After several days of gloomy, drizzly weather in Islamabad, a brilliant sunny morning arrived with the sort of azure skies that we never get in Beijing. So I took an outing.

I ended up at Jinnah Super, a market area, where I recalled that a journalist friend had suggested a rug merchant. I strolled in and promptly got called on the carpet, as it were. I know a little about rugs – but only enough to be dangerous.

So I decided to shoot this little consumer video of the father and son team at Herat Carpets describing how to tell an inferior carpet.

The family hails from Herat in far western Afghanistan, source of some of the finest wool tribal carpets and kilims in this area of the world. A couple of years ago, the family explained to a Time Magazine correspondent how to distinguish a good handwoven carpet. Here is what the subsequent article said:

“Get down on your knees and scrape a 4-cm patch of carpet with your fingernails about a dozen times. A small pile of fluff indicates poor-quality wool and a limited lifespan. Then briskly rub a section of the rug with the flat of your hand. The palm should come up shiny – lightly greased from the wool’s natural lanolin and a good indication of how well the carpet will age.”

So watch for yourself how 60-year-old Hajji Sufi Abdul Wahid does this while his 25-year-old son Abdul Tawab explains in English.

Mr. Wahid, a second-generation carpet merchant, came to Islamabad from his native Afghanistan more than two decades ago during the Soviet military occupation of his country. He still gets carpets from some of the best tribal clan producers in his homeland, including woolen carpets made decades ago.

Tawab and his father kept saying that the colors can grow deeper in a genuine carpet with the passage of time. It has something to do, I gather, from the natural dyes used in the tribal carpets. Among the vegetable sources for the dyes are pomegranates and red onions.

A little later, wallet suitably lightened, I walked outside only to see men sitting on stools in the sunshine repairing worn carpets. Here’s another short video.

As a first time visitor to Pakistan, let me offer a few impressions. First, the bookstores, the glorious bookstores. One can find an increasing number of English-language bookstores in China. Beijing has the Bookworm and the basement of the huge Xinhua bookstore in Xidan (although don’t go looking for any critical books on China there). A decent bookstore is also a few blocks from our former McClatchy bureau in Tokyo in the Yomiuri Shimbun building. Seoul’s got a good bookstore or two. And Hong Kong has Page One books, one of the better booksellers in this part of the world.  But I have been pretty surprised at the variety of books in Islamabad. In fact, I have already been back to Saeed Book Bank twice. There’s a really big selection. Here’s a photo: