Kilim

When I arrived in Marrakech at 3 a.m. flat #187 was “under construction.”

It was a cinderblock shell with three rooms, a squat toilet and small kitchen.

Howling Wolf, the word machine, had a table.

Everything was under construction in a country where eight hours seemed twenty-four and you became a minor character, director and audience in a film called, Beyond Wild With Beautiful Intensity. You adapt, adjust and evolve.

Hustlers shuffled strangers back and forth. They were the jugglers. I was the ball in the Marrakech souk.

A boy led me through a maze of narrow blind trash-filled alleys to the tanneries. He handed me off to a man who took me past workers standing in cement vats of urine and solvents cleaning leather skins and cisterns of multi-hued colors for dyeing. He shuffled me to Taib selling carpets.

“I have worked in the tanneries for thirty-seven years,” said the 47-year-old purveyor of kilim carpets in his showroom overlooking the vats. “We start at 5 a.m. and work to dusk.”

He described the workmanship of a silk kilim as staff unrolled carpet after carpet. Intricate blends were reds, oranges, blues, and greens.

“These are made by Berbers 1400 kilometers to the south. They bring them here and we trade them leather. The silk comes from Mali, South Africa and Europe. Every kilim tells a happening-story.”

Small ones sold for $150, 4x6 carpets ran $300. “We take all credit cards and of course cash.”

His salesmen herded French tourists into an adjacent room for a sales pitch.

“I don’t sell in the souk,” he said. “The taxes are too high and they pass the extra cost onto the tourist.”

After Taib the tannery guide expected something for his troubles.

The boy appeared from shadows with his hand out.

ART

Adventure, Risk, Transformation - A Memoir