Black and grey hamsa hand tattoo with an eye and ornate mandala patterns on the inner forearm, with small Chinese characters above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hamsa hand on a forearm

Geometric · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey hamsa hand fills most of the forearm, its palm decorated with an eye at the centre and mandala-style patterns in the fingers and palm. Fine, detailed linework and shading give the design depth against the skin. Four small Chinese characters sit above the hand, and a person in a knitted brown cardigan with a patch on the sleeve is partly shown.

Geometric Forearm Hamsa Hand Eye Mandala Pattern Chinese character

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

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You will laugh, but the big canvas over the Wheel of Fortune has finally been painted, and I did the hand myself. Mr Okonedo said the old one had flaked to nothing in the Stockport rain, and that a palm with no eye on it is just a glove. So I sat on the back of the lorry with a fine sable brush and a jar of ink, and I drew the mandala the way Nana drew them on the edges of her shawl, one ring inside another, until my wrist ached and the dots blurred.

Ruben watched from the step of the caravan with his tea going cold. He said nothing for an hour. Then he came over and pointed at the centre of the palm, where I had put the eye, and said the eye was the only part that mattered, because everything else was decoration for the people who needed telling. I asked him what the eye was for. He said to see who was lying to it.

Last night a boy in a school blazer came to the booth with three pound coins and a question about his dad. I sat him down under the painted hand and read his palm the way Ruben taught me, which is mostly by watching his thumb. When I told him his father would be home by Sunday, he looked up at the canvas, and I swear the eye was looking back at him, though it was only a dot of ink in a ring of lines.

I am sending this from the post office in Bolton, so you know I am still on the road and still shivering. Tell Mum the hand is finished, and that it is better than the old one.

Love, Nell