A Businesswoman's Narrative

Salon Owner*

My salon’s manager called me anxiously. “The last clients who came in arrived from the US a day ago.” This was mid March. The coronavirus scare had reduced the number of women walking in for beauty treatments but there were enough clients braving the corona associated risks for their beauty rituals. Scarily enough, many of them had travelled outside Pakistan recently.

Other salons were still open but the number of coronavirus cases seemed to be escalating on a daily basis in Karachi. It was a difficult decision but I decided to close down business for some weeks. A day later, a government directive forced all salons to close down in any case.

Most of the clients were okay with this...but some responded with surprise or anger.

A client, one of our regulars, who had recently been exposed to a confirmed coronavirus case called the manager. She has a job requiring public appearances and she wanted the salon opened for a day so that her hair could be dyed. She insisted that we call her favourite worker to the salon or to the manager’s house because her own test for coronavirus was negative.

When we refused she was first incredulous, then angry.

She wasn’t the only one. Right up to the day that Karachi was formally locked down, clients were calling or sending desperate messages. How would they survive without the beauty treatments, the threading, the epilation, the manicures...for God knows how many weeks?

I suggested they get tweezers.

But that’s on a lighter note. The worrying issue is that this is how I earn and no one can predict when businesses will reopen. A lot of girls work here and I know that many of them support their families or have husbands who do not earn.

* The writer runs a salon in Karachi, Pakistan