Page - 139 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

The Tattoos of Armenian Genocide Survivors | 139www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 123–143 are called “Holy Arrows”, “a Living Symbol of Ownership and Religion”, and are described in the following terms: Between the girl’s eyebrows the needle made a crude arrow of little dots. The arrow pointed upward – “to guide the girl’s future thoughts to Mohammed.” Below her lower lip a similar arrow, also pointed upward, was formed, that “her spoken words might be wafted above with reverence to the Prophet.” Around the edge of her lip five purple blotches were placed to represent the five daily prayers of Islam.56 The article describes the story of Nargig Abakiam, whose tattoos were re- moved by experts in New York. Their removal was supposed to restore her “beauty”, but because the tattoos were perceived as a physical manifestation of an alien religion, removing them also meant restoring her Christianity. Religion was also an important topic among the missionaries and volun- teer workers helping the Armenian women who had escaped. For them too, they were not just women who had lived among men, but Christian women who had lived among Muslim men. Especially among the missionaries, it was widely believed that the Armenian population had been “Islamized”. As their goal was to reconstruct the Armenian nation not only as a political group, but also as a religious group, the recoverability of the women, especially of the tattooed women (who wore permanent, visible reminders of their “defile- ment” by non-Christians on their skin), was questionable. Missionaries often preferred to concentrate on orphans, who were considered more malleable and easier to reintegrate.57 Regulating Ethnicity Neither Field nor Smeaton mention tattooing in general or specific designs as belonging to a particular group or ethnicity.58 Nevertheless, some ethnic groups did tattoo, while others did not: the Armenians were among those 56 https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/dlc_frenchbulldog_ver04/data/sn8402674 9/00280764711/1920090501/0636.pdf [accessed 28 December 2020]. Interestingly, this direct connection between Islam and the symbolism of the tattoos cannot be found in Smeaton’s or Field’s research. The article in the Standard-Examiner does not reveal the source of these interpretations of the tattoos. 57 Jinks 2018, 91, 97, 112. 58 Çağlayandereli/Göker 2016, 2557.