"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 32"
The Atlas Mountains rose like a jagged spine against the sky as Su Yao's 4x4 navigated a rocky track, kicking up plumes of red dust. Below, the Ourika Valley unfurled in a ribbon of green—olive groves, almond orchards, and terraced fields where women in brightly colored kaftans tended to goats. At the edge of a Berber village, where flat-roofed stone houses clustered around a central mosque, a group of weavers sat beneath a grove of fig trees, their hands moving over looms strung with wool dyed in hues of saffron, indigo, and terracotta. Their leader, a woman with a silver nose ring and hennaed hands named Fatima, stood as they approached, her fingers brushing the edge of a half-finished carpet. "You've come for the kilim," she said, her Berber tongue mixed with Moroccan Arabic, referring to their iconic flat-woven rugs.
The Berber people, indigenous to North Africa, had been weaving kilim carpets for over two millennia, using techniques that varied from tribe to tribe. Each kilim was a coded history—patterns like the handira (a diamond shape representing femininity) or siyala (wavy lines for water) told stories of migration, survival, and community. These patterns were fiercely guarded; a tribe's kilim designs were as unique as a fingerprint, and sharing them with outsiders was considered an act of betrayal. Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this sacred craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored the Berbers' nomadic heritage while showcasing the durability of their sustainable materials. But from the first greeting, it was clear that their understanding of "heritage" and "collaboration" was as different as the mountains and the sea.
Fatima's son, Ahmed, a 30-year-old weaver who had studied design in Marrakech but returned to his roots, unrolled a kilim across the dirt. Its red and black threads formed a repeating pattern of khamsa (hand of Fatima) symbols, their edges frayed from years of use. "This pattern belongs to the Ait Atta tribe," he said, tracing a hand shape with his finger. "My grandfather wove it during the drought of 1984, when we thought the valley would die. It's a protection against hunger. We do not let strangers copy it."
Su Yao's team had brought portable scanners and design software, intending to catalog the kilim patterns for a book on global textiles. When Elena displayed a digital scan of the Ait Atta khamsa design, the weavers muttered angrily. Fatima's husband, Moulay, a former shepherd with a scar across his palm from a goat bite, stood abruptly. "This is stealing," he said, his voice loud enough to startle a nearby flock of sheep. "Our patterns are our identity. You want to put them in a book, sell them to tourists? That is not collaboration—that is robbery."
Cultural friction deepened over materials. The Berbers sourced their wool from their own sheep, which grazed on the mountain herbs that gave the fiber its distinctive lanolin-rich texture. They dyed the wool using plants and minerals: saffron from Taliouine for yellow, indigo from the Sous Valley for blue, and iron oxide from the Atlas rocks for red. The dyeing process was accompanied by baraka (blessings) from the village faqih (holy man), who chanted verses from the Quran to infuse the colors with spiritual power. The seaweed-metal blend, with its industrial origins and synthetic components, was viewed as an insult to the natural order. "Your thread has no baraka," Fatima said, dropping a sample onto the ground. "It cannot protect a home."
A more urgent problem emerged when the metal threads reacted with the lanolin in the wool, causing the dyed fibers to bleed and the metal to tarnish. "It's ruining the wool," Ahmed said, holding up a stained swatch. "Our kilim should last a hundred years. This will turn to dust in ten."
Then disaster struck: a sandstorm—rare for this time of year—swept down from the Sahara, coating the village in a thick layer of orange dust. The weavers' stored wool was contaminated, and their dyeing vats, left outside to catch the sun, were filled with grit. With their materials ruined, the village faced a loss of income that would threaten their ability to buy winter supplies. The faqih, an elderly man with a long white beard, blamed the team for disturbing the desert spirits. "You brought something cold from the sea to our hot mountains," he said, as he sprinkled blessed water on the contaminated wool. "Now the spirits are angry."
That night, Su Yao sat with Fatima in her stone house, where a charcoal fire crackled in the hearth, filling the room with the smell of mint tea and roasting msemen (flatbread). Outside, the wind howled through the mountain passes, carrying the sound of distant thunder. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping her tea. "We came here thinking we could celebrate your craft, but we've only disrespected it."
