The last time I found laundry detergent was by accident in a beauty salon by Siranush Sargsyan

The last time I found laundry detergent was by accident in a beauty salon. My hairdresser, Inga, asked why I often wear dark colors. I said, I don’t have laundry detergent. She didn’t have much herself, but she gave me a handful of what she had and half a liter of cooking oil. 

Two weeks before the blockade, when I went to get my hair cut, she was concerned. She had decided to order a new hairdryer from Yerevan because she was afraid that the road would be closed. “A hairdresser can never have too many hair dryers,” she said, since the hair dryer feeds her family.

Two weeks later, the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Artsakh to Armenia, was closed. The blockade has been going on for nine months.

Even with a new hair dryer, Inga can’t work without interruption. The gas supply here has been cut for more than 200 days, and electricity is intermittent.

“There is almost nothing,” Inga said. “Now we have to ask customers to bring hair dye, shampoo and even a towel with them. We cannot wash towels without water and detergent.”

The water supply has been disrupted because of power outages, and the simple act of hair washing has become a logistical nightmare. Salon workers have to carry heavy buckets of water from a government tank and heat it by sticking an electrical wire (“kipyatilnik”) into the buckets.

“Boginya,”meaning Goddess in Russian, one of the oldest beauty salons in the center of Stepanakert, works with the slogan “The whole world under your feet”. Yet, there is no hustle and bustle in the salon. There is a bit of excitement when the electricity comes back on after several hours. The number of customers has decreased. 

Nara Karapetyan is 50 years old. She has been working as a hairdresser for 35 years and has started in a basement in Stepanakert, working through to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Nagorno-Karabakh war. She said, “At that time there was no money, we did the work for food. Now there is money, but no food. Maybe then it was harder, more dangerous, we couldn’t get out of the basements, but we didn’t feel humiliated like now. We understood what the deprivations were for, but now?”  As she described, the hairdresser’s day in the blockade has no beginning and no end: there is neither night nor day. “Our day begins at three o’clock in the morning, in the bread lines. Early in the morning, if you manage to buy bread, you take the children home and rush to the beauty salon. Of course, we also follow the electricity schedule that dictates our lives now. In the evening we go home looking for food. What is edible, what we come across, we take home,” she said.

There is still some hair dye in the salon, but only the lightest and red tones are left. Customers already know that they should come “armed”.

“I have a client who says it’s better for me to be hungry but well taken care of,” said Anahit. She has noticed  that women’s mood improves after dyeing and styling their hair.

There are also women who rarely come to the salon during the siege. The reason, according to Anahit, is time, much of which is now spent in queues.

Anoush, one of salon clients, said: “We are deprived of even this small pleasure, everything is almost finished. I don’t even have hair dye or shampoo at home.”

“ՈՒտելիք չկա, խաշանգյություն էլ չինի? (There is no food, so should we deprive ourselves of beauty too?) war veteran Mrs. Nelly defended her right to come to the beauty salon. In the early 90s, during the first war, she cut and took care of her hair herself at home. 

In 2020, during the 44-day war, her hair was well-groomed even in the bomb shelter.  “On November 2, before the war ended, I dyed my hair again.” she said. “It was a way of fighting and resisting.”

During the blockade, the breaks in the beauty salons have become անսուրճ (coffeeless), but the discussions are intense, the topics diverse. Women talk about exchanging what items they have at home, cooking without the necessary ingredients. Here you can also find out which village goods are available in which store in which district. And there is a topic, during which the conversation is particularly inflamed, in which both the hairdressers and the customers become participants. That is the question of the uncertain future of Artsakh.