When I was a child, it seemed nobody had a tattoo except Popeye the sailor, and possibly real sailors too. Strange as it would have seemed to my younger self, tattoos and body art have been part of society since Neolithic times. Today, approximately 40% of the world’s population have tattoos or some other form of body art.
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My first encounter with the henna painting in the Middle East was in the Yemeni highlands of Manakha in 1992, where we slept on the floor of a majalis with windows on three sides overlooking the mountains and valleys below. Henna is the domain of the women and having a foreigner in their midst was in itself an opportunity for celebration, as I was the only woman on this trip and thus was invited to the women’s domain to participate in Naqsh, which is the type of black henna used throughout Yemen. That introduction to henna became the glue that was to keep me coming back for years. The family home belonged to the Al Agel family, who to this day runs a restaurant that still exists despite the war and general destabilization of Yemen. It was a tourist hotspot in its heyday and the purpose-built hotel had been built with tourist dollars. We stayed with the Al Agel family for three nights and trekked to the Ismaili villages and the village of Cahill and Jebel Haraz. For me, it was a transformative experience. In later years, I kept a mountain home in Cahill, a four-story white square house belonging to a Sheikh, who then lived with his family in Sana’a.
Henna is not ‘real’ tattooing, as it washes away after a period of days or weeks, allowing the wearer to change designs or area of the body on the next occasion. It is an art form that is all about identity, beauty, celebration of life, religious ritual, birth, marriage and more. It is used in Judaism among the Sephardic, Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity including the Druze, Islam, Sikhism and in one of the oldest religions in the world, Zoroastrianism.
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On my most recent trip to the Sultanate of Oman, a highlight for my female colleagues was having their hands and feet decorated with traditional henna designs. Another time in Bahrain, as a long-time owner of salukis I was thrilled by a chance encounter with the royal family’s salukis and horses, who had their paws and hoofs stained with henna. It was an incredible sight to see.
© Brid Beeler. All rights reserved.
Henna has primarily been used for thousands of years as a form of medicine, as well as art. The henna plant itself is believed to have originated in the Middle East, but it is cultivated around the world, adapting to its environment. Like the coffee bean (gahwa), discovered by shepherds in Yemen when their goats ingested the bean, it is believed that the henna plant was discovered when goats ingested the leaves resulting in red-stained lips. Henna continues to be widely used throughout societies today, during special celebrations, births, circumcision, religious holidays like Eid Al Adha and Eid Al Fitr in the Islamic calendar, and the “Night of the Henna”, before the bride is betrothed to her groom.
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Henna powder is stored in wooden containers (called ‘boxes’ despite typically being round) painted with colorful red and black designs. In the Riyadh souq in the 1980s, I found an elaborate brass container from India for holding small amounts of mixed henna paste prior to application. It has a ‘lotus blossom’ motif topped by a peacock figure, which screws off allowing the artist to dip her brush in the individual compartments.
© Brid Beeler. All rights reserved.
Henna artistry is big business these days as women gather to don their best for wedding celebrations and parties abound. Henna is also used on black hair in the Arab world highlighting an auburn or chestnut tone of rich color. If my hair was black, I would most definitely indulge in henna. It is simply eye-catching, the way the color and shade move through the locks. Older men fashionably henna their beards in tribal society, although the result is more of an orange shade since the beard is already white. Over the years, I have encountered many tribal men across Arabia, from the Kingdom to Yemen to the Sultanate of Oman, proudly displaying their hennaed beards.
© Brid Beeler. All rights reserved.
Henna designs abound and for those who do not wish to sit through the lengthy procedure, sleeping with bound hands and feet overnight, instead, henna stencils can be purchased in beauty supply stores which are subsequently placed on the hand and with a conical cone-shaped implement – like icing a cake, the henna is applied through this tube.
Traditional henna is a long and involved procedure, often involving lemon juice and sugar which makes it stick accompanied with buckets of patience as the henna dries and settles overnight, before the bandages or plastic wrap are removed the next morning. Henna artists who free-draw designs are artists of creativity and not everyone is gifted in this talent. Motifs like the paisley design (boteh) which is found in Iranian rugs or Mughal art along with rosettes are often displayed. Many choose to just stain both their hands and feet in the henna as it supposedly cools down the hands and feet in hot desert regions. I may test that theory on my next trip!
About the Author: Brid Beeler first went to live in Saudi Arabia in 1989 and stayed for a decade. Her career then led her to live and work in Yemen and Oman and work for some of the world’s top travel companies. She currently heads Brid Beeler Travel (www.bridbeelertravel.com) and travels in and out of the Kingdom regularly on tour or collaborating on programs. She has traversed every corner of Arabia and is never happier than delving into the culture and treasures of the peninsula.
Brid began taking American travelers to Saudi Arabia in 1998 and, in addition to operating tours, she has trained guides, worked on award-winning documentaries, and written extensively on the region. In 2015, she was the Tour Director for the Smithsonian tour to Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, which followed their internationally acclaimed Roads of Arabia exhibit.
She has presented papers on eco-tourism in the Middle East region and was one of only a handful of women invited by the National Commission for Wildlife Conservation & Development and the Supreme Commission for Tourism to speak at the first International Conference on Eco-Tourism in Saudi Arabia in 2002. She has written for Foreign Affairs and the Arab British Chamber of Commerce. In addition, she has published travel articles in Middle Eastern newspapers and spoken on Middle Eastern travel at embassy functions in Washington DC. A strong proponent of Middle Eastern art, culture and traditions, she has spoken on the ethnic silver jewelry of the Arabian Peninsula at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin Castle.
Back home in Ireland, Brid enjoys walks on the beach with her latest saluki, Rishan.