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C o n t e x t

When bombs exploded in Marrakech, in April 1994, the Kingdom of Morocco closed the border with neighboring Algeria. The long-standing issue of the Western Sahara territories, a conflict that dates back to the Spanish decolonization project of the 1970s, and Algeria’s alleged support of the “Polisario Independence Movement” culminated in the rapid militarization of the Moroccan- Algerian border. The border town of Oujda, the economic hub of north-east Morocco, went from a well-to-do border town where Algerians came to purchase goods not available at home to a notorious smugglers' den of cheap smuggled gasoline, human trafficking, and cut-rate Algerian cigarettes.

 

"T h e   M a g i c   C a r p e t"

Our story begins deep in the heart of this den, where petrol fumes mix with burning rubbage and spicy Algerian harissa is poured over french fries like ketchup. It’s 2012 and the border between Morocco and Algeria has been closed for nearly 20 years. Khadija is leaning over a handloom when her niece, Yasmine, arrives and announces her intention to join a cross-country cycling trip that hopes to defy the closure. She wants to see her father’s country, though she harbors a secret ambition that she will find her father on the other side. Khadija asks the teenager to sit down and begins to tell her a story. It’s the story of love, and of tragic loss; it’s the story of her family...

 

Her parents, Zineb and Abdelqadr, had just met at a wedding in Oujda when they heard the news of the Marrakech bombing, and the Algerians rushed back across border. Fearing for their lives, the newfound lovers resort to an age-old method of communication, rug weaving. Abdelqadr enlists the help of his younger sister, Khadija, to painstakingly interpret Zineb’s messages and learns to weave his responses. They agree to meet secretly one night, under the cloak of darkness in a small strip of no-mans-land along the 900-mile border. Abdelqadr, upon learning of Yasmine’s imminent birth, contacts a trafficker in hopes of making it to the other side in time to ask for Zineb’s hand. Khadija refuses to let him go by himself. When the trip goes awry, Khadija and Abdelqadr are separated. Zineb, anxiously awaiting her betrothed’s arrival encounters her future sister-in-law instead, carpet in hand. Night after night they wait for Abdelqadr to arrive, but he does not. Zineb swears not to finish the rug until she knows her lover’s fate.

 

When Zineb dies in childbirth, Khadija is left to raise the young Yasmine. When Yasmine comes of age and confronts Khadija with her desire cross the border, Khadija knows that it’s time for Yasmine to finish the weaving. As she teaches this impatient, cycling-crazed, youth her craft, she relates this story. The carpet Yasmine weaves is a magic one, to be sure, but not because it flies. Its beauty is in its strange mix of Algerian colors and Moroccan patterns, and its magic is in the story it tells. In a diplomatic coup, the governments agree to open the border for a few short hours and the rug makes one final journey across the border- not flying, but strapped to a bicycle. 

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