The Barber of Handpost
'Here in Wales people want someone to make them smile' – how a simple haircut can help build community and belonging
By Dylan Moore
Mansour Borzoie looks around his brand new barbershop with satisfaction. Like the brightly lit chandeliers, wide gleaming mirrors and immaculate chrome trimmings, his broad smile masks the long and arduous journey made to reach this point.
Squeezed between Ranj Superstore and That Cafe, Mansour Barbers sits on a row that includes Handpost Tandoori and two other Indian takeaways, the Slow Boat Chinese, Bina’s Traditional Fish and Chips, and Diamond Grill, which serves pizzas, kebabs and burgers. The takeaways are flanked by accountants, opticians, dog groomers, charity shops and agents of estate, recruitment and travel, as well as three ladies’ hair salons, a micro-arts centre that has thrived since the closure of the local branch library, and the intriguingly named Bob Marley Vape Shop.
Handpost is named after the historic coaching inn that has since the 1820s stood near the junction of Risca Road, Bassaleg Road and Stow Hill, at the heart of Newport’s undulating western suburbs. A tiny cross-section of Wales’ third largest city, Handpost seems to sit at a median of British life. This row could be almost anywhere; the main high street of a small to medium-sized provincial town, or an obscure outlying district of a major city. Neither rich nor poor, easily diverse without being ‘multicultural’, Handpost is magnificently humdrum, its stories untold.
The area doesn’t appear on maps – it is simply ‘known locally’, a single thoroughfare at the meeting place of three council wards. Victorian terraces run down Stow Hill toward the city centre. Bassaleg Road meanders east toward the housing estates of Gaer and Maesglas and the semi-rural villages in the southern reaches of the Ebbw valley. And to the west Risca Road leads to leafy Allt-yr-Yn, which includes the woodland fringes of the city at Ridgeway, with views out toward Twmbarlwm, the hill described by Arthur Machen as ‘that mystic tumulus, the memorial of peoples that dwelt in that region before the Celts left the Land of Summer’.
‘This is a posh area,’ says Mansour, explaining the choice of location for his shop. There are certainly some smart suburban houses the further west you walk, but ‘posh’ might not be how most people in Newport West think of themselves. Locals here have returned a Labour MP to Westminster at every election since Paul Flynn first took his seat in 1987.
In other Newport districts, Pillgwenlly, Maindee or another area ‘locally known as’, Corpa, around Corporation Road, every other shop seems to be a barbers, but here Mansour’s is only the second. I ask why so many barbershops across Newport are owned and staffed by members of the city’s sizeable Kurdish community.
‘It’s not that all Kurdish people want to be barbers, but sometimes when you first arrive in a country, you have to start by taking a job with people that you know,’ says Mansour, who arrived in Newport eight years ago, starting work at Adam’s Barbers on Corporation Road after being given a chance by the owner, also an Iranian Kurd.
‘It’s a hard job.’ Mansour explains that the long hours and repetitive nature of barbering make it unattractive to many people. But he loves it. ‘You have to be prepared to work. But it’s not like a lot of businesses – people will always need a haircut!’
I suggest that barbershops can be like community centres, and Mansour immediately warms to the theme. ‘I always say that barber shops are good for mental health,’ he tells me. ‘You can chat, and when you have a good relationship with the customer, business builds up.’ He goes further. ‘You have to understand psychology, to know how to speak to people. What I find about here [in Wales] is that people want someone to make them smile. If you combine that with a cheap price and a good service, you are in business.’
Mansour talks me through how he assesses different types of customers. ‘If someone comes in wearing builder’s clothes, you are going to talk to them about building. If they come in like you, wearing glasses and dressed smart, maybe they work in an office.’ He jokes: ‘I know there’s no point talking to you about cars… you know nothing about cars!’ I laugh, because of course he is right, demonstrating his winning psychology already.
Mansour generally finds people in Newport ‘more friendly’ than other UK cities he’s lived in – Manchester, Plymouth and Southampton – and says ‘people accept you like family’. He describes the two-month operation to refit the shop as a massive joint effort. ‘The shop is mine, but I couldn’t have done it without my boys… regular customers, people from my church, people who have shown me a little bit of friendship.’
Mansour’s cousin Haoran moved to Newport to go into business with him, after living and working in Macclesfield, south of Manchester, for three years. Continuing the conversation about whether places are ‘posh’, Haoran tells me that Macclesfield is full of footballers, and that he twice saw Cristiano Ronaldo going out for Italian food.
The pair don’t expect to see any world-famous footballers in Handpost, but they have spent £50,000 refitting what was a betting shop, and Mansour in particular takes pride in itemising the outlay. The waiting bench I am sitting on runs almost the full length of the shop, and cost £3,500. A similar amount was spent on the four hydraulic salon chairs. The ceiling was £12,000, the floor tiles £4,000. ‘Then there’s the mirrors, the television – it all adds up.’
Mansour is most proud of the high gloss MDF boards inset with spotlights that run around the mirrors. These were imported from Turkey, with no expense spared. ‘It’s a challenge for yourself,’ he explains. ‘I always want to do something perfectly, how I like.’
This unrelenting drive is a common theme of the immigrant story, but for Mansour it’s also about feeling comfortable in his surroundings, and a sense of satisfaction and achievement. ‘I’m here seven days a week,’ he says, pointing to the sign on the door which shows the opening hours, ‘so it’s like my first house, not my second house.’
Mansour and his friends worked as labourers with the plasterer, and worked together on the floor piece by piece as the shop came together, and the accomplished barber is also proud to have given a chance to some younger men, who like himself eight years ago were doing their first job since arriving in the UK from Iran.
During this all-consuming period he describes himself as ‘obsessed’ with completing the task. Mansour blocked anybody on social media who he thought might bring negative energy, including some family members who questioned the risks he was taking spending so much money to realise his dream.
With the shop now finished and open, he has since unblocked ‘almost everyone’, although one person remains on the negative vibes blacklist. ‘Who’s that?’ I ask. Mansour points to his cousin and says ‘his mum’. The two of them crease with laughter.
Mansour still has dreams of which his aunt might not approve. He’s been quoted £1,500 for a coffee machine, and wants to set up some optics behind the slick black counter to make it a real community centre, where staff and customers can share a drink as well as a laugh and a skin fade.
It is quiet in the shop today, just myself and one other customer, who does promise to bring back his sons on the weekend after sharing some laughs and chat with Mansour and Haoran. I ask Mansour if he’s worried about the risks he has taken. It will take a lot of £13 haircuts to make back the savings he has ploughed into the place.
‘I have no regrets,’ he says. ‘I’m not scared of taking a risk. A couple of years ago I was so down I considered taking my own life. Now I have a car, a shop… I’m married. And I support everyone. Anyone in trouble, the first person they call is me. I give advice because I’ve been through so many things.’
And despite the glowing sense of pride in his achievement of having come this far, Mansour is careful to credit the people who have helped him along the way. He says he could not have become the new barber of Handpost without those who have supported him since he arrived in UK with nothing eight years ago – his church, his family, and the friends he has made in and around other barbershops across the city.