Apricot Light on the High Pasture
June on the plateau, the grass already gold,
the evening the colour of split apricots.
She dyed to that light
and wove it into a floor for August.
In early summer the Zaïan drive their flocks up onto the high plateau above Khenifra, where the grass goes gold by June and the evenings turn the colour of split apricots. This rug was dyed to that light: a warm orange knotted two fingers deep across three and a half metres, with the dark diamonds of the Zaïan set into it in rows, strong and sure, the way this people draw everything. It would have been a summer floor first, laid in a tent on the plateau, then carried down for the long months in the house. Forty years later the wool has the easy softness of long use and the orange has settled into the shade of fruit left a day in the sun.
It warms a room without shouting. Think of a loft with brick walls and a steel-framed window, a leather sofa, one tall plant, and this on the floor holding it all together.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.