Apricots on the Roof
Late summer, the fruit laid out to dry,
the whole roof gone the colour of it.
She kept that colour all winter,
knot by knot, against the snow.
In the villages above Khenifra the apricots are dried on the flat roofs in August, and for a few weeks the whole douar glows that one colour from above. This rug is that colour kept. Orange and apricot ground, three centimetres deep, with a field of diamonds drawn over it in brown as if someone had traced the shadows of the fruit. It was knotted in the 1970s and it was knotted to be slept on: the pile is thick enough that a cold floor stops existing.
Half a century has done what time does to good wool. The orange has deepened to something warmer and quieter, the brown has gone soft, and the whole surface has the sheen of a thing that has been loved by feet. In a modern room with white walls and black steel it is the one warm thing, and it is enough.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.