Mehendi

My treat for coming down to Colombo was a mehendi application of henna paste. Back home in Charlottesville I had once bought a henna kit at my local hippy-crap store. I reconstituted the powder derived from the dried leaf of the henna plant in a small plastic vial and screwed on a thin metal tube. The tube was about equivalent to a medium-sized IV needle, maybe a 20 gauge. I then applied the bile green henna paste onto my skin on my arms and feet in abstract floral designs. The paste oxidized and hardened into raised black lines on my skin. I waited 8 hours then washed it off to reveal delicate dark-brown lines stained into my skin. My attempts at traditional mehendi patterns were crude, but I loved looking at the designs for the three weeks they lasted. I then found a floral design I really liked and had a real tattoo applied to my right foot in two shades of brown ink to simulate mehendi.

Once I arrived in Sri Lanka I knew that mehendi had to be going on somewhere. After searching the newspapers I found a brief article in the Sunday Times about a woman named Farhath in Colombo doing mehendi and called the number. We set up an appointment and she gave a simple street address and a district of Colombo.

After lunch we set off in the taxi, not knowing if we were looking for a house, a store, upstairs or downstairs. Once we knew we were close the driver pulled over to ask a local man walking down the street. One quirk of the Sinhala is that they will never admit that they don’t know where a place is. Rather than admit ignorance, they will simply direct you elsewhere. Despite the fact that this man was literally standing in the street where we had to turn, just feet away from our eventual final destination, he pointed us back down the main road. Our driver insisted on carrying on back down the street until Dan convinced him to go back to the side road. Then he went on foot down the side road about 20 feet until he found the correct address.

I got out of the car in front of a very new, very modern house. I figured this must be it, so I rang the doorbell. An older, plump woman in a salwar and wearing the Muslim hijab answered the door. I nervously told her that I was here for mehendi. She smiled and invited Dan and I into the house. “Farhath will be down in a minute,” she explained in excellent English and asked us to sit on a bench in the hallway. The house had many levels, all semi-open and capped by a single high ceiling with ceiling fans. Looking at the polished granite floor and large lattice-work windows I realized that we had stumbled into the Muslim upper class of Colombo.

Farhath herself came down the stairs from the bedroom a few moments later wearing a cream colored intricately embroidered salwar and matching hijab. “I’m sorry to make you wait, I had to feed my baby,” she explained smiling. Her English sounded very natural and she had only the slightest trace of a British accent.

Dan and I followed her up another set of stairs to a loft area across the great gulf of the downstairs from the bedroom area. I knew that mehendi could take awhile, so Dan had brought his computer. Farhath set him up at table in the loft area and we sat down on a couch. “So, what do you want?” she asked sitting next to me.

“The tops of my hands and arms,” I replied.

“Ok,” she replied, snipping the tip off her henna dispenser. The henna was pre-packaged in something that resembled the sort of thing bakers use to make decorative flowers on cakes. She grasped my left forearm in her left hand and immediately started drawing on my skin in long, elegant lines. Slowly shapes evolved out of the lines. “I went to India to have the mehendi done for my wedding,” Farhath began. “I had my hands front and back and my arms all done at once, my mom and my aunties had to do everything for me for a week so it would not wear off,” she laughed.

“Wow,” I replied. “I bought my own box at the market back home in America and just put some designs on myself, but nothing like this,” I furthered, nodding to the interwoven patterns developing on my arm.

“I have been married just over a year, I have a baby, and I am only 21,” she remarked, looking up at me quickly and smiling. “That is very different than America isn’t it?”

“Well, actually,” I replied, “my parents got married at 19 and had me when they were 20, but that’s not the norm, no,” I agreed. I felt very relaxed talking to Farhath. I felt that I could talk at my normal speed and utilize my full vocabulary without having to simplify all of my thoughts and language.

“Are you married?” she asked, nodding to Dan.

“No,” I replied. “But I’ve been married,” I furthered with a gleam in my eye, feeling that if she wanted to know about American culture I would tell her. “I was married for almost five years. I got married when I was just a little older than you, I was 22. That’s not the norm in America either. I married one of my college teachers. It just didn’t work out, it was very sad. We never had any kids or anything.”

“Yes, it is hard to keep a marriage together,” she agreed, nodding with an understanding that surprised me.

“Do you think you will marry him?” Farhath asked, nodding to Dan again.

