I love Her (my tattoo)

My grandmother was the first person I saw with tattoos, she had eight to be exact. I was fascinated by the marks on her right forearm. Two scorpions, a bird, her name and some other drawings. As a child, I often asked her about the markings and she'd say 'igba sisi mi ni mo ya won' (I got them as a young woman) but that answer was never satisfactory. I moved to England and I forgot about Alhaja's tattoos until I turned 19. I got the urge to get my own tattoo and I thought of her. I know now there was some defiance behind her tattoos, my father told me so. When she was getting ready to marry my grandfather, he objected to her tattoos and she was given the option to either get the offending marks drawn over (my grandfather, a devout Muslim, did not like images of animals drawn on what he perceived to be a holy temple) or forget getting married. My Alhaja chose the latter and according to my father, she told Alhaji that the markings were there when they met and he liked her, so, they'll stay. They parted ways, he went off to fight the Germans in Algeria as part of Her Majesty's army and my grandmother married another man.

They met up again in 1949, my grandmother was about board a bus at Adeniji Adele when they walked into each other. My father told me my grandfather knew she was already married then, he told her then that he'd seen so much death and destruction that he was no longer sure about God. He asked her about her tattoos, she told him she still had them. He told her he saw scorpions in the desert and he thought they were signs from her, offering him protection.
My Alhaja left her first husband at the age of 22, he had become a serial womaniser, who left home for weeks on end. They got married, Grandma and Pa, a month later, Alhaja wore a western style wedding dress that showed off her tatoos.

In the tattoo shop, I thought of getting a scorpion and I decided against it, I chose to dedicate my new tatoo to my Alhaja and all the women who raised me. So here..... (it says 'but for the love of sistahs)