On Wrapping, Slowly
A gift is opened in seconds. It is wrapped in minutes. Those minutes are a gift too, one the receiver never sees but always feels. In praise of wrapping slowly.
Watch anyone open a present. The paper tears, the ribbon falls away, and in four or five seconds it is over. The person who wrapped it may have spent twenty minutes on that paper: choosing it, folding it, smoothing the corners, tying the knot twice because the first bow was lopsided.
It can seem like wasted effort. It is not. How we wrap a gift is part of what we are saying when we give it.
Excellence in small things
"Allah has enjoined goodness to everything," the Prophet ﷺ said (Sahih Muslim 1955). The word in Arabic is ihsan: doing a thing well, and beautifully. What is striking is the context. He said it about slaughtering an animal, telling people to sharpen the blade and spare the animal pain. If ihsan reaches even there, it certainly reaches a sheet of paper and a length of ribbon.
Wrapping slowly is a small, daily way of practising it: the difference between handing someone a thing and presenting it.
The most honoured wrapping on earth
Every year, on the first of Muharram, the Kaaba is dressed in a new Kiswah. Its verses are printed onto black silk and then embroidered by hand in gold and silver thread at a complex in Makkah where more than 200 craftsmen and administrators work.
Year after year it is covered, beautifully, because that is how honour is shown. Every carefully wrapped gift is a tiny echo of the same instinct.
Cloth around the Qur'an
In many Muslim homes the mushaf lives wrapped in cloth: a velvet cover, a stitched case, sometimes simply a clean scarf, and it is kept on a high shelf. Nobody needs to explain why. The covering says this is precious before anyone opens it. Children learn reverence from that cloth long before they learn to read what it protects.
The cloth that outlived the gift
In the Ottoman world, things of value were often bundled in a bohça, a square wrapping cloth, sometimes richly embroidered. Museums now keep them as works of art. The RISD Museum in the United States holds one made in Istanbul or Bursa in the 1600s or early 1700s, silk embroidery on linen.
Whatever that cloth once wrapped is long gone. The wrapping survived. There is a lesson in that: the care you put around a gift can last longer than the gift itself.
Trays dressed like brides
Bengali weddings have their own version. Before the wedding, at the gaye holud, the groom's family sends tattwa: gifts of fish, sweets and clothing, dressed so elaborately that they become a spectacle of their own. Sometimes a fish is decorated as a bride and groom. As one account puts it, "their significance lies in the intricate artistry of their decoration rather than the monetary value."
That sentence could be the motto of this essay.
How to wrap slowly
- Choose the paper, or the cloth, with the person in mind. Plain kraft, heavy cream, or a square of fabric they can keep and reuse, like a bohça.
- Fold, do not crumple. Run your thumbnail along each crease. Sharp edges look deliberate.
- One ribbon, tied well. Cotton, linen or silk in a single colour. One good bow beats three curls of plastic.
- Add something living. A sprig of mint, a stem of jasmine, a dried rose from the garden. It says this was made today, for you.
- Write the card by hand. Two or three lines are enough. Our Eid cards and Rabbana Dua Cards were made for exactly this.
- Say Bismillah as you tie the knot. Make a du'a for the person, in your own words. They will never know. Allah will.
A last word
In a world that arrives in brown boxes, a gift someone clearly took their time over is rare. That is precisely why it matters. The minutes you spend wrapping are not lost. They are the part of the gift that says you were worth the time.
Words by Rashid Shahriar, Founder & Head of Designs
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Read next: The Manners of Giving · What Is Kiswah? The Story Behind the Cloth of the Kaaba · Why We Chose Attar
