Sahl Hasheesh - Second Haircut

Egyptian Pillars by the Pier

I have this horrible habit of not really planning when to get my hair cut. I just wake up one day and suddenly feel that I can bear it no longer, and my hair needs cutting today. In Switzerland, I had the same stylist pretty much most of the time. Although I couldn’t always get an appointment on the day I requested it, she pretty much tried to make herself available whenever I turned up.

Anyway, time is pressing on, and I had one of those “must get my hair cut” days. Nobody seems willing to recommend a hairdresser here, which doesn’t bode well. Stuck for any better idea, I thought I may as well go back to where I went before. The experience had been a bit bizarre, but I had come out of it alive.

Unfortunately, the shop was closed when I got there. Businesses come and go in quite quick succession here, so it didn’t seem entirely unlikely to me that the place had closed altogether. It wasn’t particularly easy to tell just by looking at it, since it had always looked a bit strange in the first place. In the end, I thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try somewhere else.

I thought I would try in the Premier Romance hotel. It is a fairly upmarket establishment so their hairdresser should be of decent quality. Anyway, I was just finding my way into the hotel when someone asked me what I was looking for, so he invited me to stay inside his shop, where there was air conditioning, while he found out whether the salon was operating. I was grateful for the cool air, as I had already manoeuvred us during conversation into the shade rather than in the sun.

Anyway, he came back and showed me the way to the salon. It looked much more like a hairdresser than the other place – there were basins, there were towels, there were mirrors. I agreed to have just a trim and negotiated the price, which was considerably higher than my last cut.

It started off well. The hairdresser was a charming young girl who laughed a lot. However, as she started to cut my hair, I began to have my doubts and I suddenly recalled that maybe it was the Premier Romance where Kathleen had said she’d had her hair cut and it was so bad she had to go elsewhere immediately afterwards. I had no idea what the hairdresser was doing, but it looked pretty chaotic.

It was only supposed to be a trim, but she seemed to be trying to even up my asymmetric hairstyle and was hacking all the hair round my right ear where it was previously long. Then she would plump it all up in a big mess on top of my head, put her hands in the air and say “wonderful!” I kept on thinking that I must have faith, because I often panic when in the hairdressers. Maybe she knew what she was doing and where she was going to end up. Eventually, I latched on to the fact that her mission – from her, not me – was to remove all my grey hairs; hence the chaotic nature of it all.

It was eventually over. I guess it could have looked worse, but it wasn’t really what I’d call a trim and the original style was now lost, but since it’s a good 7 months since I was last in a “proper” hairdresser, maybe my hope of a good hairstyle has disappeared forever.

Then, to my surprise, she asked if I wanted to have it washed. This isn’t exactly the normal order of things. I asked if it was included, she nodded, but I suspect she hadn’t understood. Anyway, we went over, I had my hair washed. She informed me she was putting hammam oils onto my hair and they needed to be left for three minutes. One minute later, she came back and rinsed it out. So much for that!

I could have dried my hair better myself. I have no idea how she did it, but I ended up with the hairdryer cord wrapped round my neck, while she was on tiptoes at some very awkward angle trying to dry my hair. If I thought my previous experience was strange, this was truly bizarre.

My only consolation – and I had thought this before getting my hair done – is that next time it needs doing, I will be in the UK, so at least I can maybe start again with a decent hairstyle and then see what happens following on from that.