Bebo Haider’s magnificence parlour is brilliant, small, and adorned sparsely with three massive pictures: transgender fashions who turned her purchasers as a result of the Karachi salon is among the few in Pakistan which caters to them with out judgement.
Tarawah, in a middle-class neighbourhood of the sprawling southern port metropolis, is owned and run by Haider, herself a transgender one who got here to Karachi in 2003 from a small rural city in southern Sindh province with goals of changing into a beautician.
It was not straightforward.
Even when the proprietor of 1 salon in a fancy Karachi neighbourhood lastly determined to take an opportunity on her, the purchasers refused her providers – or to return her greetings, she advised AFP.
It took two years earlier than one salon common lastly returned her hi there, she stated – however the thaw, for that buyer no less than, was full.
“After that day she wouldn’t get her hair and make up executed by anyone else on the parlour,” Haider advised AFP jubilantly, sitting in her hairdressing chair.
Transgender beautician Bebo Haider speaks with neighbouring shopkeepers. PHOTO: AFP
“Good manners win the world.”
Transgenders – additionally recognized in Pakistan as “khawajasiras”, an umbrella time period denoting a 3rd intercourse that features transvestites and eunuchs – have lengthy fought for his or her rights within the deeply patriarchal and conservative nation.
Organised and politically lively, in lots of respects, they’ve made spectacular good points.
In 2009 Pakistan turned one of many first international locations on the planet to legally recognise a 3rd intercourse.
Final yr, Pakistan’s parliament handed a historic invoice offering transgender individuals with the proper to find out their very own gender id in all official paperwork, together with selecting a mix of each genders.
PHOTO: AFP
A Pakistani TV channel put the nation’s first transgender information anchor on air in 2018, whereas a number of have additionally run in elections.
However – regardless of these good points – many nonetheless reside every day as pariahs, typically diminished to begging and prostitution, subjected to extortion and discrimination or focused for violence.
Haider fought onerous to keep away from that destiny.
As soon as she gained a foothold together with her first job, she started to develop politically lively, becoming a member of transgender rights organisations and finally changing into the president of Sabrang, one neighborhood group.
When a Dutch organisation stated it needed to finance a mission to empower the transgender neighborhood, she and a companion jumped on the possibility to open their very own salon — which, they are saying, is the primary transgender owned and run magnificence salon in Pakistan.
“I by no means seemed again,” Haider advised AFP.
Image of empowerment
Transgenders are sometimes judged, harassed and even denied entry at different salons, she and her prospects advised AFP.
On this image, transgender beautician Bebo Haider (behind) attends to a buyer in her magnificence parlour in Karachi. PHOTO: AFP
“Once we would sit alongside the women on the parlour, they might really feel nervous, confused and even really feel repulsive of us. (However) we’re additionally human beings,” stated Mahi Doll, a 21-year shopper of Tarawah.
Haider’s salon, Doll says, is greater than only a protected area for her prospects to get their hair and make-up executed.
“It is a image of transgender empowerment,” she advised AFP.
The salon is inside a crowded market, surrounded by grocery and milk outlets. When Haider first opened it, she stated, neighbours had been so hostile that she felt afraid.
“I’d put on powerful seems to be after I got here to the store so that folks wouldn’t dare to mess with me,” she stated.
She warned her purchasers to decorate conservatively, and deployed the technique which had labored so effectively earlier than: good manners.
It labored.
“Each time she sees us, she greets us with a very good coronary heart and he or she meets with everyone pleasantly,” stated Mohammad Akram, the 40-year-old proprietor of a milk store subsequent to the salon.
“We aren’t involved with what their gender is,” he added.
PHOTO: AFP
‘Do I look good?’
Many modern-day transgender individuals in Pakistan declare to be cultural heirs of the eunuchs who thrived on the courts of the Mughal emperors that dominated the Indian subcontinent for 2 centuries till the British arrived within the 19th century and banned them.
In the present day, individuals who determine as transgender quantity no less than half 1,000,000 in Pakistan, in keeping with a number of research – presumably as much as two million, say TransAction, a rights organisation.
Haider and different activists serving to her hope the salon is simply step one on the highway to financial empowerment for his or her neighborhood.
“Consciousness has began to unfold now among the many those that we will do (respectable) works additionally,” Haider stated, describing initiatives resembling her salon as a “sensible approach” of normalising transgenders in Pakistan.
Throughout AFP‘s go to to Tarawah, shopper Mahi Doll perched in a black reclining chair to have her hair shampooed and handled, then a manicure.
Haider then started doing Doll’s make-up, lining her eyes darkly to match Haider’s personal. “The attention make-up is the essence,” she defined.
After ending Doll’s eyes, Haider turned again to her personal reflection, reviewing herself within the mirror.
“Do I look good?” she stated softly, apparently to herself. “I’m lovely. Am I not?”
