The eggplant-colored thread with which I wove the curve of Rabi’a's hip is made from the remains of a madder-root dye bath, an “exhaust bath.” The madder roots matured in the earth for seven years until they grew woody and thick as pencils, then were harvested, pulverized, and simmered by a Turkish dye master to make a deep red dye. For centuries, indigo has been fermented in vats of urine. Some of the pale rose and beige threads in the mud homes in my tapestry are from yarn dyed with chokecherry twigs that I salvaged after a delivery truck uprooted a bush in my field.