Black and grey traditional hamsa hand tattoo with an eye and mandala flowers across the ribs of a torso, with a white top lifted above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hamsa hand tattoo on the ribs

Traditional · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large hamsa hand sits centrally on the torso, with an eye in the palm surrounded by a rounded flower or mandala motif. Fine linework and solid black shading create the pattern, with grey shading giving depth and a dotted border framing the design. The tattoo is photographed close up against a red background, with the subject's shirt lifted just above it.

Traditional Dotwork Ribs Hamsa Hand Eye Mandala Flower

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You keep the tracing folded inside your passport, because the officer at Halsted Bridge will ask what you're carrying, and you have decided, somewhere past the lorry park, that the truth is easier to explain than a lie. The paper has gone soft from handling. A hand with its fingers pressed together, a flower blooming above the wrist, and an eye sitting in the palm like a coin in a purse.

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The officer is young, with a biro behind one ear and a tired way of turning pages. He finds the paper, unfolds it under the strip light and frowns. "What's this, then?" You tell him it's a hamsa, that your gran wore one on a chain, and that the design was worked out by a man called Dennis who drew every petal by hand because he said a mandala should look like someone had thought about it. The officer's thumb moves along the dotted border. He doesn't say anything for a while.

"My nan had one of these," he says eventually, not looking up. "Wouldn't let us touch it." He folds the paper along its old creases, slides it back between the pages and stamps your passport without another question. You're through the gate before you realise he has kept the eye in his head, and that in a shop you will never see, Dennis is probably still shading the same flower for someone else.