Farida F. Alvarez

That morning after breakfast, I finally went for it. I peeled back the transparent film and gingerly placed the adhesive side down onto the inside of my forearm. I dabbed it tenderly with a damp sponge and watched the paper absorb the moisture until it started to move slightly, revealing the edges of a geometric design. Waiting longer than the prescribed thirty seconds, I slid it away. Beneath, revealed in all its glory, and looking as realistic as it was going to get for the 8.99 plus shipping, was my grandmother’s tattoo. Or at least I think it was.  

Made by a company specialising in ‘high quality temporary tattoos’ (for non-committal types like me), I’d recently ordered a transfer based on a screenshot of an Amazigh tattoo Pinterest page containing a design that, according to my cousin, matched my grandmother’s. 

Two honeycomb patterns set inside larger empty rhombuses, stacked one atop the other and finished with a two-pronged tail; the image represents a fishing net; symbol of fertility and prosperity. Hers was pale blue in colour, and would have been a coming-of-age rite of passage.

She wore it on her chin, and having met her only once as a child, I only became aware of its existence a year ago while looking at old family photos. “I never liked them”, bemoaned my father when I asked him about Algerian face tattoos. “Just a tradition”, the cousins blithely say. 

But ever since I found out about my defunct female relatives’ritualistic inkwork, I’wanted to cosplay it a little – try it out on my own body, contemplate it for a while. Today, of all days, it just felt right.

 A blood infusion they call it, which always requires clarification. “Transfusion??”, “No, no. INfusion”. “Oh.” I always like to imagine it as an ancient tea concoction; some kind of Gwyneth-backed Neo-Ayurvedic yoni complexion booster endorsed on Goop. 

I tend to get a bit antsy a couple days before. Maybe a couple weeks. As though on some kind of psychosomatic level I feel I’m due for it. Or maybe it’s just slow mental preparation for what’s to come. It’s not actually that bad– I think to myself; stoic English resolve: engaged. And it’s not. But everything it represents is huge, looming and stark. The sobering-oh-so-sobering realisation that I am one of the lucky ones. I get to waltz over to the clinic, foot loose and mobility scooter free. No walking aids cramping my style. No stammers, no shakes. No urgent runs to the ladies. Not yet anyway. Or maybe not ever. That’s the MS roulette. It’s a part of me now. As are the drugs I’ll metabolise over the next few months until the next round of treatment and the next after that in perpetuity. 

I decided to take my freshly tattooed arm, accompanied by my as yet fully functional limbs, if astigmatic eyes, off to the Vietnamese Nailbar for a manicure. 

The Vietnamese Nailbar is very clean. The door is electronically operated. You must press a big green button which for some reason is surrounded by brown packing paper, outside to the left. A detail which eludes some, meaning nail technicians (if that’s the preferred title, I’m not sure), frequently need to abandon their posts to open the door. You’ll find it at the tail end of Kilburn High Road right before it morphs into Maida Vale – just briefly, like a calm before the Edgware Road storm. 

The manager has dyed blonde hair styled in 90s throwback K-pop curtains. He is courteous but quite business-like with his softly spoken international English accent, switching to Vietnamese only to shuffle his team between clients, depending on where they are in the drying, filing, or setting stages of the mani/pedi. His nails are an impeccable pastel pink, which is fitting, and I wouldn’t know which pronoun to use for him or if it matters to him; I do know that he did my dad’s feet the Christmas before last, and that he didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl over there but they did a good job. 

I sent my parents to the Vietnamese Nailbar the Christmas before last for a pedicure, seeing that both were a bit large in the belly and a bit stiff in the back to be cutting their own toenails with much ease. I figured my father, never one for luxuries, would appreciate the scrubbing and exfoliating; a sort of Asian Hammam for the feet.

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You must buzz in at the clinic. A door will open automatically once you’ve confirmed your name and date of birth. You’re checked in, assigned a number, and presented with an identifying wristband; your boarding pass into the next realm. At the Infusion Lounge, you’re shown to your standard issue pastel blue NHS pleather recliner and invited to settle in.

My appointment letter says the team is led by the head neurologist Alberto Spinello; a perma-tanned Sicilian I’ve met all of once. But the real boss is Jimmy de la Paz, supported by the rest of the Filipino Mafia. I’m greeted by head nurse Alex, a tall and gentle soul with a ponytail, receding hairline and glass skin. He wears his nails long and this not being the first time he’s looked after me, I wonder who he is outside of the clinic. More smiles and routine questions ease me in, a gentle hum of giggles, Telugu and Heart FM in the background set the tone. I change into my hotel slippers which brings on more nurse giggles. I am prepped for take-off. But they can never find the vein in my arm. The vein in my arm never wants to be found. They’ve got to get in through my hand. 

