Flying Carpet out of Baghdad

The last couple of weeks in Iraq have been all about the US withdrawal, oil, corruption and the future of the country in a brutal, impoverished Middle East. I was leaving and wanted something to remind me of the Iraq which every now and then I have glimpsed in a radiant pink-and-green tiled mosque dome, in Mutanabbi Street's literary tea houses, in the old universities and in the Iraqi pride that this was once a country that valued beauty and learning and maybe, one day, will have time for such things again.

Clearly, what I needed was a carpet. It's true that many of the finest carpets in Iraq come from Iran, but Iraq does have a history of carpet weaving, especially in rural areas. And, Persian or Iraqi, the glowing jewel colours of the carpets is definitely part of the Iraqi visual vocabulary. And so, my Iraqi staff kindly took me to the antiques shops of South Baghdad to check out their wares.

And were they ever glorious. I didn't so much want to buy some of those carpets as marry them. It was as if some magician had spirited the colours out of a peacock's feathers and woven them into the whorls and curlicues of prayer rugs and wall hangings. There was a green one the colour of a slice of agate, and a dove grey one with a silvery geometric pattern. There were silken carpets from Isfahan which would fill a room and napkin-sized ruglets with verses of the Koran worked in wool. They were carpets to conjure with, carpets which deserved to be the subjects of stories about enchantments and genies.

I vowed one day to save up and come back for a whopping, silk number in 1,001 shades of purple, blue and gold, but for this humbler shopping trip, I was very taken by a rug which I was told came from Kurdistan. My next adventure, God willing, will take me to the separatist region in northern Iraq, and it was pleasing to have a carpet which was, I was told, a traditional Kurdish pattern. Its geometric design looked a little like Cubist versions of Paisley swirls and it was in unusually flat, bright shades of yellow, red and blue. It didn't fly me out of Baghdad, but it did come with me on the plane and, until my next trip, will remind me of my adventures in this ancient, modern, troubled and intriguing country.

- Alice Fordham