"This article starts in a Turkish bath, a “hamam”, and the “hamam” starts with a Roman bath a millennium earlier. While this must seem an odd place to start, Kabul at 5,900 feet altitude has snow on the ground all winter. Mazar e Sharif at 1290 feet does not but stays about freezing, and Peshawar Pakistan (80% flooded) at about 1200 feet averages 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter."

 "In Part 1, we wrote about rug making in Afghanistan, using pictures supplied by Ariana. This month we will illustrate the article with pictures supplied by Amadi and Pacific Collection. For our readers who are unfamiliar with this group of firms, Amadshah and Alex Ahmadi run Ariana, Zabi, Zubair and Murtazah Ahmadi run Amadi, and Fred Hazin runs Pacific Collection. They all grew up together..."

Roz Rustigian is still the chair of "The Initiative To Educate Afghan Women" and the board and supporters continue their efforts to provide a...

From the New York Times,  December 13, 2011: The Life Report: James Opie By David Brooks The following Life Report was submitted in response to my column...

Excellent video on rug making, produced and filmed in Afghanistan by Label-Step a fair trade (NGO) organization. Look at the dresses of the women. Early in the video is a good close-up of women tying a symmetrical knot typical of Afghan weaving.

A film created by a local Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) at a site outside Kabul, showing the steps in making a hand-knotted rug on a small scale.

Oriental Rug Review, 1993 "We had the pleasure of meeting George and Helen O'Bannon in 1964 when he worked for the American friends of the Middle east, an influential organization in which we had a strong interest."

Oriental Rug Review, 1995 "These are not the people who present glossy ads proclaiming their own superiority, who reserve to themselves and to their companies all credit for producing beautiful rugs, but rather those producers who live and work in the country of origin of the rugs."

February 1989 "Often our thinking becomes most muddled and imprecise around just those issues on which we feel most confident. Particularly during the last several decades, the term tribal rugs has come into wide usage both as a description to set certain pieces apart from urban rugs and to give them a particular cachet, a stamp of special significance."

Oriental Rug Review, 1993 "There are no other people on earth for whom rugs, rug making, and the whole culture of rugs are more central to their existence and perception than the Turkomans. There is scarcely a Turkoman family to be found, at least among those from Afghanistan, where the women don't weave and the men are not involved in rug trade in some way."