Marisol Rifai -
Twice a month, beautician Chnoor Khezri takes her equipment to a camp near Mosul and gives displaced Iraqi women who have lost everything a proper pampering and some fresh confidence.
In a small room inside the camp, the young Iranian Kurd takes out her brushes and scissors and puts blue wax to heat up in a pot. “It’s not much but I work miracles with this,” she says.
More than 3,600 women have endured freezing temperatures and the most rudimentary comfort levels in this camp’s tents since they fled the fighting between Iraqi forces and the IS in Mosul.
They were initially reluctant to follow a stranger in the sprawling camp and be separated from their husbands but a dozen of them eventually gave in to Khezri’s efforts to bring them into her beauty salon.
“I offer them a haircut, eyebrow and upper lip threading. They don’t ask for anything specific really. They just want me to pamper them,” said Khezri, a 31-year-old Iranian Kurd who runs a beauty parlour in Arbil, the nearby capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region.
One of her “clients” that day is Mervet, a 30-year-old mother who watches attentively as Khezri’s fingers knead the wax, apply it on the wincing face of another young lady and peel it off sharply.
“In Mosul, before the IS, I used to work in a beauty salon. I find it moving to see this routine again,” she says.
Azhar, 34, arrived to the Hasansham camp just days ago by cross the Tigris River and escape through the liberated eastern side of the city.Recounting her experiences in Mosul put her in a state of rage but a look in the mirror put a smile back on her face.
“I never thought a haircut would make me so happy,” she said.
The word got out and now a queue of women giggling at the thought of getting a haircut has formed outside her temporary salon.
“There is no space for women in this camp. There are plenty of hair dressers for men. There are games for the children, but nothing for us,” said one of them, 23-year-old mother of two Ghada.
“Our faces are burnt by the sun, we need creams, and basic hygiene kits,” said Safa, another women standing next to her.
Ghada, who settled in the displacement camp six weeks earlier, says she’s been having nightmares. “I see Daesh spies everywhere,” she says.
Meanwhile, as the sun sets on Hasansham, Khezri finally packs up her beauty tools after seven hours of non-stop work, exhausted but happy. —AFP
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