Henna
The night it is dyed of gold and of arabesques. I decide to experience on my own skin the habit of decorate the hands with the henna. There were not twelve hours that the ritual could last but a minimum I have settled for left its trace for much more time that the time of the permanence of the drawing. Hapsatou could not accompany me in simultaneous enjoyment and suffering, of these "fashionable" commitments; to keep oneself natural, even dispense with the jewelry is of forced observance during the absence of the husband, but she did not stop being my spiritual and pragmatic guide during and after the ritual. Sensuality and sexuality: two sensations that are like threads that pierce the interstices of the speech and the meanings of the henna.
In Mauritania there is a caste, Les Forgerons, whose women have the skills to exercise a true custom, and simultaneously an art, of covering the hands and the feet with the arabesques painted with henna.
Henna is a powder, resulting from grinding the dry leaves of certain shrub (lawsonia). The color that the Arabic henna gives is between red and orange. In the India, for example, it is darker, almost till black.
