Iraqi haircuts and international haircuts

(12 April 2008)

Before the collapse and fall of the BLP empire at An Numaniyah, we would get our haircuts done from time to time by the Iraqi barber. Pretty nice- he worked in the classroom building helping the students most of the time, but he’d occasionally be brought up to the headquarters building to work for the expatriates to make our lives that much easier.

I was usually leery of having an Iraqi with a straight razor anywhere near my jugular, but one of the visits, I decided to use him rather than my NCO or one of the other expats- I had used “Needles” and “Sunny” before. Given I went with the Iraqi, I went ahead and got the full treatment. He did the traditional short military haircut, and worked on my unruly eyebrows and ear hair (men never go bald, the hair just starts growing out of different places as we get older, and yes, I’m an old 38). Then he pulled out some string, and made my life painful. He takes the string across a few fingers so he can double it up, and in a twisting fashion the two strands would grab and then pull out hairs on my face- the little peach fuzz hair on upper cheeks and forehead- not the regular beard and mustache hair. Brutal. But an interesting experience, anyway. One I’ve not repeated since then.

I took inventory as I reflected on this. Being on active duty since last January, I’ve had to keep my hair fairly short, which has meant lots of haircuts. And so I’ve had lots of folks running their hands through my hair with scissors, clippers and razors: Iraqis, U.S. military and civilians, Indians, Pakistanis, etc. My hair has lots of international experience. Which will help it land a great job in a company that has an international focus. The rest of me however is planning on going to Lowe’s- at least until my next deployment.