Iranian female carpet weaver works her way through entrepreneurship

TEHRAN — Nahid Hosseini, 49, is a carpet weaving instructor who exports hand-woven carpets made by her trainees to European countries. Hosseini learnt carpet weaving in her childhood from her father, Seifoddin Hosseini, who himself was an exemplary carpet producer and a top carpet weaving instructor. After marrying Darab Darabi, a principal, she moved from the western city of Bijar to the north-central city of Karaj in 1991 and started studying at a seminary in 2000. She started teaching carpet weaving in 2007. Currently, she has some 1,200 trainees nationwide. She is now teaching carpet weaving at free of cost classes to women. Additionally, once women learn how to weave a carpet she will task them with weaving carpets made to orders placed by European countries such as Russia, England, Germany, etc. What’s intriguing is that Hosseini doesn’t earn much profit from exporting the carpets to other countries herself and pay almost all the money she makes from selling the carpets to women who weaved the carpets in the first place. Photo: Tehran Times/ Mojtaba Heidari