Diamonds Set Like Stone
Red, and then more red,
the diamonds cut hard as the Zaïan hills.
Three fingers of wool,
and a winter that could not get in.
Where the Beni M'Guild let their lattices soften and wander, their Zayan cousins cut theirs like masons. Look at the diamonds on this rug: set close, edged clean, repeated down three and a half metres with the discipline of a people who built their houses of stone on a mountain that is snow for four months of the year. The red is the Zayan red, deep and even, and the pile is three centimetres, knotted to keep a family warm through nights when the water in the jar froze.
It has aged into itself. The red has settled to a warm depth that reads differently at every hour of the day, and the pile is thick, soft and whole. It is a rug for a room with good bones: tall windows, a plain fireplace, two armchairs facing each other and this red between them.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.