Within a five-minute walk from my apartment in the middle of Istanbul, there must be 50 barbershops for men (erkek, or bay, kuaförü). I don't know if this is because Turkish men are abnormally hairy, or if they just enjoy spending an afternoon sitting in a swivel chair inhaling hair tonic.
For whatever reason, barbershops in Istanbul are the Turkish equivalent of a Starbuck's franchise in downtown San Francisco: they are everywhere. I want a latté, dammit (or a blow dry, as the case may be) and don't make me walk an extra 50 feet across the street to get one. The barbershops also seem to be open continuously, as if there are just not enough hours in the day to deal with all the hair that needs to be cut.So I had no real excuse to let my hair grow long and shaggy as I approached my second month living in Istanbul. But when you don't speak the language (and make no mistake, I don't), getting a haircut becomes a high-stress activity. Not only do you have to memorize essential haircut phrases ("Just a little off the top," "The sideburns are crooked," and "Ow, that's my earlobe you just sliced off."), there is also the very significant danger of "barbershop small talk." It's one thing to answer questions in a foreign language from a taxi driver or a waiter, because you always know the context: this is a question about directions, this is a question about food. But with barbershop small talk, there is no context, and all bets are off.
Crap. Did he just ask me about the weather, or the political situation in Syria?
You can only say "what?" or "I don't understand" so many times before you look like an idiot and the barber no longer wants to deal with you. When I would get my hair cut living in Belgium several years ago, I would have hour-long conversations with the barber while having almost no idea what he was saying to me. I would just answer every question with a short laugh, a nod of the head, and a well-timed "Oui. C'est vrai. C'est vraiment vrai." Which I'm sure led to conversations in French like this:
Belgian barber: "You have no idea what I'm saying do you?"
Me: "Ha. Yes. It's true. It's really true."
Belgian barber: "So you are actually a complete and total imbecile, is that what you are telling me?"
Me: "Ha. Yes. It's true. It's really true."
The post-traumatic stress of the Belgian haircuts until now had effectively kept me out of the barbershops in Istanbul. But the more I looked in the mirror and saw someone staring back resembling the Unibomber, the more I knew I had to suck it up and visit the kuaför. When you start scaring Turkish children in the street, or, possibly drawing attention from the FBI, you know it's time to cut your hair.
I decide to try a tiny barbershop just off the insanely busy Taksım Square, a shop with just enough room for three barber chairs and a single, affable-looking, grey-haired barber puttering around inside. The name on the shop is "Barber," instead of "Erkek Kuaförü," along with (inexplicably) a sign that says "International Telephone." I mistakenly take this as an indication that English may be spoken here. English isn't spoken here. As it turns out, nothing is spoken here.
"Good afternoon," I say to the barber in the Turkish I rehearsed before leaving the apartment. "I would like a haircut, please." He says nothing, but nods and points me to a chair in the otherwise empty shop. Without a word he wraps my neck with what looks like a white crepe-paper streamer, and drapes the familiar barber sheet over my body.
Meanwhile another customer comes into the shop, apparently a regular. He greets the barber with an embrace and takes a seat in the last of the three chairs. I tell the barber -- again, in my practiced Turkish -- that I would like it short on the sides, and a little longer on top. The barber nods in a dismissive way that lets me know he's paying absolutely no attention to anything I'm saying.
"Çay?" the barber asks me, invoking the Turkish custom that everything, including a hair cut, goes better with a glass of hot tea. "Yes, please," I answer in Turkish. He nods and goes out of the shop into the street, apparently looking for a tea vendor.
The new customer, a professionally dressed guy in his mid 30s, looks over and smiles at me.
"Ise tredin u el?" he says to me. I try as hard as I can, but I can't decipher the Turkish.
"Pardon?"
"Ise tredin u el?" the guy asks again. No, I'm just not getting it.
"Sorry, um, ben Türkçe bilmiyorum," I say, telling him, flawlessly, that I don't understand Turkish.
He waits a beat and looks at me like I'm an exceptionally challenged mental patient. "I'm speaking English," he says, in perfect English. "I asked, 'is he treating you well?' The barber."
Oh. English. My mother tongue. Yeah, I'm not very good with that either. The guy immediately realizes I'm useless for barbershop small talk -- in any language -- and instead swivels the chair away to scroll through his Blackberry.
The barber returns shortly with my glass of tea, and goes to work, again without saying a word. He cuts my hair in the same way he received my hair-cutting instructions: like a guy who's done this every day for the past 40 years and doesn't need anyone, let alone some Turkish-stammering moron, to tell him how to do it. This is the Old School philosophy of "I'm cutting hair; not designing the nuclear reactor." All which is fine with me. I'm thinking that at this rate I'll be out of the chair in less than 10 minutes.
