A few days ago I played a round of "How old are you, why do you have so many gray hairs, why don't you dye your hair?" with the mother of my tutoring students. The day after, she and her 29 year old niece cornered me. "If you want to dye your hair I know of a place you can go to get it done!" Turns out the niece was going there the very next day, and that meant I was going along too. Now, I have been growing my natural hair out for a few years, and had decided against coloring it to see how gray a girl in her late 20s could get. But apparently it was aging me terribly. After some womanly pressure, I was signed up to go to a Jeddah salon.
At five o'clock on Wednesday we picked up Shoda (the niece) and Mike drove us to a big white building that has fancy color changing lights on it at night, Rima Salon. We got dropped off at the door. It had a sign taped to it "ABSOLUTELY NO MEN ALLOWED". (what happens if a pipe bursts or a computer needs fixing? I have a feeling there isn't a listing for female ITs or plumbers in this country.) I knew I was in for a treat. We walked into a lobby that went up about three or four stories, with hundreds of little glass bubbles suspended from the ceiling. Three older women with various versions of blond highlights and skin tight shirts greeted us at the front desk, two were smoking cigarettes. Shoda signed us in and one of the women laughed when she was given my name, "Arab name!" (by the way Saudi Arabia, my last name is not Ibrahim, no matter how bad you want to spell it that way.)
Shoda started guiding me around the salon with six floors, mazes of frosted glass walls and small rooms, doing all of our business in Arabic. Shoda had big plans for me. First she found her preferred stylist. She told the lady that she wanted a dramatic change for me, black hair, "corrected" eyebrows. The stylist began touching my hair and telling Shoda "Haraam! Haraam!" basically saying it would be a sin to do that to my hair. I went the entirety of my teen years looking like a homeless clown, trying every hair color, so hearing that I might be getting a black dye job did not shake me up a bit. But, Shoda folded on the black and picked a dark brown from the samples instead. "I am going to make you look Arab" she said. I got visions of huge hair and tropical pink and blue eyeshadow. She assured me that she preferred the "natural" look, and that I would love it and be addicted to it like caffeine.
The dye went in and she began to talk eyebrows. I guess my norwegian eyebrows had bothered her since the first time she saw me. I will admit, they are a bit lighter than my hair color somehow, and a little sparse. Truthfully I never knew what to do with them, so I left them alone in fear that if I tried anything they would end up drawn on like my grandma's. Shoda reviled that her eyebrows were tattoos, but advised me against getting them tattooed because you can't change them ever again. I also learned that in Islam, you are not supposed to pull hair out of your face. That means no waxing or plucking on your head, so I started wondering what they were going to do to my eyebrows in this Muslim country. Shave them. They shave and bleach any hair on the face. Apparently it is fine to wax the entire rest of the body, and to tattoo on eyebrows, but no tweezers anywhere above the neck. I have no clue why.
It was time for my color to come out and for the haircut. I like having my hair done by people who don't speak my language, you are always in for a good surprise, and you don't have to chit chat. The lady working on me had orangey Farah Fawcett hair, and her assistant looked like Left Eye from TLC. I honestly felt pretty confident in them, and they did a great job on me. Left Eye did go a little long with the hairdryer though, I don't care to see smoke or steam or whatever was floating off my hair from the round brush. The style turned out cute, with more of the natural look that was promised. Also, as I was being cut, I was treated to the sounds of an Arab cat fight outside my room. Screams like you have never heard before, in a language that lends its self a little too well to sounding angry like you have never heard before, doors slamming, then the hairdryer came on. Sigh. The fight was coming from the bridal section.
Finally I was ushered into the eyebrow room. A few women waited on couches with bleach all over their faces. I was seated in the operating chair, and my eyebrow "problem" was discussed over me in Arabic. I closed my eyes as a little straight razor was waved above them. Scrape, scrape scrape. Done. Then I felt a little brush of cool thick liquid on my eyebrows. COLOR. Once she was done, I was tilted up to a mirror to approve the shape, well no going back now really. I was told the tint will only last about a week, as I waited the ten minutes in uncertainty. The girl bushed off all the dye and underneath were little dark eyebrows. Totally reasonable. Shoda was not happy, she wanted darker, more drama! The eyebrow girl disagreed and told Shoda that she was afraid I would yell at her, because the only other American she worked on had gotten very angry and yelled at her. I told the girl I was pleased, and Shoda asked what my husband would think. I said, "He will like these, no problem." Shoda seemed even less satisfied and whisked me away to a mirror that was not being used. She got out her makeup bag and started painting gel eyeliner on my still too light brows. "You need to buy this makeup, you will love this. You will become addicted!" She showed me my new brows and asked, "What will your husband say?!" "Uhh, nothing," I replied. Shoda loved them, and at last felt accomplished.
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| unearthly |
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| Natural. When I got home. After some scrubbing. |
