PESHAWAR // Mohammad Shahid’s eyes lit up when he saw his once bald cousin come home one day with a head full of hair and a strutting gait to match.
A handsome but follically-challenged young man, he decided the time was ripe to restore his honour, battered by years of taunts that follow the barren-headed and the beardless in Pakistan.
In the northwestern city of Peshawar, home to underground Taliban hideouts and a gateway for trade to Afghanistan, men go about their business in the crowded dusty streets, their faces covered by bushy black beards that would make Captain Haddock proud.
The city’s roads are filled with giant billboards of celebrities once bald but now all smiles. They extol the virtues of manhood restored surgically with a few well-placed tufts of hair.
“When I saw my cousin return from his procedure, I was in shock. I said to myself: I have to have it too,” said the thirty-something excitedly as he prepared to have the procedure at a local hair transplant clinic.
“Hair is like our weapon against society.”
In Pakistan, hair is synonymous with virility to the point that even some Taliban fighters buy ointments to give their long locks and beards a lustrous finish.
Woe to those without: they are labelled “ganjas”, a deeply derogatory term.
“Here, calling someone a ‘ganja’ is a stigma but over there [in the West], saying ‘bald’ is not that bad,” explained Dr Humayun Mohmand, one of the first doctors to offer the treatment in Pakistan.
Dr Mohmand opened his practice in the early 2000s, but transplants, done under local anaesthetic, did not take off immediately.
The breakthrough moment came at the end of 2007, when Nawaz Sharif, who was balding when he was deposed as prime minister by General Pervez Musharraf eight years earlier, returned from exile with a full head of hair.
“After the hair transplant ... by Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif [his brother, the chief minister of Punjab province] this has become very popular,” said doctor Fawad Aamir at his Peshawar clinic, among a group of patients seeking new manes.
“[Before] they were very afraid of this, that something is going to happen, that cancer will develop, that infection will lead to the brain.”
Among them was the son of Farid Khan Khattak, a big man who fills the room with hearty laughter.
“My son had some kind of inferiority complex because he had some gaps in his hair,” he said.
“One of my friends told me that instead of a hair transplant I should buy a motorbike for my son. But my son insisted: ‘Instead of a motorbike I want a transplant’, so it’s for his happiness.”
Since 2006, Dr Mohmand has conducted 8,000 operations compared with 1,000 during the previous five years.
In Pakistan’s conservative society where arranged marriages remain the norm, surgeons recall the anguish of patients whose engagements have been scuppered by baldness.
“One of my clients had lost a lot of hair and two or three marriage proposals did not mature,” said the doctor of a female patient.
“After that, she came to give me the invitation to her wedding. That day, she had tears in her eyes. She said, ‘You are the person who has made my life’.”
Today, there are nearly 120 hair transplant clinics in Pakistan, according to official figures, with a dozen in Peshawar.
The operation generally costs between US$400 (Dh1,470) and $1,000, with some top clinics charging up to $6,000 – a fraction of what it costs in the West, but still well out of reach for most Pakistanis.
Many clients come from abroad, in particular the Pakistani-Afghan diaspora who come to see their friends and family – and return more hirsute.
Maihan, a cook from Denmark, finds himself in one such clinic in Peshawar. The young Afghan knows that the shaven-headed Bruce Willis look is not displeasing to the fairer sex in the West.
“In Europe, in Canada, in Australia and in the United States, the girls don’t care, but here guys must have long hair,” he said.
Hairless heads are not the only worry. Dr Asif Shah says he has also performed a number of beard transplants on patients keen to show their piety with a healthy growth.
Fawad Aamir recalls with pleasure the visit of a Taliban commander’s son who had grown frustrated with his patchy beard while fellow Islamist rebels proudly sported bushy specimens.
“A doctor tried to convince the man that ‘you don’t grow beard because this is the beard given to you by God’,” he said.
“And he said ‘No, I want to have this like Mohammed, peace be upon him.’
“So we went ahead and six months later he had a very big beard and he was very happy.”
* Agence France-Presse
'The Ice Road'
Director: Jonathan Hensleigh
Stars: Liam Neeson, Amber Midthunder, Laurence Fishburne
2/5
The specs: Fenyr SuperSport
Price, base: Dh5.1 million
Engine: 3.8-litre twin-turbo flat-six
Transmission: Seven-speed automatic
Power: 800hp @ 7,100pm
Torque: 980Nm @ 4,000rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 13.5L / 100km
Emergency
Director: Kangana Ranaut
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry
Rating: 2/5
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Founders: Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, Turki Bin Zarah and Abdulmohsen Albabtain.
Based: Riyadh
Offices: UAE, Vietnam and Germany
Founded: September, 2020
Number of employees: 70
Sector: FinTech, online payment solutions
Funding to date: $116m in two funding rounds
Investors: Checkout.com, Impact46, Vision Ventures, Wealth Well, Seedra, Khwarizmi, Hala Ventures, Nama Ventures and family offices
Dr Amal Khalid Alias revealed a recent case of a woman with daughters, who specifically wanted a boy.
A semen analysis of the father showed abnormal sperm so the couple required IVF.
Out of 21 eggs collected, six were unused leaving 15 suitable for IVF.
A specific procedure was used, called intracytoplasmic sperm injection where a single sperm cell is inserted into the egg.
On day three of the process, 14 embryos were biopsied for gender selection.
The next day, a pre-implantation genetic report revealed four normal male embryos, three female and seven abnormal samples.
Day five of the treatment saw two male embryos transferred to the patient.
The woman recorded a positive pregnancy test two weeks later.
BUNDESLIGA FIXTURES
Friday (UAE kick-off times)
Cologne v Hoffenheim (11.30pm)
Saturday
Hertha Berlin v RB Leipzig (6.30pm)
Schalke v Fortuna Dusseldof (6.30pm)
Mainz v Union Berlin (6.30pm)
Paderborn v Augsburg (6.30pm)
Bayern Munich v Borussia Dortmund (9.30pm)
Sunday
Borussia Monchengladbach v Werder Bremen (4.30pm)
Wolfsburg v Bayer Leverkusen (6.30pm)
SC Freiburg v Eintracht Frankfurt (9on)
AIDA%20RETURNS
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THE TWIN BIO
Their favourite city: Dubai
Their favourite food: Khaleeji
Their favourite past-time : walking on the beach
Their favorite quote: ‘we rise by lifting others’ by Robert Ingersoll
Why your domicile status is important
Your UK residence status is assessed using the statutory residence test. While your residence status – ie where you live - is assessed every year, your domicile status is assessed over your lifetime.
Your domicile of origin generally comes from your parents and if your parents were not married, then it is decided by your father. Your domicile is generally the country your father considered his permanent home when you were born.
UK residents who have their permanent home ("domicile") outside the UK may not have to pay UK tax on foreign income. For example, they do not pay tax on foreign income or gains if they are less than £2,000 in the tax year and do not transfer that gain to a UK bank account.
A UK-domiciled person, however, is liable for UK tax on their worldwide income and gains when they are resident in the UK.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
The Brutalist
Director: Brady Corbet
Stars: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn
Rating: 3.5/5
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Opening day UAE Premiership fixtures, Friday, September 22:
- Dubai Sports City Eagles v Dubai Exiles
- Dubai Hurricanes v Abu Dhabi Saracens
- Jebel Ali Dragons v Abu Dhabi Harlequins
