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Pompadour & Rooster Cuts: Iraqi Styles Sculpt 'Revolution'

Iraqi anti-government protesters are expressing their rebellion against the existing social order via wild hairstyles | AFP
Iraqi anti-government protesters are expressing their rebellion against the existing social order via wild hairstyles | AFP
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Pompadour & Rooster Cuts: Iraqi Styles Sculpt 'Revolution'

Iraqi anti-government protesters are expressing their rebellion against the existing social order via wild hairstyles | AFP
Iraqi anti-government protesters are expressing their rebellion against the existing social order via wild hairstyles | AFP

Elvis Presley may have been the advance guard, but young Iraqis own it -- protesters in Baghdad sport slicked styles and rockabilly haircuts, a testament to their unyielding rebel spirit.

"The revolution has changed everything," said Qassem, nearly three months into a popular movement that seeks to unseat Iraq's highly dysfunctional political establishment.

"Now, it is all so different -- we are free," the young protester added under a tent where he doles out tea and biscuits to peers in Tahrir Square.

"We also know how to let loose," Qassem continued, his face switching suddenly from serious to smiling.

"And so I invented a new style," he chuckled, glancing upwards towards his rectangular pompadour.

Outside his tent, thousands of students and young unemployed people thronged the iconic square, railing once more against "crooked" politicians.

Their enthusiasm has remained undimmed since the start of the revolt on October 1, despite clashes with security forces that have killed close to 460.

One thing strikes the eye perhaps above all else -- the unbridled hairstyles young men sport.

High quiffs, tight fades, and loads of attitude -- it is quite the male beauty pageant.

- 'Why be scared?' -

Exclusively male and in large part inspired by the fashionable cuts of football stars, the phenomenon is coursing through the Arab world.

And it is particularly exuberant in Tahrir Square.

"Here, we call it the rooster comb," explained a local journalist.

For 23-year-old actor and renowned activist Omar Dabbour, "the style began two years ago".

Then "it exploded with the revolution in Tahrir. The people feel increasingly free," he noted.

Dabbour himself sports an impressive, albeit more natural, style -- an afro worthy of the Jackson Five, which amounts to a radical departure, in what is otherwise an ocean of hair gel.

"In Tahrir Square, young people are daring -- it has become normal," added Dabbour.

"But in the rest of the city, it's a bit different -- more conservative. There is the army, the militiamen who can bother you at checkpoints," he continued.

"I don't care. Before, I had a short haircut. Now I have let it grow. Why be scared?"

Sporting yellow-tinted glasses and maintaining a studious air, Karrar Riad, 20, pushed a hand through his long and deliberately disordered locks.

With a black leather bracelet, he has the air of a young Johnny Depp. "Today, everything is possible. We do what we want here," he said.

Here perhaps, but not in Riad's home district of Kadhimiya, which houses a key Shiite mausoleum.

Going home requires him to restore some conventional order to his unruly mop.

Other fashionistos don a cap to blend back in when they depart the protest hotbed.

Their caution is not without reason.

In 2012, at least 15 youths were stoned, beaten, or shot to death in a spate of targeted attacks against people sporting the "emo" look -- tight-fitting black clothes and alternative hairstyles.

- Voluminous proliferation -

The range of styles is wide, but it is Iraq's take on the Elvis cut that rises head and shoulders above the rest: a towering pompadour with undercut back and sides.

"Adopted by celebrities, students and hipsters," the pompadour -- named after a mistress of French King Louis XV -- will transform you into a "sexy and trendy man", according to one website.

But this style itself unfurls into a multitude of sub-styles in Iraq, from classic rockabilly to even the mohawk.

And amid the proliferation of looks, cuts are becoming ever more voluminous.

"The idea is to do what you want to do," said Dabbour.

And probably also to attract the throngs of young women who frequent Tahrir Square, in a commingling that is unusual in Iraq.

The hairstyles on display have "roots in the 1990s, in the hairdressing salons, and male beauty parlors of Sadr City," explained Zahraa Ghandour, an Iraqi documentary filmmaker.

Sadr City -- a huge working-class district of northeastern Baghdad -- was marginalized under the regime of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

"The residents wanted to mark themselves out. It was a means to express themselves, to protest," said Ghandour.

Baroque haircuts, meanwhile, "really started around two years ago, again in Sadr city."

Zouheir-al-Atouani, a local videographer who has gained nationwide fame, spread this style by posting wedding videos in which men sport ever more sculpted looks.

According to Ghandour, "in Tahrir, ever more frequented by young people from Sadr city, it's a way to rebel, to free oneself".

It is also most likely a way of defying the country's all-powerful militias, and social revenge for young people who feel despised, yet now find themselves at the forefront of fashion.

"They are especially creative," smiles Ghandour.

And the styles are "spread far and wide by social networks", where dandies love to showcase their ever crazier cuts.

