Susan Gerhardt’s Blog

MOSUL, Iraq – The graffiti scrawled on a low wall close to a lively shopping street is one of the last vestiges of Islamic State propaganda in eastern Mosul. “The real beauty must be hidden,” it reads. Next to it is a drawing of a fully covered woman.

The group may have been driven from the neighbourhood but it still terrifies Anwar.

We meet in the beauty salon that the 29-year old mother has recently opened. The walls are pink, the shelves full of makeup, curlers and wigs. In the background a small television broadcasts the call to prayer from Mecca. Anwar’s face is hidden by an orange scarf. On the back of her jacket the word “Chanel” is picked out in glitter.

When IS arrived in Mosul, Anwar refused to stop hairdressing, despite it being strictly prohibited. Instead, she rebelled in her own quiet way, running a secret beauty salon at home for the women in the neighbourhood, buying cosmetics – which were also banned – on the black market.

“When IS controlled Mosul, I worked illegally at my home,” she said. “At the beginning, IS didn’t know I was running an illegal beauty salon in my house.”

News of the salon spread among women in the neighbourhood who would meet in each other’s homes (they could only meet in public iif accompanied by a mahram – that is, a man of their family, be it their husband, cousin or father). But soon, word got out and an IS policewoman came to Anwar’s home.

“They screamed at me and threatened to strike me if I did not stop it,” Anwar said. “I have four kids, my husband is sick. I have no other choice if I want to feed them.”

But Anwar refused to stop and kept the salon open. “They said: ‘If you want to complete your job inside home, no problem, but you must pay us money, like half. Some days I made 65,000 Iraqi dinars [US$55] and IS came to take half of it.”

When IS asked for more, Anwar couldn’t pay. Eventually the hisba – an Arabic word for accountability, which IS uses as the name for its police force – arrested Anwar’s already ill husband for allowing his wife to break IS law. “They beat my husband,” she said. “I had to stop and stay at home doing nothing.”

Suddenly Anwar was interrupted as the muffled noise of an explosion rings out from the western side of the city, where the Iraqi army is trying to dislodge IS, then she continued to speak.

Customers, she said, have slowly started to return to her salon. “But they are still afraid that IS may come back. I am still afraid,” she said, quivering. Fear of recapture – and what may happen – weighs heavily on her mind.

 

Read more on… I Ran An Illegal Beauty Salon: The Secret Lives Of Women Under Islamic State

Author: Laurène Daycard