Aside from oil, the Oriental rug is the most recognizable commodity of the Middle East. The manufacture and trade of this ancient craft has survived centuries of upheaval and remains a cultural pillar. The carpets' variations in design, texture, color and pattern are as diverse as the groups that manufacture them.

In The Carpet Wars - From Kabul to Baghdad: A Ten-Year Journey Along Ancient Trade Routes, author Christopher Kremmer explores these many groups by traveling along the old Silk Road, following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, the Mongols and Marco Polo. Along the way, he details the rug business as well as the subtleties of the Islamic cultures in which it thrives.

As he puts it: "The itinerant merchants in my living room unrolled their treasures, revealing not just carpets, but an entire civilisation."

Australian native Kremmer, who is also the South Asia correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, spent a decade traveling Afghanistan, Kashmir, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Tajikistan on his rug pilgrimage. His journeys take him not only to the markets where the best carpets are sold, but also to locations far removed from the safety of the campfire light.

His ability to convey emotion in these encounters captures the surreal danger inherent in them.

"We had entered the valley through the Jawahar tunnel that burrows kilometers under the Pir Panjaal Range, and whose entrance is marked by a sign that reads: 'Go slow and let your life be as long as this tunnel.' Hearing the gunfire we abandoned the vehicle and ran for cover to a sandbagged bunker, where a pukka Indian Army man blocked our entry, insisting we sign a guestbook. After an anxious delay among staccato bursts of automatic rifle fire, he produced a neat ledger. In the column marked 'Reason for Visit' somebody had written: 'To save life.'"

Conversely, his depiction of Esfahan is one that even Iranian tourism authorities would probably find pleasing. Kremmer's portrait of a teahouse captures its warmth, while not turning a blind eye to the restrictive nature of this particular expression of Islamic culture.

"Here couples courted, reclining on carpeted benches under an open sky and took turns on the water pipe. The romance was traditional - no embracing in public - but there was much airy gesticulation with hands that speak and eyes that glisten; perhaps a couplet or two. The twin minarets of Imam Mosque were beaded with fairy lights. ... Between them, private pleasures and public order merged ineffably on the lawns."

Kremmer skillfully depicts the people he encountered during his journeys. He breathes life into such souls as Habib, a man with a penchant for Pakistani transsexuals, and Tariq, the Tajik carpet dealer he encounters no fewer than three times in as many locations. Likewise, his description of the Taliban and those caught in their path evokes a chilling recounting of their rapid advance.

Kremmer made many trips to Afghanistan, where he had first arrived in the early 1990s to interview Soviet-backed President Mohammed Najibullah. He was present to witness the Mujahideen seize Kabul in 1992, and was an onlooker as the Taliban repeated the act in 1996. He returned in November 2001, after the intense Allied bombing campaign, to find the now crumbling Afghan capital barely a shell of the cosmopolitan past he had seen during previous visits.

Of the Taliban's capture of Mazar in the late '90s, he writes: "When the Taliban blazed into Mazar the following afternoon, it was in attack Toyotas, several thousand men seated in sixes and sevens with machine guns mounted in the back. They had driven four hundred kilometers from Bagis, many having spontaneously joined up with the victorious convoy as it swept through towns along the way. Suddenly they were all 'holy warriors of Islam'."

The Carpet Wars is a timely book, scholarly without being dry. Kremmer shares the sadness and joy of a confluence of people at the rug dealer's shop, while exploring the role foreign policy has had on shaping the decidedly anti-American sentiment felt by those who have experienced its collateral damage. It is in these smaller theaters, he asserts, that world events first come into play.

If there is any doubt that the thread of this ancient culture weaves its way around the globe, one has only to recall the events of Sept. 11. Kremmer's account, as much memoir as travelogue, can only help us in our sudden search to understand.

Stephen Millin is a free-lance writer living in Denver.