The weekend is here already and according to the traditions of middle-class women in Jerusalem, it was time to go to the hair salon. My mother, who also belonged to a “middle-class” family used to go every Saturday afternoon to Sarkis.
Sarkis was one of the oldest and most renowned hairdressers in Palestine. He had studied the profession in France and Italy in the 1960s. His salon was named “Paris/Rome” after the two countries’ capitals.
This was a weekly “ritual” that preceded attending the Sunday weekly Greek Orthodox mass at St. James which is next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. After the mass ended, Jerusalemite families used to gather for Sunday lunch either at home or at one of the restaurants in Jerusalem.
The quiet residential neighborhoods surrounding Jerusalem, including Beit Hanina, where we used to live, had not yet been transformed into commercial hubs that disturbed the calm and the residential identity of the place. Abed, another hairstylist, had not yet opened his modest salon in our neighborhood. Jerusalem, with its two main streets, Salah al-Din and al-Zahra streets together with the Old City were still the central destination for the Palestinians. Jerusalem was the economic, political, cultural, and social capital for them.
Taroub at Sarkis’s salon in 1965, from APO Documentaries website
Sarkis was a professional “coiffeur”. He was well known in other Arab countries. Some actresses who visited Jerusalem pre the 1967 Israeli occupation, or “the year of thunder” as I call it, stopped by the salon to get their hair styled by Sarkis.
Among them was the Lebanese, Armenian singer, Taroub, who visited the salon in 1965 and became a close friend to Sarkis. It was said at the time, that she dedicated her famous song “Ya Hallāq I‘mil-li Ghurra” (“Oh Barber, Cut Me Some Bangs”); a song that was widely broadcast on many Arab radio stations during the seventies and eighties.
This was only one of the many stories which the women used often to talk about, particularly in relation with a photograph of Taroub which Sarkis had hung in the corner of one of the mirrors in the salon. As for me, I used to listen to their gossip with full attentive ears and widely open eyes. Fifty years later, the scene in my head had become a memory which I included in my blog, “Sowar, Raad, Ward) meaning in English, “pictures, thunder, and roses”.
In those days, going to hair salons did not require a prior appointment by telephone. Anyhow, getting a landline phone after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967 was not easy at all. It required considerable effort and time, and sometimes “powerful connections”. Additionally, the installation fees, and the subsequent bills would impose a financial burden that not everyone could afford.
Only a few families in Jerusalem enjoyed the “luxury” of having a telephone line; usually families who, according to the prevailing class classifications of that time, were described as “Kubar”, meaning prominent and sophisticated. Such families, besides enjoying this “privilege”, would also own a semi or full-automatic washing machine, a black-and-white television, a four-wheeled car, and a son studying medicine abroad.
The son would usually be called “Doctor” or “Hakim” from his very first day at university, and when he returns home after a year or two for a summer visit to his family, all the elderly in the neighborhood would be waiting at his door to congratulate him on his safe arrival back from the land of “Uncle Sam”. Each moaning out of pain and health problems, hoping that the “Hakim” who still had six or seven years ahead before specializing and graduating would offer the immediate, magical solutions to end their suffering.
Farrouj Studio, Old City / Jerusalem.
In Jerusalem, as in Greater Syria in general, Armenians, like Sarkis, are particularly skilled in three professions: Ceramics and painting on tiles, photography, and hairdressing. If you are to search for the one who gave Fairuz the vase when she “passed through the ancient streets of Jerusalem”, you might discover that he was Armenian; or if you ever saw a sign reading “Photo Studio” while walking through Jerusalem’s streets, you could be almost certain that the owner’s name is Hagop, Garo, or Farouj, which are three common Armenian names.
Armenians in Jerusalem and elsewhere inherited these three professions from fathers and grandfathers. Many of the well-known Armenian photographers preserve rich and valuable archives documenting Palestinian life in the country since the beginning of the last century—if not earlier.
The Armenian Balian family and ceramic art in the 1950s
Some shelves at the Sandrouni Ceramics Gallery in Bab al-Jadid, Old City of Jerusalem/ photographed by me in 2017
The sun would set on Saturday and rise again on Sunday signaling the time to attend the ten-o’clock Mass at the Church of St. James in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. For Jerusalemites, this weekly ritual was not limited to its religious dimension; it was also considered an occasion for socializing. After the Greek Orthodox mass, they would gather in the courtyard outside the Holy Sepulchre or in a modest sitting room next to it to have coffee and exchange conversations.
The staircase leading to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from the Christian Quarter old city of Jerusalem/ Summer 2015
As a child, who was seven years old by that time, I had no patience to wait for almost two hours until the mass was over. That was so long to bear for me, particularly as I did not understand what the priest was saying, why his voice would rise at times and fall at others, and why we were asked to stand and sit down again every now and then!
I would begin to move left and right then start claiming that I was thirsty, tired, or I needed to go to the toilet. At the beginning, my trick succeeded and my mom would believe me, however, by the time and with much repetition, she discovered that I was only pretending all that to pressure her to leave. Since then, she would not pay attention to my complaints anymore. Whether I liked it or not, I had to attend the mass with her from the beginning to the end without daring to utter a single word.
I should confess that listening to the chattering of the women at Sarkis salon the day before was much more enjoyable for me.
Published on 29/4/2021
