Unknotting Someone Else's Repair

The rug came to the workshop rolled inside a bedsheet and tied with blue twine. The woman who brought it up from Gyumri apologized for the smell of mothballs, then apologized again for crying. It had been her grandmother's, she said, and before that nobody remembered. I set it on the long table and did not unroll it until she had gone home.

My grandfather built this bench for his own hands, which were smaller than mine. I work under the north window because the light there is even and does not flatter. In the afternoon it slides across the floor and I move the lamp to follow it. Nothing in this room is convenient. That is mostly the point.

The light from the north

Under that light the rug told me what had happened to it. A field of madder red gone soft at the edges, two generations of wear in the center, one bad summer near the border. And a patch the size of a palm, in yarn too bright and too even. Somebody's quick kindness, done in an afternoon, meant to last a week, and lasting thirty years.

A knot tied in a hurry still has to be untied slowly.

The patch had to come out. This is the part people do not understand about repair: most of the work is subtraction. I pick the wrong color loose with a hook, one loop at a time, and the wool resists, because it has sat there long enough to believe it belongs. I talk to it a little. Not out loud.

It took four days. Four days to return the rug to the state it was in before someone tried to help it. I do not begrudge the days. A restoration that goes too fast leaves a scar shaped like the restorer's confidence.

Count first, then touch

Before I begin, I count. Knots to the centimeter, rows to the border, the density of the field against the density of the medallion. The numbers tell me roughly which village, roughly which decade, whether the weaver was tired by the end. A rug is a record of somebody's attention. My job is to read it before I put a hand to it.

The new wool comes from a dyer in the Ararat valley who works with madder root and walnut husk and has no telephone. I wait for his colors. When they arrive they are never exactly what I asked for, and they are almost always right.

By six the light is gone and my eyes have given out, which happens before my hands do now. I sweep the clippings, cover the table, and go down to the courtyard. The coffee takes as long as it takes. Above the rooftops, the last of the sun is still sitting on the hill.