Trim? Yasser, No Problem!

Fashion and I decided to get a divorce over forty years ago. I have been accused of many things in my lifetime, lots of which are true, but never have I been accused of being fashionable. I make Homer Simpson look like an Armani Model.

 But there is one thing I can say about fashion with certainty; old blokes with long grey hair should get it cut! So with this in mind, I decided to pay the barber a visit the other day.

My hair has skipped the going grey bit of aging and gone straight to platinum blonde. So I like to keep it very short.

Another problem that I suffer from is a complete inability to queue, so I don’t do anything at busy periods. This was why I was outside the barbers shop at 9am, waiting for it to open.

It was a typical British spring morning, wet and windy. The barber eventually came to the door and opened it in what has to be one of the loneliest opening ceremonies ever seen.

I immediately rushed from my car into the shop thinking that the rain may have the same effect on me as it did on the Wicked Witch of the West.

Once I was in the shop, the barber, who I had never met before, smiled, then launched into a conversation about the weather.

If you are reading this and are not British or you have never visited Britain you will not be aware that the national pastime for us Brits is talking about the weather. The main reason for this is that we can get the whole four seasons in one day.

The barber then very kindly offered me a cup of coffee. So we sat and drank our coffee and chatted for a short while. He eventually sat me in the ‘Mastermind’ chair to cut my hair.

The barber was a small, slightly-built, balding man. Like me, he wasn’t in the first four flushes of youth, and had such a pleasing smile and demeanour. Barbers seem to be part artisan and part psychologist. People sit in the big black chair and unload all sorts of information that’s really best kept quiet to them. 

He spoke with an accent which I couldn’t quite place. My home town of Huddersfield has quite a good mix of different ethnicities, so I always find it interesting to discover where people have come from and why on earth they settled in a little town in the north of England.

We eventually got on to the subject of holidays and travel and that is when he spoke about where he came from, he was Palestinian.

I could have sat there and listened to him speak all day.He gave me a fantastic insight into where he came from and the problems they faced. He spoke gently and eloquently about the problems in the Middle East.

He spoke about how his family’s land had been taken for the state of Israel, and couldn’t work out why they had been given it. “The Jews could have just come and settled and lived with us” he said.

He then said that he couldn’t understand how a people who had been so oppressed throughout history could become so oppressive themselves in such a short space of time.

Of course this is a one sided view; it would have been fantastic if an Israeli was in the shop having his hair cut at the time.

I once visited Israel with my wife and son, quite a few years ago now. I enjoyed touring around but was surprised to see just how scared the people were. They feel that they are surrounded by enemies, which is probably true.

Jerusalem was a fascinating place, where all the religions meet! This was like making dynamite while smoking a cigar, you know there’s a good chance it’s all going to go bang, but you just don’t know when.

But the most interesting thing he told me about was Yasser Arafat. I had, in my ignorance, always seen him as a radical Islamist who was trying to start a religious war in the Middle East. 

I like to think that I’m reasonably well read and have a sufficient grasp of politics to hold my own in a debate about most things, so how come I knew nothing about Yasser Arafat? Probably because of how he was portrayed on British TV. But it’s still my fault for being so ignorant.

To my new barber friend (I won't say his name because I got the distinct impression that he arrived in Britain via the ‘under the wagon tour group') Yasser was a freedom-fighting hero, while to Israel he was just another terrorist.

I paid my fee for my hair cut, I would have paid him the same amount just for the chat to be quite honest. Then I set off home to do a little homework on Mr Arafat.

Mohammid Yasser Adel Rahman Rouuf Arafat al-Qudda al-Husseini (his Mother wasn’t quite sure what to call him?) was born in Cairo in 1929.

He studied at the University Of King Faud 1 before become involved in the Palestine freedom movement. His political career is so long and varied that I’ll let you look it up if you’re interested.

He won a Nobel Peace Prize, a Times person of the year award, Jawaharal Nehru Award and was an X factor runner up! He married when he was 61 to a 27 year old Palestinian Christian, Suha Tawil.

Before he got married he adopted 50 Palestinian war orphans (I bet his new wife was surprised when she saw how many bridesmaids there were!)

But where I got the idea that he was some sort of Islamic extremist from is beyond me as he made this famous (but I hadn’t heard it) quote.

“Having a war about religion is like having a fight about who has the best imaginary friend!”

Like all leaders that have the tag of "freedom fighter", you have to distinguish between fact and fiction. And no doubt he will have done or had done some quite appalling things in his name, but he seems like a very interesting character to me.

I can’t wait for my next hair cut; I might find out that Stalin was really a drag queen!