Friday afternoon, Adar took me to her friend's house to get some henna. I was picturing a small flower on some indiscreet part of my body. This beauty is what I ended up with. To be honest I've sort of fallen in love with it.  Looking down at your own body so familiar and finding something so new and lovely. It happened like this:

We knock on the door, no one answers. A quick phone call and some spitfire Somali and then from around the corner comes a tall figure wrapped head to toe in beautifully colored material, with another thin figure, half the size following close behind. 

"Welcome" and white teeth. And then we are sitting on a faded green sofa, the 4 year old having thrown off her head wrap and begun wheeling around the room on her tiny sparkly scooter, Anna running behind. The apartment is bare, but has a small t.v. placed prominently in the middle of the room. And so it is to the background of Scoobie Doo and giggling girls that the two women begin mixing and twisting, talking back and forth and laughing as they go.

And now I am sitting on a sticky kitchen chair, watching as she demonstrates how to cut and wrap an old spaghetti wrapper just so, until it becomes a tool ready for use. She pulls another chair in front of my bare feet and motions as she says "up!". Up go my legs, onto the scribbled-on tan pad of the second chair, and we begin. It feels like the hard end of a feather, scratching patterns into the soles of my feet. It is all I can do not to squirm and squeal. 

She tells me stories of raising children in Somalia as she guides the wet mud into flowers and swirls on my skin. She doesn't seem to care that I can't really understand what she's saying. Or that I am incredibly ticklish.

The door swings open and her other four children are back from school. They look at me, splayed out in their crowded kitchen, feet and hands now covered in black. "Somalia flowers" she says. India is patterns. 

When she is done, she goes into her room to lay down, leaving me unable to move as I wait for it all to dry. The kids are now bored with cartoons, and each stands by a window. The smallest is using a toothbrush to clean her flip-flop.

She emerges, finds a butcher knife, and begins scraping me clean. Flakes of black and red fall onto her floor. One more wipe off, and I'm done. I have become art.