Five Metres of Raspberry
A loom as long as the house,
a red with fruit in it.
She wove for a room that held everyone
and left no corner of it cold.
The Zaïan are the Beni M'Guild's cousins, the people who held the hills around Khenifra against the French in 1914 and have never been shy about anything, least of all colour. This rug is five metres long and more than two wide, a raspberry red that has fruit and sun in it, knotted three centimetres deep with dark and cream diamonds marching down its length in the strong, certain geometry the Zaïan are known for. A rug this size was woven for the biggest room in a house, the one where the whole family and every guest sat down together. Forty years of such gatherings have made the wool dense and yielding, and the raspberry has ripened rather than faded.
There are very few rooms it will fit and they are all worth having: a great hall, an artist's studio, the long salon of a riad or a Paris apartment with doors flung open between two rooms.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.