"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 52"
The sun dipped low over the coastal plains of Bangladesh, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple as fishing boats returned to shore, their hulls loaded with silver fish. Su Yao's car rolled through villages where bamboo huts stood on stilts, and women in sharis dyed in vibrant blues and greens wove jute fibers into coarse sacks by the roadside. In the courtyard of a centuries-old mosque in Dhaka, a group of weavers sat cross-legged on woven mats, their fingers moving in a blur as they worked on handlooms strung with fine cotton threads. Their leader, a woman with a white dupatta draped over her head and hands calloused from decades of weaving, named Fatima Begum, looked up as they approached, holding a piece of Muslin—a fabric so fine it could pass through a ring. "You've come for the Muslin," she said, her Bengali laced with reverence, gesturing to bolts of the legendary cloth folded neatly on a wooden table.
The Bengali people of Bangladesh have woven Muslin for over 2,000 years, a craft once so prized that it was called "woven air" by Mughal emperors and traded across the Silk Road. Made from the fibers of the phuti karpas (a rare cotton plant), Muslin was reserved for royalty—Mughal empresses wore it as gossamer veils, and European kings used it for ceremonial robes. The weaving process is a marvel of precision: each thread is spun to a thickness of 15 microns (finer than a human hair), and a single sari requires 500 hours of work. Patterns, often subtle floral motifs or geometric grids, are woven using extra threads, creating designs that appear and disappear depending on the light. Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this delicate craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Bengali heritage while adding strength to the fragile cotton fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "perfection" and "innovation" was as different as the delta's humidity and the ocean's salt.
Fatima Begum's granddaughter, Ayesha, a 26-year-old weaver who also researched textile history at Dhaka University, held up a Muslin scarf with a pattern of tiny jasmine flowers. "This is jali work," she said, holding it up to the light so the flowers seemed to float in air. "My great-grandmother wove it for the last nawab's daughter. Each flower is made of 40 extra threads—one wrong move, and the whole design unravels. You don't just weave Muslin—you surrender to it."
Su Yao's team had brought computerized looms and synthetic cotton blends, intending to mass-produce a "Muslin-inspired" fabric using their seaweed-metal blend for luxury fashion houses. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-woven floral patterns, the weavers fell silent, their wooden shuttles hanging motionless. Fatima Begum's husband, Haji Mohammad, a 70-year-old master weaver with a long white beard and a Quran resting beside his loom, stood and shook his head. "You think machines can capture the rooh (spirit) of phuti karpas?" he said, his voice trembling with anger. "Muslin is woven with ilm (knowledge) passed from mother to daughter for 100 generations. Your metal has no knowledge—it is a stone."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Bengali weavers cultivate phuti karpas in the fertile soil of the Meghna delta, harvesting the cotton by hand at dawn when the dew makes the fibers easier to separate. The cotton is cleaned with water from the Padma River, which is said to "soften the threads like a mother's touch," and spun on bamboo spindles during the monsoon, when the humidity prevents static. Weaving is done in the cool of night, With the light from the oil lamp, so as not to stain the delicate fabric with my sweat.The seaweed-metal blend, despite its organic origins, was viewed as an abomination. "Your thread comes from the salt sea, which burns our phuti karpas," Fatima Begum said, placing the sample on a stone. "It will never know the patience of a Bengali weaver."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the natural starches used to strengthen Muslin, turning them brittle and causing the cotton fibers to break. "It destroys the nazakat (delicacy)," Ayesha said, holding up a ruined swatch where the jasmine pattern had frayed. "Our Muslin lasts for centuries, softening like a memory. This will crumble like old paper."
Then disaster struck: monsoon floods swept through the delta, submerging phuti karpas fields and damaging the weavers' workshops. The stored cotton, kept in earthen jars, was soaked and mildewed, and the wooden looms—some carved with verses from the Quran—were warped by water. With the wedding season approaching (when Muslin is in highest demand), the weavers faced ruin. Haji Mohammad, performing a prayer ceremony by the river to honor the water spirit, blamed the team for disturbing the balance. "You brought something from the deep sea to our sacred delta," he said, as he scattered rose petals on the waves. "Now the river is angry, and it takes back what we've made."
