Halloween Henna

After the 34th time I mentioned Halloween on October 30th, Mustapha recognized that this was something I wanted to discuss. He played along patiently– “So, what is Halloween? Like, what do you do?”

Try explaining Halloween to someone not coming from your same culture background while not looking like a total oddity. I dare you. I mean, sure, there’s l’3id in Morocco, but what’s a little animal sacrifice in the kitchen compared to people dressing up as things that they’re not– ranging from sexy hamburgers to Albert Einstein– and walking around, ringing people’s doorbells and asking strangers for candy of all things? Welcome to my life here in Morocco. Not the dressing up as a sexy hamburger, but trying to discuss things that you think are totally normal while people give you the “I can’t believe these words are actually coming out of your mouth” look. I guess I should be used to it by now.

For the past 2 Halloweens, I’ve done nothing. This year I had the fortune of two lovely ladies bangin’ at my door– Lucia and Britt. We still, however, had no Halloween itinerary. What does one do on a Moroccan Halloween? Carve lattices out of the gnarly green squashes that taste like pumpkin? A “Moroccan themed Halloween” pinterest board actually exists (and with lots of beautiful pictures of Morocco!), but doesn’t prove to be helpful for my particular conundrum.

I did the next best thing I could– enlisted some help to acquire Halloween henna. It’s the Moroccan version of dressing up after all.

Henna is something I was excited about before coming to Morocco. Even back in high school, my friends and I often bought big shiny packets of dried henna powder from the Indian grocery store in Decatur and would add totally arbitrary amounts of water to it, mix, and squeeze it out of a plastic bag and onto our hands. The end result is about as dainty as you can imagine. We could never figure out why it didn’t look good and didn’t stay on too long. Then, I came to Morocco and saw hands and feet like this:

Okay, fine, this was located on Google, but I swear that people walk around the streets with their hands decorated in such a fashion. It continues to blow my mind and proves to be the one instance where I stare at Moroccan women just as much as they stare at me.

Why henna? Henna is used to decorate the hands and the feet for special occasions. Weddings are probably the most well-known venue in which henna is used ceremoniously; the bride has henna applied to her hands and feet and then has it scraped off by the crazy negefet, or wedding attendants. I’ve also had the experience where henna is applied as a welcome gift– several times, upon visiting new families or friends (or as the net result of being dragged from stranger’s house to the next), I’ve had henna done to my hands by everyone from a 13 year old to a sitemate’s host sister. When my pal Catherine visited, we also got henna-ed as a “Welcome en Maroc!” gesture. Here are some of the highlights:

I enlisted the help of Mustapha’s sister, Touria, for the purpose of our Halloween henna venture. Touria is the ni9asha of the family, which means she’s the one you go to if you need henna done. And she knows her stuff! We walked into her living room last night, and she already had all of the ingredients prepared for her 3 little science experiments.  There’s a box of dried henna, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a jar of garlic and onions, two cups full of…something…and sugar. We watched in awe as she mixed and poured and procured a dish of green goo with scientific precision.

Guess how the Moroccan women get such fine lines on their hands? Well, big surprise– they don’t use a plastic bag cake decorator. Instead, they use syringes! Blunt-tipped, obviously. How brilliant is that?
And so we proceeded to get henna-ed. Lucia, Britt, and then myself. Each of us had our hands covered in organic designs, each different from the next. Once the paste dried, Touria dabbed our hands in the onion-garlic mix to make our skin absorb the color better. To top everything off, she asked her daughter to retrieve a small tube of silver glitter and gave us each a sprinkling of fairy dust– a new dimension to our Halloween-y hands.

Upon completion of the henna– it took about two hours– we hobbled around and tried to put on our scarves, jackets, and shoes without messing up the artwork on our hands, all to varying degrees of success. Walking through the streets was entertaining as well. We made quite the shadow figure with our outstretched arms and clothing stuffed in random places. What was our destination on this Halloween night? Why, couscous, of course– the candy of Moroccan cuisine.

Despite having limited mobility in our limbs, we still managed to house that couscous. I mean, three girls can make a surprising dent in a large dish. Glitter and henna was falling everywhere, and I’m sure we consumed an unhealthy portion of both. So, all in all, a strange Halloween. But I guess that’s the point after all?

If it wasn’t a strange enough or Halloween-y enough read for you, check out Britt & Pete’s latest blog entry about the Harma. 

Happy Halloween!