Letters from the Far East
Rose wool, and on it, in plum,
signs that are not quite writing:
a ladder, a bird's foot, a door.
Someone far away, saying something.
Talsint is as far east as Moroccan weaving goes, out towards Figuig and the Algerian line, high and dry and a long way from anywhere, and the Ait Seghrouchen women who wove there made rugs that look like nothing else: loose, long-haired, and covered in marks that sit somewhere between pattern and alphabet. This one is from the 1960s. Its ground is rose pink, and over it, in plum, run rows of small signs, ladders, combs, bird tracks, a thing like a door, as if a letter had been written in a script only one valley could read.
Sixty years have faded the rose towards old silk and left the plum marks sharp. The pile is short and the rug is light. It is a collector's piece and it knows it; it will hang on a wall as naturally as it lies on a floor, and either way people will stand in front of it and try to read it.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.