A Jerusalem woman has returned to her home to get her first tattoo after having a dramatic transformation from a tattoo parlour employee to a tattoo artist.
The 37-year-old woman, who asked to remain anonymous, came to the tattoo shop on Saturday to get the first tattoo of her life after the company stopped accepting her requests to do so.
“I’m still a bit shocked,” she said.
“I went to the shop to do a tattoo and it was a nightmare.”
On her back, she had tattooed an image of a rainbow and a heart on the left arm and the Hebrew words “Tihon” on the right.
She said she had been working for the tattoo parlor since January 2016, but the company’s policy on tattoos in Israel changed in March.
“My wife had asked me to get an ‘Israelite’ tattoo, and I thought it would be a nice change of pace.
I didn’t have any money for an ‘Arab’ tattoo and I felt really embarrassed,” she explained.
After getting the tattoo, the woman, whose name has not been revealed, was told that she would have to pay her own tattoo fee and then a commission for the second tattoo, which she has already done.
Her wife, however, told her that it would not be possible for her to get paid, and that the tattoo would be cancelled immediately.
“When I told my wife, I was told I was not allowed to get any tattoo without my wife’s permission, and there was no way I would ever get a second tattoo,” she recalled.
She was then told that the company was cancelling her orders.
“They told me that my second tattoo was going to be cancelled, and then they cancelled my first tattoo,” the woman said.
“Then they asked me if I had ever had a tattoo before, and she said, ‘Yes, I’ve done a tattoo with my son on my back,’ and I just thought, ‘Why do I need a tattoo?'”
Her husband then said, if I want to have a second one, I should go to a shop, and they said, it is impossible for me to do that.
“The owner of the tattooshop told me he would take care of me, but then I told him, it would cost him hundreds of shekels [$50] to get me a second round of tattoos, and if I went there, I wouldn’t get the money.”
When she returned to the place where she got the second round, the owner of a different tattoo parlcare told her he would not even take the second one.
The woman decided to return to the local tattoo parlance, and had a second, more expensive tattoo on the arm of her friend, a 37-years-old Israeli woman.
The first tattoo she received was in April last year, and it featured the words “Israelite” and the words, “Tahrir” on her left arm.
But after she had received the second, she was told by the tattooist that the third tattoo would not take place.
“It was a terrible shock,” she recounted.
“The second tattoo is not allowed in Israel.
It’s not acceptable to do tattoos on a foreigner’s arm, and to make such a request, one needs permission from the Israeli Government, which doesn’t exist.
I told the owner that I’m not doing it anymore, but he said, no, we don’t care about that, because it was illegal.”
The woman said she was not sure what to do next.
“If I want a third tattoo, I have to come back to the owner, and get permission from him, and he will take care,” she told The Jerusalem Times.
“If I don’t get permission, I’m afraid I’ll have to get another tattoo on my arm, because I’ll never get the payment.”‘
A great opportunity to change my life’The woman is now planning to continue doing her own work, but said she hoped the tattoo artist would not make her go through a tattoo shop again.
“This is a great opportunity for me.
I’m very excited.
I hope this will be the first time in my life I get to go back to a local tattoo shop, which is something I never got to do before,” she added.
