Turkish.....not-so-Delight

This weekend I had a Turkish adventure.

It's been approximately 2 months since I moved here this summer, and I had recently decided that it was time for a haircut, lest I eventually break the school's no-hair-covering-the-ears dress code policy. Now, I HAVE had one haircut in Turkey before at a local Turkish salon when I was here last spring, but at that time I had an interpreter to help me through the process.

When my roommate mentioned offhandedly last week that he was also wanting a haircut, I decided that it was time to go. Because of the fact that neither one of us really speaks much Turkish, we asked around for a Turkish speaker to accompany us, but no one was available (whom we trusted, at least) over the weekend. So finally, on Saturday afternoon, I just thought, "Whatever. I can figure this out." (an MK's famous last words) and headed for the salon. On my way my roommate called me and asked me what I was up to, and when he found out I was going to get my hair cut, he asked if he could join me. I explained that I didn't have a translator and I was planning on winging it. Knowing that if he didn't join me in winging it, he would be left to wing it on his own later, he readily agreed to join me at his own risk.

Before we went into the shop, we huddled up and I told him the game plan: we would go into the shop, sit down, point to our heads and say, "Bir santimetre burda," which roughly translates to, "1 centimeter here." It had taken me the whole walk to the shop to put together a comprehensible phrase in Turkish with my VERY limited vocabulary to get my message across, and so needless to say, by the time we stepped in the shop, I was practically brimming with pride at my own brilliance. I was well aware that the sentence was primitive at best, but it seemed foolproof, and that's all I cared about.

My roommate was the first in line, and so when a chair opened up, he sat down and followed my instructions. I was so proud of him. The barber nodded his head (with a grin) and confirmed, "Bir?" ("One?"), to which we unanimously replied, "Evet, bir." ("Yes, one."). The barber nodded again, and turned to attach the appropriate clip to the buzzer. Then, just like that, he turned back around and shaved the top of my roommate's head bald. And we're talking BALD, bald. Nowhere NEAR 1 centimeter.

By the time I was able to pick up my jaw off the floor, a new chair had opened up, and it was my turn. Frantically, I scrambled for a Plan B. The barber was now looking at me with a big question written across his face. Panicking, I tried Plan A, but when his response was simply to cock his head sideways like a parakeet, I knew I had to try something else - fast. Spinning around, I saw the 12 year old-ish boy they had working at the shop sweeping, etc., and noticed that his hair was about the length I wanted. Pointing at him excitedly and looking up at the barber with the buzzer poised above my head, I did my best to make him understand that I wanted my hair to look like the boy's. His gaze swung to follow my finger, and when he saw the boy, he almost doubled over laughing.

I was confused.

He proceeded to rattle off something to his fellow barbers, and when they had all had a good laugh, and he noticed my still confused face, he smiled and pointed at the boy and said something else in Turkish. Hearing him, the boy grinned shyly and turned around revealing the back of his head and probably the most hideous looking mullet that I've ever seen on a 12 year old boy in my life. I didn't need to understand what the still very amused barber tried to ask me next; my answer was an emphatic "Hayir, HAYIR!!" ("No, NO!"). This only produced another hearty laugh from him before he nodded that he understood and began trimming.

Although I still didn't get quite what I was looking for, my trim was a lot closer to what I wanted than my poor roommate. (On a side note, I DID think it would be somewhat humorous if we had both walked in to school with new haircuts on Monday morning to show off to our students - the Bible teacher as a skinhead and the English teacher as an 80's rock star). As for him, he has taken it all in stride like a champ.....although I am not expecting to have another haircutting buddy again when I go back for round 2 in two more months. :-)