Where the Wedding Was Danced
Three days of drums in the courtyard.
The rug came out of the chest for it
and went back smelling of orange blossom and dust,
and a little flatter in the middle.
A Beni M'Guild wedding lasts days, and the rugs come out of the chests for it, the best ones, the red ones, and go down in the courtyard end to end so that the women can dance barefoot on wool under the strung lights while the drums go on past midnight. This rug has that in it. You can tell from the middle, where the pile is a little lower than at the edges, the mark of many feet in one place over many years, and from the red, a rust red with the warmth of a courtyard wall in late sun, which was chosen for exactly that kind of night. It went back in the chest afterwards smelling of orange blossom water and dust, and came out again the next time, and so on for forty years.
It is wide for a Beni M'Guild, more than two metres, and the lattice sits in the field with a looseness that suggests the weaver was in a good mood. It would be happy under a dining table where people stay late, or in a sitting room where the rug is allowed to be the warm thing and the walls stay white.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.