The Port Aransas Beach Bums

At the left is a 12th century, minaret at Bukhara, sometimes called "The Tower of Death" - It seems in about 1100 a new form of execution was started here by which the victim was tossed from the windows at the top.   -   This photo is reproduced from the Australian web-site of Hon. Victor Perton, M.P. who visited Uzbekistan in 1994. CLICK ON THE PHOTO - (SORRY - the original link is broken but see : The Wikipedia aritcle for more about this man.) DON'T FORGET THE "BACK" BUTTON TO RETURN HERE! SCROLL DOWN FOR MORE (Too much?) TEXT.

• Bokhara has on one ocasion (We lost the URL. Sorry!) been described as an olive drab city of little interest but we rather think there are a few things that pique the interest of the curious.
• At one time Bokhara was a principle seat of learning and a repository of much of the Islamic writings. It was lost to all mankind when the ancient libraries were destroyed by "The Revolution" in 1920. Thousands of years of learning, up in smoke, to say nothing of thousands of lives sacrificed.
• The punishment scheme mentioned above spread from the city but was perhaps nothing when compared to that of later Emirs of Bokhara who, in the early 1800's, were known to lower their victims into a pit filled with fleas, ticks and other vermin.


• There has always been a close association in the BeachBums mind of the "Royal Bokhara" and the Uzbeki city of Samarkand. Perhaps this is the very rug on which Sheherazade sat cross-legged before Harun-al-Raschid and related the 1001 tales that kept her from the fate of the preceding wives. Maybe it is all that's left of the magic "flying carpet" of which she so excitedly told. Perhaps the conquerors Alexander the Great or Tamerlane trod on a few of the threads that were rewoven into this little gem.



• Our little rug was described as "turn of the century" by one afficianado, but perhaps it is not. Bokhara's are a dime-a-dozen and can be found just about everywhere. Most of the older ones are the product of nomadic tribes from numerous nations, and were distributed through Bokhara, thus the name. Many modern day Bokhara's are machine-made and of little intrinsic value. Beauty,of course, is in the eye of the beholder, so if a reddish, chemically treated to a silky-textured Bokhara fits into your design scheme, then, go for it!



• Our rug is far from "silky" textured. It is, in fact, a rather tightly woven, very short knotted, beefy piece. If, indeed, Sheherazade sat cross-legged on this carpet, she got up with a pain in the rear. On the other hand, once we had an Afghan hound who favored this rug. Maybe she sensed some sort of kinship with the animals that provided the fibers. Ten years after her demise we still find a few fibers which she contributed.



• A true rug expert can tell you a lot about these rugs. The BeachBums would rather just let their imagination run away with them. When we get out of bed on a cold morning (Yes, we do have a few in the Coastal Bend area of Texas.) you can feel the heat of the desert sun on your feet. Sit back in the evening with a little wine and some music by Khatchaturian, Grieg, Borodin or Rimsky-Korsakov and you can almost see the Arabian dancing girls (Click HERE) doing their thing. Or, perhaps, Oksana Bayul will be skating just for you. Yes, it is a magic carpet!

We'll visit SAMARKAND some later month.




This is the February 1999 page.

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