But no, it turns out the fun is just getting started.
I notice for the first time on the counter to the left of me, a covered metal pot sitting on a hot plate. Having finished cutting my hair, the barber now takes the lid off the metal pot, dips in something that looks like a wooden tongue depressor, and comes up holding a gob of bright green goo. He first smears the green goo over both sides of the bridge of my nose. The goo, it turns out, is hot wax. He goes back to the pot then smears another glob of hot wax over and into my left ear, then another into my right.
With hot wax clogging my ears I can no longer hear a thing. I am now deaf, as well as Turkishly illiterate. The barber holds out his hands and gestures in a manner telling me to drink my tea and wait a few minutes. He shifts over to tending to his regular in the third chair.
As I sit there in silence, I stare into the mirror and take stock in myself: sheared hair; barber's cape up to the neck; bright green wax covering the nose and ears. What is it that I look like? Yes, that's it: I look like a gremlin. Not the cute, furry mogwai gremlins. The evil ones, after someone's fed them after midnight.
For not the first time in Turkey, I am completely convinced that I am being punked. I am in the chair closest to the sidewalk, with nothing between me and the constant stream of passersby other than a big glass wall. I sit and sip my tea, with a kind of quiet dignity that says to the world, "Yes, I realize I am appearing in public with bright green wax smeared in and around my orifices, what of it?"
It takes me a few minutes to comprehend exactly what is happening here, but I start putting together the clues. Hot wax. Hot wax is used for ... wait. Isn't hot wax used for hair removal? But he put the hot wax ... No, it's not possible, is it? Are my ... are my ears and nose ... are my ears and nose about to go Brazilian?
There seems no other possibility, but my brain refuses to accept it. Yes, there is hair in my ears, OK, I'll give you that. But my nose? The bridge of my nose? I swear to you, I have been looking in the mirror for decades now, and I had no clue there was hair on the bridge of my nose. Why didn't someone tell me? Who am I, Jo-Jo the Dog-faced Boy?
The barber has now finished with his regular and turns his attention back to me and my wax job. He wordlessly pulls the green wax off of my nose with one quick motion, like he's ripping off a Band Aid. Ow! Hey, that kind of hurts. Not a lot but, you know, a little. This is because, as I told you, I have no hair on the outside of my nose. The inside of my ears, however ...
When he begins to slowly and methodically pull the wax out of my right ear, along with every single ear hair out of every last ear-hair follicle, I think this must be some kind of mistake. No one outside of a hardcore S&M club would actually pay money to have this kind of pain inflicted on them, would they?
Holy. Fricking. Begeezus.
Hours later, when I can finally think clearly again, I contemplate whether an expletive had been invented to sufficiently express this level of pain. The F-word doesn't cover it. The S-word doesn't even come close.
Is there a Z-word?
I haven't figured out all of the behavioral customs of Turkey, but I am reasonably sure it is frowned upon for a fully-grown man to scream like a 2-year-old while sitting in a barber's chair. Still, that almost doesn't stop me.
After tearing out all of the hair from Ear No. 1, the barber holds out the wax in front of me, as if to say, "See? See how much hair was in your ear? Aren't you glad I made you look ridiculous and put you through unspeakable excruciating pain? Look!" I look at the ball of green wax he's holding and nod my head, but I can see nothing through the tears in my eyes.
Now the barber moves to the other side of the chair for wax extraction from Ear No. 2. Please, no, I'm begging you. We'll just leave it like this. I don't need to hear out of both ears! Green wax plastered on the left ear is a good look for me. We'll say it's something festive, for the holiday season! Just please don't tear every hair out of my ear aga ... YEAHHH OH HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!
If I'm being held by this barber at Guantanamo, at this point I tell him anything he wants to know. He holds out Green Wax Ball No. 2 for my inspection. See? See?
In addition to the obvious example of childbirth, I offer this as proof positive that women are more pain tolerant than men. If someone came at me with a tongue depressor full of hot goo offering a bikini wax, I would hit the door and simply stay off the beach at Ipanema.
With my nose and ears effectively de-haired, the barber finishes his services by moving behind the chair, putting his hands on my chin and the top of my head, making a quick twist, and cracking my neck like a back-alley chiropractor. Perhaps he believes wincing and writhing in pain has thrown my spine out of alignment.
At least there was no small talk.
In the end, it turns out to be a pretty decent-looking haircut. But you know, at this point, I'm thinking that while I'm in Turkey the Unibomber may not be a bad look for me.
Ha. Yes. It's true. It's really true.
