Doctor Abbas al-Sahan’s patient wasn’t a war victim.
She didn’t have a scar that needed cosmetic surgery. All she wanted was a cute nose, and she got it.
Speaking after the surgery, bandages and swelling gone, 23-year-old Sarah Saad Abdul-Hameed was ecstatic.
Friends who visited “were surprised with the change in my face,” she said. “They compared my nose to Nicole Kidman’s!”
Even in the worst spasms of violence that followed the 2003 US-led invasion, cosmetic surgery didn’t go out of style. Now, as the country has quieted down, nose jobs, Botox and liposuction are all the rage.
Al-Sahan, one of Baghdad’s premier plastic surgeons, said he averages about 20 cosmetic surgeries a week — 70 percent on women.
During the height of the fighting, reconstructive surgery for the wounded made up the bulk of his practice, but now most of it is cosmetics unrelated to the war, he said.
“When there’s a good security situation and good economic improvement of the country, the work will grow,” he said.
Interest in plastic surgery has blossomed since the fall of former president Saddam Hussein, and the end of economic sanctions that isolated Iraqis from the influences and pop culture of the outside world. Also, doctors who fled the violence are trickling back.
However, availability of cosmetic surgery is limited — al-Sahan said fewer than half a dozen cosmetic surgeons operate in the country — and patients have to provide their own Botox or silicone. Al-Sahan’s clinic in the upscale Mansour neighborhood, with its worn sofas and stairwell smelling of cats, hardly evokes Nip/Tuck, the US TV show about high-end cosmetic surgery.
Still, his waiting room on a recent afternoon was so full that clients spilled out into the hallway.
Most of Baghdad’s cosmetic surgeons play dual roles: They do reconstructive surgery, mostly on war-wounded patients, at government hospitals and cosmetic surgeries at private hospitals.
The cosmetic surgeries tend to be their bigger earners because patients pay cash — about US$600 for a nose job. Breast augmentation costs US$1,200 and clients must import the silicone from abroad.
Botox, injected to relax muscles and head off wrinkles, can be found in Iraqi pharmacies.
Demand cuts across all religious divides, but all the same, Iraq being an overwhelmingly Muslim country, some have inevitably sought guidance from the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s most revered Shiite religious figure.
The verdict on his Web site? Hair implants are preferred over a wig, which can fall off during prayer. Liposuction to remove fat and surgery to make breasts smaller or bigger are OK as long as female patients go to a woman doctor.
Cosmetic surgeons in Baghdad, however, said patients rarely raised the religious question or demanded a particular gender of surgeon.
Many bring pictures of famous people they want to look like — Lebanese pop stars Nancy Ajram or Elissa are the most popular.
Cosmetic surgery requires an artist’s touch, al-Sahan said.
“If you have no art in your brain and your hand, I don’t think you can do aesthetic surgery,” he said. “No nose is like another nose. Every patient is a particular case.”
A 30-year-old woman said she was having trouble with a prospective suitor’s mother who didn’t like her nose.
“I am getting older and time is running out. One should take care of oneself to look more beautiful,” she said, adding that she saw no religious issue at stake.
She requested anonymity, saying she didn’t want it known that she was getting a nose job.
“Day after day, the number of clients is increasing,” said an Iraqi doctor, Falah Abdul Hussein al-Shimmari, who runs an outpatient clinic in Baghdad.
“Iraqis were deprived before of such cosmetic services because they were unable to travel,” he said. “But after the war, there has been some openness to the outside world. People are becoming interested in having such plastic surgeries.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was