The Hour the Cedars Go Violet
Just before dark the whole ridge turns purple,
trees, snow, the smoke above the roofs.
She watched it every evening of her life
and then she wove it, so it would stay.
Ask anyone who has spent a winter above Khenifra and they will tell you about the hour. The sun drops behind the ridge, the cedars lose their green, and for twenty minutes the whole mountain is one shade of violet. The Beni M'Guild dye their wool to that exact colour, and this weaver tied it deeper than most, three and a half centimetres, a pile you sink into, with pale diamonds floating across it like the last patches of snow. It was a sleeping rug for a family, and it has been slept on, sat on, rolled up for summer and unrolled again for forty years. The wool has gone soft as moss and the purple has deepened rather than faded.
In a bedroom with white walls and linen the colour of oatmeal, this is the one thing the eye will remember. Bare feet first thing in the morning, and the day begins kindly.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.