The Thickest Rug on the Plain
Boujad rugs are thin, everybody knows that.
Everybody but her.
Four centimetres of peach wool,
tied for a bed, not for a floor.
Boujad rugs are thin. That is the first thing anyone who knows them will tell you: the plains are hot, the weavers keep the pile short, and a Boujad is a thing you can roll up under one arm. Then there is this one. Four centimetres of pile, sixteen kilos of wool in a rug not three metres long, so dense that it stands up off the floor like a cushion. Somebody on the plain decided, one winter, that she wanted a bed and not a floor covering, and tied this with the patience of a mountain weaver and the colours of a plains one, peach for the ground and other colours set into it in the loose Boujad way. It must have taken her most of a season.
The pile has kept nearly all its depth, which in a Boujad is a small marvel. It lives now in a bedroom under a skylight, where the peach takes the light from above and the wool is deep enough to sit on with your back to the bed and a book.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.