Every Lantern in the Big Tent
Red for the fire, purple for the hour after,
orange where the lamps were hung.
She tied the whole feast into the wool,
three fingers deep, so the cold could not get in.
The big tent went up for a wedding the autumn the walnuts came in late, and every family on the high ground above Khenifra brought a rug to lay on the earth inside it, so that by nightfall the floor was a field of colour and the lanterns swung above it from the ridge pole. This is the kind of rug that was made for that night. Nearly four metres of it, tied three fingers deep in wool the women dyed in the courtyard for a week beforehand, red going into purple going into orange, a lattice of diamonds holding it all together the way a good hostess holds a room. It is heavy, and it was always meant to be, because up there the cold comes through the ground, and a thin rug is no rug at all.
Forty winters have taken the shout out of the colours and left them talking quietly to each other. It lives now in a long room with tall windows, under a table where people stay late, and when the lamps go on in the evening the orange in it wakes up first.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.