Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

najat el hachmi

talking like them now? As if you were one of them?) used to tattoo on the middle of their foreheads, on the middle of their chins down to their necks, and, in the case of the most daring, as far as the start of their breasts. They tattooed themselves when they were happy, illiterate Muslims who had appropriated the religion of Mohammed and transformed it into something of their own, an amalgam of pagan and Muslim rites. They have now stopped tattooing themselves because the television pundits said it was a sinful, forbidden practice, haram. And now not only have they stopped tattooing themselves with the last vestiges of a written language that for centuries has only been written on their skins, some have even undergone painful operations to remove the patterns etched

when they were young. My mother never had tattoos, and I certainly didn’t, but I can see that line quite clearly running down me, from top to bottom. Like a scar that was formed at some stage and made me the way I am, with so much inside me that only emerges in exceptional circumstances. I sense that at some point, years ago, it was the other way round, that this skin accompanied me, protected me, wrapped round me and was something comforting that gave me strength and drive to go out into the world as if it were all mine, and I alone could embrace it. At some stage – that I could never recall – this skin had closed protectively around me. Once, and only once, did I feel myself splitting in the right place and I peeled it back to reveal to A. everything I was

138