Italian translation by Elda Volterrani
As a child I often went with an aunt because, married to a wealthy man, had beautiful carpets. At home we only had mats like my Koranic school. They were comfortable and hurt her knees. Later I learned that the carpets of her aunt were real Rabati , carpets of exceptional quality and beauty, handmade in Rabat. Today are very sophisticated and expensive because they cost more and more considered works of art, evidence of an epoch and a civilization.
A Rabati is a book, a story, an invitation to travel . The sky is a deep red carpet. The flowers are blacks. They tell stories in which the reason is been set aside, on the edges, just to make a frame, because the stories are not overflowing, they are there to read, decipher, possibly to continue in the imagination, to mix dreams and meditation .
That's what I did. At first I learned to see a carpet as you learn to read in a book or reading an expression on a secret face. One day my father told me that a carpet is more than just a coating for an ungrateful soil: it is a creation that expresses aspects of culture and civilization of a people. It is not just a decorative object. Is that too, but not all. You presence time, perhaps a link with the memory of ancestors, a kind of book that leaves us, a testimony of their lives, their inner life, their inner self. It is physically the expression of their spirituality.
Watch is gently into space in a non-habitual . There is no need to hasten the gestures. We must put a distance, observe the set, then proceed to detail, slowly, without being in a hurry, without jumping obstacles. Attach an image, turn around a design or an arabesque. Feeling at ease in familiar with the subject. This requires taking time to appeal and the slow attention.
For me all the excuses were good to go by his aunt in her big house in the district of Batha, Fes. The floor was covered with a marble came from Italy. On the walls were the zéliges Fes arriving at eye level. The ceilings have wooden beams, carved, etched, painted with colors that resembled those of Rabati . I took off my shoes and entered the halls of the famous huge carpeted Rabati . I stroked it and spread on the thickness of the wool. I felt the work of the hands of thousands of hands. I felt the weight of the carpet and its impressive size. My uncle had them make up designs nineteenth century. To measure. It was a luxury that few people could afford. Then I sat on the mattress, high enough, and I stared at the traits that made the picture. For me this was the painting. The carpet gave warmth to the living room, adding elegance and prestige. Even carpets in the house were more modest, less heavy, less refined, Berber carpet handmade wool but with less and sometimes more vivid colors. Put them in the rooms of children or domestic servants. But I found them quite nice. I liked the grounds that they decorated. It was evident that they came from poor villages, which were unpretentious, which were even neglected. My parents could not even buy those. I think my mother would prefer not to have any carpet mats rather than the poor.
I had a childhood without music. We had no radio (up to my ten years) or a device to listen to records. I later measured the frustration that I had caused. When I started listening to music, I started with jazz and I had to start with only the great classical music.
I remember it now because the company, I mean the attendance and the fascination of the carpets, has compensated for the lack of music. The colors and their agreements enchanted me. The decorative motifs freed my imagination, giving me wings to invent stories of love, hate, revenge. Some forms of clouds in the sky islands become for me the characters I played with the bottom blue carpet in the bottom is red and the characters are birds, flowers, trees, stars and angels. I used to mix the two and I lost vision in an irrational world and alienating. I was a sickly child who did not like violent games of his companions. 'd Rather make my games and, thanks to the carpets of her aunt, my imagination was developed and kept me company. It's never boring. I was never alone because the carpets were there. With floral motifs, flowers such as tulips, hyacinths, roses, carnations and flowers drop of water blown by the wind, I drew my garden and I went for a walk inventing characters conversations with them in the images of Persian miniatures. Later, much later I discovered the wonders of oriental carpets, Persia, China, the Muslim republics of Russia, Tabaristan of Khorasan, the Ottoman Empire and many other places. That's another world, another imaginary, a world more complex and more subtle.
rugs are small gardens, evocations of a world where playing with the wonderful tale . Although these rugs here tell stories. You need to have some keys, codes to enter, to travel. This requires some 'culture, but does not prevent them we can admire without understanding all that they represent.
I had a childhood without music. We had no radio (up to my ten years) or a device to listen to records. I later measured the frustration that I had caused. When I started listening to music, I started with jazz and I had to start with only the great classical music.
