they would get such a set-up ready made, and for nothing. In their original cities, they had lived obscure and humble lives. The eldest among them—he was called the "Ustad"--used to have a few permanent customers that he would visit regularly to give shaves. The one younger to him had made his city's railway station and bus stand his haunt, where he would seek out anyone remotely hirsute. The remaining two were mere youths, and used to hire themselves out on daily wages whenever vacancies arose at the regular shops. Now, all of a sudden, fate had given the four barbers their first-ever chance to be independent in a big way. Their happiness was boundless. They were eager to build up business and brighten their prospects.
The first thing they did, they bought a straw brush and some lime, and white-washed the inside of the shop. They also scrubbed clean its floor. Then, at an auction, they bought at knockdown prices a couple of bundles of old clothes from America. In those bundles, they found shirts and pants, which they mended as needed. If they were torn, they sewed them; if they had holes, they put patches on them; where they needed to be trimmed, they gave lead to their scissors—thus they made for themselves some fairly decent-looking clothes. They still needed sheets to wrap around their customers. That was a tall order, but they managed to find a way. They tore out the linings from the jackets in the bundles and sewed them together with some other remnants to make at least two sheets. In one of the bundles they discovered a silk curtain. It was pretty old, but its gold-colored butterfly design still had a little bit of its original glitter. They carefully washed it, then hung it across the shop's door.
They already had their scissors and clippers—that was one thing they didn't have to worry about. Still they had to buy a number of other things: plastic cups for the shaving soap, shaving brushes, a variety of combs in different sizes, a couple of towels, some bottles of highly scented, locally-made hair oil, a jar of cheap facial cream and a can of similar face-powder. From a ragman they bought a number of odd-shaped, empty cologne bottles of foreign make and, filling them with mustard oil, set them up on the marble counter.
They didn't forget to decorate the walls either. The previous owner had put up all sorts of old-fashioned religious pictures—they took them down and replaced them with some colorful American film posters they had found at another ragman's shop. They also put on the walls a couple of prints of Urdu verses and a calendar that had portraits of all the major political leaders of the country.
As they were anxious to get the shop going, they decided to keep their prices low, even less than half of the goijng rates. They got someone to write out their prices in bold black on a piece of cardboard, then put it up in a prominent place where any customer could see it the moment he entered the shop. The previous owner had called the place "Fancy Haircutting Saloon." That name was written in bold letters above the entrance, in both English and Urdu. The barbers asked a b5bH what the word "Fancy" meant, and when he told them, they were quite delighted and decided to keep the name. Also, getting the old name erased and a new one painted would have meant substantial extra expense.
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