That night, Su Yao sat with Fatima Begum in her bamboo hut, where a clay stove simmered with hilsa curry, filling the air with the scent of mustard oil and turmeric. The walls were hung with Muslin saris passed down through four generations, and a small altar held a copy of the Quran and a sprig of jasmine. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping cha (tea) sweetened with jaggery. "We came here thinking we could 'preserve' your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Fatima Begum smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of pitha (rice cake). "The floods are not your fault," she said. "The river gives life and takes it away—that is its nature. My grandmother used to say that broken threads can be reknotted, like broken hearts. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that Muslin can survive, even when the delta changes. The young people buy synthetic fabrics. We need to show them the value of what their grandmothers made."
Su Yao nodded, hope blooming like water lilies after the flood. "What if we start over? We'll help drain the fields, replant the phuti karpas, and repair the looms. We'll learn to weave Muslin by hand, by lamplight. We won't copy your royal patterns. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your jasmine with our seaweed, honoring both your delta and the ocean. And we'll let Haji Mohammad bless the metal thread with a prayer, so it carries baraka (blessing)."
Ayesha, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her sari rustling. "You'd really learn to spin phuti karpas to 15 microns? It takes years to master—your eyes will strain, your fingers will cramp."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the poems you recite while weaving. Respect means speaking the language of Muslin."
Over the next four months, the team immersed themselves in Bengali life. They helped build earthen dikes to protect the new phuti karpas fields from future floods, their hands blistered from stacking mud bricks. They traveled with Haji Mohammad to the Padma River at dawn to collect water for cleaning cotton, learning to say a prayer before dipping their buckets. They sat by lamplight in the weaving sheds, spinning thread until their fingers trembled, as the women sang bhatiali (boat songs) about the river and loss. "The thread must be spun with the rhythm of the tide," Fatima Begum said, showing Su Yao how to adjust her spindle. "Too fast, and it breaks; too slow, and it thickens. Like life—patience is everything."
They learned to weave jali patterns, their progress slow but steady as Haji Mohammad counted the threads with a magnifying glass. "Each jasmine petal needs seven threads," he said, his gnarled fingers guiding Su Yao's shuttle. "One less, and it's not a jasmine. Perfection is in the details." They dyed small sections of Muslin with natural pigments—turmeric for yellow, indigo for blue—using techniques Ayesha had researched in ancient texts, their breath held as the fabric absorbed the color like a sponge.
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and starch, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of tulsi (holy basil) extract and ghee, a mixture Bengalis use to preserve sacred texts. The basil sealed the metal, preventing brittleness, while the ghee added a subtle sheen that Fatima Begum said "made the thread glow like moonlight." "It's like giving the thread a Bengali soul," she said, showing Haji Mohammad a swatch where the jasmine pattern now shimmered against the metal's faint glow.
Fiona, inspired by the way the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta meets the Bay of Bengal, designed a new pattern called nadi o samudra (river and sea), merging jasmine motifs with wave shapes in seaweed-metal thread. The flowers gradually dissolve into waves, symbolizing the delta's union with the ocean. "It honors your rivers and our tides," she said, and Haji Mohammad nodded, running his hand over the fabric as if blessing it. "Allah made both fresh and salt water," he said. "This cloth is a bridge between them."
As the phuti karpas plants matured and the looms hummed with activity, the weavers held a celebration at the mosque, displaying their new textiles and feasting on biryani and firni. They unveiled their first collaborative piece: a Muslin sari with the nadi o samudra pattern, its cotton fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that caught the light like sunlight on water, and traditional jasmine borders that seemed to float in air.
Fatima Begum draped the sari over Su Yao's shoulders, her hands trembling with pride. "This cloth has two breaths," she said, as the weavers clapped. "One from our delta, one from your sea. But both breathe the same air—the air of patience."
As the team's car drove away from Dhaka, Ayesha ran alongside, waving a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and she tossed it in: a scrap of Muslin so fine it was almost invisible, stitched with a tiny jasmine and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in a lotus leaf. "To remember us by," read a note in Bengali and English. "Remember that even the finest thread is stronger when woven with others."
Su Yao clutched the package as the delta faded into the distance, its green fields merging with the blue of the bay. She thought of the hours spent spinning by lamplight, the bhatiali songs sung to the river, the way the metal thread had finally learned to dance with the phuti karpas fibers. The Bengalis had taught her that tradition isn't about fragility—it's about strength hidden in softness, a resilience that comes from knowing when to yield and when to hold fast.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Igorot team: photos of Amara holding their collaborative abel blanket at a terrace festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new thread—Bengali delta and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a call to prayer echoed across the water, its melody a reminder of faith and patience. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless cultures to learn from, countless threads to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—honoring the hands that had woven before, respecting the land that sustained them—the tapestry would only grow more delicate, more strong, a testament to the beauty of what happens when different threads become one.