Sylvia's Journal

I worked all day on getting my dress finished for the shab-e-henna, the night before the wedding party, of one off my colleagues’ sons. It was an invitation for women only so Axel stayed home.

The shab-e-henna is basically like a wedding party and I gather at the end the couple is officially married after the traditional and formal negotiations about money have taken place in a separate room someplace in the enormous wedding hall. I assume it is a formality as the decision to wed has already been made.

I had been listening all day to stories from Persia and Arabia and had my head full of images of people dressed in splendid clothes, beautiful walled gardens with songbirds and fountains in the middle of the desert by the time I arrived at the wedding hall. Although there were pictures of walled gardens and songbirds and fountains on the wall, the hall was a far cry from these romantic settings but the clothes people wore could have been from that ancient world.

The bride glittered and sparkled in her heavily embroidered dresses and veils (there were two outfits tonight and tomorrow there will be another set of dresses). And it was not only the bride. One by one, as the women entered they took their chadoors or black cloaks off, and emerged in their finery; more glitter, gold, mirrors, and stunning embroidery than I have ever seen in one place. I felt a little drab in my home-sewn print ensemble which looked liked a moo-moo next to all that fancy needlework.

The place was awash with small kids; half of them were dressed in very cute mini traditional Indian, Pakistani or Afghan outfits, including the embroidered and mirrored hats, the others wore western clothes. They tore through the room as if they had been given uppers; up and down the stairs they flew, the boys little terrors, the girls prancing in their ill fitting party dresses.

One little boy who had his left arm in a cast and sling kept hovering around the stairs as if he wanted to break his other arm. Two others discovered that you could shake a coke can really hard and then pull the tab off and then, best of all, could keep the can upside down above the stairwell. There were more games invented with the soda cans; full cans, shaken and opened a little bit made awesome grenades. What fun!

As more Coca Cola was consumed the frenzy increased while the bride and groom sat quietly and patiently on their thrones, facing us. After the meal the female siblings of the bride and groom danced around the couple in their traditional clothes, carrying decorated clay pots and an arrangement with peacock feathers, candles and other things I could not make out.

The henna ceremony remained a bit hazy for me. It started with the bride holding her hand against her forehead. The hand was supposed to be closed and then to be pried open with money and rings but the bride didn’t even try and willingly opened her hand for her relatives to dab with the red stuff. When all was done the hand was closed and protected with a silver/lacy piece of cloth. And then the party was over. I have never quite stayed till the end (usually the food arrives so late that I can hardly keep my eyes open).

While waiting for the car a young man approached me on behalf of his seven giggly sisters and asked if they could have their picture taken with me. They arranged themselves next and behind me which made for many permutations; each new combination required another picture. No one asked my name. I try to imagine these girls showing their friends this picture of them with the no name gray-haired and foreign lady with her reading glasses and dress entirely devoid of glitter. More giggles no doubt.