Memory and the Past

An object with enormous significance in my family is a hand-embroidered suzani — a large decorative textile — that was made by my great-grandmother in the 1920s, in a village near Shahrisabz. It measures roughly two metres by three, and it’s covered in deep red pomegranate and flower motifs, stitched in silk on cotton. Traditionally, a mother and her female relatives would spend months, sometimes years, embroidering suzanis as part of a daughter’s dowry, and this one was made for my great-grandmother’s own wedding. It has passed from mother to eldest daughter for four generations, and it’s currently kept by my aunt. For most of the year, it’s carefully folded in a chest with dried herbs to deter moths, but it’s brought out for the most significant family occasions — weddings, the birth of a child, and Navruz — when it’s hung on the wall of the main room. It’s important to us for several reasons. Most obviously, it’s a physical link to someone none of us living have met; we know very little about my great-grandmother’s life, but we know her hands made this. It also represents resilience: the family hid it during difficult periods in the twentieth century, when traditional objects were sometimes discouraged or confiscated. And it embodies women’s history in our culture, which was rarely written down but was recorded in textiles like this. Every time it’s unfolded, older relatives tell stories about it, so in a way it preserves not only the cloth, but an oral history around it. I suspect its meaning will only grow as fewer people know how to make such things.

Buyum → kelib chiqishi va hunar → qanday saqlanadi → ahamiyati (avlodlar, chidamlilik, ayollar tarixi, og‘zaki tarix).