Fashion
Laura Gets Hennaed in Morocco
by Laura
Henna is a plant used in Morocco and many other countries/cultures to dye the skin in intricate patterns, sometimes called temporary tattoos. In Morocco, it is quite common to see henna on women's hands and feet for weddings, special occasions, or even just for a treat, while men use it on their hands and arms only for extremely special occasions.
About 1 in 20 women that I see is wearing henna, while I have never seen a man with it. Of course, if the man's arm is dyed, it would be hidden, since Moroccan clothing nearly always has long sleeves.
Henna has something of a religious importance in Islam (although I've been told that real tattoos are forbidden) and there is a whole ceremony that goes along with its usage. Women gather together and sing or chant while the henna is being applied, and eat special foods that go with the henna spiritually. After the first woman is hennaed, the other women at the ceremony each apply a bit of henna as well.
First, henna is ground into a paste and applied to the surface of the skin through the hollow tip of a syringe.
The henna stays on the skin for up to 12 hours. Below, you can see the bowl of henna paste that fills the syringe.The finished "wet" design on one hand. Front and back, this took about 45 minutes, and began to hurt after about 10. Most people feel only a cooling sensation, but I am mildly allergic to iodine (I think henna contains iodine, but I haven't yet found proof) and so my skin burned and felt extremely cold at the same time.
Warming my ice-cold hands over a brazier. The glass on the table has a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, and sugar, which was generously applied to the henna in order to alleviate the discomfort (it didn't help much).
When the henna is more or less dry, the hands are "gloved": they are wrapped in thin cotton sheets so that the finished design is not disturbed. The woman who applied my henna told me to keep the gloves on overnight and wash my hands in the morning, but I only kept them on for a couple of hours.
The finished product. Moroccan women often have their nails dyed a solid brownish-orange, but the woman who did my henna didn't even ask me if I wanted that - I guess foreigners usually say no.
The henna on my palms is much brighter than on the backs of my hands and my wrists, due to the different types of skin. The henna lasts anywhere from one to four weeks, depending on your skin type and where on your body it is used. The henna on the backs of my hands and wrists lasted less than a week, yet after three weeks my palms were only just starting to fade.
