At 86, is that this Gaza’s oldest barber? – Center East Monitor

Eighty-six-year-old Palestinian barber Ismail Al-Khatib refuses to retire. He continues to open up his barber store in Firas Market, one of many oldest and hottest markets in Gaza Metropolis each morning.

Al-Khatib and his son work till sundown on daily basis in a occupation that the octogenarian started working towards almost 73 years in the past, and which he realized from his father after the Nakba in 1948. He has owned his personal store out there since 1955, when it was first established, and two years in the past his work was recognised by the Palestinian Barbers’ Syndicate.

He remembers when he first began within the enterprise, after the Nakba, Palestinians bartered the value of reducing their hair and trimming their beards for bread, eggs, or easy sums of cash that didn’t exceed just a few Egyptian kilos.

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