Swastika on High Street, Hamsa on the Wall, Script That Refused to Behave

There are certain Friday rituals observed by Jewish women across continents and with wildly varying levels of spiritual enthusiasm: challah, candles, and enough food to sustain a small Balkan republic until Tuesday, even though only six people are coming. One is “avoiding carbs”; another has the appetite of someone on Ozempic; and a third has neglected to mention that she is vegetarian, vegan, or following some other tiresome dietary regime the hostess was apparently expected to detect by prophecy.

That third person is usually me, realising far too late that the salads are decorative, the vegetables have been deployed largely as garnish, and I am about to construct an entire meal from one potato and a branch of broccoli. I then spend dinner trying not to let my hostess notice either my lack of appetite or the grim, laboured vigilance with which I ration the potato, as though it is the final carbohydrate on earth and the broccoli has been taken hostage.

Then there is the ladies’ wash and blow-dry.

Professionally disciplined hair creates the impression that the rest of one’s life is managed similarly. It is not. But the hair need not testify.

On Friday afternoon, I entered a narrow salon on High Street in Sydney with my bonus mom: a few chairs, two washbasins and the entire Russian language being discharged from several semi-automatic weapons.

Russian ricocheted from chair to basin, mirror to ceiling and back into my ears. I understood none of it, but the tone suggested betrayal, overpriced fish and a daughter-in-law who had again failed to telephone.

Around me, mature ladies underwent perms, colour rinses and blowouts with the concentration of diplomats preventing nuclear war.

Foil crackled. Rollers clicked. Hairdryers roared:

Fwoooooosh.

Civilisation was being held together one lacquered fringe at a time.

Through the steamed shopfront, High Street became a silent film: shopping bags, puffer jackets, a child being towed by one arm and a man wearing the expression of someone who had just remembered the one thing he had been specifically told not to forget.

Inside, time followed an older calendar: ordinary time, Jewish time and colour-processing time.

Colour-processing time is the slowest. Entire governments can fall while one waits for a rinse to take.

Once it became known that I lived in Israel, the salon became an oral-history archive with complimentary conditioner.

Beryl had lived there for fifteen years.

She hated it from the moment she arrived.

“You hated Israel immediately?”

“Yes.”

“And stayed fifteen years?”

Apparently.

Fifteen years is not a visit. It is a relationship, longer than many marriages, several governments and almost every hairstyle represented in that salon.

Almost.

One perm appeared to pre-date the state.

Beryl arrived in 1973, the year of the Yom Kippur War, and stayed until roughly 1988: wars, upheaval and more than a decade of opportunities to pack.

Human beings rarely remain somewhere for fifteen years solely to strengthen the credibility of a future complaint in a Sydney hair salon.

Before I could investigate Beryl’s prolonged geographical grievance, Nik led me to the basin and shampooed my hair like a forensic specialist removing evidence.

Scrub-scrub. Rinse. Scrub-scrub-scrub.

If any serum, mousse, mineral deposit, unresolved emotion or previous incarnation remained, Nik intended to extract it.

He did not wash my scalp.

He interrogated it.

Then, while my defences were disabled by shampoo, he mentioned the swastika.

“You cannot really see it now.”

Someone had scratched one into the salon’s front glass.

My body went cold. My mouth dried. Something dropped through me with a silent internal thud.

It was 2026.

Not 1936. Not a European village waiting for boots on cobblestones. Australia. First World Australia, as Australia remains magnificently pleased to consider itself.

Sydney: cosmopolitan, multicultural, glittering harbour, Opera House sails and declarations that hatred has no home here.

Except when hatred brings something sharp to a shop window:

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

A swastika is not merely graffiti. It is history’s most efficient threat.

We remember what this means.

We assume you do too.

We can still find you.

How had they known?

There was no mezuzah, Hebrew sign or Israeli flag. Only a hamsa, shared across Jewish, Muslim and broader Middle Eastern traditions, and beloved by people who believe the evil eye coordinates nicely with macramé.

