The First Night in the New House
Violet, because the cold months are long,
and a floor should hold some of the evening.
She tied it close, then closer,
and carried it over the threshold first.
Before the furniture, before the kettle, the rug goes in. On the high ground above Khenifra a new house is nothing until a woman has unrolled a Beni M'Guild across the floor of the main room, and the one she chose was violet, the colour the sky turns in the ten minutes after the sun has dropped behind the cedars. It was knotted for cold: for a room where the walls are stone and the winter gets in anyway, where you need something between your feet and the ground that was made by someone who understood February.
Forty years of that room have pressed the pile close and even, the way a path is pressed by walking, and the violet has eased toward the soft side of aubergine. It is nearly four metres long. In a tall white living room with one long sofa and a wall of books, it does what it did the first night: it makes the room a place to stay.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.