Notes from a Long Afternoon
Purple for the ground, and then whatever came:
a diamond, a comb, a pair of eyes,
an orange thought in the second metre.
Four metres of her mind, unhurried.
A four-metre Boujad is a rare thing, because Boujad looms are mostly small and Boujad women mostly made rugs for rooms the size of their own. This one was made in the 1960s for a bigger house or a bigger idea. The ground is purple, deep and a little uneven as hand-dyed wool is, and across its length the weaver set down one motif after another, diamonds, combs, small bright shapes in magenta and orange, the way you jot things down over a long afternoon and only see the pattern at the end.
Sixty years have gone over it and left it better: the purple has the depth of old velvet and the low pile lies dead flat. It is a runner for a wide hallway, a rug for a long studio, or four metres of colour down the middle of a quiet room.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.