A close shave at the Cairo barber's

If there is one thing worse than an unfamiliar barber it is a blind one. But that is who greeted me at the door on my first trip to an Egyptian barbershop.

The elderly man in his slippers gingerly led me down the steep steps off one of Cairo's bustling, traffic-infested streets and showed me into the small basement salon.

I followed even more gingerly and the drone of car horns drifted away.

Coiffeur Deluxe, said the sign said on the front of the shop. In fact it was anything but.

Two dusty old, cracked leather chairs, in front of a grimy mirror, surrounded by dozens of multicoloured plastic bottles and jars containing dubious-looking hair products.

Many of these had clearly been there for quite some time and had something of an industrial look to them. I settled into one of the chairs, brushing off the fine coating of hair beneath me.

"Hairdresser come soon," my host said, and I realised to my great relief that, despite having the scissors clutched in his hand, he was only minding the barbershop until his friend, the barber, returned. The hairs on the back of my neck relaxed.

The inevitable offer of tea came, and the blind man carefully felt for the small portable television in the corner of the room and switched it on.

I watched and he listened as a kitsch Egyptian 1960s film crackled from the tiny box, the shrill singing voice of the garishly dressed heroine filling the salon.

The mullet

I have only been in Egypt two weeks but I already know that a useful motto to try to carry with you is, "Good things come to those who wait."

It was an hour, three cups of very sweet mint tea and half a half-decent film before the long-awaited barber finally arrived.

Adel Mohammed rather worryingly for me sported a mullet haircut, of the kind once seen on 1980s footballers.

Fingers on my temples, he sized me up, threw me a toothy smile which rebounded back and forth on the cracked barbershop mirrors, and asked me, by means of an inquisitive look, what I would like.

Back home in England for much of my life I have had my hair cut at the same South Yorkshire barbershop. Again, not a fancy place and certainly not deluxe.

The barber there offers three cuts: short back and sides, a trim or "the general tidy-up". As a teenager I once asked for a flat top, and the non-committal reply came: "I'll see what I can do".

Here in Cairo I decided to be more conservative and opted by means of hand signals for the general tidy up.

The haircut itself proceeded for the most part without incident with the sound of Adel Mohammed's nimble fingers working the scissors furiously in my ears.

Even the complementary shave with the cold cut-throat razor gliding across my neck produced no drama.

Thread bare

It was when we came to the optional extras, and I was to take the wrong option, that things took a downward turn. Adel Mohammed produced in front of me with a twinkle in his eye a long piece of fine, white Egyptian cotton and pronounced the word "fatlah" invitingly.

Not having any idea what he was suggesting, I nodded apprehensively as he brushed his fingers over my eyes to close them and began to twist the thread around his fingers into a kind of lasso.

I have since learnt that fatlah is an old Egyptian tradition, also known as threading, and common in India where it is called Khite.

It involves twisting the fine thread in such a way that it catches on the hairs on your face.

Whoever is conducting the fatlah holds one end of the thread in his hand and the other in his teeth, moving his head backwards and forward like a pigeon to tighten the thread which then rips the hairs away from the skin.

Adel Mohammed proceeded to do just this, working feverishly, with some glee I suspect, first on my eyebrows, then my cheeks, before finally moving onto the tops of my ears, a place where I was unaware I even had hairs. Needless to say I do not any more.

Blue murder are the two words that come to mind, like being pinched repeatedly around the face by someone who really does not like you. Be a man about it, some might say, but then if I were, perhaps I would not be having my eyebrows plucked in the first place.

Needless to say, in true English fashion, I said nothing. For what seemed like an age, Adel Mohammed plucked, I winced and tried to show a stiff upper lip - mercifully no hairs there.

Eventually the ordeal was over and I peeled open my tender eyes. Adel Mohammed admired his handiwork and I admired the two red raw strips of skin that surrounded my now dramatically reduced brows.

I declined a final bladder-busting cup of tea and shuffled out of the shop.

"Shukran," I muttered, ¿thank you," not entirely convincingly.

"Anything for the weekend sir?" Adel Mohammed might have asked.

"An ice pack and some dark glasses," might have been my reply."

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 23 June, 2007 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.