« Sugar Serving Norms | Main | Flags Symbolic of What? »

Got Thread? Why Not?

It's not a barbers shop, its a cultural experience waiting to happen.

Yesterday’s Istanbuli barber shop experience: local tunes piped out of an aging stereo; a mirrored view of the room from the chair's headrest; a balding customer carefully attended to on my right; and a plethora of evil eyes mounted on the wall to my left. Admittedly the direction of the conversation between barber and barberee was somewhat one-sided - not surprising given both my distinct lack of Turkish and the fact that I had a razor held to my throat. The shave was as you might expect until, the very end when he reached for a drawer and pulled out a spool, expertly pulled off an arm and a half-length’s of thread, repeatedly twisted to create torsion and with the middle point clamped between his teeth and proceeded to apply the thread like a pair of tweezer-scissors gently plucking the light-hairs-I-didn’t-knew-I-had from parts of the face that-now-don't-have. Elegant. Unnerving. And because his head darted forward with every stroke of the thread - somewhat similar to swan’s mating ritual.

It's not my first encounter with a barber's shop thread. Late last year in the Himalayan foothills, a Gangtoki barber (below) used thread to good effect as a spatula - to scrape liberally applied massage oil from the face. The inherent properties of a simple, universal object put to uses previously outside the scope of my understanding.

Other cultural insights from around the world? Understanding why electric razors are used in rural Uganda - a country known for its power cuts; the use of razor blades to clean ears in Hue; why beautiful in Chengdudoesn't equate to painless; why south Delhi barber's have softer hands than the rest; why, ultimately offering photo studio services as part of the package makes total sense in remote Fujian Province.

Expect more from your next visit to a barber's shop.

Writing from Istanbul | April 28, 2007 | Permalink