In Ghardaïa, carpets are not made in a day. Sometimes a single piece takes four months, in the hands of four women.
The M’Zab valley is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and not only for its ancient cities. The looms the women still work on today have not changed in a hundred years.
The patterns are family inheritances — daughters learn them from their mothers, and each motif tells a story: water, mountain, animal, star. The dyes come from plants, the wool from local sheep.
I asked one of the women how she chooses what a carpet will look like. She shook her head and laughed: "The carpet decides. I just follow it."
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