Enlarged with AI from a smaller original
Blue ink mandala design
Geometric · Colour · Flash
A symmetrical mandala drawn in dark blue ink on a cream background. Teardrop petals surround a small central circle, with concentric bands of dots, scrolls and fine hatched detail towards the outer edge. The linework is even and dense, and the design is shown flat with no skin visible.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Four in the morning and the ovens have finally settled into their hum, so I am writing this on the back of a flour sack while the bread proves. Mrs Okonedo came in at half three again, wanting the round loaves scored in a ring, the way her mother did them in Lagos before the war. I told her I would try. I have never scored a ring in my life, only slashes and crosses, but I bent over the bench with the blade and found the rhythm of it, a teardrop of cut here, a dot of flour there, going around and around until the dough looked like a small sun.
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The sun is what I have been thinking about. When I was a boy my grandfather drew patterns like that on the steamed windows of his shop in Peshawar, with a wet finger, and every morning he wiped them away before the customers came in. He said a pattern only needs to exist while you are making it. I thought he was being foolish. Now I think he was right, because the loaves will be gone by seven and the design with them.
The last tray is cooling by the window. The light is starting to grey at the edges of the car park, and the first van is idling outside with its lamps on. I have written the recipe for the ring loaf in the back of this diary so Tomasz can make it when I am on my day off. He will get the scoring wrong. Let him. The sun will come up whether he gets the petals right or not.
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