Lines Drawn Against the Wind
The wind comes over the plateau with nothing to stop it.
She answered with straight lines,
dark on red, row on row,
and the floor held its ground.
The Zaïan plateau is open country, and the wind that crosses it in winter has nothing to slow it down between the Atlantic and the mountains. The women who weave here answer with geometry: straight lines, rows of diamonds, nothing that wavers. This rug is red, fifteen kilos of it, with dark and cream lines drawn across the field in the firm hand the Zaïan are known for, and it has the close, low pile of a rug that was walked on daily in a working household for forty years. The wool has gone smooth and supple, the red has deepened, and the lines look, if anything, more decided than the day they were tied.
It is a rug for a room with structure: a dining room with a long table and bentwood chairs, an office with a big desk, a hallway in a modernist house. Order on the floor, and the rest can relax.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.