Syrian barber creates portraits on his clients' heads

With a painter's precision, he creates contours and cuts hair to different lengths to give the image depth.

In this Friday, July 14, 2017 photo, Muhannad Khaled Omar, shaves an image of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on the back of a customer's head at his barber shop in Burj al-Barajneh, southern Beirut, Lebanon. In a city full of hair stylists, Omar stands out. He is a 26 year-old Palestinian-Syrian hair stylist known for shaving celebrity portraits into clients’ hair. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

In this Friday, July 14, 2017 photo, Muhannad Khaled Omar, right, prepares an image of U.S. President Donald Trump on the back of a customer's head at his barber shop in Burj al-Barajneh, southern Beirut, Lebanon. In a city full of hair stylists, Omar stands out. He is a 26 year-old Palestinian-Syrian hair stylist known for shaving celebrity portraits into clients’ hair. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

In this Friday, July 14, 2017 photo shot through a window, Muhannad Khaled Omar, right, prepares to create an image of U.S. President Donald Trump on the back of a customer's head at his barber shop in Burj al-Barajneh, southern Beirut, Lebanon. In a city full of hair stylists, Omar stands out. He is a 26 year-old Palestinian-Syrian hair stylist known for shaving celebrity portraits into clients’ hair. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

In this Friday, July 14, 2017 photo, Muhannad Khaled Omar, right, prepares to create an image of U.S. President Donald Trump on the back of a customer's head at his barber shop in Burj al-Barajneh, southern Beirut, Lebanon. In a city full of hair stylists, Omar stands out. He is a 26 year-old Palestinian-Syrian hair stylist known for shaving celebrity portraits into clients’ hair. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

In a city full of hair stylists, Muhannad Khaled Omar stands out.

Mr Omar, 26, is a Palestinian-Syrian stylist known for shaving celebrity portraits into clients' hair.

On a recent Friday at his Beirut salon, he shaved a portrait of U prresident Donald Trump into a young customer's hair. With a painter's precision, he created the contours of the president's face, cutting at various lengths to give the image depth. A spray of gold hair colouring  added to the overall effect.

"I started this profession when I was in 9th grade," Mr Omar said. "I was studying at the same time, learning how to cut hair. I've had a talent since I was young, a talent for drawing."

Mr Omar grew up in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, Syria, but moved to Lebanon in 2011 after a crackdown against demonstrations in Syria grew violent.

He said his vocation in hair styling is an extension of his passion for art. "I started my baccalaureate studies and I studied psychology. When I came here to Lebanon, I mixed psychology, cutting hair and drawing into one profession," he said.

Hair salons are a focal point in  every Middle East city, a place for friends to gather and gossip ahead of the weekends. They are usually segregated by sex.

Mr Omar manages his own salon in the Bourj al-Barajneh refugee camp in south Beirut, established in 1948 to accommodate Palestinians who were dispossessed by the creation of the state of Israel. The camp's population has swelled with the influx of Syrian refugees — some of them also Palestinians — who have come to escape the violence of the war next door. According to the United Nations, Lebanon currently hosts a million Syrian refugees.

Syrians are vulnerable to workplace and housing abuses in Lebanon because they lack basic legal protections. Many find it easier to live and work in Palestinian camps.

Mr Omar said he hopes that someone will invest in his work one day and sponsor him to emigrate to Europe.

"I want to start something new, but not in this area, something outside of the Arab world, to show that we are capable, we can produce things," he said.