An Albanian haircut

My Albanian haircut. And, this is about something completely different.

Somewhere in the midst of a busy pedestrian street in the Northern Albanian town of Shkodre, I walked into a barber shop. I asked for a haircut.

The owner, a very pleasant guy (I will not mention his name, you will understand soon why), sat me in the chair and started the right away. I think the only English word he knew or said was “short?”. Yes, short, I said. There was nobody but us in the room.

We started to chat, of course. He in Albanian and I in English. With his finger, he wrote on the mirror that he is 64, and 43 years is working as a barber. Of course, I wanted to hear about the Old Times, but the language barrier between us was too big.

When I told him I am from Israel, he told me that Israelis (perhaps Jews) and Albanians are brothers, rubbing his two index fingers together. Nazis, boom-boom, history, he said. Not the first Albanian to make that connection.

He probably said that the old times were not good, moving his forearm towards the back of his neck, as if pushing air or driving away a cheeky fly.

He somehow made me understand that making a haircut like the one he is doing for me now could have been a source of trouble, in the old days, but I was not sure I understood all of it.

When another elderly local gentleman, probably in his seventies, walked in, my barber explained to him that he is with a tourist, and that he should come back later (I understood the word tourist only). The guy said something like “I don’t mind the tourist”, and sat down. My barber stopped talking. I understood somehow, that he wanted to talk with me, but only between four eyes.

Then, his aid, a forty-some old year guy came in, and stood by the other chair, starting to cut hair to a new, younger customer. It turned out that he had a good English. I learned from him that in the Communist dictatorship days, a barber (and a client) that would have made or had such a haircut, one that could then be called “western”, could have gotten into very serious trouble. He did not mention what trouble.

Out of politeness and curiosity, I changed the subject. I said that my barber had good, gentle, professional hands, then asked if he learned this from his father, and asked him to translate. To this he answered, without having to consult his colleague, “he learned to cut hair in the jail”…

Counting the years back, you can figure out which kind of jail it was.

A few days later, while reading the memoir of the Albanian author, academic and political theory professor at the London Economic School, Lea Ypi, “Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (2021)”, I understood that indeed those haircuts were called not less than Imperialistic, and those who were sporting such a haircut could be severely punished for it.

I found more proof to this in an article of an Albanian named Mirjan Sulejmani where he mentioned that one could be arrested for that, having his hair (or beard) cut right in the middle of the street by police, then sent to jail.

Such were those days…

And this is what you can learn when you engage in a conversation with your baber.