Perhaps somebody recognised it. Perhaps somebody knew Nik or his Jewish customers. Perhaps it was random.

That was hardly reassuring.

A random swastika releases hatred into the atmosphere like fumes, confident that eventually the correct lungs will inhale it.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is right to condemn Islamophobia. Muslims who are threatened or vilified deserve protection. A mosque marked by hatred is an obscenity.

So is a synagogue.

But Australian Jews may still ask why antisemitism enters political conversation dragging a suitcase full of qualifications.

Was it definitely antisemitism? Could it have been anti-Zionism? Was the swastika intended for Jews? Could we provide three witnesses, a timestamp, a blood sample and further context before becoming frightened?

After the Opera House protest on 9 October 2023, police analysis found no recorded evidence of “Gas the Jews”, concluding that the available footage contained “Where’s the Jews?” Witnesses nevertheless reported hearing the former, and other antisemitic abuse was documented.

Not “Gas the Jews”.

Merely “Where’s the Jews?”

My mistake.

Obviously they were trying to locate a minyan with an unusually forceful approach to community outreach.

Since then, Sydney has seen synagogues, homes, cars and businesses defaced with swastikas. Jewish Australians did not manufacture Nazi symbols as visual aids for our anxiety.

“You cannot really see it now,” Nik had said.

But swastikas do not need to be large. Once a Jew knows one is there, it occupies all the available glass.

I lay at the basin, ridiculous and terrified.

Should I bolt upright, trailing shampoo and ancestral panic across the floor? Demand a federal inquiry before conditioner?

History rarely arrives with cinematic dignity. Sometimes it comes while your head is wedged in a washbasin, with soap in your ears.

Nik’s hands remained steady.

Scrub. Rinse. Squeeze.

This was his salon, his glass, his ordinary working day. Whatever fear had surged through me, he had already absorbed it and decided whether to unlock the door again the following morning.

Hatred had scratched its signature into his window.

Nik had opened the salon anyway.

Then came the drying.

Many hairdressers treat curls as a manufacturing defect to be corrected through heat, brute force and personal resentment.

Pull. Flatten. Fwoooosh.

Nik reached for a diffuser.

A diffuser.

Civilisation had not entirely collapsed.

He dried my curls patiently, allowing them to form rather than punishing them for existing, and delivered his verdict on the year he had lived in Israel:

“The children do not hev no manners.”

Beryl gave Israel fifteen years and emerged with hatred. Nik gave it one and emerged with concerns about discipline.

I have given it my future.

Everyone who has lived in Israel carries away a different country: war, bureaucracy, struggle, family, or memories of being shouted at by somebody who was technically trying to help.

Israel does not permit emotional neutrality.

It gets into the nervous system.

So does Jewish history.

The hamsa, Beryl’s 1973, Nik’s verdict and the faint swastika were all crowded beneath the hairdryers with us.

Eventually, the dryer stopped with a soft phuff.

My curls had achieved shape, volume and more internal cooperation than my television series.

Now that the pilot episode has been approved, the remaining episodes have collapsed theatrically onto a chaise longue and announced that they no longer work.

They must be researched, recast, rewritten, rejuvenated and reaffirmed, preferably before the entire project applies for emotional-support status.

I tried to tackle them today, but could not imagine a single viable scenario for my intrepid cast of characters.

Perhaps my subconscious jet lag is responsible. I have, most fortunately, experienced no actual jet lag, so mine may have gone underground, formed a small resistance movement and begun sabotaging my imagination from within.

I awaited inspiration.

The blank page awaited competence.

Tick. Tock. Blink. Blink.

Neither of us was prepared to make the first move.

Outside, High Street hurried towards the weekend. The hamsa hung on the wall. The swastika was barely visible on the glass. My script had declared mutiny.

My hair, however, had reached a peace agreement.