The Kashmir Shawl Read Online Free PDF Page A

and tugging at the wool of the throat and chest. Matted clods of hair began to yield to this treatment, coming away in chunks with the embedded dirt, dung and grease. The goats protested and the men countered with a throaty, ululating song.
    ‘They are singing to the goats, telling them to give some good pashm in return for the sweet grass they have eaten and the good water they have drunk,’ explained the guide.
    A woman gathered up the tufts of hair as the men disentangled them from the combs, taking care to retrieve every last wisp,and stuffed them into a frost-stiffened polythene sack.
    ‘Each family has between eighty and two hundred goats. The animals are combed in May and September. Each animal’s combing yields approximately two hundred grams of raw wool,’ the guide intoned, in his chipped English. At least she didn’t have to translate all this again, Mair reflected, unlike her companions.
    ‘How much money do they get?’ asked the Dutchman who hadn’t been travel-sick.
    ‘Sixteen hundred rupees for a kilo,’ the guide told him. ‘Maybe more, maybe less, depends on quality. After cleaning and processing, that kilo of raw wool will yield only three hundred grams of pure fibre ready for spinning.’
    Mair stared at the sack. It would take a lot of combings to add up to one kilo and probably a whole herd of goats’ combings to fill that one bag. And it was very hard to conceive how those filthy, greasy bundles could ever be transformed into the feathery elegance of her shawl.
    ‘So what happens next?’ asked one of the Israeli boys, although he didn’t sound all that interested.
    ‘The wool traders come out by truck from Leh. They buy the pashm , and take it back to town for processing,’
    Another of the boys had retrieved a rusty can from the detritus scattered across the Changpa camp. He set it on a rock and aimed pebbles at it.
    ‘Is that all?’ his friend wanted to know. A fusillade of stones clattered against the can until it bounced off the rock.
    The guide looked offended. ‘This is the traditional way for the people. It has happened like this for hundreds of years.’
    ‘But is this all there is to see ?’
    ‘This afternoon we will visit the monastery. There are some fine paintings.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    The demonstration over, the men freed their goats and chased them out of the pen. Their leader waited for a cash hand-out and the others hastened towards the nearest tent enclosure.Mair hoped they were going to spend the rest of the day sitting by a log fire, singing goat-herding ballads and drinking chang . She unbuckled her rucksack, checking yet again that the shawl was wrapped inside, and took a five-hundred-rupee note out of her wallet. The man’s blackened fist rapidly closed on it, but not so quickly that the guide didn’t see how much. He would think she was a careless Western pushover because the tip was far too generous, but she didn’t care.
    ‘ Julley ,’ she murmured. It was the all-purpose Ladakhi word for ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘thank you’.
    ‘ Julley ,’ said the man. He was already on his way over to the Dutch.
    Mair had planned to unwrap her shawl and spread it on some sun-baked rocks, with the goats browsing in the background, to take an artistic photograph of its beginnings to show Eirlys and Dylan – but she would have had to weight it with small rocks to stop it blowing away and there were pellets of windborne ice pinging against her cheeks. The whole scene was just too bleak for anything more than a mental acknowledgement that this was where the fine, light wool had originated perhaps seventy years ago. Nothing would have changed since then. And she was glad she had made the visit. She contented herself with taking a picture of the lake and the trees, with a white-wool long-haired goat glaring in front of them.
    There was no way to capture the smell, but that wasn’t a matter for regret.
    As for her grandparents: now that she had been here herself it