After the catastrophic earthquake that devastated Türkiye’s Hatay province many of the staff misplaced their properties, and each the accountant and the vet disappeared together with their households.
Despite these tragic circumstances, a ray of hope emerged within the type of “the silk of peace,” which performed a task in forming new bonds.
“I had to convince myself to start up again,” says Emel Duman, rolling between her fingers a small and extremely high quality ball of fibers.
The yellow cocoons, with which she spins and weaves pure silk, have been her life’s venture.
Duman’s dwelling was destroyed within the February catastrophe and she or he lives together with her household in a silk cooperative workshop on the heights overlooking Antakya.
Following the quake, about 100 individuals who had misplaced all the pieces crammed into the constructing for shelter.
They had survived however at the least 50,000 folks died throughout southeastern Türkiye.
“Apart from the workshop, everything collapsed. It’s difficult to start over,” says the 57-year-old.
Seventy folks had been employed by the Apollon cooperative, largely ladies usually working from dwelling.
Only a handful have come again, together with the designer who had already moved in to stay.
When Duman had first began the business 25 years earlier than, Hatay – on one of many silk routes of antiquity – had misplaced the refined manufacturing abilities. Weaving continued however with white cocoons imported from China.
Yellow cocoon
Hatay’s particular cocoon is yellowish and Duman obsessively tracked down the final place breeding the bombyx mori home silk moth across the metropolis of Antakya.
Her husband, Fikret, says she talks to the bugs.
“It’s like, with plant species, you have to fight against the loss of biodiversity,” she says.
On dry and rocky land Fikret and Emel planted their first mulberry bushes, fragile crops which want watering day and night time. The couple had water introduced in by truck till a nicely was sunk.
Today, the 15,000 bushes nourish hundreds of white worms, saved within the shade on giant wood platforms. If you hear rigorously, you possibly can hear the worms munching the contemporary mulberry leaves.
“It’s an orchestral symphony, the most beautiful music in the world,” says Fikret after spreading out extra freshly picked leaves.
Emel lets nature do its work. The silkworm egg hatches a caterpillar which finally pierces a gap via the cocoon it has spun and flutters off as a moth.
Working with sericulture or silk manufacturing specialists from Hatay’s Mustafa Kemal University and from Izmir, Duman heard of “the silk of peace”, or ahimsa silk, an Indian time period for silk produced with out ache.
“Industrial (production) boils the cocoon to kill the worm,” she explains.
At the cooperative every cocoon is stretched out to a thread of as much as 1,700 meters (5,577 ft) of silk, says her 32-year-old daughter Tuğçe, who studied textiles and design.
“But all of it cannot be used because of the hole which damages the filament.”
Marriage trousseau
Silk manufacturing steadily declined in Hatay after the Ottoman Empire within the early twentieth century.
Emel recollects how brides would historically obtain a silk trousseau for his or her marriage.
She misplaced nephews and cousins to the quake that was “so strong I thought no one had survived” and was then caught up serving to households who wanted help.
But Emel struggled to kickstart silk manufacturing once more.
She discovered her personal assist from The International Organization for Migration (IOM) which despatched Syrian refugees to work at Apollon.
Now Emel is searching for official recognition for the “peace silk of Hatay” and has filed for a protected designation of origin.
About 350,000 folks labored in 3,000 clothes and textile companies within the provinces hit by the Feb. 6 earthquake.
Today, the numbers have been halved, in accordance with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which is operating a marketing campaign to recruit ladies.
Source: www.dailysabah.com
