Regular Life in Jerusalem: Samara Salon

Jerusalem is a city of places. Most people travel there to see a certain place: Jewish, Armenian, Arab, Christian, Muslim, historic, holy, contested, and touristed. The struggle for cities like Jerusalem is to move beyond their overly visited places and to show the everyday lives of their normal people. To which places do “normal” Jerusalemites go? One such place is Samara Salon.

Samara Salon is an Arab hair salon located in the heart of the Christian Quarter of the Old City next to the Custodia Terra Sancta. It is owned by a wonderful Arab Christian man named Jamil Samara and staffed by a mix of Christian and Muslim Arabs who service a clientele of Arabs and tourists. It is one large floor space where hair is cut and an upper loft where makeup is done.

If we stop with these basic facts, we will start to think that perhaps normal places are in fact interesting and that’s why few seek them out. But the excitement of a normal place lies not within articles in a newspaper or political importance, but the adventures of everyday life that happen there. But the outsider, the tourist, usually does not get or take the time to see this.

The “normal” place called “Samara Salon” is really a hub of community activity where people enter and exit bringing the news of the town and the world, where tourists come to ask for directions, and everyone takes part in the life stories of those who frequent or work there. The Salon is usually a flurry of activity with people criss-crossing back and forth as customers and workers alike rush around to accomplish a world’s worth of tasks in a day’s worth of time. An outsider might think it is a terribly stressful place, but the chaos has a warming magic to it.

For me, an American studying in Jerusalem, Samara Salon is something like a sitcom. Last year on Fridays, my friend Chandler and I would ride our bikes into town and stay at the Salon for hours absorbing the atmosphere and participating in the excitement. For the sitcom, we envisioned ourselves as the teenager heartthrobs who come in the beginning of the show with some problem or situation and the older, wiser Jamil would listen and offer sound advice to us. Jamil and his family would of course be the central characters: his wife Olympia who helps with everything except actual hair cutting, his 6 year-old son Immanuel who speaks Arabic, English, and Hebrew, and the baby boy Yoel who mostly makes messes. Then would follow the other characters who are the hairstylists: Samuel, the more worldly younger brother and part owner; Bessem, the strong fix-it man who doesn’t speak English; Nasser, the ladies’ man; Tamara, the make-up specialist; Keefa, the quieter secular girl, Abir, the religious and veiled receptionist with a smile who seems to actually make the place run; and finally Israel, Jamil’s best friend from Barbados who speaks neither English nor Arabic and who seems to always pop in and out at interesting moments. Besides the main characters, there are hundreds of Arabs and a handful of NGO workers and tourists who filter in each day adding their interesting lives together to make Samara Salon a place worthy of prime-time television.

Chandler and I were introduced to Jamil last year by the mother of a high school friend of mine while she was on a tour in Israel. As young men, we always needed our hair cut which meant we came back time and time again. A business friendship turned into a real friendship and a “normal” place turned into our regular Jerusalem hang out. Many times we would sit and practice our Arabic or Hebrew with our flashcards. Last Fall, we met an Israeli in Cyprus who taught us how to play Cheshbesh (Backgammon), so Chandler bought a Cheshbesh board from one of our Arab shopkeeper friends and we took it to the Salon to play. This became a regular routine: passing time at the Salon playing Cheshbesh and watching the world flow around us.

One of the most fun parts of Jamil’s shop is his young son Immanuel (Ee man u eel in Arabic). The first time we met him he discovered that we were strong enough to easily lift him up, which quickly turned into a game where we spun him around in circles. However, we managed to get tired far more quickly than he did. Another time, I was standing outside watching the tourists, the monks, the nuns, and the regular people walk by when Immanuel ran up to me. “Play with me!” He demanded in English. I told him that he had to follow me and do exactly as I did. Now, the Old City stone streets and these stones are sometimes staggered on stairs (like the stairs in front of the Salon) so that one could hop on them across the street. So, I waited for a break in the people walking by and then I dashed across the stones to the other side. Immanuel copied me. We did this for awhile until he began to tire and get careless about dodging the passerby. He ended up crashing into a Catholic priest who muttered something in Arabic and walked off.

Once Jamil called me asking for help and told me to bring Chandler and come the next day to the shop. We thought we were going to be doing manual labor. Instead, he informed us that he had a 10 minute segment in the Bethlehem Hair Salon Show and wanted us to help him. Chandler ended up being in charge of the music and I sat down brainstorming with Jamil until we came up with a storyboard. We came back to the shop every evening for several nights in a row working long into the night about movements, props, scenes, and how the music would fit.

The Tuesday night before the Saturday performance, we came with another friend named Ben and really finalized the plans. It was rather late in the evening and Jamil announced that he wanted us to do a trial run using the now closed Salon as the fake stage. Jamil, acting as director with my occasional interjection, then proceeded to turn the music on and have us, Bessem, Nasser, and another friend of his dance around acting out the musical that we planned: a wedding. There we were in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem: three Americans and three Arabs flapping our arms like butterflies as we danced to Persian and Arabic folk music in a brightly lit store at night while confused tourists did double takes through the Salon’s big windowed storefront. This part of Jerusalem I am sure has never made it into the papers. Jamil unfortunately cancelled the show the next day because we did not have enough time to practice and the preparations were too much stress. Regardless, every time that I enter the shop now, Nasser and I pretend to dance and flap our arms in memory of that night.

Really the magic of the Samara Salon is just how normal it is and how normal the people are that come into it. People tend to think of the normal places in the world as boring, “unlike the exciting places” they will say. But this is of course a mistake. The normal places give the life that enriches us more than someplace famous. In the end of my studies in Jerusalem, I will leave full of memories not about the Dome of the Rock or the Western Wall, but about the normal places like Samara Salon.