Livre - The carpet wars

The early Muslims inhabited lands where people were born on carpets, prayed on them, and covered their tomb with them. And in much of the Muslim world, very little has changed. For centuries, carpets have been a currency and an export, among the first commodities of a globalized trading system. Apart from trade, the main form of intereaction between nations is war. With their countries decimated, cultures pulverized, and families scattered, they flee, carrying what is often the only portable asset they own - their carpets. For those who remain, the carpet business is one of the only functioning industries left. And when the shooting stops and the bazaar springs back to life as if nothing happened, you can lose yourself there, where carpets dealers recline on bolsters, retailing conversation outside time.