Harvest Colour, Every Thread
Yellow from the crocus fields,
orange where the sun hit the dye,
red for the borders, blue for luck,
and the diamonds marching down the middle like a procession.
In November the fields around Taznakht turn purple with saffron crocus, and the women who pick the stigmas before dawn are the same women who weave. This rug is what they weave in. Saffron yellow filling the ground, orange and red in the great chain of diamonds down its centre, blue and green picked out in the small motifs between, and the fine tight bands of the Ait Ouaouzguite along both ends. It was knotted around 1980 and it is as exact as a drawing on graph paper, which is the Taznakht way.
Forty years have warmed the yellow to honey and softened nothing else. The pile is two centimetres and even. It is a rug for a room that wants waking up: a dining room, a kitchen with a long table, a hallway that was grey until this arrived.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.