Hairdo Holyland

Hairdo Holyland

In the spring of 2002, amid the violence of the second Intifada, my father and I were in the waiting room of a beauty salon in the German Colony in Jerusalem. His thinning hair had become difficult to manage. Don’t worry, he said as we waited. This is a very classy place. He had read about it in a Hebrew newspaper and said the hairdresser was Russian trained in France, and considered a genius with difficult hair. She can even do a dry perm he said, and I remembered how proud he was of his hair before chemotherapy had made it fall out.

The German Colony had transformed over the years, cafes, salons, and boutiques filled old Templar stone houses. We’d been told that this hairdresser, Tamara, was so good that women from as far as Tel Aviv came to see her. Eventually she appeared a large Russian woman with wild auburn curls, cigarette in hand. She beckoned my father to the chair. He tried to explain what he wanted, showing her how his hair tended to puff. Tamara nodded clearly uninterested.

As she trimmed, my father looked younger. I could almost forget he was sick. Tamara worked quickly and stepped back to admire her work. It was...big. She’d puffed it up with mousse hair sprayed it until it looked like a Russian pop star. My father’s eyebrows lifted in horror. It looks like Sharon Stone he whispered. He paid and we left quickly.

Later that evening we met friends for dinner. You look like a new man, someone said. My father winced. I look like a new woman.

That summer I stayed in Jerusalem, a city fractured by violence. My mother was in New York working, and I was helping take care of my father. His illness had returned, and I accompanied him to doctor appointments, managed the medications and tried to keep him cheerful. Some days, he was almost himself. Other days the fatigue and weight loss were hard to ignore.

Our days took on rhythm. We walked down Emek Refaim Street greeted by shopkeepers who remembered my father from before. They’d always ask you want coffee something sweet and he’d smile and shake his head. Once, a woman at a bakery gave him a cake for free. For strength she said.

At home he rested read newspapers and made notes in the margins. We watched old movies together especially his favorite.

The Third Man. I’d make him sandwiches he barely ate. Some evenings we hosted friends who came to cheer him up. He loved these visits but got tired quickly.

During this time, Jerusalem felt surreal. Bombings happened weekly. A pizza restaurant was hit. A bus exploded near the market. Sirens were constant. And yet life continued. Cafes were full. People went out. It was like living in a play where the city pretended everything was fine.

One afternoon we saw Tamara on the street. She was smoking and wearing leopard-print pants. You didn’t like the haircut she asked eyeing my father. It was too much, he replied. Too glamorous. She shrugged. You have good bones.

The salon Tamara became something of a place of pilgrimage. I started going myself, drawn to her confidence. The salon was a kind of theater women came in worn and left transformed. Tamara wielded her scissors like a wand. She barely spoke working fast and intense.

One client an elderly woman in a headscarf had thinning hair. Don’t worry Tamara said. We’ll give you volume. In half an hour the woman was beaming, her hair puffed into clouds of fluff. She kissed Tamara’s hand. Another woman said she was going through a divorce. You need bangs Tamara told her.

There was a kind of holy madness in that place. A belief that beauty could defy time sickness even despair. Tamara herself was a contradiction rude warm, indifferent yet gifted.

One day after a visit I asked my father if he wanted to go back for another haircut. Not yet he said. Let’s give Sharon Stone a little more time.

My father died that fall. His last days were spent at home, surrounded by books music and family. On his last evening, he asked for The Third Man again. I played it on the laptop. We didn’t speak much. Just sat in silence watching the black-and-white images flicker

After he died people came with food flowers stories. They said he was brilliant kind, stubborn. They said he was a fighter. One woman brought an old photograph my father in his twenties with a shock of curly black hair. He always cared about his hair she said laughing through tears.

I kept thinking of that haircut, the one Tamara gave him. How absurd it seemed. And yet in some strange way it was perfect. It was bold alive and defiant. It was a hairdo for a man who refused to go quietly.

Years later I visited the salon again. Tamara was still there. Her hair was even bigger. She squinted at me. You came back, she said. Want something dramatic?

No, I said. Just a trim

She nodded and pulled out her scissors.