What closing beauty salons means to the women of Afghanistan
By Alma Begum*
On July 6, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice declared that women’s beauty salons were wasteful and “against Islamic law,” It ordered them to close “from next month onwards.” After I learned about the decree, I visited a salon that I used to frequent from time to time. The hairdresser is a young woman from central Afghanistan. Mina and her two apprentices work out of a humble shop. All the equipment is second-hand, worth less than 10,000 afghani. There is a three-legged unstable stool that would topple an unsuspecting customer, two full-length mirrors, and a worn-out cabinet that holds only a few beauty supplies. But the owner is a skilled beautician who does a good job with limited resources.
We exchange pleasantries, and after a few minutes of silence, I ask: “I’ve heard that they have issued an order to close the salons.” The hairdresser raises her head and vents her frustration. “What to say, everywhere I look, there’s sadness and sorrow,” she explains.
I ask why she chose this profession. She sighs, runs her hands through her hair, and says: “Out of necessity.”
Mina studied for 18 years, including two years of postgraduate studies in computer science and information technology (IT) at a private university. Before the fall of the republic, she worked in a high-ranking office as an administrative and IT manager. Then came August 15, 2021. “On the day of the fall, I left everything untouched in my office and left. Even my tea tin, my books, my laptop that had my pictures, I left everything and left hoping that maybe I would return to work tomorrow or the day after,” Mina recalls. She lost her job and became housebound.
Though Mina received emails offering help from several foreign governments after the fall of the republic, she cannot leave Afghanistan because she’s responsible for her sick and elderly mother. She also doesn’t have a passport.
She tried to find a job, knocking on every door she could but with no luck. They were closed like her previous office. “I knew how to do makeup. I used to do things like eyebrow shaping and dyeing my hair and my sisters. When I saw that there was no other job and didn’t have money or a passport to leave the country, I went to a hairdresser and apprenticed for five months without pay,” she recounts. After getting the blessings of her mother and hairdressing teacher, she searched for a shop to rent.
“I rented this shop seven months ago with the help of one of the relatives for 5,000 afghani. The income was not bad. Not so much that I could become rich, but not so little that I couldn’t afford to rent the shop,” she explains. “I had many customers. Apart from beauty and money, just having a place to work and a space to vent our longings was worth a lot to us. I had 20 to 30 customers every day, all of whom were women and girls who had lost their jobs and studies. Now, no one is looking for beauty, fashion, and style; most customers just want me to dye their hair or trim and tidy their hair.” She was happy in her salon and with her customers, who were poor like her. “Because my shop is not fancy, I didn’t have rich customers. Everyone was poor like me. But at least it was a place where I was happy.”
She was doing well enough to employ some family members as apprentices. “I have three or four students,” Mina explains. “One is my niece who used to be a fourth-year law student. The second one is my maternal uncle’s daughter-in-law, whose husband is unemployed. She earned 500 to 600 afghani a week, which contributed to their household income. The third is my paternal uncle’s granddaughter. She was in the twelfth grade but is now in poor health.”
Mina is tired but strong. She strove to succeed. She worked. She studied. She passed the hardest exams, but society and politics have set her progress back by at least a decade. She says, “I don’t know if we are not considered human to them, we do not eat bread, we do not breathe, we do not have feelings. Why don’t they put themselves in our shoes for a moment?”
I ask Mina about what she thinks will happen to the city’s famous hairdressers and beauty salons. “They will be fine. They are rich,” she says. “These decrees and these obstacles are all for us, the common people. We have lost everything and continue to lose.”
As for Mina, she’s determined to leave, though she worries about her mother: “I am going to Iran. From Iran, I will go to Turkey. I will never return to Afghanistan.” The exodus out of Afghanistan is partly why she is still single. “All the educated and literate ones have left the country. Whoever remains are illiterate and uneducated – I wouldn’t want to marry them,” she explains with a laugh.
Until she leaves, she vows to continue her hair business from home. “Yes! If I have the right customer, I can work from home, but I fear they will arrest me for applying makeup and for earning a living from home,” she acknowledges.
**
In a video press release announcing the hair salon closures, spokesman Mohammad Sadiq Akef explained the Taliban’s reasoning: “It was recently announced that beauty salons will not be allowed to operate after a month. There are several reasons: First, in the current poor economic condition of the country, there is a lot of wastage in these places and the groom’s family is forced to pay extra.” He added: “Second, it is not permissible in sharia for someone else’s hair to be used for adornment. There, women’s hair extensions are used for adornment. Third, women’s eyebrows are plucked, which is explicitly against sharia, and one of the women cursed in one of the Prophet’s hadiths is a woman who plucks another’s eyebrows. These are sinful acts. Another point is that in these places, the rules of Wudu [ritual purification] are not observed, and the water does not reach where it is needed.”
Yet, as Mina explains, the Taliban ignored those “faults” for nearly two years while they taxed every part of her beauty salon, from its licence to its signage. “They used to regulate and standardize our work according to their opinions, so why are they closing now? Was the tax they took from us legitimate? We also need bread and food. How do we meet our and our family’s economic needs?” she says, both distraught and frustrated.
“There are only 10 days left. They gave a written notice three days ago and said you have 13 days to close the salon. In 10 days, everything will be over,” she says with a sigh. “Maybe afterward they will order that no woman has the right to roam the streets of the city.”
* Alma Begum is the pseudonym for a writer living in Afghanistan.
