# "Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 99"
The midday sun blazed over the Tunisian Sahara, turning the dunes into a sea of gold that stretched to the horizon. Su Yao's jeep crawled through the sand, its tires crunching over scattered date pits and camel bones, until a cluster of black goat-hair tents emerged like shadows against the sky. As they drew closer, the rhythmic clacking of wooden looms and the murmur of women's voices carried on the hot wind. In the center of the Berber camp, a fire smoldered beneath a copper pot, sending the sweet scent of mint tea into the air.
Zohra, 60 years old with a face etched like desert rock and hands stained indigo, looked up from her weaving. She wore a *haik*—a flowing veil dyed with indigo so deep it seemed to hold shadows—and around her neck hung a silver amulet inscribed with Berber symbols. In her lap lay a *kilim* rug half-finished, its patterns of camels and palm trees rendered in threads of rust, gold, and midnight blue. "You've come to see our work," she said in Tamazight, her voice rough but warm, gesturing to the other women seated on woven mats around her. They looked up from their looms, their fingers pausing on the wool threads—some young enough to be Zohra's granddaughters, others with hair as white as the salt flats, but all with the same deftness in their movements.
Berber carpet weaving is more than a craft; it is a language. For over a thousand years, the nomadic tribes of the Sahara have recorded their history in wool and dye—each *kilim* a living chronicle of migrations, marriages, and battles. The diamonds that repeated across Zohra's rug were *tiznit* motifs, representing the fortified villages of southern Morocco where her people once took refuge. The wavy lines between them were *oued* (river) patterns, honoring the oases that sustained their caravans. Even the colors held stories: saffron-yellow came from crocus bulbs harvested in the Atlas Mountains, a trade secret passed down through her mother's line; rust-red came from henna leaves dried in the sun, their dye strength tested by dipping a thread in goat's milk. "When a woman weaves, she weaves her soul into the cloth," Zohra said, plucking a strand of wool and holding it to the light. "This rug will remember my hands long after I'm gone."
Her granddaughter Amina, 23, had studied textile conservation in Tunis but returned to the desert each summer to learn from Zohra. She knelt beside a completed *kilim* decorated with starbursts and crescent moons, her fingers tracing the patterns. "This was made for my cousin's wedding," she explained in French, which she spoke with the lilt of Berber vowels. "The stars are *nur*—light to guide their way, and the crescents are *hana*—blessings from the moon. My grandmother added seven stars, one for each of our tribal ancestors. We never use more than seven—too many, and the spirits grow jealous." She ran a hand over the rough wool, which still held the faint scent of camel hair. "We shear the sheep at dawn during *moussem* (tribal festival), when the animals are calm. The first fleece goes to the *shaykh* (tribal leader) to bless, then we card it by hand, singing songs about our grandmothers' grandmothers. A machine can't do that—it can't put the songs into the wool."
Su Yao's team had brought samples of their seaweed-metal blend, encased in a plastic container that seemed alien against the camp's earthy tones. Lin lifted the lid, revealing threads that shimmered like polished obsidian. "These fibers are stronger than wool, water-resistant, and blend with natural dyes," she explained, passing a swatch to Zohra. "We thought they might make your *kilim*s last longer in the sand and wind."
Zohra's husband Kadir, a 68-year-old with a beard streaked white and a walking stick carved from palm wood, stepped forward. He wore a *jellaba* (robes) belted with a leather thong holding a flint and a small Quran, and his eyes narrowed as he examined the swatch. "Metal is for knives and camels' bells," he said, dropping it back into the container. "Wool is for stories. This thing has no stories—it's dead, like the stones in the dry riverbed." The other women nodded, their looms falling silent. One elderly woman spat on the ground, muttering a prayer to *Ammun*, the Berber god of oases.
Over the next three days, tensions simmered. The team set up a portable loom to demonstrate their technique, but when they wove a star pattern using the metal threads, Zohra's sister Fatima cried out. "You've broken the pattern!" she said, pointing to a star with eight points instead of seven. "Now it will bring bad luck to our flocks!" That afternoon, a sudden sandstorm swept through the camp, howling like a wounded animal. When it passed, the women's dye pits—shallow holes lined with clay, where indigo and henna soaked in water—had been filled with sand. Their stored wool, bundled in camel-hide sacks, lay buried, and Amina wailed when she found her wedding gift *kilim* half-buried, its edges frayed by flying grit.
