Black line drawing of two Unalom scroll tattoo designs labelled Female and Male on a cream background, each with a zigzag shaft ending in a spiral.

Unalom scrolls, female and male designs

Black and grey · Flash

The image shows two line drawings of Unalom scroll designs, labelled Female and Male, with the heading UNALOM SCROLLS beneath. Each design has a straight vertical stroke at the top, a zigzag section in the middle and a spiral curl at the base. The linework is uniform black on a cream background, with the two designs placed side by side and symmetrically spaced.

Scroll Spiral Zigzag Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, all of you, and let the boat settle. You want to know why the ferryman at Ban Kham Sai never asks for papers? I'll tell you, but keep your hands in your laps, because the river hears everything said on its banks.

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There was a boatman called Somsak whose rope ran from the Thai bank to the Lao bank, one straight line of hemp that the current pulled taut like a fishing line. Every night he walked that rope in his head, every bend and snag. Where the water broke over the rocks it zigzagged and shouted, and where it turned back under the willow roots it curled round and round until it forgot where it had been going.

A woman came down to the landing one wet season carrying a bundle and a child who would not stop coughing. She had no money and no name the officials would write down. Somsak did not ask. He pushed off in the grey light, and halfway over the zigzag water rose under the hull and the spiral pulled at his oar. He did not fight it. He let the boat turn, the way the river turns, and brought them out on the far side where the mud was soft and the lanterns were lit.

Years later that child, grown and quarrelsome, had a line drawn on her arm: a straight stroke for the rope, the rapids in the middle, and the curl at the bottom. When people asked what it meant, she said only that some things go down into the eddy and come back up on the other bank. Then she told them to pay the ferry and mind the step.