In early June, I spent a week traveling with two Kurdish carpet sellers from Turkey.   Abi, who currently resides in San Francisco, California, and Muzo, in Tuscon Arizona, invited me on the last leg of their road trip.

When I joined them out in the Midwest, Abi had been traveling for six months unfurling and selling rugs and kilims—at first accompanied by his brother, and later by Muzo.  They had set out in January from the West Coast, crisscrossing the U.S., making deliveries and selling carpets to customers.  Among the stops were small towns and big cities in Iowa, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, New York—and wherever else they could make a sale. 

The carpet trade is a profitable one--the right rug commands high prices in the U.S.--but Muzo says transactions are more difficult here:    “Sometimes, we bring the carpets at their feet, but everybody makes a hard bargain.  We have a saying in Turkey: The rug is heavy in their place.  If you move it to another place, it is not so heavy.”

Armed with ipod, computer, bags of fruit, and a truck loaded with carpets, the pair took turns driving day and night, killing time singing songs, until arriving in a metropolitan city.  From there, they’d camp out at a hotel for short stretches of time, and drive out to make regional sales, before hitting the road again. 

During my sojourn in St. Louis and Chicago, the carpet sellers wanted to learn as much about me as I about them.   Abi, the charming flirt, talked about growing up as a Kurd in Turkey, learning English from the tourists in Istanbul, a city he likened to New York. He lectured me on the allure of Turkish men, and described life in San Francisco.   Muzo, the more soft-spoken one of the two, was prone to fits of laughter—the hardest one when I tried fresh ayran, a salty yogurt drink popular in Turkey, for the first time.

--Alicia Ng