Black and white flash drawing of an ornate hamsa hand with a large eye in the palm, filled with dotted and linear patterns.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hamsa hand with eye design

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A symmetrical hamsa hand with five fingers, filled with dense ornamental patterns including scrollwork, dots, and rounded motifs. A detailed eye sits in the centre of the palm, framed by a radiating mandala-like circle. The design uses solid black areas and fine black linework on a white background, with a dotted border tracing the outline.

Dotwork Hamsa Hand Eye Mandala Pattern Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hand came aboard at Lagos wrapped in oilcloth, and Mr Okafor would not let anyone carry it below but himself. I held the lantern while he nailed it above the galley hatch, and the first thing I saw was the eye in the middle of the palm, black as a sloe, ringed round with lace like a doily someone had forgotten to iron. You will laugh, Nell, but nobody on this ship has laughed at it since.

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It is a strange thing to live under. By day the dots and scrolls catch the sun and throw small shadows across the deck, and I have caught myself counting them while I wait for the kettle. The boy Tomas swears the little black fingers move when the wind backs round, and he will not go up to the foretop without touching the wood beneath them first. When the squall came off the Canaries in March, the whole watch crowded into the galley to say their prayers, and I noticed Mr Okafor standing with his back to the hand, watching the hatch as if something might come down it.

We came through with one sail torn and a cask of oil lost over the side. Afterwards the bosun went up with a pot of white paint, meaning to scrub the eye out, and came down again with the pot still full. He said it was looking at the sea and that was why the sea had left us alone. I do not believe a word of it, but I sleep better knowing it is there.

Tell Father the hand is still nailed up, and that I have stopped thinking of it as painted. Tonight I think it is the one thing aboard that never once looks away from the water.