Fatima smiled, passing her a piece of msemen slathered with honey. "The sandstorm is not your fault," she said. "The desert and mountains have always fought. My grandmother used to say that the wind brings both destruction and new seeds. We just have to know which ones to plant." She paused, then added, "But your thread—maybe it's a new seed. Our children are leaving for the cities. They don't want to weave kilim anymore. Maybe we need something new to make them stay."
Su Yao nodded. "What if we start over? We'll help you clean the wool and rebuild the dyeing vats. We'll learn to weave kilim the way you do, by hand. We won't use your tribe's patterns—we'll create new ones, together, that tell the story of the mountains and the sea. And we'll treat our metal thread with your dyeing rituals, so it has baraka."
Ahmed, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside. "You'd really learn to weave kilim on a Berber loom? It takes years to master the tension."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll pay for new wool, new dye—whatever you need. This isn't about taking. It's about giving back."
Over the next three months, the team immersed themselves in Berber life. They helped sift the contaminated wool, their hands raw from picking out grains of sand. They trekked to the Sous Valley to collect fresh indigo, sleeping under the stars with a group of nomadic herders who shared their tagine (stew) and stories. They learned to dye wool using Fatima's techniques, measuring the dyes by hand and waiting for the faqih's blessings before each dip. "The blue needs more time in the sun," Fatima said, watching Su Yao tend to a vat of indigo. "Rushing it makes the color weak. Like a person who doesn't listen."
They sat at the looms beneath the fig trees, their backs aching from hours of bending, as Ahmed taught them the kilim weave—a technique that required flipping the threads with a wooden comb to create the flat, reversible pattern. "The khamsa fingers must point upward," he said, correcting Su Yao's work. "Otherwise, the protection leaks out."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and lanolin, Lin experimented with washing the metal in a solution of mint leaves and vinegar—used by the Berbers to clean wool before dyeing. The acid in the vinegar neutralized the lanolin, while the mint added a fresh scent that masked the metal's industrial odor. "It's like giving the thread a bath," she said, showing Fatima a swatch where the colors now stayed fast and the metal retained its shine.
Fiona, inspired by the mountain landscapes, suggested adding patterns of jbel (mountains) and oued (rivers) to their collaborative design, merging them with wave motifs from the seaweed-metal thread. "They show how the mountains feed the rivers, and the rivers feed the sea," she said, and the faqih nodded, saying it honored the interconnectedness of all things.
As the first autumn rains washed the dust from the valley, the village held a moussem (festival) to celebrate the harvest, where they danced to amzagh (Berber flute) music and sacrificed a sheep to thank the spirits. They unveiled their first collaboration: a kilim rug with mountain and river patterns in traditional red, blue, and yellow, accented with seaweed-metal threads that shimmered like sunlight on water and tiny beads made from Atlas quartz.
Fatima laid the rug in front of the mosque, where the entire village could see it. "This kilim has two souls," she said, as the faqih chanted a blessing over it. "One from our mountains, one from your sea. But they are both home."
As the team's 4x4 rumbled down the mountain track, Ahmed ran after them, holding a small package. Su Yao rolled down the window, and he pressed it into her hand: a skein of indigo-dyed wool, tied with a piece of seaweed-metal. "To remember us by," he said, in halting English. "And to remember that even deserts and oceans touch."
Su Yao clutched the package as the Atlas Mountains faded into the distance, their peaks glowing pink in the sunset. She thought of the hours spent weaving under the fig trees, of the way the metal thread had finally learned to work with the wool, of the faqih's blessing and Fatima's laughter. The Berbers had taught her that tradition wasn't a relic to be preserved in glass cases—it was a living practice, capable of evolving while staying rooted in its essence.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Tay team: photos of Lan wearing their khan mó scarf and seaweed-metal blend, standing in a rice paddy. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new pattern—Berber mountains and sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, an amzagh flute played, its melody winding through the valleys like a prayer. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless cultures to learn from, countless threads to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility, recognizing that they were guests rather than experts, the tapestry would only grow more rich, more diverse, more full of the wisdom that comes from listening.