Morning Laid Over Night
Purple first, the whole of the night in it.
Then pink, laid over, the way day comes to the ridge.
She tied them both in one winter
and did not choose between them.
On the high ground around Khenifra the day does not arrive, it is laid down. The night is purple, a real purple, the kind you can see, and then along the eastern ridge a line of pink appears and widens and comes down the slopes like a cloth being unrolled, and for a while both are on the ground at once. A Zaïan woman tied this rug the winter she had both colours in the house, and rather than choose, she put them together: purple underneath, in the ground and the big diamonds, and pink laid over it in the lines and the small shapes, so that the whole field looks like the hour before the sun clears the hill.
It is a compact rug, a little over two and a half metres, thick enough to kneel on, and forty years have softened both colours just enough that they no longer argue. It belongs at the foot of a bed, or in the room where you drink the first coffee of the day.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.