ABSTRACT
In the California community where I grew up, there was a woman whose arms were entirely tattooed. She was an energetic person, active in the ladies’ guild, a regular presence at community events in Los Angeles. Every time I saw her, I was at once intrigued and repulsed, unable to speak to her, courteous though she was with all. No one else I ever knew had tattoos like hers. Then one day I saw her picture in the obituary section of the community paper and curiosity led me for the first time to read a death notice. To this day, her brief necrology remains imprinted in my memory to the same degree that those tattoos had been imprinted on her body. She was a survivor, abducted in her prime during the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. To break her will and discourage her from escape, her captors had tattooed all exposed parts of her body, including her face. Many years after her liberation and immigration to America, she had had her facial tattoos surgically removed. I was appalled and outraged at the unspeakable humiliation and dehumanization to which she had been forced to submit against her will. I still become angered when I remember that to which she had been subjected. To think that she was marked in her youth to be enslaved, and to know that she had been imprisoned in her own skin, objectified by a cruelty meant to destroy her individuality, personality, and dignity, remains difficult to fathom.