I remember it now because the company, I mean the attendance and the fascination of the carpets, has compensated for the lack of music. The colors and their agreements enchanted me. The decorative motifs freed my imagination, giving me wings to invent stories of love, hate, revenge. Some forms of clouds in the sky islands become for me the characters I played with the bottom blue carpet in the bottom is red and the characters are birds, flowers, trees, stars and angels. I used to mix the two and I lost vision in an irrational world and alienating. I was a sickly child who did not like violent games of his companions. 'd Rather make my games and, thanks to the carpets of her aunt, my imagination was developed and kept me company. It's never boring. I was never alone because the carpets were there. With floral motifs, flowers such as tulips, hyacinths, roses, carnations and flowers drop of water blown by the wind, I drew my garden and I went for a walk inventing characters conversations with them in the images of Persian miniatures. Later, much later I discovered the wonders of oriental carpets, Persia, China, the Muslim republics of Russia, Tabaristan of Khorasan, the Ottoman Empire and many other places. That's another world, another imaginary, a world more complex and more subtle.
rugs are small gardens, evocations of a world where playing with the wonderful tale . Although these rugs here tell stories. You need to have some keys, codes to enter, to travel. This requires some 'culture, but does not prevent them we can admire without understanding all that they represent.
not remember that my aunt had oriental rugs. I know that one of his pilgrimages to Mecca, had brought a Persian rug dealer who had sold an Iranian, perhaps he pilgrim. It was a fake. It was not lost but the quality of the real Persians. In any case, I knew immediately that it was done by hand. my elder sister's husband was a man of great compassion. Do not miss any prayer and went to Mecca every two years. One day I brought a gift: a prayer mat of a meter to sixty centimeters. It's called sadjada , from the verb meaning Sajad kneel waiting to proceed to prayer. He said to me with your prayers that will be received by God I had a good mind to tell him that I prayed that I was not practicing as he did, but insisted they use that carpet. Tested to find out who had been made with synthetic fibers in China. I told my brother: do you realize? Recite the prayer on a carpet of synthetic fibers manufactured by the Chinese Communists, probably atheists! The discussion was closed there. I folded the carpet and put it in a closet where the moths would have to eat it. It is also, alas, the fate of the beautiful carpets, rugs, wool and silk. Nascondercisi like the critters in and drill holes.
In the tales of Thousand and One Nights the carpet is a protagonist of the narrative. Shehrazad, the young woman who tells the stories of the prince not to die, is sitting on a nice carpet. When jinn or demons have to cross continents in the blink of an eye to intervene in a story, make them ride on magic carpets. It has become a cliché, but the magic is incompatible with reason. The era was one in which the carpet was a fundamental element of culture and identity . The guidelines is the world draped in the ornaments of its carpets, its arabesques, its chinoiserie ...
The carpet is a metaphor of which even God uses to turn to men. In the Qur'an it says that " God has established for you the earth like a carpet . It is stated in those words, a link between the global and the art of carpet cosmogony.
colors participate to the symbols of Islam: green is the symbol of the elect of heaven, the main color of Islam, white and red colors are positive, which embody the goodness, abundance, joy, purity of heart (a good person is said to have hearts all white). As highlighted by the great Orientalist Louis Massignon, " aesthetic emotion released by the Islamic carpet is related to the combination of light and darkness, of light and darkness .
Most of the carpets, even those not intended to prayer, they report a niche, arch, which indicates the direction of Mecca. It is a response to the verse of Light " Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. His Light is like that of a niche where there is a lamp, a lamp within a crystal, the crystal is like a shining star, this lamp has light from a blessed tree, an olive tree that does not come from either the East or 'West, whose oil appears to light up without being touched by fire. Light upon light . (Sura 24, Verse 35). The carpet then evokes the threshold, the door that opens onto the path of spirituality, of faith and renunciation of all that clutters the heart and soul. 
Many artists have wanted to paint not the reality, life, but what is behind the real, behind the life of the carpet. In fact, they saw that from what are the rugs can transfer their art and make them a part in creating. is the feeling I had when I first saw paintings by Paul Klee and some drawings by Henri Matisse. It must be said that these two artists were in the Maghreb, Tunisia in Klee and Matisse in Tangiers. Closer to us, the Moroccan painter Ahmed Cherkaoui, who died at thirty-three in 1967, had this passion sign and all of his painting - abstract - is a reading of his most beautiful carpets Morocco. A subtle and sublime reinterpretation of this ancient and so modern.
One day a friend saw that I was taking care of my mother told me this phrase: "You know, the Prophet Muhammad said" Paradise lies under the feet of mothers . With the beautiful carpet that you gave a Rabati , you're sure to go to heaven. " If
enough, a nice carpet to go to heaven ...
