free Book Online

of rotating belts and spinning flywheels, vast rubber rollers and steaming tanks. At the end of the line was a drying chamber from which the wool emerged cleaner and softer, but still with thick coarse hairs and fragments of dirt trapped in it.
    ‘What now?’ she asked, as she twisted a hank between her fingers.
    A second metal door opened ahead. A wave of humid air, heavy with the smell of wet wool, rolled over her.
    ‘Why is it so hot? And so damp?’ she choked out.
    ‘It is a humidified chamber,’ Tinley said proudly. ‘It makes the wool easier to work. This is the dehairing section, see?’
    They peered into the machinery. At each stage the remaining wool emerged whiter and softer, as the pure fleece – the goat’s innermost insulation against the Himalayan cold – was separated out.
    At the end of the line, after another drying chamber, the belt turned back on itself. One man sat in reverent attendance as the cleansed and blow-dried end product billowed from the jaws of the machinery.
    Mair couldn’t help herself. She stepped forward and plunged her arms up to the elbows into pure pashm . It was like handling a cloud, weightless and pure, and exactly the same colour. She remembered that one kilo of the greasy, reeking wool she had seen at the beginning of the line produced a mere three hundred grams of this airy fleece. ‘It is a kind of magic,’ she agreed.
    Tinley’s eyes glinted. ‘Come with me.’ He settled his baseball cap squarely on his head and led the way out of the processing plant.
    The back lanes were too narrow for two to walk abreast, and were overhung with washing lines, the branches of knotty old trees and the projecting balconies of houses. Tinley walked so fast that Mair had to concentrate on keeping up. At a collapsing set of gates in a whitewashed wall he suddenly stopped and nodded her through. Hens scratched in refuse and the call of the muezzin rose over the housetops.

    ‘ Julley ,’ Tinley called, to a man leaning on a broom.
    Up four stone steps and through a narrow door, they came into a roomful of women seated at wooden looms. There was a steady creak of floor treadles and the flash of shuttles as they worked. They were weaving plain pashmina lengths, in soft shades of grey and brown. These workers, Tinley told her, were producing shawls for sale through the state-sponsored craft-industry outlets in Leh. ‘Very traditional methods preserved, nice work for women here. They can work what hours they can, make some money, and also take care of families.’
    ‘That’s good,’ Mair acknowledged. But she was puzzled by how different these pieces were from her own.
    They passed through the weavers’ studio and the women looked up at her and smiled as she passed. The front of the building, to Mair’s surprise, opened out on to a view she recognised – the main street, with the minarets of the central mosque rising against the hill crowned with the old palace. Via the backstreet labyrinth they had come into a shawl showroom, lined with the now-familiar shelves. A salesman grinned a flash of gold incisor at her as he began to slide his wares out of their plastic bags.
    Leh could sometimes seem like one large wool-based retail opportunity.
    There was no question of withholding her custom, though, after Tinley had patiently taken her through the manufacturing processes. Mair obediently picked out three shawls: a pearl-grey one for Eirlys, a toffee-brown one for herself, and a cream one for Hattie, which would suit her friend’s dark colouring. She paid twelve thousand rupees in all, and reminded herself that it was not such a great deal of money for all the work that had gone into producing the pashmina fibre.
    The salesman took her purchases away to wrap, and on a sudden impulse Mair opened her rucksack and pulled the folded pouch from the innermost recess. Tinley watched curiously as she unfolded her grandmother’s shawl and gently spread it on the shop’s plain wooden counter.