Apricot Season, Three Metres Long
June, and the roof is orange with fruit,
halved and laid out face to the sun.
She carried that colour downstairs
and tied it the length of the house.
There is a week in early summer when every flat roof around Boujad turns the colour of apricots. The fruit is halved and laid out on cloths to dry, and from the next roof over the whole town looks painted. She would have been up there turning the halves in the morning and at the loom by the heat of the day, and the colour came with her. This is a long rug, three and a half metres, the length of a Boujad house from the door to the far wall, filled with peach and apricot and a rose that leans towards the pink the town is known for, in shapes that lengthen as they go, the way a thing does when it is woven over months.
It is unusually heavy for a Boujad, seventeen kilos of close-knotted wool, and the pile has worn to a short, soft nap. It runs now down the hall of a London townhouse, front door to kitchen, the first warm thing you step on when you come in from the rain.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.