This Hair Salon Brings Israeli and Arab Women Together in the Name of Beauty

Iris Zaki is an Israeli filmmaker who recently set out to make a documentary about Arab-Israeli relations in her hometown of Haifa. “I knew there had to be arenas in this city where the different groups intersected, connected through the simple rituals of everyday life,” she wrote this week in a New York Times essay that featured a seven-minute video clip, above, from Women in Sink, her award-winning short film. “I decided to try and find them.”

And find a beautiful example she did — in a hair salon named Fifi’s, where Zaki took a job as a shampoo girl.

“To make the film, I sought a place where I could easily build intimacy with my subjects, and the idea of working for a hairdresser seemed perfect because of the physical connection with the women and the wide array of clientele that such a place offers,” she wrote. “I began to work at the salon, chatting with its patrons as I washed their hair.”

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What she found through her experience surprised her.

“I had initially set out to make a film about Israeli Arabs, a community which I believe is treated unequally in this country. I never expected that to do that, I would find myself in a hair salon, of all places. But as you’ll see, Fifi’s is remarkable.” She explained that while the business is owned by two Christian Arab women, Fifi’s counts among its devotees both Christians and Jews, many of whom share some pretty intense thoughts and experiences on Arab-Israeli relations as they lean back over the sink, getting their hair washed on camera.

“It draws women from all over the city and inspires friendship, acceptance, and respect between Arabs and Jews,” noted Zaki, who, for her last project, turned her lens on ultra-Orthodox Jews in London. “So ultimately I ended up with a different film: one about a little island of sanity.” One with clean and freshly styled hair, to boot.

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