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By Root 636 0

wedding adornment, stain the skin for weeks. Radia, Jelena of Arabia Felix, and I travel together from work to Noor’s home, a large modern house in a wealthy part of town. We are seated in the front mafraj, where women are unwrapping themselves, drinking tea, and passing plates of date and sesame cookies. Several girls and women dash in and out of other rooms, changing clothing, fixing their hair and makeup, and helping the hidden bride. I hardly recognize Najma when she emerges from another room, after shedding her abaya and hijab. She is wearing a form-fitting leopard-print top, revealing more than a hint of cleavage, with tight jeans. Her thick hair is tied in a ponytail. I’ve seen her face many times before, but never her hair. She laughs to see me stare at her and takes my hand to lead me outside, to show me a tent filled with fancy candelabras for the wedding.

Noor rushes around attending to her sister and other family members, also in jeans and a top, her hair pulled back.

A long-haired woman sitting near me asks me what other Yemeni weddings I’ve attended, and I tell her that I went to the wedding of one of Noor’s cousins.

“That was my wedding!” I look closely at her. I would not have recognized her. Like all Yemeni brides, she had been buried in layers of cosmetics, her hair tightly curled and sprayed into rigid obedience. Now she wears a bit of eyeliner but little else on her face, and her hair hangs straight down to her hips.

“Wow!” I say. Then, to cover my surprise, “That was a beautiful wedding.”

“Thanks!”

“So how is it going, married life?”

“Al-hamdulillah.” She laughs.

What I really want to ask is, How’s the sex? But I’m fearful of offending. “I thought you were going to China.”

“We were going to China, but I have two more years of school so we decided to stay here.” I am pleased to hear that she has a husband willing to make concessions for his wife’s career. It is the rare Yemeni woman who is granted all the rights we take for granted in the West: the right to work, to choose a career, to decide whether to bear children, to get on a plane by herself, to direct her own life.

Someone hands me a cup of tea, and I am introduced to a dozen more women, who all kiss my cheek several times before moving to kiss the rest of the room.

At last, the nagsh is ready, and Jelena and I, as the guests of honor, are shepherded into an adjoining mafraj to be painted. Jelena goes first. She wants to get her whole body decorated with the black ink (which I much prefer to the reddish henna that some Yemenis use instead) but settles for both arms and her chest. I sit next to her and watch as an elderly woman still wrapped in her abaya paints on the ink with a small brush in short, rapid strokes. She’s remarkably fast, and yet each shape looks perfectly formed.

Then it’s my turn. “I just want a little,” I say, indicating my wrists. The woman protests. Too small a canvas! Why don’t I want my whole arms done? But it’s my first time, and I am not sure I like the way it looks all the way up the arm. Fading nagsh or henna can resemble a skin disease.

Najma and Radia perch on cushions near me, watching closely, as the woman paints bracelets of flowers and leaves around each of my wrists, the designs extending down the tops of my hands to my knuckles. I won’t let her do my fingers. “I wash my hands so much!” I say.

“So don’t wash them for a few days!” says Najma.

“Impossible!” Some Western habits are just too hard to break.

The ink is cool on my skin, and as it dries, the tattoos tighten around my wrists like ethereal handcuffs.

But the process isn’t over when the ink is dry, we discover. We still must be basted with Vaseline and patted with flour before getting wrapped in plastic, to preserve the design. I watch Noor work on Jelena, smearing Vaseline over her nagsh. When Jelena is completely greased up, Noor takes out a large blue cloth and drapes it across her lap and the floor. From a pan next to her, she scoops out handfuls of white powder, which she pats onto the Vaseline, sending clouds of it into the air. A woman