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Rats Feast on New York’s City’s Bagged Garbage. Can Putting It in Bins End the Smorgasbord?

A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
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Rats Feast on New York’s City’s Bagged Garbage. Can Putting It in Bins End the Smorgasbord?

A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)
A resident walks through the courtyard of the Knickerbocker Village housing development in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, US, November 22, 2024. (Reuters)

For half a century, New York City residents have taken out their trash by flinging plastic bags stuffed with stinking garbage straight onto the sidewalk.

When the bags inevitably leak or break open, they spill litter into the street, providing smorgasbords for rats. In the winter, the trash mounds get buried in snow and remain frozen in place for days, sometimes weeks, reinforcing the city’s reputation as filthy.

Now, New Yorkers are slowly adjusting to a radically new routine, at least for America's biggest city: Putting their trash in bins. With lids.

Earlier this month, covered bins became a requirement for all residential buildings with fewer than 10 living units. That’s the majority of residential properties. All city businesses had to start using bins earlier this year.

“I know this must sound absurd to anyone listening to this who lives pretty much in any other city in the world,” said Jessica Tisch, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, who oversaw the new measures before becoming the city's new police commissioner this week. “But it is revolutionary by New York City’s standards because, for 50 years, we have placed all our trash directly on the curbs.”

Residents who've already experienced trash containerization elsewhere agree it's long overdue for New York City to catch up.

“You see plastic bags open with the food just rotting and stinking and then it leaking out over the sidewalk and into the road,” said John Midgley, who owns a brownstone in Brooklyn and has lived in London, Paris and Amsterdam. “Just the stink of it builds up, you know, week after week after week.”

New York City's homes, businesses and institutions put about 44 million pounds (20 million kilograms) of waste out on the curb every day, about 24 million pounds (11 million kilograms) of which is collected by the city's sanitation department. Much of the rest is handled by private garbage carters.

In the early 20th century, New York City required trash to be placed in metal cans. But in the era before widespread plastic bag use, refuse was thrown directly into the bins, making them filthy and grimy.

Then in 1968, the city’s sanitation workers went on strike. For more than a week, trash cans overflowed. Garbage mounds piled high on sidewalks and spilled into the streets like some dystopian nightmare.

Plastic bag makers donated thousands of bags to help clean up the mess, and New Yorkers never looked back, said Steven Cohen, a Columbia University dean specializing in public affairs.

“It had to do with convenience,” he said. “After the strike, the sanitation workers preferred the modern advance of lighter and seemingly cleaner sealed plastic bags.”

Plastic kept more odors in, compared to the old metal bins. A worker could grab the neck of a bag and easily fling it into a truck.

But Democratic Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has deemed trash bag mounds Public Enemy No. 1 in his well-documented war against the city's notorious rats.

Rats have little problem getting into a plastic bag. Durable bins with closing, locking lids should, in theory, do a better job of keeping them out.

The bin requirement, which took effect Nov. 12, comes with its own challenges. Among them: Finding a place for large, wheeled bins in neighborhoods where most buildings don't have yards, alleys or garages. Landlords and homeowners also have to collect the empty bins and bring them back from the curb in the morning — something you didn't have to do with plastic bags.

Caitlin Leffel, who lives in Manhattan, said residents of her building had to hire someone “at surprisingly high cost” to bring out the bins the night before and bring them back in three times a week.

“I know there are problems with the way this city has collected trash for years,” she said. “But the way this program has been rolled out, it has not taken into account many of the nuances of living in New York City.”

Building superintendents are also grumbling about the added work of bringing bins back from the curb.

“It’s completely rearranged our lives,” says Dominick Romeo, founder of NYC Building Supers, a group of building managers that recently rallied in front of City Hall against the new requirements. “Folks are running around like crazy.”

Eventually, the largest residential buildings — those with more than 31 units — will have their own designated container on the street. New trash trucks built with automated, side-loading arms — another innovation that is already common in many other countries — will then clear them out.

The upgrades should make pickups easier and cleaner, even if it might take longer for trash collectors to make the rounds, says Harry Nespoli, president of the union representing some 7,000 city sanitation workers.

For now, he says, workers are still tossing trash into their trucks manually, which has its own downsides.

“Some places, they’re not even using bags. They're just putting their trash into the bins,” Nespoli said. “It's going to take time to get everyone to do it the right way, but at the end of the day, it's our job to pick it up.”

Tisch believes New Yorkers will eventually come around to the new reality.

City officials, for now, are issuing written warnings for non-compliance. Not everyone knows about the new rules yet. But come Jan. 2, fines ranging from $50 to $200 will kick in.

“No one wants to live on a dirty block,” Tisch said. “No one wants to walk past a heaping mound of trash and trash juice when they are leaving to go to work or they are walking their kids home from school.”