Unheard of during the reign of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and unthinkable during years of violence, an unlikely innovation is slowly being rolled out in Baghdad by Iraqis back from overseas: the one-stop beauty center.
Three decades of instability — from wars with Iran, Kuwait and the US-led invasion, to 13 years of sanctions and embargo, and a sectarian war in which thousands died — all but ruled out leisure activities for women, including trips to a beauty salon.
However, Ali Bulbul, armed with over 30 years’ experience doing makeup for television broadcasters, is determined to change all that.
Photo: AFP
The 51-year-old left the country in 1990, after Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait. Having returned for good in 2005, he began working again as a makeup artist for Iraqi television channels and still works for state broadcaster Iraqiya TV.
Early last month, he and an associate opened Specialized Beauty Center on Abu Nawas street along the Tigris river in the center of Baghdad. It is there that Bulbul aims to offer a single-point attraction for the city’s privileged upper classes.
The center features skincare and body treatments, a sauna and jacuzzi, yoga and aerobic classes, the last two of which are virtually unprecedented in Iraq.
In addition, there is a gym outfitted with shining, new exercise equipment and a weight loss center, nail salon, tattoo parlor and a makeup and hair salon.
Unusually in Iraq, the center makes prolific use of technological devices, to the point where the dozens of machines that await clients are often intimidating to them, Bulbul said.
He has been relying largely on word-of-mouth advertising, but has also distributed flyers in the neighborhood around the center.
For now, the handful of clients are mostly housewives, but men also attend on the two days a week reserved exclusively for male customers.
“We are more comfortable now,” said Farah Saad, a 27-year-old mother of two. “We can go out and wear anything we want — we used to put on scarves, but not now. We are exploring life more and more.”
A pre-wedding hair and make-up session costs US$300, while a subscription to the center’s gym and jacuzzi is US$100 a month, both of which are expensive in a country where the official rate of poverty is 23 percent.
Bulbul wants to expand the center to include a swimming pool.
He said that while he could have stayed overseas he preferred instead to return to his homeland.
“Iraqis are always homesick,” Bulbul said. “The social ties here are very strong. “I always had the idea of opening a wellness center in Baghdad, both before and after the fall of the [Saddam] regime, but I had to delay the idea because of the bad security situation.”
During the insurgency and sectarian war that raged across Iraq in the years following the US-led 2003 invasion, tens of thousands of people were killed.
Religious extremists in particular targeted hairdressers, most of whom closed their shops in fear. Women, few of whom were veiled before 2003, were suddenly forced to cover their skin and stay at home.
Violence has dropped dramatically since that period, but attacks are still common and Baghdad remains one of the world’s most dangerous cities.
Janna al-Baaj, who runs the part of the wellness center dedicated to hair and makeup, fled Iraq in 2006, initially for Jordan and then other countries in the region, after receiving death threats.
She came back earlier this year after Bulbul told her about his plans and offered her a job, but her daughter is still living in Syria.
“I think the security situation has changed tremendously,” the 40-year-old said. “I decided to return to work in my country, despite all the difficulties. Iraqi women are eager to live — through our work, we will try to create beauty even among those who lack it.”
“We have a lot of demand for what we do, because there of the lack of such centers in the country,” Bulbul said, but noted that finding qualified employees for his salon was proving difficult. “We are in contact with experts who left the country because of threats against them, and are trying to bring them back to work here.”
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