Many of us are celebrating Eid over the coming days. As is cultural tradition, the women love to decorate their hands with henna patterns. For the first time in a very long time, I am also one of these women. I have never had the urge to have mehndi done on my hands before, but this year, this Eid, I wanted to. I wanted to know what it would feel like to have mehndi on my hands. Maybe I will never get to put mehndi on my hands as a bride, but as a woman celebrating Eid, it is the least I can do. Perhaps in some strange way, it will compensate for it..
I sit here looking at the beauty that is mehndi. It makes me think that life’s events (be they good or bad) adorn us, like henna. When the henna has dried, it will peel away, leaving behind rich colour. When something great happens to us, whilst we rejoice in it’s euphoria, like the henna it looks beautiful. When it passes, it leaves behind it’s mark, but gradually, the memory will fade, as does the henna after however many days before the colour wears off completely. So too with the not-so-great things: once again, whilst we go through it, we don’t realise, appreciate or understand the beauty of the trial that has befallen us, for it is nothing more than something positive packaged in a different way, and when it too passes (for everything must run it’s course), it leaves behind it’s mark like the colour of the henna which then goes on to fade away with time.
The beauty of henna cannot be praised enough. A beautiful Creator’s beautiful creation. Alhumdulillahi Rabbil Alamin.
eid mubarak.
A few years ago I went to Egypt and spent a night in a village where there were no street lights. Our guide had arranged for me to visit some of the locals (they were a bit interested in this weird asian tourist).
They were lovely and part of the evening included having henna added to my hands. They finished it off with a liquid which I discovered, to my horror, was sulphuric acid. The end result was black henna which looked beautiful and made my fellow travellers very jealous
(Khair Mubarak
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I would like to go to Egypt one day, never been. ~Keep hearing so many wonderful stories like this about it (minus the sulphuric acid of course!)
Black henna is most beautiful simply because of the intensity of it’s colour – but everything comes with a price, in this case the acid in exchange for the beauty…
I always heard that you should avoid black henna, but no-one was able to explain why. ~Many thanks for the sharing of this post weird Asian tourist: someone finally has explained why!
x
p.s. Curiously, how long did the colour last? The mehndi I had on for Eid is beginning to fade already and it has only been 4 days or so. The colour was so intense I thought it would last for weeks and weeks.