Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Haircut

Lebanese hairdressers are both the best and worst hair dressers to go to and here is why: They are incredibly good at cutting hair and really, revoltingly stuck-up about it. This is a sweeping generalization, sure, but then this is a blog, not the BBC, so I guess I can make a few broad sweeps if the mood is on me.

This morning I cut my own hair. I just divided it into sections, leaned over the bathroom sink and started chopping. Now, I hear what you’re saying and you’re absolutely right, it should never be attempted. It’s just that I really needed a haircut and couldn’t bear the thought of going to a Lebanese hair salon. Not yet. I’ve only been back in the country two months and I’ve got to take on the challenges it brings one broken sidewalk tile at a time.

Previously when I lived here I went to a salon owned by a fella named Tony. They’re nearly all named Tony, you know. In these uncertain times I guarantee that you can count on this: if your stylist is Lebanese and named Tony you have every chance of getting a fabulous haircut. My particular Tony’s salon was recommended to me by my sister-in-law, who can be relied upon for direction in all clothing or beauty-related matters. I remember that I had delayed going, as I always do, until I could use my eyes only by lifting my hair up off my face with one hand and holding it to the side.

 The salon turned out to be small with lots of mirrors, track lighting and huge posters of women with green lipstick and blue hair. There was only one other client, a woman with a head full of aluminum foil, talking in a gravelly voice into her cell phone. She glanced at me and looked away again. In front of a door in the corner of the salon a group of three or four young people lounged, speaking in affected voices and checking their look in the mirror every two seconds or so. They were all dressed with painstaking care to look like they just got out of bed. The hair was mussed just so, the jeans had the right brand name with the correct factory tears in the leg, the makeup (only on the girls, I’m pretty sure) was thickly in place and blotted enough to absorb the rays of a collapsing star. The eye makeup was black and applied with asphalt-laying equipment.

That, of course, is how makeup is meant to be worn in Lebanon. There is no such thing as light or natural-looking makeup. You either slather it on or you don’t bother with any, which is something my mother-in-law and I discuss in the following manner: every now and again she asks me why I don’t wear makeup. I tell her I do wear it, every single day, and she says “No, you don’t,” and I say “But yes, I do, I’m wearing makeup right now,” and she says, “Where? I don’t see any.” So I point to the mascara on my eyelashes, which she says she can’t see, and the discussion dwindles away, to be revived by my mother-in-law at a later date.)

 One of the heavily made-up girls came lazily forward when I walked in and asked me in Arabic what I desired. I pushed my forelock to the side and said that I wanted a haircut, please. She didn’t say anything or even acknowledge that I had answered her. She turned expressionlessly to the mirror and checked her look — I think, particularly, her bottom, which was tiny and no doubt a great source of comfort to her in consideration of the size of her nostrils — before leading me back to the hair washing area. A washerwoman of sorts was summoned, coming up through a dark opening in the floor on the tiniest spiral staircase I had ever seen. She washed my hair while I stared at the ceiling and then I was towel wrapped and led to a chair. I was asked, by the washerwoman, if I would like some tea or coffee. Not yet having entered my tea-addiction phase which was to overpower me later that same year I said I’d just like water and while she went to fetch it one of the young men picked himself up from his perch and strolled over. Without a word or even eye contact he began combing my hair. I mean, I don’t ask for much. He doesn’t need to tell me his life story or even his name but how about a ‘hi’ or a smile and a nod? There’s just something so weird to me about a stranger walking up to me and wordlessly combing my hair. I know I’m too clenched about these things and that I’m going to be one of those very difficult old people who spits on the nurses and yells “Help! I’m being murdered!” when taken for my bath.

The young guy combed my hair while continuing to participate in the conversation his friends were having over in the corner. I didn’t understand everything they were saying but it sounded like the most feather-brained exchange a group of upright hominids could produce — a series of unconnected boasts, all hinting at a glamorous, jet-setting life but never giving any particulars to get hold of. Nobody seemed to be listening to anyone else. I sat in the hairdressing chair and stared at the potato in the mirror that was my head and wondered what a bunch of models and movie stars, as they seemed to consider themselves, were doing hanging around in a hair salon on a weekday morning. Then hair-combing guy shoved off and Tony appeared.

I didn’t know it was Tony (I only found out later from my sis-in-law). He was in his mid-thirties and dressed even more expensively casual than the underlings. He greeted me condescendingly but not discourteously and asked, in English, how I wanted my hair. He then whipped out a pair of scissors and began to flip them around so fast they became a blur in the mirror. In five minutes my hair looked fantastic. Even though it was still wet I could tell this was an excellent haircut. During the last couple of minutes of the haircut Tony’s mobile rang. On the other end of the line was someone who had apparently rung him for no other purpose than to lavish praise upon him because all Tony said, in between long periods of listening, was “Merci... oh, merci beaucoup,” in a prissy kind of voice. I swear that’s all he said for three straight minutes. I was dying to know what he was being thanked for. A haircut? It seemed a stretch. I’ve never called up a hairdresser from my home to tell them how pleased I am with my new ‘do’. Then Tony pocketed his phone, gave my hair a final whizz with the scissors and vanished.

I didn’t even realize he was done till the first guy reappeared with a hair-dryer in his hand and began to burn my scalp with it while aggressively pulling a round brush through my hair like he was hauling up a marlin. Naturally I didn’t say anything to him. The most appropriate thing would have been to screech, “For %#&* sake, that hurts!” and smack his hand away. But I sat there motionless with a composed, neutral expression, pretending I had no pain-sensing neurons and that if anyone wanted to skewer me with a barber's comb or use my lips to hold a hot curling iron it was nothing to me.

It ended, as these things do, with my hair looking exactly like the head of a Barbie from the 1960’s. The cut was good but the styling was ridiculous. My mother-in-law loved it, however, and in her subtle way asked me why I didn’t get my hair professionially styled once a week. After all, it was so flattering and a woman needs to look good for her husband.

I don’t know if you understand now why I cut my own hair over the bathroom sink. I’m not going to make it a habit or anything. I know Tony is still in business because we drove past his salon a few weeks ago so I will go to see him in a month or two. I just couldn’t face it all this week. And the crazy thing is my hair doesn’t look too bad at all. In fact my mother-in-law, once she’d gotten over her shock that I’d cut it myself and that I hadn’t done it to save money (“Oh Jenn, why did you do it, why? I know a great place that’s not expensive, I could have taken you there,”) asked me if I would cut her hair. Huh!