Page - 134 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

134 | Ulrike Luise Glum www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 123–143 other. To save us from the Turks, the Bedouins had tattooed our faces with green ink. We were altogether 12 Armenian girls. There was a pasha nearby. Every day he took one Armenian girl with him. He had made something like a harem.”38 Because the faces of the Armenian girls were marked with green ink, the “Turks” would not want to kidnap them for their harem. Although it sounds like Antonian perceived the tattoos as a necessary precaution, one could argue that at the same time, by tattooing the girls and women, the “Bedouins” marked them as part of their community, as bodies that they controlled. Antonian’s statement implies that this involved claiming sexual ownership over the women’s bodies, since she later had to marry one of the Bedouins. For the Armenian women who found their way to rescue homes, the tat- toos were again given sexual connotations by their European and North Amer- ican helpers. Jinks explains the strong rejection tattoos triggered in terms of the “contemporary cultural unease in Western society regarding tattoos”.39 Europeans had tattooed convicts in their colonies, often on the face, and tat- toos were seen as a sign of a “primitive” civilization. Europeans who were tat- 38 Svazlian 2011, 110. 39 Jinks 2018, 101. Fig. 8: Depiction of the tattoos of a “Non-tribal woman of Baghdad” and a “Gipsy woman (Kaulia)”. (© Winifred Smeaton (1937))