Embroidery's Warrior Princess

Julie McCarthy/NPR

Do not get in the way of Princess Mussarat Ahmed Zeb!  She runs three vocational training centers for women in northwest Pakistan. The centers teach women the dying art of Swati embroidery, and offer them a safe way to make a decent living.

She started her first training center while the area was under Taliban control.  She is providing women with jobs so they are not reduced to begging.  She is helping women consider the futures of their daughters in a society where even the embroidery designs tell them they are trapped.  Ahmed Zeb describes a traditional motif called punjara, or the cage, in which a woman depicted as a flower sits inside the cage.  Ahmed Zeb and the embroiders of the Swat Valley are transforming lives, creating jobs for women....and are hopefully on their way to develoing a new motif for Swati embroidery.