About Us > News & Press > May 29, 2003

May 29, 2003
By Fred Bouchard
Boston Globe

AT HOME WITH An aura of austere simplicity surrounds Mahmud and Zeba Jafri's modern yellow house with 20-foot ceilings, sharp eaves, shallow bays, and vast planes of wood slats. Set back a kilometer from Dover's Center Street, the house exudes a quiet charm, and an almost solemn affirmation of peace amid its temple of immense pines. The winding drive traverses a running rill. A retaining wall of huge granite slabs was transported from the dismantled town hall in Northborough. A basketball hoop, used plenty by sons Hasan and Ali, stands by the three-car garage.
Jafri owns and runs Dover Rug Company in Natick and Hanover, and oversees rug factories in India, Nepal, and his native Pakistan.

The Jafris' home life is strongly family centered. They have three teenage children (Fatima, Ali, Hasan), and keep an apartment in the house for Mahmud's mother. Abby, the family Persian cat, nuzzles our feet as we talk.

Jafri likens the carpet business to the film industry: "We take an artist's concept, a cartoon or a `script,' and make a design, take it to the weavers, who spend ages creating the rug. People may look at it for half a minute, no longer than a film trailer, and either fall in love with it or dismiss it. It's a constant challenge; the reward comes when people identify with it."

The house, designed by architect Javed Sultan in 1986, took 18 months to build. "He's designed several mosques," says Jafri of Sultan, an owner and partner of Kinoo Inc. in Cambridge, "including one of 40,000 square feet now going up in Billerica."

Eastern elements recall Jafri's ancestral home in Lahore, Pakistan (still in the family and more than 100 years old). Pointed arches outside lead to an entrance courtyard that echoes a mosque's washing fountain. Within, a foyer leads through rounded arches to a sitting room and library to the right, family rooms to the left, the kitchen straight ahead.

The vast interior, painted in pleasing pastels, contains little representational art. Wall photos show Mahmud's and Zeba's wedding, and their fathers with various heads of state and World War II Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. (Mahmud's father was in the Pakistani diplomatic corps; Zeba's father was an admiral in the Pakistani navy.) German painter Tomas Liesegang's portrait of Mahmud whimsically portrays him as an Islamic cleric with Urdu verses of poet Mustafa Zaidi painted green over Wall Street Journal stock pages.

Other Islamic touches surface discreetly. A water pipe is tucked in a corner under a painting of an imam, a Muslim prayer leader. In a suite for Jafri's mother, away visiting his siblings, stands a wooden prayer platform. On the mantle by a votive candle are framed Koranic inscriptions. Large rugs, many modeled on 17th-century patterns from Agra, India, integrate harmoniously into the ample living spaces.

Squash courts are a must for Pakistani athletes; the country's Hashim Kahn was a world champion of the game from the 1950s through the 1970s. Jafri's court is off his front hallway, sunk below floor level, a full international size, 22 feet by 32 feet and 10 feet high. Mahmud keeps his game up with friends.

His passion for maps takes up a modest wall in the den. The centerpiece, a brightly painted, 16th-century map of Pakistan in Latin script, shows the fertile Indus River valley area of Mohenjo Daro, a cradle of civilization. It's flanked by 18th-century maps of British India.

The kitchen, with dark, sumptuous, cherry wood cabinets that even mask the fridge, is warmed by bright skylights, fresh flowers, and a cheery Bachtiari rug of bright cartoon-like squares. The room opens onto a modest garden, with a flowering cherry tree and rhododendrons; beyond the lawn in an oak is nestled a sizable treehouse Mahmud built for his children. All is dwarfed by the surrounding forest.

The family's interest in education extends beyond PTO groups at their children's schools (Chickering, Dana Hall, Belmont Hill) to embrace a wider circle of philanthropy that includes Walker School and Hole-in-the-Wall Gang Summer Camps. Mahmud also is a founder of the Islamic Mosque of Hopkinton and the Interfaith Council of Dover-Sherborn, and he's a trustee for the Newton Philharmonic Orchestra, Brown Bag Opera, and WGBH.

Home improvements underway are to transform the sitting room, with fireplace and bookshelves, into a display room with chandelier and tapestries for Islamic artifacts gathered as gifts and mementos from their travels.

The house is not their only focus, though: With a dozen other families, including concert impresario Don Law and his wife, Susan, the Jafris recently purchased 60 acres across the road to preserve it from development.