Laid Down for the Harvest Feast
The barley in, the threshing floor swept,
every cousin on the road by noon.
She unrolled nearly four metres of red
and there was still not room for all of them.
When the barley is in and the threshing floor has been swept clean, the family that owns the biggest room feeds everybody. The cousins come up from the lower villages, the shepherds come down from the summer grazing, and the rug that is kept rolled in the chest for eleven months of the year is carried out by two men and unrolled the length of the room, nearly four metres of red for people to sit along in two facing rows with the dishes between them. It was tied thick for exactly this, three centimetres of pile, so that sitting on it for a whole afternoon is a pleasure rather than a penance.
It has the weight and depth of a rug that was never meant for a hallway. The red has stayed strong, and the pile still springs back after a hand has pressed it. It has found a wide living room with low seating and a long wall of books, where it does again what it has always done, which is to make a floor into a place people gather.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.