Re: girls and henna

Posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on September 22, 1999 at 18:24:24:

In Reply to: girls and henna posted by Michelle McD on September 22, 1999 at 15:05:53:

Young girls are hennaed along with the rest of the family at regular
festivals in India, Arabia, etc.....such as weddings, Eids, Holi and
all. They are usually not hennaed elaborately until their wedding
day.

One specific hennaeing of girls occurs in North Africa at their
circumcision (excision) or infibulation...if the family decides to
make a celebration of it. (They usually don't celebrate more than
just having mid-morning tea.) If there is a celebration included with
the infibulation, the girl is dressed as a bride and hennaed prior to
the surgery. The little boys are dressed as brides for their
circumcision (so the djinn [evil spirits] won't know that they're
boys, and therefore not infest them...djinn are apparently extremely
attracted to genital bleeding) and they are hennaed, bejeweled, veiled
and kohled. (The grandmother is allowed to wear the removed foreskin
as a ring, that day).

Here's the references for that information.....(in case that's a
little hard for you to believe...)

Barklay, Harold; "Buurri Al Lamaab, A Suburban Village in the Sudan"
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N. Y., N. Y.,

Boddy, Janice, : Wombs and Alien Spirits, Women, Men, and the Zar Cult
in Northern Sudan"
The University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin, 1989

Cloudsley, Anne,: "Women of Omdurman, Life Love, and the Cult of
Virginity"
St. Martin's Press, New York, 1983

Follow-ups:

• Re: girls and henna Kara 01:20:21 9/23/99 (1)
  • Re: girls and henna Catherine Cartwright Jones 02:25:15 9/23/99 (0)