Kadir stood before the team as they helped dig out the wool, his voice trembling with anger. "You brought this curse," he said, his stick thudding the ground. "The desert doesn't like strangers—especially strangers with metal in their hands. Now our *moussem* is ruined." The *moussem*, a week-long festival where tribes gathered to trade, marry, and honor their dead, was only days away, and each family was expected to present a new *kilim* to the ancestral shrine. Without dye or undamaged wool, the community faced shame—and possibly the wrath of the spirits.
That night, Su Yao sat with Zohra by the fire, where a pot of *harira* (soup) bubbled with lentils and dates. The older woman's hands, raw from digging out the dye pits, trembled as she sipped her tea. "The sandstorm is not your fault," she said finally, her voice softening. "The desert is like a man—sometimes it gives, sometimes it takes. My grandfather used to say that even a buried *kilim* can be saved, if you brush off the sand and sing to it." She smiled, revealing a missing tooth. "But your threads—they are not evil, just… lost. They don't know our ways."
Su Yao nodded, her fingers tracing the edge of a damaged rug. "What if we learn your ways? We'll help dig new dye pits, using stones to keep out the sand. We'll gather fresh henna and indigo—Amina says there's a grove two days' walk from here. And we'll weave by hand, singing your songs. We can coat the metal threads in something from the desert, make them part of your wool."
Amina, who had been listening from behind a tent flap, stepped forward, her eyes bright. "Argan oil," she said. "We boil argan nuts to make oil for our skin—and it makes leather soft. Maybe it will make your metal threads behave like wool." Zohra nodded slowly, then held out her hand. "Tomorrow, we gather henna," she said.
The next morning, they set off at dawn, Su Yao and Lin walking alongside Amina and Fatima, their sandals sinking into the sand. Amina taught them to spot henna plants by their serrated leaves, which glinted red in the sun, and to chant the harvest prayer: "*Ammun, give us your color, that our stories may live.*" By midday, their baskets were full, and Fatima led them to a hidden spring, where they drank water cool as glass and shared flatbread with dates. "This is why we don't use machines," Amina said, laughing as Su Yao tried to balance a basket on her head like the others. "Weaving is not just about the rug—it's about this. Walking together, sharing bread, remembering where the water is."
Back at camp, they rebuilt the dye pits with stones from the riverbed, lining them with clay mixed with camel dung to make them waterproof. Lin melted beeswax from the women's honeycombs and mixed it with argan oil, then soaked the metal threads in the mixture until they felt soft, almost waxy. When she wove a test swatch with the treated threads, Zohra ran her fingers over it and nodded. "It bends," she said. "Good."
Fiona worked with Amina to design a new pattern: a caravan of camels walking toward waves, the camels' legs gradually turning into foam, with metal threads for the wave crests. "The desert meets the sea in our stories," Amina said, sketching in the sand with a stick. "Our ancestors came from the north, across the water—this *kilim* will tell that story."
For days, they wove together, the women teaching the team to sing the *zajal* (Berber poetry) that kept their hands moving in rhythm. "*My thread is a road, my loom is the world,*" they sang, their voices rising and falling like the dunes. Zohra corrected Su Yao's tension, her calloused fingers wrapping around Su Yao's to pull the thread tight. "Like this—firm, but not so firm it breaks. A story needs to breathe."
On the morning of *moussem*, they unfolded their *kilim* beneath the sacred palm tree, where the tribal shrine stood. The camel caravan stretched across the rug, their humps rendered in golden wool, and where the dunes ended, the sea began—waves of blue wool shot through with metal threads that caught the sun like sunlight on water. The seven stars glowed above, stitched in white wool, and along the edges, they'd added tiny date palms, their fronds weaving into the waves.
Kadir stepped forward, his hand on the rug. For a long moment, he said nothing, then knelt and pressed his forehead to the cloth. "The ancestors are speaking," he said, his voice thick. "They say, *The desert and the sea are brothers—why have we kept them apart so long?*" The crowd cheered, and Zohra draped a small *kilim* scrap over Su Yao's shoulders—a camel and a wave, stitched together.
As their jeep pulled away that afternoon, Amina ran beside them, holding up the collaborative rug so they could see it fluttering in the wind. "Remember!" she shouted, her voice carried on the desert breeze. "Your sea is our desert's sister—now, they'll tell stories together!"
Su Yao watched the camp shrink into the distance, the rug scrap warm against her skin. In the rearview mirror, the *kilim* still hung from the palm tree, its metal threads winking like a distant star. She thought of the songs they'd sung, the way the metal threads had learned to bend like wool, the way the desert and sea had found each other in a pattern of camels and waves. Some stories, she realized, were meant to be woven together.