The Queen’s husband, King Abdullah, 62, challenged the Queen in 2005 to revive the craft at a time when there were only 15 weavers left with the skills for the complex and time-consuming process involved. Fast-forward to today and there are 167 weavers in action. The Queen, with Tiggerish energy, has launched a special school (for anyone aged 18 to 35), started her own company and has got the prisoners of the two male prisons of Bentong and Penor, in the Pahang region of Malaysia, involved. ‘It’s easy for me to revive (and to make sure it survives) – because they [the prisoners] are there eight til four. I make sure that the prisoners I teach to weave are those serving more than 10 years,’ she explains.
And might a Queen and a prison seem a little incongruous? ‘When my husband became king, he said: “I don’t allow you to go to prison anymore.” and I said: “Actually, I’m sorry. That’s my work. You cannot stop me from going in there and I just kept going.”’ And there you get a taste for the Queen’s single-mindedness. ‘I go in and out [of the prison] all the time; I sit with them; I eat with them,’ she says, ‘Nobody’s allowed to go into the prison [in Malaysia] which is why I use it as my platform, I use my position.’
