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The kingdom of barbershops

The first night we scoured the area around the Doha hotel for a place to dine, we were blown away. Hunger was pressing, but we moved in slow motion, like three zombies fresh out of their graves in the Qatari capital that the heat threatened to liquefy. The lighting on most of the streets in the neighborhood was very dim, just enough to distinguish the rest of the pedestrians and read the indicator signs. Suddenly, turning a corner, light came on next to a shopping area, as if the UFO from ‘Encounters of the Third Kind’ had made a stopover in the Persian Gulf to abduct the entire World Cup. The lighting was so bright that it was hard to make out what was on the other side of the first window. I managed to catch a glimpse of a dozen waiters dressed in immaculate white jackets and several people seated in large armchairs. “A restaurant!!!!!” I exclaimed to myself. But when the glare died down what I thought waiters were barbers and what I had imagined were diners were local patrons needing a shave or touch ups on their goatees or sideburns. A few seconds earlier I was salivating because my initial mistaken impression intensified the memory of those real cafeterias -there are practically no more left- in which it seemed that there were more people serving the bar than consuming and in which the smell of coffee and chocolate mixed with that of butter melting on the griddle. But it is that wherever you looked there were barbershops everywhere. Not only in that street, also in the parallels, and in the perpendiculars. Together, but not scrambled, with garish signs beyond power and unlimited, uniformed staff, like soldiers from the kingdom of barbershops. And it was already midnight. I’m about to grow mine out to try them.

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