Why I love a Turkish barber

Berlin

Just as you always hope will happen, I knew I had met the man of my dreams almost on sight. I had made a booking the day before. I arrived. Burak was just finishing the previous customer and gestured with a comb towards an armchair. A Turkish coffee was brought. The customer paid and left and I took his place in the chair before the mirror. “Now, sir,” Burak said, with an ingratiating formality not quite his own. “What can I…”

But as he was asking about the haircut, the nervous pale English boy at the next station in the barber’s interrupted. “Er, Burak,” he said, tremulously. “I wonder, er, would you mind if I borrowed your…” “Nah,” Burak said, all ingratiation gone in a fierce flash. “Nah. Fuck off.” He turned to me. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “But he is. He’s a fucking thief. Now. What can I do for you?” And I knew I had met the barber of my dreams.

It’s an odd thing, a man’s relationship with his barber. I tried three or four — hipsterish but hopeless

I was some way into middle age when I discovered the joy of the Turkish barber, and the bracing rigor of the process. There are the hot towels over your face, twice; the circus trick of the twirling threads plucking your excess eyebrow; the flaming giant Q-tip batting at your earlobe and leaving a burnt-hair stench behind; the cut-throat razor, shaving the back of your neck as well as chin and, if you have a parting in your hair, they shave a tiny parting, too.

And the two minutes of shoulder massage, both brutal and oddly perfunctory. There are technical discussions involved — Lord, the discussions about mustache wax I’ve had. It costs £60 ($75) but you need to find the right Turkish man.

Plenty of people will tell you that $75 is far too much for a man to spend on a haircut. In my view, it’s this haircut that only needs a repeat four times a year — anything cheaper and it grows out in a weird lopsided way after a month. Probably my worst extravagance was, like Jane Austen’s Frank Churchill, in support of a haircut. A German friend had reported in awe about a monosyllabic Turk, a Kreuzberg genius with the cut-throat. The next time I was in Berlin, I went. My friend was right. Four months later, I flew back to Berlin, in pilgrimage, as if I were going to Bayreuth for Parsifal, just to get my hair cut.

“There are Turkish barbers in London, you know,” my husband said, with some exasperation tempered with lechery when I got back to show it off. It’s an odd thing, a man’s relation with his barber. I tried three or four — hipsterish but hopeless, nervous with the cut-throat. And then I came to Burak, the barber of my dreams. Like the best men’s barbers, Burak scowled a great deal, and had the distinct air of a thug with an Asbo about him. We quickly bonded over dogs — he said, and I believed him, that dogs always loved him. Dogs adore a physically decisive man, and Burak didn’t hesitate with a razor in his hand. By the third visit, he remembered me, and the conversation went on into uncharted areas. You can talk about anything in a barber’s chair, and Burak talked to his customers about everything. He had what my grandmother used to call “a potty mouth.” He liked, he said, a fat girl, and went on into fond, contemptuous, detailed reminiscences. It was disgusting. But it was also brilliant, and so were his haircuts.

It is commonly believed that women, living together in communities, come to experience a synchronization of their monthly cycles. In much the same way, I and our schnauzer, Greta, had come to the same haircut timetable. I would drop her off at the groomer in Kennington, shelling out another sixty pounds, and head off with a light heart to be pummeled by Burak.

One day I arrived and Burak was gone. Without a word, he had taken himself back to small-town Turkey. Did he have what he referred to as a “fat girl” in tow? Hard to imagine. But small-town Turkey — that really is too far to go for a haircut.

I was in the park, and bewailing the disappearance of Burak, some time later, to a friend who had made the mistake of admiring Greta’s new haircut. “I’m just going from Turk to Turk at the moment,” I said. “It’s not the same. I’m seriously thinking I might have to go to Berlin to get my hair cut again — like Frank Churchill going to London in Emma.” (My dog walking friend is quite literary.)

“Well,” she said. “You do realize that Frank wasn’t really going to have his hair cut. He was actually ordering the piano for Jane Fairfax. Didn’t you realize?”

“No!” I said. You learn all sorts of things, idly chatting in the park.

“Your hair’s looking fairly good, too, I should say,” she said, sympathetically.