The Haircut...

Every once in a while I wander “down the hill” to Rancho San Diego to get a haircut.  For several years now I've been patronizing a barbership owned by an Iraqi immigrant.  The barbers are mostly Iraqi as well, though not all of them.  This is unsurprising, as in the general El Cajon area (including Rancho San Diego and Jamul town) there is a large and thriving Iraqi expatriate community.

The owner, who often takes care of me himself, speaks English with a very thick accent.  I often have trouble understanding him.  Yesterday I went down for my semi-annual haircut (just kidding – I go at least three times a year), and the owner greeted me, then motioned me aside, out of earshot of the other barbers and customers.

“Err hou choo?” he asked.  I didn't comprehend, and I let him know.  We went back and forth a few times, both of us a little frustrated, until finally it dawned on me what he was asking: “Are you a Jew?”

I suppose my beard (a white Santa Claus-style beard that I don't trim very often) got him wondering.  But the fact that he asked got the ponder going.  Why did he care?  Would he refuse to serve Jews?  Did Jews require the use of special clippers?  Perhaps only certain barbers would work on Jews?  I didn't like where any of these thoughts were going.

So I told him I was not a Jew – and I asked him why he wanted to know.

With his thick accent, it took me a while to understand what he was telling me, but I'm very glad I took the trouble.

My barber is a Chaldean, an Iraqi Christian.  There are many Chaldeans here, refugees from Saddam, and over the years I've learned a bit about their history.  Amongst the things I knew: the Chaldeans were responsible for forcing many Jews to leave Iraq.  In general, relations between Chaleans and Jews have been less than cordial. Much less.

But the message from my barber wasn't what I'd expect, given that background.  What my barber finally managed to convey to me was this: the reason he wanted to know if I was Jewish is because he wanted to be certain that he never charged a Jew for a haircut – even if that Jew came in every day for a trim.

Why?

Because my barber's two sons and his brother were saved from Saddam in 1999 by Jews in his home town in northern Iraq.  Jews whom Saddam treated even more cruelly than he did Chaldeans.  Jews who truly had no reason to be friendly to their Chaldean neighbors.  Jews who nonetheless risked their lives to hide my barber's family from the Iraqi troops bent on arresting and executing them, and then smuggled them over the border to Syria, from where they eventually escaped to asylum the U.S.

So no Jew pays for a haircut at my barber's shop.  And I have a new reason to patronize him.  I'm not sure he wants his story widely known, so I'm not going to publish his name, or that of his barbershop.  But if you know Rancho San Diego, you can probably figure it out...