“Yes,” I replied, “but we don’t have any sort of formal plans or anything.” We both paused for a moment and looked at Dan across the room, he was facing us but had his headphones on and was engrossed in his computer.

“Do you want to have children?” she asked as she moved down to my left hand, starting with bands just under my fingernails.

“Yes,” I replied. “I’m 28 so I have a little time before I’m too old,” I replied jovially. “But I need to wait until I am really in the right place for it,” I furthered seriously. “I am not one of these people that can just jump into it. I’m a nurse so it would be easy for me to work part-time, that’s what I would want to do.”

“Yes, I like being home,” she agreed. “This is the first time I have done mehendi since giving birth actually, it feels nice to be creative again” she remarked, stopping briefly to admire her work. “I love drawing on your skin, it’s so white,” she commented.

Farhath was quiet while doing some detailed work on my fingers. “You know, my marriage was arranged,” she told me.

“Really,” I said, surprised. “Did you parents place an ad in the Sunday Times?” I asked.

“No, my husband’s father works with my father” she replied laughing, “That’s funny that you know about those ads.”

“Are you kidding?” I replied. “I love the marriage ads. I read them every week. The whole idea fascinates me. How many times did you get to meet your husband?”

“We met at our engagement party, here, I will show you pictures,” She replied. She yelled something to her mother in Tamil.

“No kidding,” I remarked.

“Yes, but it was my choice,” she explained. My left hand was finished and she started on my right forearm in a totally different pattern of sweeping lines. “This house was my bride-gift,” she remarked.

“It’s beautiful,” I replied sincerely. “I totally love the floor. I have one of those red wax floors at home that turn your feet red.”

“Those are terrible,” she agreed, wrinkling up her nose.

Farhath’s mother came upstairs with the wedding album, a professionally produced book of glossy, bound, full-plate pictures. I flipped the pages carefully with my left hand as Farhath worked on my right arm. In one of the first pictures Farhath and her fiancé stood side by side, he wore a long, embroidered tunic and a red turban. She wore a saree with a long-sleeved shirt underneath tucked into the petticoat and a matching fashionable hijab. The couple posed happily as though they had known each other for years “Your jewelry is amazing,” I commented on the long 22k gold and ruby earrings and matching necklace.

“Oh, that’s just my engagement jewelry,” she replied. “I went to India to get my wedding jewelry and my wedding saree.”

“Can you ever wear all that jewelry again?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “It is strange,” she admitted. “If I try to have less, then the old people, my grandparents and his grandparents will say that it is not enough. They will say that it is not a real wedding.”

“What about your daughter, can you save it for her?”

“No,” Farhath said laughing, “She will not want it. By the time she gets married it will all be old-fashioned.”

I turned the page to see her wedding saree and jewelry. Instead of the usual hijab she wore a gold head-wrap that looked like a more elegant version of turning your head over, twisting a towel around your hair, then standing up and flipping the towel back. “Your head-covering is really cool,” I remarked.

“Thank you,” she replied. “I had a designer make that for me. I wanted to cover my hair, but I wanted something different.”

“Ok, so these are pictures from the reception, but what happens with the ceremony?” I asked. I could tell that all of the pictures were from some local high-end hotel.

“Oh, I don’t go to the ceremony,” she replied. “All of the men go to the mosque. My father represents me. My husband, he is there, and his father. Then everyone else is there as witnesses. The more witnesses the better you know?”

“Right, right,” I agreed. “To make everything stronger.”

“Exactly,” she replied, nodding in approval and moving down to my right fingers. I was amazed at how different my two arms had turned out. Farhath continued to draw the henna on confidently, rarely stopping or re-touching.

“Then my father gives me to my husband and they speak their vows in front of everyone. Then there is the party at the hotel,” she said excitedly.

“So the ladies just show up for the party huh?” I asked teasingly.

“Yes that’s it!” she replied, “It’s really very nice,” she remarked as she drew the last lines on my fingers. There was no possible skin left to which to draw and I sensed that we both felt sad it was over. “I’ll go and get some lemon-sugar water to help bind the henna to your skin until you wash it off tonight,” Farhath told me a bit sadly as she went back down the stairs to her kitchen. In the heat of Colombo the henna paste dried black almost immediately. After my designs were coated with the sugary lemon water, Dan packed up his computer and we went downstairs. We called for a cab and I carefully hugged Farhath as went headed back out into Colombo.