I’m mainlined a hit of antihistamines sending my parasympathetic system into cruise control. 

Comfortably numb, I settle off into a lull- unable to focus on any of the media I had hopefully brought along. I marvel instead at the geometric arrangements of the pipes on the wall close to the ceiling. 

From the window, London is a rhapsody in grey. The sky, the low-rise buildings, the Shard, the Wheel- all visible from my spot up on the fifth floor; as dull as my senses, and somehow looking as boring as it does exciting. 

They come along with the real stuff now; the meds that keep me symptom-free and immunosuppressed. A symphony of beeping will follow as all passengers will need to be monitored at roughly thirty-minute intervals. The machines will alert the nurses to the fact and jolt them into action. It disrupts the lull but only just- I remain in the liminal space of not quite zoned but not quite alert either. Enough to have my blood pressure dip to the low 80s though. 

Enough to alarm the nurses and have them have me stand up for a bit to get things moving again. 

But I looove the liminal space. 

It’s delicious there. 

I sink lower and lower and the beeping is a mere snooze alarm while the pop beats play and the now soporific Telugu ebbs and flows in and out of earshot. 

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I chose an almost neon peach shade. My technician is very skilled with the trimming and the shaping and the painting. There’s no small talk. Occasional instructions are bounced around in Vietnamese. Some of their consonant sounds are made by inhaling rather than exhaling which gives them that almost gong-like quality. Sounds resonate differently like that. Southeast Asian love songs intersperse the scritch-scratch from the methodical filing and the hum of the electric nail drills. A flurry of young girls pour in needing nails removed, replaced, squared off, rounded down, fixed, filled, and beautified. All part of their hierarchy of needs.

I just wanted something pretty to look at before they stabbed me in the hand and drew blood. Something to distract me while they flush the first cannula as the needle is still embedding itself in my vein between the bones and the cartilage. Something to gaze upon as an uncomfortable and unnatural rush of cold saline is sent through my blood vessels. All before the good stuff comes. The glorious premeds. The antihistamine dream machine. Given to offset any potential side effects, but succeeding so sweetly in sending me off to the land of Morpheus. 

My Vietnamese nail technician concluded the manicure with a reflexology hand massage. I closed my eyes- an attempt to distill the pleasure in the advent of pain. He focused on the fleshy part of my palm below my thumb. I tried to imagine which part of the body he was connecting to. He pulled each one of my fingers, taking care to press and hold each one of the tips. I longed to know which of the energy centres he was hitting, but I tried to stay present. He ran his oiled latex gloved hands down my forearms – I thought of the tubes that would be there soon after and was grateful for this healing touch too. I saw his fingers run over my grandmother’s tattoo. He was the first to see it. To touch it. For all he knows, it is permanent. And in that moment it was. It is. Part of me. 

I made my way home. An intentional layover between the salon and the clinic. I wanted something grounding in my stomach. A moment of quiet nourishment. I ate porridge with chia seeds and a swirl of honey. After some mango and pineapple pieces; a nod to my southeast Asian beauticians. I tried to centre myself but my emotions had somehow reached the surface. I packed up my charger, phone, notebook and chronically unread novel and hit the road. 

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My in-flight meal comes right on time at 5 o’clock. A very British tea time and a very British Shepherd’s Pie bring me back down to Earth. I can’t eat it this time. The cultural antidote comes in the form of a big pile of brown slop and overcooked mash and peas. I eat the yellow and green and leave the brown. 

I change back into my street shoes. The cannula is gone now. The nurse applies pressure in all the right places so that its removal hurts less. A gauze is applied immediately, held down with a piece of tape, and I’m told to press down firmly for a minute just in case. I remove it, gingerly – no blood. A slight pinprick over the vein. 

My nails, a fantastic peach, still pop. 

I take one last look at my Amazigh tattoo – a sort of passport stamp, there on my arm – a palimpsest of ritual and remedy, pleasure and pain. My body, not so much a temple, but a scrapbook of snapshots.

I slip my windbreaker back on. The ominous sky that morning threatened summer drizzle. 

I have been marked but I have marked myself. 

30/07/2025